If the United States is to deal effectively with China’s growing threat, it would be a good idea to define our current situation accurately.

The truth is, we are already in a ‘cold war’ with the People’s Republic of China.

I take no pleasure in pointing this out. Given a choice, I would prefer to live in the world that more phlegmatic China-watchers describe, the latest being the highly-respected Joseph Nye in his recent op-ed in The New York Times (With China, a ‘Cold War’ Analogy Is Lazy and Dangerous). Unfortunately that world is a fantasy. 

The similarities between the ‘Cold War’ (a long-term, strategic competition between the Soviet Union and the United States that spanned more than four decades) and the current ‘cold war’ (a long-term, strategic competition between the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America) are much closer than many admit. 

This is more than just an academic debating point. We risk serious errors as a nation if we shy away from reality because we find it distasteful. Drawing out the similarities and differences between these two cold wars gives us the best possible chance to avoid catastrophe and protect our interests.

Cold-war deniers make a number of mistakes.

Mistake #1 – The ‘Cold War’ was two-dimensional. Looking at my shelf of Soviet-American Cold War historiography reveals a rich literature on its multi-dimensional aspects. Whether you read John Lewis Gaddis or Melvyn Leffler, it is clear that the Cold War was far more complex than a two-dimensional military confrontation: Just like the strategic competition unfolding with the PRC.

The United States and its allies created GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) in 1947 and used it as a critical component of ‘Cold War’ economic and trade policies by uniting market economies into a bloc for comparative advantage. GATT, which later morphed into the World Trade Organization, proved to be a powerful attractive force for nations as they considered how to construct their own politico-economic institutions. In 1950, the U.S. and its allies developed multilateral export control regimes to gain advantage in the industrial and technological domains and impose disadvantages on their adversaries. Those same tools to control the diffusion of technology are in use today against China in multiple technology and manufacturing sectors (just ask Huawei whether export controls are still relevant). 

The Cold War undoubtedly took place in the fields of science and technology as well, experiences that provide important lessons today as we navigate between the two extremes of fully open and fully closed scientific institutions. President Reagan’s 1985 National Security Decision Directive 189, “National Policy on the Transfer of Scientific, Technical and Engineering Information,” was implemented to deal with the competing priorities of open scientific research and the need to maintain national security advantages in the context of the Cold War. The “exorbitant privilege” the United States gained from holding the international reserve currency played a critical role throughout the Cold War too, enabling successive administrations to deftly use the financial domain to impose dilemmas on Moscow at nearly every turn. 

Thomas Rid’s book on political warfare, Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare, provides critical insight into how the informational, cultural and diplomatic dimensions of the Cold War interacted as governments sought to manipulate information and drive socio-political wedges. There is much commonality between the Cold War and what we are experiencing today in the realm of political warfare and disinformation. Louis Menand’s latest book, The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, offers probably the best antidote to the mistaken interpretation that the Cold War was in any way two-dimensional or a purely military competition.

Mistake #2: The Cold War was bipolar. Pretending that Washington and Moscow were the only two capitals with agency during those four decades is particularly unhelpful. Just like the competition unfolding with China, any sophisticated history of the Cold War reveals that multiple independent players (nations and non-state actors) pursued their own interests too. Many were reluctant to be pulled into a strategic competition that they viewed as tangential to their own interests; others used its context to advance parochial interests. In some cases, nations and groups pursued both of these approaches simultaneously. This more nuanced view of the history of the Cold War is extremely helpful in understanding the dynamics we are experiencing today. 

To provide just a few examples: The French obsession with “strategic autonomy” did not start during the Trump, Obama, or Bush Administrations. It has deep roots in the independent approach that Paris adopted during the Cold War. Charles de Gaulle’s “Politics of Grandeur”, France’s development of an independent nuclear force, forcing NATO to move its headquarters from Paris to Brussels, and twice vetoing Britain’s entry into the EEC were policies that were all about France’s autonomy and its desire to counter an Anglo-American bloc (sound familiar?). 

