In October, two China experts joined None Of The Above to discuss Washington's response to the rise of China. Today's episode digs deeper and unpacks the very notion of great power competition, and whether America requires this strategic framework to succeed as a global hegemon. Jacob Stokes and Ali Wyne sit down with Mark Hannah to evaluate Washington's obsession with great power competition and the strategic purpose of America confronting a rival like China. Is America in the throes of a new Cold War? Or does the U.S.-China conflict distract from what will always be an entangled, complicated, yet necessary, relationship?

Jacob Stokes is a senior policy analyst in the China Program at the U.S. Institute of Peace. He previously worked on the national security staff of Vice President Joe Biden.

Ali Wyne is an international and security policy analyst at RAND Corporation. He is a coauthor of Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World (2013) and a contributing author to Power Relations in the Twenty-First Century: Mapping a Multipolar World? (2017).