As the stakes of the Cold War became increasingly cataclysmic, former President Ronald Reagan often found himself wishing for an alien invasion. Nothing else, he remarked, could unite the people of the world and dissolve the discord that had brought humanity to the brink of nuclear annihilation. Even the bitterest foes would have been forced to train their fire away from one another and toward their common, extraterrestrial enemy.

As political tribalization ravages America in the social media age, I’ve often thought of Reagan’s peculiar wish. But it’s become increasingly clear that not even a foreign invasion could unite America’s warring political factions since both sides are convinced that the other represents the pinnacle of evil. Liberals and conservatives alike compulsively frame our present circumstances as an indictment of the other's mal intent. Even foreign conflicts, such as the war in Ukraine, in which Russian President Vladimir Putin adopts the role of MAGA supervillain and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that of the pro-democracy freedom fighter, are now understood almost exclusively as an extension of domestic politics. Our national discourse is like a car with only one gear and very little range — and this leaves us vulnerable.

China’s increasingly bold behavior on the world stage is due at least partially to this debilitation. Despite China's diminished standing in Western capitals as a result of coziness with Moscow and its increasingly obvious culpability in relation to the coronavirus pandemic, it’s obvious Chinese President Xi Jinping doesn’t fear the consequences of rebuffing the U.S.-ed global order.

And why should he? It's difficult to believe that America would be able to muster the internal unity and resolve necessary to repel a long-term challenge to its international dominance. Last month, for example, as a Chinese spy balloon drifted over the U.S. mainland and gathered intelligence from military sites , Americans simply gawked and tracked its progress in the sky, pausing only to argue over whether Democrats or Republicans were more to blame for the incident. Within weeks, they forgot about the episode entirely and returned to more pressing things, such as drag queen story hour and the possible criminality of a presidential payoff to a porn star .

Meanwhile, during his visit to Russia only weeks ago, Xi bid Putin farewell in front of the cameras and offered his take on the brewing international shift: “Right now, there are changes, the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years, and we are the ones driving these changes together.”

The East is on the move. Countries in the "global south" are coming to see China as a voice of reason, which is giving the Chinese Communist Party the prestige necessary to form a parallel global order. When Beijing shocked the world last month by brokering a detente between Saudi Arabia and Iran , an event our news media ignored because it couldn’t be easily reduced for tribal consumption, it appeared nothing less than a benign global superpower, especially in contrast with the U.S., whose militarism and meddling in the Middle East has only wrought destabilization. Beijing’s entry into the conflict in Ukraine as peacemaker will only further burnish these credentials.

The U.S. lacks the focus and will necessary to protect the global order it spent the last century establishing. Not even a military aircraft floating over the mainland could snap it into a lasting attention. Perhaps people were too transfixed by the endless loop of videos they waste their lives consuming on TikTok, which the Chinese government uses to spy on them, lower their IQs, and carry out “influence operations " designed to exacerbate internal tensions. Xi must laugh himself to sleep at night.

One could at least imagine Soviet and American officials banding together to repel aliens, even at the height of the Cold War. There is evidence of a begrudging respect between the two countries after so many years of struggle — Kruschev gifted the Kennedys their beloved dog Pushinka , for instance. But no such tokens of goodwill appear between red and blue states in America today. An invasion of their common land is playing out before their eyes, yet they can't take their hands off each other's throats long enough to defend themselves. They've decided there's nothing worth salvaging without so much as a counseling session. Talk of “divorce” isn’t evidence of a marriage on the rocks but instead of a marriage that is already over.

If I were China, I'd take a swing at the U.S. right now, too.

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Peter Laffin is a contributor at the Washington Examiner and the founder of Crush the College Essay. His work has also appeared in RealClearPolitics, the Catholic Thing, the National Catholic Register, and the American Spectator.