Cold War II

Cold War II is a phrase mainly used by academics and journalists to speculate the possibility of tensions between two current sides. Usually, it is exemplified with tensions between the United States and Russia or between the US and China. Interchangeable terms are the new Cold War, Second Cold War, and Cold War 2.0. It should not be considered the successor to the original Cold War.

Reference to the original Cold War

• Fred Halliday, in The Making of the Second Cold War (1982, ISBN 978-0860911449), in reference to the later phases of the original Cold War.
  • p. 23: The military threat contained within the Second Cold War therefore makes it a far more ominous confrontation than was Cold War I.
  • p. 173: Cold War I coincided with a boom, Cold War II with a recession.

Russia–The West relations

Stephen Walt

From Foreign Policy (12 March 2018)

• Headline: "I Knew the Cold War. This Is No Cold War"
  • Viewing today’s troubles as a new Cold War downplays the role that human agency and bad policy decisions have played in bringing the United States and Russia to the current impasse, distracts us from more important challenges, and discourages us from thinking creatively about how to move beyond the present level of rancor.
  • The current situation [between the US and Russia] is bad. But to call it a “new Cold War” is misleading more than it is enlightening.
  • Thinking of the current conflict between the United States and Russia as a new Cold War exaggerates its significance and distracts us from the far more serious challenge we face from a rising China. Even worse, it encourages us to take steps that are actively harmful to our own interests.

Lawrence Freedman

From New Statesman (14 March 2018)

• Headline: "Putin's New Cold War"
  • Cold War 2.0 deserves the designation because it might turn hot. That is the risk that demands attention.
  • Cold War 2.0 has been shaped by the internet.
  • Does Cold War 1.0 provide any guidance for how we should cope with Cold War 2.0?

Paul Craig Roberts

From The Self-Genocide of the West, Foreign Policy Journal (26 December 2018)

• The military/security complex has resurrected its Cold War enemy so necessary for its outsized budget and power and intends to keep Russia as The Enemy. The Democrats have an interest in the villification of Russia as “Russiagate” explains Hillary’s loss of the 2016 Presidential election and gives Democrats hope of removing President Trump from office. The media lacks independence, knowledge, and integrity and is the tool used by the military/security complex to control explanations...
• As strategic and Russian studies are largely funded by the military/security complex, the universities are also complicit in the march toward nuclear war. Republicans are as dependent as Democrats on funding from the military/security complex and the Israel Lobby.
• All of this self-serving is driving America and its vassals to war with Russia, which might also mean with China. The war would be nuclear and be the end of the West, an act of self-genocide. The US national security establishment is so crazed that Trump’s efforts to get off the war track and onto a peace track are characterized as treason and a threat to US national security.
• The Russians are aware that the accusations and demonization that they experience are fabrications. They no longer see the problem as one of misunderstandings that diplomacy can overcome. What they see now is the West preparing its populations for war. It is this perception for which the West is solely responsible that makes the situation today far more dangerous than it ever was during the long Cold War.

Other academics

• From "Is the Cold War Back?" by Eve Conant, National Geographic (12 September 2014)
  • Mark Kramer: You have to put cold water on the faddish idea of a 'second Cold War'
  • Archie Brown: Calling this [the situation between Russia and the US] a second Cold War is an exaggeration, even if elements of it are reminiscent of the real Cold War.
• A directionless administration in Washington is giving allies and adversaries the jitters by seemingly putting in place all the ingredients for the start of a Second or a New Cold War just precisely when the world was looking at ways to strengthen ties economically and commercially.
  • Dr. Sridhar Krishnaswami, professor of SRM University, in "Sanctions may lead to Cold War II", Deccan Chronicle (6 August 2017)
• Russian policy towards Ukraine since late 2013 in this sense also indicates that actual and latent conflicts in Eastern Europe have entered a qualitatively new and more dangerous phase, frequently described as a new Cold War yet far from the hegemonic stability that then prevailed in this part of the world.
  • Tatyana Malyarenko and Stefan Wolff, in "The logic of competitive influence-seeking: Russia, Ukraine, and the conflict in Donbas", Post-Soviet Affairs (15 February 2018); licensed under CC BY 4.0
• Calling twenty-first-century great-power tensions a new Cold War therefore obscures more than it reveals. It is a kind of terminological laziness that equates the conflicts of yesteryear, which most analysts happen to know well, with what takes place today.
  • Odd Arne Westad, in "Has a New Cold War Really Begun?", Foreign Affairs (27 March 2018)
• Coordinated response will not start a new Cold War between Russia and the West. It will restore guidelines and common expectations about future behavior in a more complex international system than existed during the Cold War.
  • Regina Smyth, associate professor from Indiana University, in "Is the growing Russia crisis another Cold War conflict? Nyet", The Conversation (30 March 2018); licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0
• This appears to be one of the beginnings of a second Cold War, which we have been seeing so many manifestations of around the globe in the recent decade.
  • Naoko Wake, Michigan State University associate professor of history, quoted in "Is This the Start of World War III or Cold War II?" by Steve Herman, Voice of America (24 February 2022)

