The currency of great power competition in the 21st-century is neither ballistic missile nor aircraft carriers. It is rather a state's administrative capacity, structural resilience, and governing legitimacy.

Because the world is no longer a chessboard so much as an integrated matrix of de facto macro & micro sovereignties, and because there are no longer merely discrete threats but rather a latticework of transnational problems that no individual state can solve.

The Cold War lasted most of the 20th-century and was about dealing with the effects of the industrial revolution. The question the United States and its allies were trying to answer better than the Soviet Union was how to best structure an industrial society.

The 'big question' of the 21st-century now is how to best structure a globalized, digital society; how to deal with the effects of the information revolution. My suspicion is that requires fast, effective, resilient governing structures suited to a digital, integrated era.

A state's capacity to defend itself is still important, of course. But credible, effective options to do that have grown, while the efficacy of traditional weapons platforms has diminished.

Because we're more integrated than at any previous point in world history, states' actions are more easily assisted or resisted by others, with effective systems being adopted by the rest and ineffective ones being ignored as they fall into obsolescence.

Because individuals are more empowered than at any previous point in history, a state's broad legitimacy is far more important than in the past, when 'the people' could be suppressed through draconian police measures.

Anyway, what all this means is that the real competition between the U.S. Russia and China is over governing systems. If China's model is viewed as effective, it will be imported by others - see states in Africa adopting Xi's smart Safe Cities technology.

If Putin's sistema of managed democacy is seen as effective, it will be adopted by others, as it has gained inroads elsewhere in Europe, Central Asia, and, until last night, even here in America itself.

If America's 'brand' of rule of law, transparency, and independent institutions continue to be viewed as antiquated and broken, they will be abandoned. This is why Joe Biden's victory is a crucial first step to repairing their tarnished image.

But it's not a solution by any means. Our institutions must be reformed to make them better suited to modern conditions and to solve 21st-c problems instead of 20th-c ones. They need to be efficient & effective to first be seen as legitimate by Americans themselves.

But here's the kicker. It doesn't have to be America anymore. There are plenty of other states out there today modernizing their institutions and reforming their democracies to make them more fit for competition. Smaller states may even have the advantage in a digital era.

There's no reason it can't be the United States, though. We've reformed ourselves repeatedly through our history, and can do so again. It only requires the political wherewithal to do so.