NEW BOOK: Richard Sakwa, “The Lost Peace: How The West Failed to Prevent a Second Cold War”
New book: Richard Sakwa, The Lost Peace: How The West Failed to Prevent a Second Cold War (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2023).
Professor Emeritus of Politics
School of Politics and International Relations
Keynes College, Division of Human and Social Sciences
University of Kent
Introduction
PART I: FROM COLD WAR TO COLD WAR
The promise of peace
The Charter international system; Origins of the system; Cold War I; Helsinki and human rights; New Political Thinking; Towards a positive peace
Time of great hopes
New thinking bears fruit; China’s communism of reform; The contested peace; Towards victory; When a promise is not a promise; The clash of new world orders
How the peace was lost
The arc of ambition; Hostages to geopolitics; World order inside out; Paradoxes of enlargement; NATO expands
The road to war
The logic of conflict; Fateful steps; The security dilemma; Two rights make a wrong; European Security Treaty; The Reset and beyond
PART II: GREAT POWER CONFLICT
6. America between leadership and primacy
US grand strategy; Liberal hegemony and American primacy; Primacy becomes dominance; The Trump disruption; Business almost as usual; Warning signs; New challenges
7. Global China
China comes of age; China and world order; China’s horizons; Power and purpose; China in the world; Sino-US relations; The logic of conflict; Decoupling
8. The Russia question
Fortress Russia; Is Russia revisionist? Patterns of alienation; Russian post-Westernism; Russia looks East; Russia takes on the West
9. Europe redivided
Europe as a power; Power in practice; From Ostpolitik to consolidated Atlanticism
PART III: WAR AND INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
10. The world on fire
100 seconds to midnight; The end of arms control; The permanent storm; A world on edge
11. War in Europe
The Ukrainian impasse; European security at stake; Slide to war; Last chance; The Russo-Ukrainian war
12. Crisis of the international system
A perilous world; Is this a cold war?; Diplomacy and the Charter system; Parting of the ways
13. Rise of the political East
Sanctions and extra-territoriality; Towards a post-Western world; The Global South finds its voice; India’s quiet rise
14. Conclusion
Back to basics; False hopes; Pathways to peace