at the expense of the United States and its security allies and partners.

Now the eruption of the COVID-19 pandemic has arrived conveniently in time to stall the U.S. economy and deepen partisan divisions over the cause of the outbreak and the government’s response. It also has opened a whole new disinformation front, with Beijing sources accusing the United States Army of releasing the disease, denying its Chinese origins, and labeling U.S. officials as racist and xenophobic.

The presidential candidates will have the pandemic and a host of other domestic and foreign policy issues to debate between now and November. But the one issue they need to remove from partisan contention is America’s single most important national security challenge: the existential threat posed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC).Given their respective histories on China, they should be able to present a united front and eliminate Beijing’s efforts to further inflame American society and debilitate the U.S. government and military establishment.

They should start by fully embracing the core U.S. national security reality embodied in the National Defense Strategy, which says that “China … seeks Indo-Pacific regional hegemony … and displacement of the United States to achieve global preeminence.” Put more bluntly, since the PRC under Mao Zedong gained political power “out of the barrel of a gun,” it has seen the United States as the implacable enemy standing in the way of its goal of world domination.

The “anti-imperialist” campaign started with Mao’s “wars of national liberation” throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America. Then China joined with North