people give a number of reasons why we will NOT have a cold war with China and these all seem to break down into three categories: 1)ideological, 2)economic, and 3)geopolitical. Some of these - to me! - are more convincing than others /n

the first argument is there is no ideological struggle as with the USSR. China is a non-proselytizing great power, maybe the first one since the Dutch golden age, so it doesn’t need to convert fellow travelers

A second argument is that globalization and extensive US-China economic ties will moderate conflict.Again, unlike in the Cold War, the two great powers are deeply connected.

Third, we no longer have a fairly rigid bipolar system with two opposing alliances. Geopolitically, the world lacks the setup for the kind of stark competition we saw in the cold war.

The ideology argument seems to me the weakest. The conflict is already ideological in the sense of offering two competing visions of modernity, and in the sense that policy-makers on both sides are convinced of the superiority of their system.

It will get more ideological as the conflict sharpers up, and I expect Chinese reticence at regime promotion will fade away. With economics, the argument is more compelling, but we know economic ties are not reversible.

the specter of Norman Angell hangs over these economic explanations, even accepting the fact that the modern economy with its complex supply chains etc, is very different than in 1914. Nevertheless, I think it will be a moderating force.

The third argument is to me the strongest. Rigid bipolarity was historically unusual and we are not going back to it. When people say they reject the Cold War analogy, this is usually what they mean - a bipolar system is too unique to be repeated.

But in the end the question is whether ideological differences and domestic incentives pushing for a Cold War (in both countries) will be strong enough to overcome the moderating effects of globalization and multipolarity. I suspect, like many others, that they will./