It's a Cold, Cold, Cold War

Great Powers and Regime (Non)Promotion in Asia

Yesterday I was on a panel at Berkeley titled “Democracy, Authoritarianism, and Geopolitics in Asia”. It was moderated by Susan Hyde, with Sheena Chestnut Greitens and Dan Slater as the other panelists.

Dan and Sheena are two people whose work I’ve admired and who, as you can see from their bios, are far more qualified to speak about Asian politics. I was there mainly due to Susan’s generosity and secondarily due to the subject of my book, which looked at how great power competition has shaped the evolution of democracy. My comments are below:

Since I’m here to talk great powers, let me begin by saying a little about the key geopolitical rivalry in the region, the US-China relationship. There is an ongoing debate about how to label this and whether we should call it a Cold War. The label is indeed fraught with all sorts of ideological problems, and this is made worse by the fact that people use the term in different ways. So let’s unpack a bit what we mean by a “Cold War”.

I’ve seen pe…