i'm writing my final paper on using applied history to understand US-China relations and where to go from here. I have a big section on why the Cold War analogy is only useful in deconstructing why the Cold War analogy isn't correct. https://twitter.com/nils_gilman/status/1262754070244147205

I argue that when using history to understand US-China relations, and the current administration's aggressive stance - it makes more sense to use an issue history and vector approach...

looking at China's and America's developments since 1979, separately and their cooperation, as well as addressing the vectors of neo-globalisation, the 2008 financial crisis, and anti-American suspicion and anti-Chinese nationalism in the US — better helps us understand...

the breakdown of relations as part of a longer process, dispels the "inevitability" of conflict, and provides options for future policy.

there have been a plethora of articles on "Is America entering a New Cold War?" for ages now, and reading all of them make it easier to look at the current Sino-American relationship as 1) a long time coming 2) not "doomed" and 3) not a "Cold War"

the overarching accepted argument about the Cold War is that it was at its core an ideological conflict, where the Soviet Union's vision of a global system and economy was not based on capitalism but communism...

since China is basically a planned market system today, and is inextricably integrated into the global economy - the ideological conflict comparison doesn't hold imo.

that is not to say there aren't ideological differences between the two countries (purportedly on human rights and democratic politics, but we know the US isn't "perfect" on that)...

but as the history of Sino-American cooperation reveals, America has been more than willing to overlook these differences — something they were very unwilling to do in the Soviet case...

what this tells us, imho, is that despite the trade war and heightened tensions today, we are not at a point of no return, and claiming that this is a "New Cold War" will only engender the China hawks.

also, Kori Schake's book on US-Anglo relations and the "transfer of power" is a more useful analogy, and again it's not 1:1, you gotta look at the differences — to understand a version of the path the US might be on...

this doesn't mean a Chinese uni-polar moment is inevitable, but it does suggest the United States cannot expect the same from China that it did from Britain or the Soviet Union.