In Cold War II, the US Risks Playing the Soviet Role
Détente is mainly about playing for time. But we shouldn't assume that time is on America's side rather than China's.
Summiting.
Photographer: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
What if we had a new cold war — and we were the Soviets? That was the question I found myself asking during this week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, the highlight of which was the long-anticipated meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden at Woodside, California, south of San Francisco.
My question goes against the grain of current conventional wisdom, which gives little credence to Xi’s old slogan that the US is in decline, and China is on the rise (“dong sheng, xi jiang” — “the East rises, the West falls”). Given the surprising strength of the US economy and the sputtering recovery of China’s from the restrictions of “zero Covid,” some commentators have suggested that, on the contrary, it is the West (or at least the US) that is rising economically, while China is falling.