Why We Might Be Staring Cold War Part 2 in the Face

President Trump has not been shy about sharing his opinion about China. Exhibit A:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1156159999833513984

And he’s threatened to double down on tariffs if China doesn’t keep their end of the trade deals they’ve spent months on. Exhibit B:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1156979445565202433

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1156979450560548864

Everyone probably has a pretty strong opinion about whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but one historian sees it as something a bit. . . chillier.

In an interview with Mark Levin, historian Niall Ferguson draws a comparison between the US-China relationship and the state of global politics that led to the Cold War.

“If you think back to the first Cold War, we went quite quickly from being the allies of the Soviet Union in World War II to being at odds with them within just a few years,” Ferguson said.

“It was partly the classic territorial issues — that the Soviet Union appeared to be expanding in all directions — but it was also technological,” Ferguson added. “The Soviet Union … stole the atomic bomb design through its spy network, and in many ways, the Cold War was a kind of technological race. It produced the space race as well as the nuclear arms race.

“Fast forward to the late 20th century. For a time the United States and the People’s Republic of China are strategically aligned.”

Sound familiar? Ferguson goes on to explain that, though China’s rapid growth was initially a good thing for everyone, it’s now seen as having gotten out of control– something no one thought about until President Trump started making it a talking point.

“If you think back to when his campaign began, back in 2015, when he started talking about putting tariffs on Chinese imports, establishment America was outraged.

“Fast forward to 2019, and there’s a bipartisan consensus — which there isn’t on many things –that China poses a fundamental threat not only to the country’s economic future but it poses a strategic threat.”

What do you think? Is Ferguson right? Will history books cite a string of tweets from August 1, 2019 as the effective start date of the Second Cold War, or will this play out in a totally different way?