Eric hosts Dale Copeland, Professor of International Relations in the Department of Politics at UVA and faculty senior fellow at the Miller Center. Dale is the author of A World Safe for Commerce: American Foreign Policy from the Revolution to the Rise of China, (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 2024). They discuss Dale's dynamic realist theory of international relations which seeks to meld "offensive realism" which sees states as power maximizing entities in an anarchic world and "defensive realism" which sees states as acting to modulate power maximizing in order to avoid a spiral into conflict. Dale contrasts this theory to liberal institutional theories that see foreign policies as driven by internal dynamics including ideology. They discuss his account of American foreign policy which sees US statesmen as successful practitioners of realpolitik in a way that has advanced the U.S. national interest and created what Dale calls the "FDR legacy" or the liberal international order over which the U.S. has presided since the end of World War II. They talk about analysts who are either China "pessimists" who believe a conflict between the U.S. and China is unavoidable and China "optimists" who think it may be possible to avoid conflict. They discuss China's tightening relations with Russia, whether or not the U.S.-China relationship will be a bipolar one, whether or not we have seen "peak China," Xi's recent trip to Europe, how one would know enough to conclude that China was a threat that require containment and much more about the U.S.-China relationship. A World Safe for Commerce: American Foreign Policy from the Revolution to the Rise of China: https://a.co/d/8GWjZVd Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.