Because China will be harder to deal with than the Soviet Union, the argument goes, calling bilateral competition a Cold War might deceive Americans into thinking that victory can be won using the old playbook. Its vast consumer market, its status as the world’s greatest trading nation, its skill in leveraging its wealth to elicit deference and provide public goods worldwide, and its desire to shape the global order make China something the United States has not faced before: a true peer competitor. The first is that China, unlike the Soviet Union, is not merely a military power. Until recently, most analysts of US-China relations have rejected the Cold War framework, for two reasons.

Bernard Baruch’s 1947 neologism invoked the gravity of the world wars and honored Churchill’s dictum that “short words are best, and old words when short are the best of all.” Today, Cold War captures our sense, and fear, that the United States and China are in for a decades-long, high-stakes, high-cost contest that will reshape the world, affirm or discredit our values, and that can be won, if the United States is wise or lucky, without fighting.

Most attempts to wed the needs of grand strategy and the methods of marketing have coalesced around the issue of whether the United States and China are now engaged in a Cold War. The results have been both serious and silly, as analysts often conflate their desire to guide policy with their hope of coining a catchphrase that lands them in the history books. Hundreds of attempts to answer this question have been offered over of the past few years. What is the nature of relations between the United States and China?

Why was the cold war called cold war