The Coming of the Second Cold War
On November 9, 1989, an era of global politics and international relations came to an end with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The tumbling-down of the barrier that had for almost 40 years divided East and West Germany represented the cessation of the decades of ideological and geopolitical conflict that had taken place between the United States and the Soviet Union after World War II. This resolution was understandably massive, to the extent that some Liberal political theorists even went so far as to call the end of the Cold War “the end of history,” due to the final triumph of the ideas of liberal democracy over the concepts of communist dictatorship and fascist totalitarianism.
Since then, the world has borne the fruits of an unprecedented amount of economic and geopolitical collaboration, with the United States at the center of the new unipolar world order. The global economy has nearly tripled, and almost 1.5 billion people have been lifted from poverty. The reduction of trade barriers and protectionism has allowed for a great amount of global economic integration that, while still controversial in the United States and abroad, is capable of bringing numerous states in need of infrastructure and economic development the necessary capital and investment to bring their peoples out of poverty.
Another major factor in the increased international stability of the last few decades has been the role of multinational organizations like the United Nations. During the ideological battles of the Cold War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union would use the veto—the power to block legislation held exclusively by members of the P5 coalition of the UN Security Council—to the point of abuse, forcing stalemates in conflict resolution that hindered the United Nations from serving its role effectively. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, optimism that the United Nations could finally serve its purpose dramatically increased, and not without reason; in the four decades that have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United Nations Security Council has been responsible for a good number of resolved conflicts, among them Namibia (1989-1990), Cambodia (1992-1993), and Côte d’Ivoire (2004-2017). It is not a question that the United Nations is here to stay, and further conflict resolution is hoped for and expected.
Yet in recent years, the United Nations has been experiencing a crisis of confidence. Concerns and skepticism are rising in regards to the decades-old institution, with a feeling growing among member states that the UN is becoming “rudderless” as a result of the difficulties it has faced in the era of increasing great-power competition. “Over the last year,” writes Richard Gowan for Foreign Affairs, the United Nations has been “unable to respond to crises ranging from violent flare-ups in Sudan and Nagorno-Karabakh to the coup in Niger.” Debates over the continued conflict in Ukraine have been “fruitless”, and important attention is being revoked from areas like the Middle East and especially Africa, an issue I wrote about last month.
This issue is especially pressing as common ground between the great powers of the world is increasingly shrinking. One of the greatest conflicts the United States faces today, for example, is with China. The United States and China are increasingly unable to find any ground upon which to agree, be it over Taiwanese sovereignty, economic sanctions, or military buildup and posturing in the South China Sea and elsewhere. A recent diplomatic shutdown occurred when Antony Blinken’s visit to Beijing following a fruitful sidelines discussion at the G-20 was cancelled after a Chinese spy balloon was detected floating over the United States. Lili Pike writes that in the months after the spy balloon controversy, “The countries’ presidents have traded harsh language; Xi [Jinping] said the U.S. aimed to contain and suppress China, while [Joe] Biden called Xi a ‘dictator.’”