Everything is more complex than the story about it. The cold war was an improvised reaction to a transformative technological leap (nuclear weapons) and had a genuine, transnational ideological core that is simply missing from the plain vanilla great power conflict with China
I guess it strikes me as not different in principle than what Britain would have done back in the day if you made fun of Queen Victoria. The limits of CCP influence and control operations seem to be stuff related to China. Maybe I'm not understanding your point?
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... people made fun of Queen Victoria *in Britain* all the time. Now, if the monarchy had been all-powerful, very much felt itself to be endangered by any opposition, and willing to use imperial power globally to crush that opposition - we'd be somewhat closer to where we are.
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I can accept all that! The distinction I am groping for is that the Cold War was not anchored on individual countries, but two abstract, incompatible belief systems that each made a great sales pitch—freedom vs. communism. It was a religious war with roughly equal numbers.
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