Book & podcast collection

The Twilight Struggle: What the Cold War Teaches Us about Great-Power Rivalry Today

byHal Brands

Historian Hal Brands revisits the Cold War to identify lessons for contemporary great-power rivalry, especially the competition between the United States and China. He examines containment, alliances, military deterrence, economic strategy, ideological confidence, proxy conflicts, diplomacy, and the risk of escalation. The book resists both nostalgia and fatalism: American success was costly, uneven, and never guaranteed, while important Cold War methods may not fit today. Brands argues that prolonged competition requires patience, domestic strength, coalition building, and the ability to combine pressure with negotiation without mistaking rivalry for inevitable war.

Publisher

Yale University Press

Publication date

2022

Format

Print edition

Pages

—

ISBN

9780300268058