So, when I say that President Biden doesn’t understand the new Cold War, what I mean is that the new Cold War itself is baked into the structure of the international system that has existed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and you cannot simply speak away the new Cold War in a speech. You know, since the Soviet Union collapsed, China has looked out at a world dominated by American power, not only economically, politically, but also militarily in China’s backyard. The United States, many of its closest allies and partners and much of its military power is located in a ring along China’s periphery — Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Australia, buttressed by Guam.
And so, what we’ve seen over the last 30 years is that China has had a deliberate strategy to balance against American power, particularly in its backyard. And now what we’ve seen since the Trump administration, and continued by the Biden administration, is that the United States is responding to these changes in Chinese policy by trying to balance back against China.
And it’s important to note that these are, one, the two most powerful states history has ever known, and, two, that this game between the United States and China that we’re just starting to see play has no logical endpoint. And so, my primary concern is that as both sides set out to wire up Asia and the Asia-Pacific with the most powerful military
— source democracynow.org | Oct 12, 2021