A visitor is reflected in a puddle along the East Side Gallery in Berlin. The lack of a geopolitical focal point akin to Berlin during the Cold War is one of several reasons that drawing parallels between US-China and US-Soviet-Union competition misses the mark. Photo: EPA A visitor is reflected in a puddle along the East Side Gallery in Berlin. The lack of a geopolitical focal point akin to Berlin during the Cold War is one of several reasons that drawing parallels between US-China and US-Soviet-Union competition misses the mark. Photo: EPA
A visitor is reflected in a puddle along the East Side Gallery in Berlin. The lack of a geopolitical focal point akin to Berlin during the Cold War is one of several reasons that drawing parallels between US-China and US-Soviet-Union competition misses the mark. Photo: EPA
Gregory Mitrovich
Opinion

Opinion

Gregory Mitrovich

US-China relations: invoking the Cold War ignores the Covid-19 pandemic and wider context

  • The lack of an ideological conflict or clear geopolitical point of contention, as well as the presence of Covid-19, are differences that must not be overlooked
  • The looming threat of multiple waves of the pandemic, as in the 1918 influenza outbreak, could ultimately force the US and China into a more cooperative relationship

Gregory Mitrovich
Gregory Mitrovich

Updated: 6:14am, 11 Aug, 2020

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A visitor is reflected in a puddle along the East Side Gallery in Berlin. The lack of a geopolitical focal point akin to Berlin during the Cold War is one of several reasons that drawing parallels between US-China and US-Soviet-Union competition misses the mark. Photo: EPA A visitor is reflected in a puddle along the East Side Gallery in Berlin. The lack of a geopolitical focal point akin to Berlin during the Cold War is one of several reasons that drawing parallels between US-China and US-Soviet-Union competition misses the mark. Photo: EPA
A visitor is reflected in a puddle along the East Side Gallery in Berlin. The lack of a geopolitical focal point akin to Berlin during the Cold War is one of several reasons that drawing parallels between US-China and US-Soviet-Union competition misses the mark. Photo: EPA
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Gregory Mitrovich

Gregory Mitrovich

Gregory Mitrovich is the author of "Undermining the Kremlin: America's Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947-1956", which was awarded the Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. He was co-principal investigator for Columbia University’s "Culture in Power Transitions: Sino-American Confrontation in the 21st Century", funded by the Department of Defence Minerva Research Initiative. Mitrovich has held research fellowships at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University, the Harvard Kennedy School, the Centre of International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, and the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. His current book project is titled "Uncommon Challenger: The Epic Story of the Rise of the United States from the War of 1812 to the Second World War".