The next administration will have to ask a much harder question at a more conceptual level: Can there be such a thing as a "war" of ideas? Does this metaphor make any sense? Do ideas really fight wars against each other; is there such a thing as "overwhelming force," victory, and unconditional surrender in the realm of ideas? If we think in terms of a war of ideas, we are sending ourselves and the world into a war that can never end.

Metaphor is not policy. But metaphors suggest policies and this is one that does not work. A better metaphor may be a "marketplace of ideas," where the goal is to facilitate peaceful interchange among and mixing and melding of ideologies — both the ones that we already know, and the new ideological movements that will inevitably arise. In a marketplace of ideas, power comes from the ability to identify social movements as they form, understand deeply what these movements are about and what human impulses they channel, and interact with them within their own language and systems of meaning. The point of a marketplace of ideas is to provide reasonable platforms for debate, discussion, action, and recombination — and occasionally reconciliation — among differing ideologies. A marketplace assumes that outcomes — in this market, some form of truth — will emerge and it assumes that various ideas, ideologies, and facts will serve as the "currency"in the search for that truth. We’re not even close to having the capabilities that would make a marketplace work to our advantage.

It is urgent that we move in that direction. The next administration faces an extraordinary demographic time bomb overlaid on an ideological challenge throughout the developing world. Take Pakistan, for example. About half of Pakistan’s 165 million people are now under the age of 21. When this group of young people thinks of America, they do not reflect on the peaceful end of the Cold War. They do not think of the post-World War II multilateral institutions largely designed by America that helped bring peace to a previous generation. And they certainly don’t think of Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, or George Washington. The images of America burned into their heads come from Abu Ghraib. That is an unfortunate reality that the next administration (and several more after that) will have to face straight on.

Rising China

For the past eight years, the incontrovertible doctrine driving U.S. foreign policy has been that no nation should be allowed to limit American influence and that no rival can be permitted to accumulate enough military or economic clout to pose a future threat to America’s global ambitions.

On paper, a nice idea. In the real world, it’s too late for us to impose our sense of order on the rest of the globe.

Instead, our next president will have to recognize that America is already settling into bipolar competition with a re-emergent China, and that this contest will be a global fact of life for the next several decades. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Two policemen may well find it easier to patrol a bad neighborhood than a single one, and if our next president gets it right, this new bipolar world — as defined cooperatively by Beijing and Washington — could create spectacular mutual benefits. A China that helps defeat global terrorism, stabilizes energy and financial markets, and helps enforce new trade and environmental laws would create tremendous paybacks for millions around the globe.

But get it wrong and the consequences will be dire. We could find ourselves confronting military and strategic struggles across the populous landscape of Asia, Africa, and perhaps Latin America that mirror the ugliest moments of the Cold War waged against the Soviet Union. Add to that the possibility that we would also face a form of brutal economic competition that would make us nostalgic for the trade wars Washington waged with Japan in the mid-1980s.

How is a bipolar relationship different from a simple bilateral relationship? Bipolarity exists when two nations affect each other’s lives at every step of the way, and much more directly than anyone else’s. During the height of the Cold War in the late 1950s and early 1960s, what Russia did was the most important fact of life for American foreign policy makers, and vice versa. In the first decade of the 21st century, Sino-American relations are quickly taking on this bipolar cast.

Consider that today we can already say with confidence that the health of America’s relationship with China helps determine the price of gasoline at the pump; the pace at which nuclear and missile technologies proliferate to unreliable nations or rogue states; and whether international organizations such as the United Nations can function in a meaningful way to stop genocide in Darfur. The nature and pace of China’s development are becoming the most important determinants of the health of our air and whether the earth’s atmosphere will continue to warm beyond environmental sustainability. What happens between Washington and Beijing will set the rules for the world’s security architecture and trade regimes. This is bipolarity, pure and simple.

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