German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik was about West Germany pursuing an independent approach by forging rapprochement with Eastern Europe, particularly with East Germany, over the objections of Washington. India and Yugoslavia famously led the effort to form the “non-aligned” movement in response to the Korean War. Japanese Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, the grandfather of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, pursued efforts to carve out an independent foreign policy for Japan in the late 1950s, signing peace treaties with Poland and Czechoslovakia. Mao’s rebuke of Khrushchev in 1961 marked the formal Sino-Soviet split which would last until nearly the end of the Cold War. The United States and the Soviet Union certainly played central roles, but the course and character of the Cold War was not wholly dictated by Washington and Moscow.

One could argue that the process of decolonialization following the Second World War had a far bigger impact on the lives of hundreds of millions across the globe during those four decades. Washington and Moscow both misinterpreted and also took advantage of these dynamics to further their interests. Despite our flawed memories, the world of the Cold War was just as complex and multipolar as it is today, even if the specifics of the power dynamics are different and some of the players have changed.

Despite our flawed memories, the world of the Cold War was just as complex and multipolar as it is today, even if the specifics of the power dynamics are different and some of the players have changed.

Mistake #3: Containment is the objective of cold wars. The objective of the Cold War was to expand and maintain a liberal international order that favored democratic, market economies over authoritarian regimes: Containment was the strategy employed to achieve that goal. The Soviet Union represented the most serious threat to that objective because it saw itself as being in an existential struggle with the capitalist world. We adopted a strategy or method, which we labelled “containment,” that was suited to the specific conditions in which we found ourselves, and which we adapted as those conditions changed over the four decades. 

The objective of our cold war with China is quite similar, even if our strategy may be different. When former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe coined the term ‘Free and Open Indo-Pacific,’ he identified this same objective. The strategy we design and adopt to achieve this objective will be suited to the conditions we have today and won’t exactly match the strategy of containment we designed for the Soviet Union. 

While we must avoid confusing strategies and objectives, we must also avoid confusing the competition itself with a strategy. For many, there is a tendency to equate the ‘Cold War’ with ‘containment,’ as if the two terms are synonymous: they are not. Containment is the label for the strategy the United States adopted for the Soviet-American Cold War of 1947-1991. A different cold war conducted at a different time, under different conditions, involving different opponents, would obviously require a different strategy. 

Mistake #4: Interdependence is stabilizing. This is probably the most perilous mistake because it lulls us into a false sense of stability and blinds us to the options available to ourselves and our opponents. The popular conception is that during the Cold War the Soviet Union and the United States were “decoupled” and that this condition was dangerous and destabilizing. Conversely, we are led to believe that China and the United States are “coupled”, a condition that is stable and safe, and that to change that condition would lead to the same dangerous and destabilizing situation of the Cold War. These popular conceptions deserve greater scrutiny. 

First, the Soviet Union and the United States were more “coupled” than it seems at first sight. By the 1970s, the Soviet Union was increasingly dependent on petroleum sales to the global energy market to fuel its economy and provide support to its satellites. American and Saudi efforts in the 1980s to flood the global market with oil and drop the price did significant harm to Moscow and hastened the Soviet Union’s collapse. This was classic “weaponized interdependence” and could only take place because the United States and the Soviet Union were “coupled” in the global energy market. 

Soviet leaders meanwhile saw Rock n’ Roll and blue jeans as corrosive to the communist system because of the interconnected nature of the two blocs. The Soviets employed “weaponized interdependence” too by exploiting decolonialization to undermine the political coherence of the United States and its allies. The Soviets sought to use economic and trade relations with European countries to create wedges in the NATO alliance, and within Latin America the Soviets sought to provide alternative economic options to countries which felt constrained by Washington. All of this took place within the increasingly interconnected world of the 20^th Century.