Article headlines (Russia–The West)

• "Welcome to Cold War II" by Dmitri Trenin in Foreign Policy (4 March 2014)
• "As Cold War II Looms[...]" by Nikolas Kozloff in Huffington Post (15 October 2015)
• "We’re on the road to a new Cold War" by the Washington Post editorial board (31 July 2017)
• "Travel Barriers Are the Worst of the New Cold War" by Leonid Bershidsky in Bloomberg (1 September 2017)
• "White House backs UK in Russia crisis as Cold War Two looms over Salisbury poisoning" by Richard Hartley-Parkinson in Metro (15 March 2018)
• "The New 'Cold War' With the West Heats Up" by Pavel Felgenhauer in The Jamestown Foundation website (15 March 2018)
• "Russia v the West: Vladimir Putin's new cold war" by Daniel McLaughlin in The Irish Times (29 December 2018)
• "Venezuela crisis: Putin's new Cold War on America's doorstep?" by Nathan Hodge in CNN (2 February 2019)
• "Cold War 2.0? Russia suspends nuke treaty after US decision" in The Times of India (3 February 2019); original: Associated Press
• "The New Cold War’s Warm Friends" by Chris Miller in Foreign Policy (1 March 2019)

Peter Savodnik

From Vanity Fair (9 August 2017)

• Headline: "How Comrade Trump Unleashed a Cold War in America"
• Quotes:
  • For at least a decade, Americans have been obsessing over the new Cold War about to break out between Russia and the West.
  • There is not going to be a new Cold War because the real Cold War was, at its essence, a clash of ideas.
  • One detects in all this public hand-wringing about the new Cold War a thinly veiled desire to return to the old one.
  • We are not waging a new Cold War with Russia, but Russia, as always, forces America to confront itself.

Jeffrey Sachs

• The US is a force for division, not for cooperation... It's a force for trying to create a new cold war with China. If this takes hold - if that kind of approach is used, then we won't go back to normal, indeed we will spiral into greater controversy and greater danger in fact.
• The US lost its step on 5G, which is a critical part of the new digital economy. And Huawei was taking a greater and greater share of global markets... The US concocted in my opinion, the view that Huawei is a global threat. And has leaned very hard on US allies... to try to break the relations with Huawei.
• Do I believe that China could do more to ease fears that are very real? I do.... The big choice frankly is in China's hands. If China is cooperative, if it engages in diplomacy, regional cooperation and multilateralism…. then I think that Asia has an incredibly bright future.
  • Jeffrey Sachs quoted in US China cold war 'bigger global threat than virus' By Karishma Vaswani, BBC News (21 June 2020)

Simon Tisdall

From The Guardian (19 November 2014)

• Headline: "The new cold war: are we going back to the bad old days?"
• Quotes:
  • Newspaper headlines from Moscow to Washington and Sydney to Kiev all agree: the cold war is back. Well, maybe.
  • Any new cold war-type confrontation would differ in scope and range from the worldwide frozen conflict that dominated the latter half of the 20th century.
  • A new cold war would lack other key features that distinguished its forerunner.
  • [Vladimir Putin] is the man who put the cold war back in vogue.

