Analysis of the current and emergent correlation of forces between US–China–Russia points towards a new era of one super-imperialist power coexisting with a triadic form of major inter-imperialist tensions.
The label ‘‘New Cold War’’ applied to the growing confrontation between the United States (US) and China is a term that hides more than it illuminates, especially when it implies a fundamental similarity in the character of major state rivalries in the post-World War II period from 1945 to 1989–91—a conjuncture shaped by the geoeconomics and geopolitics of that time—and the emerging world order today. There is in fact a profound difference between the former era and the present one.
What existed then was a systemic rivalry between two incompatible orders that had profoundly different dynamics of social and economic reproduction expressing itself in an enduring clash of geopolitical ambitions and practices. This incompatibility was widely recognised giving rise to a sustained ideological hostility. The specific features of that global conjuncture were as follows.
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