Op-ed by Paul Kelly, Editor-at-Large for The Australian, in response to The Center for Independent Studies, Analysis Paper 8, May 2020, MITIGATING THE NEW COLD WAR: Managing US-China trade, tech and geopolitical conflict, by Alan Dupont
Four months into the COVID-19 crisis, the world and Australia confront a worse problem — the descent into a version of cold war between the US and China, many years in the making but now apparently sealed in the great-power animosity unleashed by the virus.
The virus will be conquered by scientific, rational and logical public policy. But such elements are absent on the US-China front where Donald Trump and Xi Jinping have tipped each other into a confrontation neither seems willing to abandon, with escalation the most likely result.
The coronavirus pandemic that recognises neither nationality nor ideology should have brought the leading powers into co-operation but the opposite has happened — the threat to humanity has exposed the true descent in the US-China crisis. The warning lights are flashing on emergency.
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