U.S. President Joe Biden meets with China’s President Xi Jinping during a virtual summit from the … [+] Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, November 15, 2021.
MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
As Presidents Biden and Xi Jinping concluded their fifth round of virtual talks this week, one can’t help feel an overpowering sense of nostalgia to the real Cold War which ended decades ago. That war, between America and the USSR, at least, had powerful guardrails and a formal discussion platform to prevent the worst-case scenario of that era—nuclear holocaust.
U.S.-China relations, on the other hand, which geopolitical analysts insist are not on a new Cold War footing, are shaping out to be unpredictable because a simple conversation between the two leaders is preceded by elaborate diplomatic choreography to ensure that expectations are low, and ends with a pro forma statement that the dialogue…