Quotes from other journalists and columnists

• There is a new Cold War starting.
  • Philip N. Howard, in "Social media and the new Cold War", Reuters (1 August 2012)
• It looks like a new Cold War between Russia and the West is inevitable[...]
  • George Bovt, in "Who Will Win the New Cold War?", The Moscow Times (31 March 2015)
• The current 'cold war' is a fight for the very soul of international order: a US-led Liberal rules-based international system or a Russia-led illiberal system of authoritarian regimes.
  • Adam Slonim, in "The roots of the new Cold War", Spectator Australia (24 June 2017)
• [...] a second round of the cold war may ensue as a punishment for leaving many issues unsolved
  • Dmitri Trenin, in "The crisis in Crimea could lead the world into a second cold war", The Guardian (2 March 2014)
• The post-cold war era is over, and a new era has begun. Cold war 2.0, different in character, but potentially as menacing and founded not just on competing interests but competing values.
  • From "Cold war 2.0: how Russia and the west reheated a historic struggle", The Guardian (28 October 2016)
• What could be called an autocratic bloc is provoking, through territorial expansion and destabilizing nuclear development, an interrelated set of conflicts developing in the direction of a New Cold War between autocracies on one side, and democracies on the other.
  • Anders Corr, in "The New Cold War: Democracy Vs. Autocracy," Forbes (21 May 2017)
• The drive to put more sanctions on Russia might feel good. But fueling a new Cold War can only propel the United States in the wrong direction.
  • Norman Solomon, in "Russia sanctions fuel new Cold War", USA Today (26 July 2017)
• We are in a new Cold War.
  • Marc A. Thiessen, in "Putin’s interference in our election clearly backfired", Washington Post (3 August 2017)
• The Second Cold War, begun when we moved NATO to Russia's borders and helped dump over a pro-Russian regime in Kiev, is getting colder.
  • Pat Buchanan (credited as Patrick J. Buchanan), in "Shall we fight them all?", Northwest Florida Daily News (4 August 2017)
• Is the Cold War back?
  • Marc Champion, in "Cool War", Bloomberg (14 December 2014; updated on 20 March 2018)
• Experts in Russia agreed that Putin was sending a very blunt message to the Trump Administration—if Washington wants a new Cold War, Moscow is up for a rematch.
  • Dave Majumdar, in "Russia's Nuclear Weapons Buildup Is Aimed at Beating U.S. Missile Defenses", The National Interest (1 March 2018)
• They have wasted three decades, focusing primarily on advancing their own narrow interests just as they did during the Cold War, and in the process only paved the way for, well, another Cold War.
  • Marwan Bishara, in "And so, Cold War II begins", Al Jazeera (24 February 2022)
• No, it's not [the start of World War III]. The real question is whether it's the start of Cold War II. The answer may depend on the longevity of [Vladimir] Putin's regime.
  • Joshua Pollack, editor of The Nonproliferation Review, quoted in "Is This the Start of World War III or Cold War II?" by Steve Herman, Voice of America (24 February 2022)
• The Russian invasion of Ukraine feels like the beginning of a new Cold War. Only this time, the global enemy is authoritarianism, not communism.
  • Bill Schneider, in "What's fueling the 'new Cold War' — in Russia and at home", The Hill (27 February 2022)

Politicians

• We should also pay attention to those who warn against plunging into a new Cold War as a knee-jerk reaction, without consideration for what happens next.
  • Sauli Niinistö, President of the Republic of Finland, in his 26 August 2014 speech
• Marco Rubio: (referring to the US) "[...]barreling toward the second Cold War." ([1])
• [F]irst, the two presidents [Putin and Donald Trump] must publicly come clean regarding the 2016 election campaign. Otherwise, there will be no breakthroughs, and Cold War Two will continue with no end in sight.
  • Dov S. Zakheim, former US Deputy Secretary of Defense, in "America and Russia: Time to Come Clean", The National Interest (16 August 2017)
• We are starting a new Cold War. We seem to be sleepwalking into this new nuclear arms race. [...] We and the Russians and others don’t understand what we are doing. I am not suggesting that this Cold War and this arms race is identical to the old one. But in many ways, it is just as bad, just as dangerous. And totally unnecessary.
  • William Perry, former US Secretary of Defense, quoted in Politico magazine (January 2017)
• My point of view is that the individuals that have said that a new Cold War has started are not analysts. They do propaganda.
  • Vladimir Putin, President and then-Prime Minister of Russia, quoted in his interview with Megyn Kelly at NBC News (March 2018)
• There's no question we're in a new chapter of the Cold War with Russia.
  • Leon Panetta, former US Secretary of Defense, quoted in "We're in new chapter of Cold War with Russia: Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta", CNBC (April 2018)

Others (Russia–The West)

