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The Second Cold War, or New Cold War, is a term used to describe conflicts and international tension that are reminiscent of the first Cold War, particularly those seen between NATO and the People's Republic of China and Russian Federation, along with their respective allies.[1][2] Less than 15% of the world population supports the New Cold War.[3] Like the first Cold War, its goal is to destroy the communist movement and anything that may threaten the Western bourgeoisie's power.
The diplomatic and economic confrontations between the Western and Sino-Russian blocs, especially after the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian conflict began, have resulted in numerous commercial embargoes, travel restrictions, and even discriminatory violence against people of Asian or Russian ethnicity abroad, which has been further encouraged by the reactionary bourgeois media.[4][5][6][7]
On 10 January, 2023 the United States House of Representatives established the United States House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. The "Select Committee" comprised of not more than 16 Members appointed by the Speaker and 7 appointed in consultation with the minority leader, are tasked with advising on the “…status of the economic, technological, and security progress of the Chinese Communist Party and its competition with the United States.”[8] The development presents a further escalation of the New Cold War against China.
History[edit | edit source]
US-aligned bloc[edit | edit source]
At the end of the Second World War, the United States created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to fight against communism and the international proletarian movement.[9] Since then, the alliance has grown to 32 member states, all of them dictatorships of the bourgeoisie and located, as per NATO's charter, in Europe and North America. NATO has instigated several wars despite calling itself a defensive alliance,[10] and funded terror cells in Italy as part of Operation Gladio and in Ukraine during the 2014 Ukrainian coup d'etat.[11]
The end of the war was itself a pivotal moment in global politics, as the US was able to dictate terms to Japan,[12] Korea[13] and keep the Republic of China alive in Taiwan province after the establishment of the People's Republic. In Europe, the Marshall Plan as well as NATO/CIA intervention kept their influence high against the worker's movement. To this day, these states are still aligned against communism and with the interests of the Statesian bourgeoisie.
In the 1980s, the United States forced Japan to appreciate the Yen in the 1985 Plaza Accord, making Japanese exports (which the Japanese economy relies on) less competitive.[14] Because the Yen was more valuable compared to other currencies, importing Japanese goods became more expensive to consumers and they turned to other providers. Reagan, who was president of the United States at the time, imposed tariffs and trade restrictions on Japanese goods.[15] This caused the Lost decade in Japan, a period of stagnation and recession in the 1990s that the country still has not recovered from.[14]
To this day there are US military bases and troops occupying Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.[16]
New opposition bloc[edit | edit source]
After the overthrow of the Soviet Union in 1991, itself a continuation of many attempts by the Statesian bourgeoisie to destroy the first successful socialist state, the Cold War was declared over by the West.[17] The German Democratic Republic was annexed into the Federal Republic of Germany, the constitutive states of the USSR seceded into their own bourgeois states, and Boris Yeltsin was elected with US help.[18] Between 1991 and 2001, NATO bombed states of the ex-Yugoslavia as part of the Yugoslav Wars.[19]
In 1978, the People's Republic of China had formally started its Reform and Opening Up plans under Deng Xiaoping. This followed the Sino-Soviet split in the 1950s, and China realized that it needed to develop its productive forces to stand on its own against anti-communist reaction and infiltration.
In parallel, Vladimir Putin was elected president of the Russian Federation in March 2000. While he was originally courted by the West to become a comprador like Yeltsin had been,[20] Putin moved away from participating in Western hegemony (including joining NATO and the EU when Russia saw that this was going to be impossible) and has since then been considered an enemy by the imperial core.
For a time after 1991, the Cold War was believed to be over and anti-imperialist forces to have been defeated. However, both Russia and China were able to build their productive forces at breakneck speed over the past decades. In 1991, China's GDP per capita (the average value produced by a person in the country) was 333 USD. By 2000, this value had tripled to 959 USD. By 2010, the GDP per capita had reached 4550 USD.[21] Since 2013, China has invested in the Belt and Road Initiative, a worldwide program that aims to build economic self-sufficiency in countries that are either ex-colonies or imperialized. Since the 2000s, Russia has militarily supported self-determination movements across the world that fight against imperialist meddling. For example, after Mali and Burkina Faso (former colonies of France and part of the ECOWAS system until 2022) kicked out French troops in late 2022 and early 2023,[22][23] they invited Russian troops to replace them, creating room to form the Alliance of Sahel States.
