Abstract

The present tension in international relations did not start last year: it is the outcome of a long process that was mostly determined by the decade of transition in the 1990s, from the end of the Cold War, along with the dissolution of the USSR, to the defining moment of the New Cold War represented by the 1999 Kosovo war. The trends set during that decade were to be continued and even aggravated under the US presidency of George W. Bush (2001-2009). Contrarily to the post-1945 Cold War, the 21st century’s New Cold War is not primarily ideological or systemic: US containment of both Russia and China continued after Russia’s post-communist right-wing shift and the capitalist turn of China’s economy. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a failed imperial response to the expansion of US hegemony. The ensuing global tension fosters increasing authoritarian tendencies at the global level and are very harmful to humanity as a whole.

Gilbert Achcar is Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at SOAS, University of London. His many books include: The Clash of Barbarisms: The Making of the New World Disorder; Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy, with Noam Chomsky; The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives; The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising; and The New Cold War: The United States, Russia and China, from Kosovo to Ukraine.