New Cold Wars

China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion and America’s Struggle to Defend the West

By David E Sanger

Published by Scribe (free shipping Australia wide)

RRP $45.00 in paperback | ISBN 9781761381126

 

David E Sanger, White House and National Security Correspondent for The New York Times, certainly has the credentials to write this book in which he explores an America at the crossroads in international affairs.

Two adversaries loom large: Xi Jinping’s China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

How times have changed in the few short years since the turn of the millennium, when the United States was confident that a democratic Russia and a newly wealthy China could gradually be pulled into the Western-led order. That ambition, as Sanger demonstrates, proved a fantasy.

By the time Washington emerged from the age of terrorism, the three nuclear powers were engaged in a new, high-stakes struggle for military, economic, and technological supremacy — with nations around the world forced to take sides.

The evidence is clear that successive US presidents misunderstood Putin’s ambitions and what drives him. He is a tzar without the trimmings; a tzar whose singular ambition is to restore the Russian empire, at whatever cost. Will he reach for his nuclear arsenal to settle the Ukranian conflict? No one is prepared to guarantee he won’t.

While much of this book is focused on the Ukraine war and the US role in assisting Ukraine, the issue of China’s ambitions is not neglected. And therein lies another battleground in the murky world of geopolitics.

But even as I write this review, I’m reminded that, since this book was published, there has been a US presidential election. Donald Trump will once again occupy the oval office.

Sanger writes of Trump’s first presidency:

‘America’s capability to shape the world shrank. Allies were regularly insulted and unsurprisingly had no interest in signing up to Washington’s initiatives. Adversaries thrived. …’ 

VERDICT: This book may be regarded as an astonishing first draft of history chronicling America’s return to superpower conflict, but in reality, the unpredictability of a Trump presidency might well up the stakes for the rest of the world that looks on in dismay.

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