Cold War II also consists of three interlocking conflicts: a contest between the U.S. and China for primacy in East Asia, and potentially Eurasia and the world; a rivalry between the U.S. and Russia for primacy in Russia’s “near abroad” (the former Soviet republics) and the Middle East; and a rivalry between the U.S. and Iran in the Middle East. Unlike the members of the Communist bloc in the Cold War, America’s major rivals in Cold War II do not share an ideology. The regimes in China, Russia, and Iran have next to nothing in common except the desire to reduce U.S. influence in their own neighborhoods.