Second, China and the United States are more “decoupled” than we are led to believe. Since 1989, the United States and Europe have maintained comprehensive arms embargos, along with significant restrictions on dual-use exports, to China. In most hi-tech and strategically significant sectors there are limits on the degree of interconnectedness between China’s industrial base and the rest of the developed world. For much of the past three decades, Beijing has sought to restrict market access in order to grow its own national champions. China has built its own walled-off garden for digital platforms spanning social media, e-commerce, and fintech. In terms of news and information, it is demonstrably “decoupled” from the rest of the world. The dreams of American, Japanese and European companies upon the eve of China’s entry into the WTO in 2001 have yet to be fully realized and the trends are heading in the wrong direction.

It would be far more helpful for us to understand that the neo-liberal dream that international trade is in all cases a balm for geostrategic tensions, is just that: a dream.

This binary conception of “coupledness” and “decoupledness” provides a poor heuristic for understanding the interdependence between nations. Degrees of interdependence exist across a spectrum and vary based on technology, industrial sectors, cultural and informational systems. It would be far more helpful for us to understand that the neo-liberal dream that international trade is in all cases a balm for geostrategic tensions, is just that: a dream. International trade should be encouraged between nations that share broad interests and agree to implement and enforce rules and norms that discourage the weaponization of interdependence. Geostrategic alignment, shared values, and a common understanding of the rule of law are necessary preconditions for a mutually beneficial trade relationship which reinforces stability and peace. When those preconditions are lacking, as is the case with China, both sides are tempted to pursue their own advantage which leads to an increasingly dangerous and destabilizing situation. 

Our fundamental challenge with China is that we had hoped that those elements of geostrategic alignment, shared values, and a common understanding of the rule of law would emerge through increased trade. Unfortunately, they have not. In many ways, the interconnectedness between the United States and the People’s Republic is destabilizing.

Mistake #5: Confusing the world we desire with the world as it is. The most basic definition of a ‘cold war’ is “a state of political hostility between countries characterized by threats, propaganda, and other measures short of open warfare.” If that does not describe the current condition between the People’s Republic of China and the United States, I’m not sure what does qualify as a ‘cold war.’

Chinese Communist Party leaders recognize this reality and have been pursuing policies, both domestically and internationally, as if they were in a cold war with us for nearly a decade. Simultaneously, the Party seeks to persuade American elites not to pursue our own competitive policies. This is understandable, since it is always preferable to convince your opponent not to compete. Xi Jinping’s inaugural address to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on January 5, 2013 made this dynamic quite clear:

“Facts have repeatedly told us that Marx and Engels’ analysis of the basic contradictions in capitalist society is not outdated, nor is the historical materialist view that capitalism is bound to die out and socialism is bound to win. This is an inevitable trend in social and historical development. But the road is tortuous. The eventual demise of capitalism and the ultimate victory of socialism will require a long historical process to reach completion. In the meantime, we must have a deep appreciation for capitalism’s ability to self-correct, and a full, objective assessment of the real long-term advantages that the developed Western nations have in the economic, technological, and military spheres. Then we must diligently prepare for a long period of cooperation and of conflict between these two social systems in each of these domains.”

We must separate our understandable distaste for cold wars from a clear-eyed assessment of the reality we face. ‘Cooperative rivalry’ sounds much more pleasant than ‘cold war’ because it provides us with the sense that both sides agree on the rules and want to maintain the existing system. But we don’t agree on the rules and Beijing wants an illiberal international system that gives the advantages to authoritarian regimes like its own. 

Sticking our fingers in our ears while singing la-la-la when someone compares our current condition to a ‘cold war’ does not alter the challenges we face. This challenge to the broader liberal international order will not go away just because we ignore it. Without a correct framing of the problem, we can’t address the kinds of domestic and foreign policy reforms we need to make, we can’t provide a clear vision for other countries to make their own decisions about the kind of world they want, nor can we forge a political consensus if we aren’t straightforward about these things. Wishful thinking and denial keep us from embarking on the difficult task we have before us: constructing a world, alongside our friends, that protects our values and interests, while avoiding catastrophe. 

This is serious work and we can’t begin if we can’t recognize what it is: a ‘Cold War.’

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