Perspective: China syndromeBeijing Will Give You Cold War Nostalgia
America’s twenty-first-century competition with China is likely to be more dangerous and more complex than the U.S. Cold War with the Soviet Union. Walter Russell Mean writes that this is the result of two factors: First, China’s economic power makes it a much more formidable and resourceful opponent than the Soviet Union was., and, second, the technological environment has changed dramatically in the past generation.
America’s twenty-first-century competition with China is likely to be more dangerous and more complex than the U.S. Cold Cold War with the Soviet Union. Walter Russell Mean writes in the Wall Street Journal that this is the result of two factors: First, China’s economic power makes it a much more formidable and resourceful opponent than the Soviet Union was., and, second, the technological environment has changed dramatically in the past generation.
Mead writes:
· “The development of nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles shaped the Cold War.… Arms-control talks became a centerpiece of superpower relations as both sides sought to stabilize the nuclear balance.”
· “The information revolution has brought new dangers to the fore. Cyberweapons can devastate their targets, crashing power grids and transportation networks, paralyzing financial systems and destroying the functionality of anything from hospitals to government offices. The development of these weapons is much harder to control and their use much more difficult to deter.”
· “After 9/11, American policy makers would sometimes speak nostalgically about the simpler problems of the Cold War. They’ll come to miss those days all the more as the U.S.-China competition heats up. Dreadful as it felt to those who waged it, the Cold War took place in less dangerous times.”
