By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Why we are now in a Global Cold War

When former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill laid out the contours and stakes of the first Cold War at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, in 1946, he didn’t just talk about Europe. What people remember, of course, is this famous line: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” But later in the speech, Churchill also warned of the coming “shadow” of tyranny “alike in the West and the East.”

The nascent Cold War, in other words, was already going global—even as it was being defined for the first time. That Cold War may have ended three decades ago, but another, very different sort of cold war is beginning. And this one is also about to go global. NATO’s leaders are convening today with an eye on the Indo-Pacific and preparing to confront China and Russia.

In contrast to the 40-year-long U.S.-Soviet confrontation, which pitted two great powers utterly isolated from each other into separate spheres, this struggle is marked by a multidimensional relationship where China and the West trade and invest with one another even as they compete.

And as we will see at the NATO summit in Madrid—where the leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand will join the gathering for the first time—new battle lines are being drawn that could last for generations.

As suggested before, whatever the outcome, the West must also begin to plan for the collapse and the reinforcement of Putin’s regime.

But neither should we deceive ourselves that the contours and stakes of a long-term confrontation aren’t coming plainly into view. A cold war is simply a raw struggle for power and the right to set the rules for global conduct; it occurs mainly behind the scenes in private deal-making and covert action rather than on the battlefield. And that’s what we’re facing.

What caused this war? First, Washington has undergone a generation-long transformation from a bipartisan policy of eager engagement with China—seeking to turn Beijing into a fellow “stakeholder” in the global system, as former U.S. President George W. Bush’s deputy secretary of state, Robert Zoellick, once put it—to a bipartisan policy of unrelenting confrontation. And helped along by the shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Washington appears to be bringing a once-reluctant Europe along with it.

The new strategic concept for Washington grew out of a communique issued a year ago after the last NATO summit, which warned for the first time against China’s “systemic challenges to the rules-based international order and areas relevant to alliance security.”

At the time, European leaders were still resisting U.S. pleas to address the strategic challenge from Beijing; former German Chancellor Angela Merkel spent much of her 16 years in power cultivating ties with China. Russia’s invasion, with China’s endorsement (if not yet military support), has dramatically changed that approach. On Sunday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, U.S. President Joe Biden, and other G-7 leaders announced a new $600 billion global infrastructure initiative to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative. And this week, NATO will launch a new “strategic concept”—a 10-year plan—that will address the threat from China for the first time.

In a speech in late April, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss further raised the stakes when she declared that “NATO must have a global outlook” and “preempt threats in the Indo-Pacific,” ensuring “that democracies like Taiwan can defend themselves.”

 

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