US-China 'Cold War' can evolve into a deeper strategic partnership

NOVEMBER marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, an epochal moment in international relations. Yet, some three decades on, the initial promise of what is commonly called the 1989 revolutions across Eastern European has now faded.

Indeed, from the vantage point of 2019, it is sometimes necessary to look back and remember the huge wave of optimism that dawned with the wave of political tumult which swept the former Eastern Bloc, starting in Poland and Hungary, with experiments in power sharing coming to a head with the opening of the Berlin Wall in November. Thereafter came the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, and the overthrow of the communist dictatorship in Romania in December, ending in December 1991 with the implosion of the Soviet Union itself.

This breathtaking period in international relations, after the decades long Soviet-US bipolar stand-off, gave rise to optimistic hopes and expectations of how the post-Cold War world might be. Yet, the vision of a universal order of liberal, capitalist, democratic states living in peace and contentment, asserted by some, has not just been dashed, but replaced by a different reality.