Cold War II Archives - Pittsburgh Quarterly

The final leg in our Cold War II stool is the containment of China diplomatically. To make the point that China no longer has a free pass, the first step in the West’s diplomatic offensive needs to be focused on Taiwan. Assuming that the West’s military containment of China has succeeded in confining the country inside …

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Creative Capital

The Perils Facing China

by Greg Curtis

As global trade retreats and is replaced by regional trading blocs, power will flow to those countries that are most self-reliant. By self-reliant, I mean countries that are best able to a) maintain vigorous economic growth without relying excessively on exports; b) feed their populations without importing vast amounts of food; and c) be more or …

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Creative Capital

China is Destined to Fall Behind

by Greg Curtis

Whatever happens with my proposal that the West launch Cold War II, the next three decades will be far less friendly to the Chinese economy than the past three decades have been. There are three reasons for this. First, there is what we might call “the law of large economies.” It’s relatively easy for a …

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Creative Capital

Containing China Economically

by Greg Curtis

Assuming that we can summon the courage to contain Beijing militarily, the next leg of the containment stool is to restrain China economically. Military containment will prevent China from overrunning other lands and peoples, but only economic containment can bring the Chinese Communist Party to its knees (or its senses). In Cold War I, it was …

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Creative Capital

The Argument for Containing China

by Greg Curtis

“In the Indo-Pacific region, China wants complete dominance; it wants to force the United States out and become the region’s unchallenged political, economic, and military hegemon. And globally … it wants to be powerful enough to counter Washington when needed.” –Oriana Skylar Mastro, Foreign Affairs We are talking about how a cold war between China and …

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Creative Capital

U.S & China: Setting the Record Straight

by Greg Curtis

In April of 2017, as Donald Trump and Xi Jinping were preparing to meet, a group of academics, policy wonks and former diplomats took out a full-page ad in the New York Times. The wonks warned the U.S. against falling into the “Thucydides Trap.” The ad explained the Thucydides Trap as arising when a dominant power …

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Creative Capital

Why China Is Ready to Fall Apart

by Greg Curtis

In the 1980s, almost four decades into Cold War I, President Reagan dramatically ratcheted up the pressure on the Soviet Union by expanding and modernizing the U.S. military and launching his famous “Star Wars” (Strategic Defense) Initiative. The policy apparatus in the West went berserk. Reagan was, they claimed, wildly escalating the Cold War. The …

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Creative Capital

The Trouble with China

by Greg Curtis

Virtually every American policymaker believed that the collapse of the USSR marked “the end of history.” Ever since the dawn of human civilization, hostile societies had vied for supremacy, resulting in war after war. But, it was thought, the break-up of the main sponsor of Communism demonstrated that there were simply no political ideas that …

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Creative Capital

Outlasting the Russians

by Greg Curtis

Within a period of four months in 1945, both Germany (in May) and Japan (in September) surrendered. At that time the Allies controlled most of the world, including Western Europe, while the Soviets controlled Eastern Europe. The USSR had been our “ally” during the war only in the narrowest sense of the word. Stalin had …

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Creative Capital

Cold War II

by Greg Curtis

Roughly five years ago, my book, “The Stewardship of Wealth,” was published in the U.S. Almost immediately, it was translated into Chinese and was being readied for publication by Tsinghua University Press in Beijing. But then one day—actually, it was nearly midnight—I received a frantic call. It seemed that there was a teensy-weensy problem: the Chinese …

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