New Cold War[edit | edit source]
The Cold War has never really ended; at most, it was dormant for a period between 1991 and 2010. However, the term has uses to combat the idea that the Cold War is a thing of the past.
In terms of cold wars being waged, there was the Syrian Civil War and the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian conflict being fought through proxies.
The Cold War was infamous for the Red Scare, a period of anti-communist hysteria that led to widespread political persecution of dissidents in the United States. The US Government has sought to recreate that atmosphere of paranoia with similar propaganda tactics, using unfounded claims of Chinese "infiltration" to justify domestic repression and aggressive foreign policies. [24]
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ The New Cold War on China by the Monthly Review
- ↑ "The second Cold War is here — and supply chains will be the front lines". Freight Waves.
- ↑ Benjamin Norton (2022-09-21). "87% of world doesn’t support West’s new cold war on Russia" Multipolarista. Archived from the original on 2022-09-24. Retrieved 2022-09-24.
- ↑ Daily Mail, The Times Both Repeat China "Dune" Poster Lies DAYS After Others Retracted False Claims by The New Atlas
- ↑ "How to satisfy the US Empire: smear the left, demonize China".
- ↑ Josh Campbell. "Anti-Asian hate crimes surged in early 2021, study says" CNN.
- ↑ Rachel Hu and Chris Garaffa (2022-03-16). "CovertAction Bulletin Podcast: The Role of War Propaganda in Anti-Asian Violence" CovertAction Magazine.
- ↑ “The resolution authorizes the committee to investigate and submit policy recommendations concerning the status of the economic, technological, and security progress of the Chinese Communist Party and its competition with the United States.”
Kevin McCarthy (2023-10-01). "H.Res.11 - Establishing the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party." United States Congress. Retrieved 2023-02-14. - ↑ Office of the Historian
- ↑ Chris Hedges (2022-07-12). "Chris Hedges: NATO—The Most Dangerous Military Alliance on the Planet" MintPress News. Archived from the original on 2022-07-21. Retrieved 2022-07-26.
- ↑ U.S. and NATO allies arm neo-Nazi units in Ukraine as Foreign Policy elites yearn for Afghan-style insurgency
- ↑ The Potsdam Declaration, accepted by Japan on 14 August 1945.
- ↑ Douglas MacArthur, Proclamation No. 1, 1945.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 Ken Dow (2020). "How the Plaza Accord helped the US destroy the Japanese economy"
- ↑ "Reagan Imposes 100% Tariffs on Japan Goods : Retaliatory Sanctions Aimed at $300 Million in Electronic Products in Semiconductor Dispute" (1987). Los Angeles Time.
- ↑ US Military presence in West Pacific map, 2014
- ↑ “In late 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed and 15 newly independent nations were born from its corpse, including a Russia with a democratically elected, anticommunist leader. The Cold War had come to an end.”
"Toward a new world order". Britannica. - ↑ ELEANOR RANDOLPH (July 9, 1996). "Americans Claim Role in Yeltsin Win" Los Angeles Times.
- ↑ Michael Parenti (2000). To Kill a Nation: 'NATO's War Crimes' (pp. 115–126). [PDF] Verso.
- ↑ "President Vladimir Putin and British Prime Minister Tony Blair held a joint news conference" (2001). Kremlin.
- ↑ "China GDP per capita". Macrotrends.
- ↑ "Timeline: Nine years of French troops in Mali". Al Jazeera.
- ↑ "Burkina Faso marks official end of French military operations on its soil" (2023). Reuters.
- ↑ “This new era of McCarthyism reproduces the same paranoia as the first iteration in the 1950s: that communist infiltrators both in government and throughout wider society are influencing policy and public opinion in the enemy’s interests.”
Amanda Yee (2023-07-11). "Red Scare reloaded: Chinese “foreign agents” and a new era of McCarthyism" Liberation News. Retrieved 2025-08-23.