After climate change, competing with China is the next most important security challenge for the United States in the 21st century. The Trump team has framed this struggle as Cold War 2.0. Some parts of this analogy are right. Others very wrong. THREAD 1/
Those invoking the Cold War analogy like it because we "won" the Cold War. If we won Cold War 1.0, we can win Cold War 2.0 2/
In fact, Russian democrats, together with Polish, Hungarian, Baltic, Ukrainian, Georgian anti-communists forces were the ones really responsible for "winning" the Cold War. We played a marginal role in the end game. (But that's a longer story for another day) 3/
But during the Cold War, we did do some things right -- containment, alliance cohesion, propagating liberal ideas, crisis management with the Soviets, and some cooperation w/ Moscow such as arms control & smallpox eradication. We should learn from those positive lessons. 4/
But we also made some horrible mistakes during the Cold War -- unnecessary proxy wars, because we conflated nationalism & communism, killing tens of millions; propping up dictators including apartheid; McCarthyism. 5/
Today, we are repeating this last mistake. Demonizing all Chinese people, including students, weakens us and strengthens the CCP. We should want as many Chinese students to study in the US as possible and then create incentives for them stay & become citizens. 6/
Attracting the best and the brightest from around the world was an essential element of our victory in the last Cold War. We need to be using that powerful tool in our arsenal again. 7/
For elaboration, see my “Lessons from the Cold War for Competing (and Cooperating) with China Today,” in @TWQgw , coming soon.
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