Donald Trump’s potential return to the White House has sparked renewed debate about whether the U.S. can steer clear of another Cold War with China and Russia. While some experts dismiss this comparison, BCA Research believes the analogy still holds value, albeit imperfectly.
“The ‘Cold War’ analogy for U.S.-China rivalry is not perfect, but should not be dismissed out of hand,” explained Matt Gertken, BCA’s chief geopolitical strategist. The analysis was co-written with historian Jeremy Black.
Though today’s global landscape is very different from the post-World War II period, there are clear parallels: escalating military buildups, economic disengagement, and ideological rivalry.
One major difference is the deep economic ties between China and the U.S., unlike the relatively isolated economic relationship during the original Cold War. Yet Gertken points out that “interrelations between the U.S. and China (and Europe and Russia) are declining as strategic tensions rise.”
This growing divide is fueled by shifting economic policies and ideological shifts. “China’s reversion to statist economics has been the critical feature of Xi Jinping’s rule since 2012 and the chief trigger of U.S.-China tensions.”
The report also notes the political utility of the Cold War framework for all parties involved. In China and Russia, it bolsters regime legitimacy amid economic slowdown.
Within the U.S., it strengthens bipartisan consensus on industrial policy, defense budgets, and reshaping supply chains. “Both American political parties may continue to return to this trough,” Gertken says, adding that this framing might also support European integration efforts.
However, the Cold War analogy holds less sway in Western Europe and North America compared to countries like Ukraine, Poland, or the Baltic states. Its influence is even weaker in much of the former “Non-Aligned World,” where the U.S. was often perceived as “the ally of colonial forces or inheritor of the imperialist mantle,” according to Gertken.
“The liberal West’s insensitivity to the global resonances of the Cold War is often striking,” he added.
The study emphasizes that nuclear deterrence remains central to current superpower relations, deterring direct conflict while maintaining fierce competition.
“It is self-evident that the U.S. and Russia, and the U.S. and China, are making sufficient military, technological, and industrial preparations… to justify the notion that they are ‘at war’ in a metaphorical sense but not a literal sense,” the report states.
Black and Gertken conclude that this Cold War analogy signals more than just rhetoric. “The ‘intra-glacial’ period between the ice ages of confrontation is now at a close,” they write.
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