U.S.-China Relations
NextFin News - The November 2026 midterm elections did more than redraw congressional maps; they opened the Democratic Party's 2028 presidential contest, and with it the most consequential foreign-policy reckoning the party has faced since the Cold War. Thomas Wright, a Brookings Institution senior fellow who served as the National Security Council's senior director for strategic planning under President Biden, argues in a new essay that the strategic environment a Democratic president would inherit in 2029 is on track to be the most difficult and unforgiving since the height of the Cold War. The party's familiar centrist-versus-progressive split is no longer the main story. The sharper fight is over whether the post-World War II operating system that three Democratic presidents have treated as a cornerstone can be reformed at all — or whether it must be replaced.
The Situation: A Party at War With Its Own Foreign Policy Legacy
After two years of post-mortems on Kamala Harris's 2024 defeat, the 2028 contest is shaping up as one of the most open debates about the future of Democratic policy in generations. The party divides into two camps that readers will recognize: centrists focused on strategic competition, restoring American national power, and deepening alliances; and progressives pushing a more affirmative agenda built around shared global challenges and cooperation. But as the second Trump administration continues its project of overturning the postwar global order, Wright writes, the debates within each camp matter at least as much as the disagreements between them.
The stakes are concrete. Five disagreements — the future of the international order, Israel, artificial intelligence, China, and the global economy — must be litigated by candidates, former officials, and thinkers now. If they are not, and voters are not given a coherent choice, the first year of the next Democratic administration "could be consumed by indecision and infighting." That is not an abstract warning. It is a description of what happens when a coalition inherits power without having decided what it believes.
Wright's central observation reframes the whole debate. The three Democratic presidents since the end of the Cold War all made a U.S.-led international order the cornerstone of their foreign policy. But Biden, for all his "America Is Back" rhetoric, did not govern like a restorationist. Faced with intensifying strategic competition from China and Russia and the onset of shared challenges such as the pandemic, the Biden administration shifted foreign economic policy away from free trade and globalization toward industrial policy, resilience, and technological leadership, and pushed back more assertively against Beijing and Moscow than his Democratic predecessors did. The old era had already unraveled; the question now is what replaces it.
Centrists: Reform the Order, or Adapt to Upheaval
Among centrists, the argument is no longer about whether to lead. It is about whether the world they want to lead can be restored. One camp believes a future Democratic administration can restore and reform the U.S.-led international order. The other believes the United States must adapt to a prolonged period of geopolitical upheaval. For now, Wright notes, the differences are "more pronounced in diagnosis than in policy prescriptions." All centrists favor deepening alliances and partnerships, modernizing the military, fixing the defense industrial base, strengthening deterrence, tackling transnational challenges such as global public health, and pursuing hardheaded diplomacy with rivals.
Centrists also agree that Trump has severely weakened U.S. power and institutions, though they remain relatively optimistic about the country's capacity to recover. The harder truth is that the world in 2029 will not be the world Biden inherited in 2021. "Winning an election will not mean the end of Trumpism," Wright writes. The America First movement is likely to remain a dominant force in the Republican Party, and allies and partners will hedge against dramatic shifts in U.S. foreign policy from one election to the next. Even if a Democratic president rebuilds American power and repairs damaged institutions, restoring international confidence in the durability of U.S. commitments will be much harder.
That hedging is the quiet structural shift beneath the personnel drama. Allies are no longer pricing American commitment as a permanent asset. They are pricing it as an option with a short maturity — and that repricing survives any single election.
Progressives: Primacy at All Costs Failed
Progressives start from a different premise: the U.S. foreign policy establishment failed over the past 25 years by pursuing American primacy at all costs. They see the U.S.-led order as deeply flawed in its design and track record, and argue that Washington's selective application of the "rules-based order" undermined the order itself.
"In a rules-based order, hypocrisy is vulnerability."
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said it at the Munich Security Conference in February 2026, and the line captures the progressive critique of the postwar order. Progressives favor a rules-based order that applies its principles consistently, even when doing so constrains the United States.
Many progressives, led by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, also believe a global oligarchy threatens democracy and see big business in defense, technology, and finance as part of a corrupt system that has driven excessive military spending, misguided interventions, and a global economy favoring multinational companies over workers. They read the turmoil of the past two years as accelerating the emergence of a multipolar order in which the United States has an important but more limited role. Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser to President Obama, puts it plainly: Washington should "re-engage the world as something other than a hegemon."
The Gaza war is the fault line that turned this from an intellectual dispute into a party-splitting reality. Progressives point to U.S. support for Israel's war in Gaza as evidence that the selective rules-based order is morally and politically unsustainable. The numbers behind that split are stark. In a Pew Research Center survey fielded March 23-29, 2026 and published April 7, 80% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents held an unfavorable view of Israel — up from 69% a year earlier and 53% in 2022. Among Democrats under 50, 47% held a very unfavorable view. And in April 2026, 40 of 47 Senate Democrats voted to block arms sales to Israel, including every Democratic senator viewed as seriously weighing a White House bid: Arizona's Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego, New Jersey's Cory Booker, Michigan's Elissa Slotkin, Georgia's Jon Ossoff, and Connecticut's Chris Murphy.
That vote is the clearest signal that the center of gravity has moved. As Jake Sullivan, who co-founded the influential National Security Action group and served as Biden's national security adviser, said: "The center of gravity has shifted on the relationship with Israel, and there will be a debate about the nature of the relationship going forward."
