Book Talk: The Rivalry Peril
Van Jackson and Michael Brenes discuss their new book on the dangers of great power competition.

As the utopian “end of history” turned progressively more dystopian through US wars of aggression, financial turmoil from unregulated markets, and popular discontent with the failure of democratic forms, the US foreign policy establishment turned to “competition” with China as a unified response to their own crisis of legitimacy.

In The Rivalry Peril: How Great-Power Competition Threatens Peace and Weakens Democracy, Van Jackson, senior lecturer in international relations at Victoria University of Wellington, and Michael Brenes, co-director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy and lecturer in history at Yale University, argue that, far from saving democracy and American leadership, the turn to great power conflict poses grave dangers to both.
April 2025

2
3:00 PM ET
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Join us for a timely and important discussion with:

Van Jackson

Van Jackson joined Victoria University of Wellington in 2017 as a senior lecturer in International Relations. He is also a senior research scholar at Security in Context, where he co-directs its "Multipolarity, Great-Power Competition, and the Global South" project. Van’s research broadly concerns the class politics of geopolitics, especially U.S.- East Asian relations.

Michael Brenes

Michael Brenes is co-director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy and lecturer in History at Yale University. His research interests include United States foreign policy, political history, and political economy. He is the author of For Might and Right: Cold War Defense Spending and the Remaking of American Democracy.

Jake Werner

Jake Werner is director of the East Asia Program at the Quincy Institute. His research examines the emergence of great power conflict between the US and China and develops policies to rebuild constructive economic relations. Prior to joining Quincy, Jake was a Postdoctoral Global China research fellow at Boston University.
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