Us and them: East-West relations reconsidered

This paper frames the contemporary challenge of the People's Republic of China in the context of Cold War history. It shows how apparent echoes of the past-Beijing's continued embrace of "socialism;" a partnership with Russia that recalls the Sino-Soviet alliance-help illuminate the sources and nature of present-day East-West conflict, and suggests that Francis Fukuyama's much-pilloried "End of History?" has been misunderstood. Viewing the twenty-first-century standoff with Chinese (and Russian) authoritarianism in historical perspective, the paper concludes, casts prospects for the West more positively than recent conventional wisdom would suggest.