Shifrinson Publishes Article in WaPo on the New Cold War
Joshua Shifrinson, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published a recent article on the “new Cold War” between the United States and China.
Shifrinson’s article, entitled “The ‘New Cold War’ With China Is Way Overblown. Here’s Why,” was published in the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog on February 8, 2019.
From the text of the article:
Is a new Cold War looming — or already present — between the United States and China? Many analysts argue that a combination of geopolitics, ideology and competing visions of “global order” are driving the two countries toward emulating the Soviet-U.S. rivalry that dominated world politics from 1947 through 1990.
But such concerns are overblown. Here are four big reasons why.
- The historical backdrops of the two relationships are very different
When the Cold War began, the U.S.-Soviet relationship was fragile and tenuous. Bilateral diplomatic relations were barely a decade old, U.S. intervention in the Russian Revolution was a recent memory, and the Soviet Union had called for the overthrow of capitalist governments into the 1940s. Despite their Grand Alliance against Nazi Germany, the two countries shared few meaningful diplomatic, economic or institutional links.
In 2019, the situation between the United States and China is very different. Since the 1970s, diplomatic interactions, institutional ties and economic flows have all exploded. Although each side has criticized the other for domestic interference (such as U.S. demands for journalist access to Tibet and China’s espionage against U.S. corporations), these issues did not prevent cooperation on a host of other issues. Yes, there were tensions over the past decade, but these occurred against a generally cooperative backdrop.
Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson’s teaching and research interests focus on the intersection of international security and diplomatic history, particularly the rise and fall of great powers and the origins of grand strategy. He has special expertise in great power politics since 1945 and U.S. engagement in Europe and Asia. Shifrinson’s first book, Rising Titans, Falling Giants: How Great Powers Exploit Power Shifts (Cornell University Press, 2018) builds on extensive archival research focused on U.S. and Soviet foreign policy after 1945 to explain why some rising states challenge and prey upon declining great powers, while others seek to support and cooperate with declining states.