Cold War II
Those siding with me in believing that we are already in a second cold war
Then there is the Yale University/Hoover Institution view. the global situation today more closely resembles the world on the eve of one or the other of the world wars.
In an excellent new piece, Zelikow argues that it is a comforting delusion — indeed, “wishful thinking” — to believe we are in a cold war with China. Rather, we confront a new Axis — China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — that in many ways poses a bigger threat than the Germany-Japan-Italy Axis of the late 1930s and early 1940s, or the early Cold War combination of the Soviet Union, China and the other communist-controlled states.
“The worst case, in a major crisis,” writes Zelikow, “will be if the United States and its allies commit to victory, animated by their own rhetoric and dutiful but ill-considered military plans, and then are outmaneuvered and defeated. It would be the ‘Suez moment’ for the United States, or perhaps much worse.”
Regular readers of this column will know that I sometimes share this fear. For me, Cold War II is the good outcome. An American version of the Suez Crisis of 1956 — the abortive occupation of the Suez Canal by Britain, France and Israel — would be worse,
Diet Cold War?
Letting other people do the fighting is, after all, one of the four pillars of National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s grand strategy: “Help [fill in the blank] defend itself without sending US troops to war.”
In practice, that means channeling money and arms to key countries — Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan — and hoping they can hold off the new Axis powers without the need for American “boots on the ground.”
Niall Ferguson Bloomberg 19 maj 2024
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