Making Cold War Two Worth It: The Search for a Liberal Post‐Globalization

ABSTRACT

American neoliberalism and Chinese Dengism emerged in the 1970s as virtual twins. Their ongoing interaction contributed greatly to the fairy tale that a global convergence of developmental values was taking place across geopolitical and even civilizational lines. That image of Sino‐American conflux became so enmeshed in the concept of neoliberal globalism that China's anti‐Dengist turn under Xi Jinping was bound to strike a hard blow to globalism as such. Now, with US–China relations worse than they have been in half a century, we have moved definitively into a post‐globalist era that so far has been an engine of illiberalism and authoritarian capitalism. What is sorely needed is a liberal post‐globalism that is not only capable of standing ( à la Ukraine) against the new revisionist powers, but also against the more subtle anti‐democratic inroads of “globalization.”