Artificial Intelligence and China: Where the Old Categories Blur
If Israel divides the party, artificial intelligence and China reveal where the old categories break down. On AI, the fight is not left versus right but acceleration versus restraint — and it is cutting across the Democratic bench. Several potential 2028 candidates who once favored removing barriers to major technology investment are now moving toward regulation. Senator Mark Kelly has said he plans to introduce legislation creating a fund that AI companies would pay into to support workers displaced by the technology, a reversal of his earlier stance favoring the removal of barriers to such investment. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has called for "strict guardrails" on advanced technology after signing an executive order imposing tight restrictions on data centers, and Maryland Governor Wes Moore has said he would sign a statewide data-center moratorium. The pivot toward data-center regulation is becoming a defining 2028 issue precisely because it touches both the progressive critique of corporate power and the centrist concern with technological leadership against China.
On China, the split is subtler. One account envisions a globe defined by strategic competition and the erosion of the old order; the other rejects that framework as self-fulfilling and favors restraint and cooperation with Beijing on shared global problems. Biden sought to cooperate with China on issues of mutual concern, including AI, but insisted it be done without preconditions. The 2028 debate will force the party to choose whether competition or coexistence sets the terms — and whether industrial policy and technological leadership can survive contact with a progressive agenda skeptical of defense and technology spending.
Why This Is Structural, Not Cyclical
It is tempting to read this fight as a cyclical personnel dispute — the same 120 foreign policy hands being rotated out, as Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii suggested in May 2026 when he wrote that it was "fair to want a whole new crop of foreign policy staffers in the next democratic administration," adding that "it's not like the same 120 people are the only people who know anything." Personnel turnover is real. But it is a symptom, not the disease.
Three forces make this a structural realignment rather than a cyclical correction. First, the polling shift on Israel is not a temporary reaction to a single war; it is a cohort-level realignment, with younger Democrats far more unfavorable than older ones, and it persists across the party's ideological spectrum. Second, allied hedging is a rational response to volatility that no single election resolves — America First remains a dominant force in the Republican Party regardless of who wins the White House. Third, the economic model has already changed irreversibly: the bipartisan consensus now runs toward industrial policy, resilience, and technological leadership, not the free trade and globalization that defined the post-Cold War Democratic playbook.
Ben Rhodes, who co-founded National Security Action with Sullivan but has moved in a more progressive direction, captured the mood in May 2026: "I think the next Democratic administration should look quite different. It's kind of time to pass the baton." That is not a staffing note. It is a verdict on an era.
The Counter-Thesis: The Order Is Damaged, Not Finished
The strongest case against the structural-realignment view is Wright's own. Centrists argue that the differences between the camps are "more pronounced in diagnosis than in policy prescriptions," that both sides remain committed to rebuilding the foundations of American power, supporting alliances, backing a just peace in Ukraine, taking transnational challenges seriously, and eschewing unnecessary military interventions. A spirited, productive primary debate, on this view, can allow voters to make an informed choice and ensure the next administration spends its first year acting on a vision rather than arguing over one. The order is damaged but reformable; statecraft can paper over the split.
That case is coherent — but it depends on the assumption that the coalition's underlying assumptions about American primacy and the rules-based order remain intact beneath the rhetoric. The evidence suggests otherwise. When 80% of a party's voters view a cornerstone ally unfavorably, when 40 of 47 of its senators vote to block arms sales, and when allies are structurally hedging against American volatility, the disagreement is no longer about tactics. It is about the operating system.
The falsifying signal for the structural view is specific: if the 2028 Democratic nominee runs on an explicit platform of conditioning all military aid to Israel on human-rights benchmarks and renegotiating alliance burden-sharing as a matter of principle — rather than as an exception — then the "reformable order" thesis is finished. If, instead, the nominee runs on restoring credibility and repairing institutions without challenging the primacy framework, the centrist reform case holds.
What Comes Next: Three Time Horizons
Short term (2026-2027): The fight is over personnel, messaging, and primary positioning. Expect the "ideas primary" that Third Way's Jonathan Cowan described to intensify — the centrist group has launched a $50 million effort to ensure a "combative centrist" emerges as the 2028 nominee, while progressives organize around restraint and consistency. Polling on Israel, China, and AI will move the candidates.
Medium term (2028-2029): The platform fight. The question is whether the nominee can unite the coalition around a coherent doctrine or whether the five unresolved debates produce a platform papered over with ambiguity. This is where Wright's warning about a first year "consumed by indecision and infighting" will be tested.
Long term (2029 and beyond): The structural outcome. Regardless of who wins, the next Democratic administration inherits a world in which allies hedge, China competes across technology and trade, AI reshapes labor and security, and the postwar order's legitimacy is contested at home. Three scenarios frame the range. The base case is a contested restoration: a Democratic president rebuilds institutions and reassures allies, but governs within tighter constraints than Biden faced, with the order reformed at the margins rather than replaced. The upside case is a renewed synthesis: the party resolves the five debates before taking office, fusing centrist statecraft with progressive consistency into a durable new doctrine. The downside case is paralysis: the debates are deferred into the administration, and the first year is consumed by the indecision and infighting Wright warns of. The trigger that separates them is the 2028 platform: a coherent doctrine points to the synthesis; ambiguity points to paralysis. The party that litigates these questions now will govern with a mandate. The party that defers them will govern with a wound.
The 2028 Democratic foreign policy fight is not about who gets the briefing book. It is about whether the book's first chapter — American primacy, selectively enforced — still has a second. The party that answers that question before election day will spend its first year acting. The party that doesn't will spend it arguing.
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