Cold War Containment Strategy and Current Applications

Good strategy starts with an understanding of history. The United States is entering an era of great-power competition with China and Russia. Such global struggles happen in a geopolitical twilight, between the sunshine of peace and the darkness of war. Hal Brands, a leading historian and former Pentagon adviser, argues that America should look to the history of the Cold War for lessons in how to succeed in great-power rivalry today. Although the threat posed by authoritarian powers is growing, Brands contends that America’s muscle memory for dealing with dangerous foes has atrophied in the thirty years since the Cold War ended. If you want an option for America to win today's rivalries with Russia and China, read this book about how it triumphed in another twilight struggle: the Cold War. In this SDG we will revisit how America won a previous twilight struggle and consider if that is the starting point for determining how America can successfully prosecute another high-stakes rivalry today.