In the aftermath of World War II, these two states were the United States and the Soviet Union, the two victorious allies that emerged from the war as military “superpowers” and whose rivalry defined the basic contours of world politics until one pole, the Soviet Union, disappeared in 1991.īut bipolarity was only one, albeit important, aspect of the post-war international order. And what were those realities? Well, to begin with, the system was bipolar, which simply means a distribution of power in which two states predominate. The Cold War paradigm that emerged in the decades following World War II reflected – albeit in a simplified and Manichean fashion – the realities of the international system as it then existed. And any effort to impose the logic of the Cold War – and its derivative strategy of containment – on Sino-American relations today is likely to end in disaster. But while the parallels with America’s mid-20th century “ long, twilight struggle” with the Soviet Union may seem obvious to some, the geopolitical realities of the current moment bear little resemblance to those of that era. This was precisely the worldview that underpinned America’s grand strategy during the original Cold War, from 1947-1991. The air in Washington is thick with terms and phrases that reflect an increasingly common belief that the United States finds itself in a titanic struggle with an evil empire that is on the march to global domination - unless America can rally the free world to first contain and then defeat the forces of Eastern malevolence.

Dawn of war banners