Jul 26, 2020
This week on Long Reads Sunday, our selection is “Whose Century?” by Adam Tooze in the London Review of Books.
Nominally a review of four recent scholarly works on the conflict between the US and China, Tooze main argument is that the central problem with viewing this as a new Cold War is the idea that it is new.
Instead, we need to understand that, contra Fukiyama’s famous essay, history didn’t end in 1989 - at least not for the Chinese. What’s more, the narrative of having “won” the Cold War fails to take into account our spectacular failures in Asia.
Only by reframing our understanding can we make sense of the most important geopolitical conflict of the coming century.