Has the United States never competed with a great power whose ideology or civilization was dramatically different from ours? Skinner’s claim that China is the United States’ first ideologically distinct great power competitor is wrong. Before World War II, Japan came to believe it wouldn’t be treated equally in world politics because of Western racial attitudes. But the claim that the United States has never faced a non-Caucasian great power competitor is also wrong. Japan before World War II was a great power rival and was understood as racially different.

Source: Washington Post May 04, 2019 11:00 UTC