If it sounds like a new cold war and looks like a new cold war, then it probably is a new cold war. For what other interpretation is to be placed on US president Joe Biden’s latest ramping up of diplomatic, economic and military pressure on China?
Western officials tend to avoid the term, recalling as it does decades of hair-trigger confrontation with the former Soviet Union. They talk instead about enhanced security and defence cooperation and the importance of a free and open Indo-Pacific region. But such bland generalisations belie the fact that Biden is now pushing back hard at a repressive, authoritarian regime in Beijing that he and many Americans believe is determined to overthrow the international democratic, geopolitical and legal order safeguarded by the US. Last week’s groundbreaking Camp David summit hosted by Biden for Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, and South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, perfectly fitted this agenda. It produced a series of measures aimed squarely at China and its “dangerous and aggressive behaviour”.
