Melanie, Chris, and Zack debate the role of ideology in American foreign policy. Bridge Colby and Robert Kaplan have recently argued that the United States should avoid making the competition with China overly ideological, but Zack suggests that this will be easier said than done. Chris worries about the difficulty of emphasizing ideology when the United States isn't practicing what it preaches. Melanie notes the importance of alliance building for managing foreign threats, which has major implications for the role of ideology. She also talks about a quintessential Net Assessment topic: forestry practices.    Links: Elbridge Colby and Robert D. Kaplan, “The Ideology Delusion,” Foreign Affairs, September 4, 2020 Kori Schake, Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017) Aaron Friedberg, “Competing with China,” Survival, June 01, 2018 Jessica Chen Weiss, “An Ideological Contest in U.S.-China Relations? Assessing China’s Defense of Autocracy,” SSRN, July 30, 2019 “A Special Conversation with Zack Cooper and Laura Rosenberger,” Biden Institute, September 21, 2020 Fareed Zakaria, “We Need to Prepare for This 'Deeply Worrying' Scenario on Election Day,” CNN, September 13, 2020 Christina Morales and Allyson Waller, “A Gender-Reveal Celebration Is Blamed for a Wildfire. It Isn’t the First Time” New York Times, September 7, 2020 Elizabeth Weil, "They Know How to Prevent Megafires. Why Won't Anybody Listen?" ProPublica, August 28, 2020 Delilah Friedler, "California's Wildfire Policy Totally Backfired. Native Communities Know How to Fix It," Mother Jones, November 2019 Alessio Patalano, "What Is China's Strategy in the Senkaku Islands?", War on the Rocks, September 10, 2020 Aaron Friedberg, "Getting the China Challenge Right," American Interest, January 10, 2019 Stephen Walt, "Everyone Misunderstands the Reason for the US-China Cold War," Foreign Policy, June 30, 2020 Yashar Ali, Tweet, September 13, 2020