• The only ones applauding the decision to tear up the INF [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces] Treaty are the nuclear weapons manufacturers, eagerly anticipating the kickoff of Cold War II.
  • Beatrice Fihn, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), via email, reprinted in "U.S. Withdraws From Nuclear Weapons Treaty With Russia, Paving the Way for a New Arms Race" by Matt Novak, Gizmodo (1 February 2019)

China–US relations

R. Jagannathan

From "Is the Cold War really over? Well, Cold War II is here", Firstpost (24 August 2011)

• Just in case nobody has noticed, Cold War II has begun.
• [U]nlike Cold War I, Cold War II will bring instability, not stability.
• [T]he world is multi-polar now. Which is why Cold War II will be less stable and more uncertain for everybody. It might also be less peaceable.
• Cold War II is now upon us. It is fundamentally different from Cold War I.

Subhash Kapila

From "United States Can't Afford Two Concurrent Cold Wars", South Asia Analysis Group (25 February 2016)

• China foisted Cold War II on the United States in the first decade of the 21st century[...]
• It would be strategically erroneous to attach linkages of China’s ongoing Cold War II with the United States to fears of United States revival of Cold War I with Russia.

Article headlines (China–US)

• From a July 29 Xinhua article: "New Cold War looms large in North-east Asia as Seoul accepts THAAD"
• Matt Novak from Gizmodo: "Book Review: Asia's smile diplomacy disguises a new Cold War"
• Cary Huang from SCMP: "Trump vs. China: Is This the Dawn of a Second Cold War?"
• Sofia Lotto Persio from Newsweek: "China's Xi Warns Trump of New Cold War—Again"
• Ishaan Tharoor from The Washington Post: "Under Trump, U.S. enters a new 'Cold War' with China"
• Christopher A. Preble from CATO Institute: "A New Cold War with China?"

Others (China–US)

• If left unchecked, current tensions could lead to a second cold war, say American and Chinese analysts.

  Kevin Platt, in "To Head off a 'Cold War II,' China and US Try to Warm Up Relations", The Christian Science Monitor (28 October 1996)

• Are we barging into another Cold War–this time with China?

  Henry Butterfield Ryan, in "Another Cold War? China This Time?", Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective (10 June 1999)

• [China] is now engaged in a second cold war, the Pacific Cold War, with the United States. This war might last as long as the European Cold War—and it is much more likely to turn into a hot one.

  From "Chapter One: The Next War" of Showdown: Why China Wants War with the United States (2006, ISBN 978-1596980051) by Jed Babbin and Edward Timperlake

• Wang Dong, specialist of Northeast Asia studies from Peking University: "Despite media sensationalism, China and the US are not entering into a new Cold War because, for one thing, the two are highly interdependent, economically and socially, and, for another, the cost of rushing into a new Cold War for nuclear powers like China and the US is prohibitively high."
• Chen Jian, a Cold War expert from Cornell University: "A new Cold War is not going to happen if neither side makes serious mistakes, including mistakes related to misperceptions of a new Cold War."

  From "China warming to new Cold War?" by Kor Kian Beng, in The Straits Times

• By adopting an ideological and confrontational posture toward China, the Trump administration risks creating a pointless Cold War.

  Michael D. Swaine, in "A Counterproductive Cold War with China", Foreign Affairs (2 March 2018)

• We certainly don't need to view them [Chinese] as enemies. We can't afford another cold war.

  Henry Paulson, former US Secretary of Treasury, "U.S. can't afford a 'cold war' with China, former Bush official says", Dallas News (18 April 2018)

• There is an undeclared Cold War underway now in the IT sector.

  Kevin Rudd, former Australian Prime Minister, in "There's an 'undeclared new Cold War' between the US and China — and it's in tech, Australia ex-leader says", CNBC (30 April 2018)

• This new Cold War, if that is what it is, involves an even more complicated structure of conflict and cooperation, division and unity than the last one.

  Mie Oba, a professor of Tokyo University of Science, in "The Unpredictable, Conflicting Structure of the New Cold War", The Diplomat (29 December 2018)

• [I]t is nothing less than a new cold war: The constant, interminable Chinese computer hacks of American warships’ maintenance records, Pentagon personnel records, and so forth constitute war by other means. This situation will last decades and will only get worse.

  Robert D. Kaplan in "A New Cold War Has Begun", Foreign Policy (7 January 2019)

• [T]he Chinese are not seeking to launch a new Cold War. That’s America’s doing.

