Ours is an era of great power competition. The United States acknowledges as much in its official national security documents; China concedes that is the tenor of the times but insists that the U.S. is responsible for this state of affairs. Japan’s National Security Strategy simply has repeated references to “intensifying geopolitical competition.”
That competition should not — must not — block cooperation on crucial issues. Even during the height of the Cold War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union worked together to reduce the threat posed by nuclear weapons, signing arms control agreements and cooperating with other nations to block the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
The “crucial issues” that supersede narrow calculations of national interest tend to be somewhat arbitrary. WMD still makes the list. Climate change is getting there. Last week, artificial intelligence rose to prominence following warnings by prominent officials and experts that the risk of catastrophic damage from AI was nontrivial.