Marshall here. Welcome back to the Realignment.

Today's episode is with the author, Dr. Jonathan D.T. Ward,

the author of the recently released The Decise of Decade,

American Grand Strategy for Triumph over China.

I was interested in speaking with Dr. Ward because unlike a lot of the previous

China-US related books and interviews I've conducted,

he really has done the work of putting together a comprehensive articulation of the means,

aims, and stakes for how the US should approach China this decade.

Two aspects of the conversation and the book were ones I really appreciate,

and I think that whether you agree or disagree with his framing are useful ones to contend with.

Number one, as retired Lieutenant General and former National Security Advisor,

HR McMaster points out in the forward of Dr. Ward's book,

the economic picture matters during the 2020s, great power competition,

in a way that it just did not matter during the Cold War.

If you're looking at the grand strategist and politicians who led American foreign policy

during that era, they were just not focused much on the economics side of the picture,

mostly because of the fact that the Soviet economic system was just so inherently flawed,

and the US and Soviet worlds at an economic level were just so separate that it just didn't come

into the picture. This time and during this competition, the economic side of things is going to be

key and everyone needs to act accordingly. And then number two, he's just at a lot of time focusing

on the impact of the choices that one could make in the 2020s. When he's talking about triumph,

when he's talking about competition, he isn't alleging that this is going to resolve itself by

...