New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

by David E. Sanger

The outlines of this new era are slowly beginning to take shape. Globalization is out; self-reliance and control of a nation’s own supply chains are in. Nationalism is back in vogue, and so are the strongmen who preach it. North Korea and Iran are now military suppliers to Russia and increasingly in alignment with China. The partnership that Xi and Putin celebrated at the opening of the Olympics is stronger than at any point since the Korean War. Putin’s threat to deploy battlefield nuclear weapons to deter other countries from aiding Ukraine risks inspiring other nuclear-armed autocrats. Trench warfare is back in Europe—though soldiers now command drones and conduct cyberattacks from their foxholes. Acts of mass terror never truly ceased, but today they are staged in part to create viral, gruesome images in hopes that the attacks—and the retaliation sure to follow—will shape the sympathies of a global audience. Iran’s many proxies—Hezbollah and the Houthis, among a long list—have discovered that the way to seize the world’s attention, and establish credibility, is to threaten the West’s supply lines of oil and goods, and draw it into a conflict with the “Axis of Resistance.”