  John Ibbitson, Canadian journalist, in "China is not seeking to launch a new Cold War. That’s Trump’s doing", The Globe and Mail (29 January 2019)

• In that light, Washington’s fight against Huawei looks less like a clear case of defending against Chinese government espionage and cyber threats. It looks more like a cyber version of a new Cold War, where the United States and China are both attempting to line up proxies and divide the world into technology spheres of influence.

  Zachary Karabell in "The Huawei Case Signals the New US–China Cold War over Tech", Wired (11 March 2019)

• The defining geopolitical feature of the first half of the 21st century, should current tensions between the United States and China continue escalating, will almost certainly be the strategic rivalry, or even a new cold war, between these two countries.

  Minxin Pei in "International development cooperation in the age of US-China strategic rivalry", Brookings Institute (25 July 2019)

• Those who call for a new Cold War on China, or for us to sequester our economy entirely from China—which seems to be the new policy of the opposition, weaving as they generally do from one position to the next—are, I think, mistaken. We have a balance to strike. We need to have a clear-eyed relationship with China.

  Boris Johnson, British prime minister, quoted in "Boris Johnson warns against 'new Cold War on China' as he comes under pressure from Conservative MPs" by Greg Heffer, Sky News (16 March 2021)

• It's [Tension between China and the US] the biggest problem for America; it's the biggest problem for the world. Because if we can't solve that, then the risk is that all over the world a kind of cold war will develop between China and the United States.

  Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State, quoted in "Failure to improve US-China relations 'risks cold war', warns Kissinger" by Vincent Ni and agencies, The Guardian (30 April 2021)

• 1. A new cold war, this time between the United States and China, along with other regional security threats, could be disastrous for Africa's economic development and green transition.

2. A second cold war would likewise weaken ongoing efforts to deepen integration under the nascent African Continental Free Trade Area.

Hippolyte Fofack, Chief Economist and Director of Research of African Export–Import Bank, in "Africa Cannot Afford a Second Cold War", Project Syndicate (4 January 2022)

• If certain prognosticators are to be believed, the United States is now facing a new cold war with China. But it seems unlikely that this cold war will produce any sort of high-culture renaissance.

  Beverly Gage, an American professor of Yale University, in "The Art of War", Foreign Affairs (January/February 2022)

Other meanings

• Fiona Hill: "[I]f we are concerned about getting into another Cold War relationship, which is actually avoidable, then perhaps it's time that we start thinking about how to change [existing tensions]."

  from "Are Russia, China and the U.S. Headed Toward a New Cold War?" by Andrew Soergel, U.S. News and World Report (26 July 2016)

• Peter Beinart: "Read its foreign policy statements and this much becomes clear: The Trump administration is preparing for a new Cold War."

  in "Trump Is Preparing for a New Cold War," The Atlantic (27 February 2018)

• Ken Roberts: "Today, the once-prosperous nation of Venezuela is increasingly looking like ground zero in a new Cold War."

  in "With China, Venezuela Crises, Trump Faces a Defining Month of Presidency", Forbes (30 January 2019)

• Michael B. Shoenleber, Christopher Nixon Cox, and Juan C. Lechín: "In the not-too-distant future, we might very well point to the Venezuela crisis as the first 'hot' conflict of the Second Cold War."

  in "Trump's Venezuela crisis may mark start of 'Second Cold War'", The Hill (31 January 2019)

• Bruce Jones and Torrey Taussig: "A new Cold War is not the worst potential scenario ahead of us, nor should it be the ceiling of our ambition."

  in "Democracy & Disorder: The struggle for influence in the new geopolitics", Brookings (February 2019)

• US President Joe Biden, to the United Nations General Assembly: "We're not seeking — say it again — we are not seeking a new Cold War or a world divided into rigid blocks. The United States is ready to work with any nation that steps up and pursues peaceful resolution to shared challenges, even if we have intense disagreement in other areas, because we'll all suffer the consequences of our failure."

  reported by Kevin Liptak, "Biden says US isn’t seeking a new Cold War, in nod to competition with China", CNN (21 September 2021)

• Greg Kesich: "Anti-corruption, here and abroad, should be the anti-communism of Cold War II."
  • in "The View From Here: New Cold War needs a new Free World", Portland Press Herald (27 February 2022)

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Cold War II on Wikipedia
• The dictionary definition of Cold War II on Wiktionary
• New Cold War