Why can't the US and China be a natural capitalist ally? A geopolitical reading of inter-capitalist rivalry

The rivalry between the United States (U.S.) and China has entered an uncharted phase, marked by heightened confrontation over trade, technology, the South China Sea, Taiwan, and various other issues. This paper introduces a Geopolitical reading of the conflict within the fold of an Inter-Capitalist Rivalry. In contrast to mainstream IR theories, the paper is grounded in two key premises: (a) inter-state competition and global capitalist development are dialectically co-constitutive, each crucially informing the other; and (b) both China and the U.S. are leading capitalist states, whose capitalist identity and respective trajectories of domestic capitalist development play a significant role in shaping their international behavior. Driven primarily by the theoretical framework of Uneven & Combined Development (UCD), this paper advances two key arguments. First, rather than a contest between political hegemons, the U.S.-China rivalry is best understood as an inter-capitalist rivalry shaped by (i) qualitative differences in their respective models of capitalist development and (ii) their positioning within evolving global capitalist dynamics and hierarchies, particularly in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Second, contrary to the Globalist account, the emergence of a Transnational Capitalist Class has not prevented inter-capitalist rivalry from taking the form of "Geopolitical" tensions (involving nation-states and regional institutions), as evidenced in the U.S.-China conflict. Building on these findings, this research seeks to refute the Globalist perspective on inter-state relations within global capitalism, reinstating the importance of geopolitical dynamics in understanding global capitalist transformations and inter-capitalist competition.