We're not going to have another Cold War. For one thing, the American and Chinese economies are interdependent. For another, they'd both require multilateral support to act militarily in any significant capacity.
I think the situation is a lot different than in the cold war. The economies of the U.S. and China are so deeply connected that neither can afford to get into a major conflict with the other.
Thing is, U.S. and all of the civilised world does not have enough resources for a cold war with China. It will be simply defeated the way Soviet Union was defeated - just run out of money and overall steam.
It's time to adapt to Chinese leadership and extract benefits of democracy and freedom which they don't have. Too late to keep trying to oppose it.
Example: Chinese military shipbuilding delivers more tonnage per year than the rest of the world combined. And they don't even try all too hard.
China will simply own the world in the XXI century, probably concentrating the majority of worldwide economic output in every sector of production and consumption, in as little as a generation from now.
What's left to be done is to cave in - try to be as little dependent on them as possible, make hot war unattractive to them - by being as little of a threat to them as possible, and by having little of interest for them to take too, and in general self-isolate.
On the good side of things, Chinese are very unlikely to proselytize the way U.S. does or the way Soviet Union did: they understand very well that Maoism is linked to the traits of Chinese national character and will not work outside of East/Southeast Asia. They just seek to become, and will become what they always seen themselves as being: the Middle Kingdom where all interesting things happen, with the rest of the world being just a side story. Think 1960 USA. 30 years down the road, we will for sure see it happen.
The end game seems to be moving more and more toward armed conflict between China and the US. I honestly don’t see both societies continuing their current trajectories without running headlong into each other. Perhaps it will just be another cold war and we’ll see who’s economic system blinks first.
Why do people think I'm asking for war with China? Obviously nobody wants it but also you shouldn't bury your head in the sand and ignore the consequences of the US and China separating their economies. Trade and business between the US and China is what has been preventing any new war. We were at war with China in Korea and that was fairly recently. It would be a proxy war and would probably happen in Taiwan, Korea, etc. with both the US and China arming and supporting different sides
There will never be a hot war between China and the US. Or if there is, it'll be the end of the world so it doesn't matter. Two nuclear triad powers simply can't fight directly.
It's true... but I assume (and hope) that US politicians are not stupid enough to advocate anything actively harsh against China. China is nearly a superpower, and we do not need anything like another Cold war. (Not that it would be as bad, but two large countries in a state of conflict do note bode well for their inhabitants.)
Well this certainly looks to set start another cold war. The US was not going be the only power for too long. And I think China is in a much better position than the USSR, at least economically. Let's see how this goes.
With China and the US MAD applies to virtually any movement. Traditional warfare is out of the question, nuclear weapons are so prevalent in their armed forces that it would quite literally be a world ending conflict (at least from the non-aquatic species over view, as even a minor nuclear conflict is considered capable of seriously disrupting modern civilization).
However non-traditional warfare like the Cold War is similarly completely out of the question. The Cold War dragged on for so long because the USA and USSR were economically independent of each other, they both had mega-quantities of resources and production in their respective regions of control. They couldn't fight outright, but they had enough resources to supply everyone else to do the fighting.
Yet the US-Chinese economies are so intrinsically connected that a war would cause immediate trade embargoes between the countries and would cause an all-out collapse of the respective economies. US desperately relies on Chinese manufacturing for everything from what we wipe our arses with to our knives, computers and even a large part of our ship production (civilian and military production both reside squarely within China's region of control). Similarly China relies wholly on US and European dollars to even have a sustainable economy.
We're not talking $1 trillion in cold hard cash likes some uber-lottery, we're talking a likely payout over the next 50-100+ years. It would be more advantageous for China and the US to team up to extract the resources than to even think about arguing over them.
The cold war has been happening for a while now and has largely been waged by China through "Unrestricted Warfare" [1]. The free world can only win if allies stick together.
The US and China have been in a Cold War for longer than 3 years. This didn’t start with Trump, and it won’t end with him. Trump is just an inarticulate accelerant in an already unfolding geopolitical catastrophe.
Isn't the issue with that nuclear weapons? The USSR/US conflict would have turned hot if it were not for MAD. Conversely, if MAD had applied, maybe WW2 would never have happened?
Since both China and the US have the capacity to annihilate each other, they're unlikely to engage in direct conflicts. So their struggle will be more like the cold war (proxy conflicts, squabbling over allies and prestige etc) than WW2 (direct fighting to conquer land/people).
The most interesting thing about the US China relationship is that they're mutually reliant. Decoupling their economies is likely impossible and even if it weren't would take decades. That wasn't true of the USSR/US or Britian/Germany. So that adds another layer of anti-direct-conflict mechanics.
I'm hopeful that a new Cold War might see some social improvement (the cold War was a boon for social programs, science and technology funding, education and the arts). Though I think it's unlikely as China is much weaker than the post-ww2 USSR was...
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