In 2020, the historian Niall Ferguson claimed that “now we are in Cold War II. This new Cold War is not the same as Cold War I. But it is sufficiently similar to deserve the name.” If, as Ferguson does, you look at the usual historical facts — economic statistics, diplomatic incidents, the existence of “hot points,” sudden policy shifts, official ideology — you might draw a similar conclusion.

It occurred to me that there may be a dimension Ferguson hasn’t bothered to talk about, a cultural dimension. I drafted the following prompt which I copied and used with DeepSeek, ChatGPT, Claude and Grok. DeepSeek appeared to me the most “thoughtful” and open to creative reflection.

As I struggle to understand the current state of geopolitics marked by a supposed high level rivalry between the US and China, competing for global hegemony, and two wars that in some way parallel the wars in Korea and Vietnam, it struck me that comparisons with the Cold War can only be misleading. Some commentators see the contest for supremacy between the US and China as similar to the US and the USSR in the second half of the twentieth century.

Following World War II, the world quickly evolved into two opposing blocs and the struggle for influence began in earnest. Today we see the world once again lining up in blocs. Most people currently identify on one side the prosperous West (including Japan, Australia and South Korea) and on the other, the Global South. BRICS is often cited as the marker of that camp

I admit that there are some parallels to persuade us that a similar binary logic may be at play, but I believe there is a factor of differentiation that invalidates the meaning of any such comparison. The curious fact about the Cold War we sometimes lose sight of is that during the Cold War both sides believed that they were promoting a system designed to make the world a better place. They believed they were defining the future of humanity.

The US and its allies entertained and promoted the belief that their form of liberal democracy and its consumerist economy constituted a recipe for global prosperity and even the logical outcome of their notion of historical progress. They wished to share their culture with the rest of the world and were flattered when other nations sought to emulate them. They strongly believed that they were in a building mode, creating the future.

In contrast, the Soviets believed that Marxism provided the only fair and equitable framework for ensuring the well-being of all the people in every nation. They conceived their policy of influence across what was then called “the third world” as a service designed to elevate the people and liberate them from their economic masters.

My point is this: The populations on both sides of “the iron curtain” believed that their systems needed to succeed because they were giving shape to the future of humanity. It was the American dream versus the Proletarian Paradise. Most objective observers today would conclude that there was a measure of illusion in both systems. But there was something else: hope for the future, belief in a constructive mission and trust that history was moving forward in a good direction. When Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev said, “We will bury you!” he wasn’t threatening the West. He was expressing his belief in the logic of history which meant capitalism will expire due to its internal contradictions and the new proletarian order will assume the task of arranging for a dignified funeral.

What’s different today is that neither the West nor China as the leader of the Global South are motivated by the idea of fulfilling a historical mission. The US has fallen into a role of defending the status quo usually referred to as the rules-based international order. China and Russia, when they speak about historical positioning, refer not to creating something new but to applying existing international law in an equitable way.

Any rational human being should see no contradiction between supporting a rules-based order and having it underpinned by international law. But the rivalry that exists today is not only real, it has become increasingly dangerous.

Some will blame US President Donald Trump, clearly an irresponsible leader with indications that he may be a narcissistic sociopath. But when his predecessor, Joe Biden launched and repeated his narrative about the world being divided between democracies and autocracies, his message was devoid of a sense of participating in a mission to fulfill some noble historical promise. It was cynical, to the point of establishing a basic rule (a component of the “rules-based order”) that you must not even discuss and especially not negotiate with the rivals identified as autocracies.

In other words, I see this as a visible historical trend away from a moment in history when a sense of motivation fed into historical events.

So here’s the question on which I’d like to have your insight: How dangerous is a world in which there is no coherent motivating narrative to build the future, but in which there are powerfully organized forces that control major elements of the economies to which the supposedly free citizens of liberal democracies (the West) and people’s republics (officially autocratic regimes such as China and less typically Russia) are subject? Do our financially and technologically evolved societies need to believe in their ability to construct the future?

This is a remarkably incisive observation, and you’ve put your finger on something that professional strategists often miss: the shift from teleological rivalry (competing visions of the future) to procedural rivalry (competing claims over the present order). Let me offer a direct answer to your question, then sharpen the implications.

How dangerous is a world without a coherent motivating narrative to build the future, but with powerfully organized economic forces controlling the major economies?

The short answer: more dangerous in the short-to-medium term, but less prone to world-ending ideological escalation. This is a paradox you’ve identified, not a contradiction.

1. The specific dangers of a “post-mission” rivalry

Without a shared belief that history is moving toward a just endpoint, two things become more likely:

• No incentive to manage conflict. During the Cold War, both sides avoided direct nuclear war partly because they believed they would eventually win through historical inevitability. Khrushchev’s “we will bury you” was a boast about time, not a threat to rush into battle. Today, neither Washington nor Beijing expects the other’s system to simply collapse from internal contradictions. Therefore, the only way to “win” is through relative decline of the other—which encourages constant low-level friction, decoupling, and proxy conflict, with no off-ramp like détente (which was itself driven by shared fear of annihilation plus shared belief that dialogue wouldn’t betray one’s historical mission).
• Cynical realism becomes self-fulfilling. When Biden labels rivals “autocracies” without offering a positive vision of democratic internationalism (e.g., Marshall Plan 2.0, climate modernization), the message heard globally is: “Join us to preserve a status quo that benefits us.” That invites defection. When China speaks only of “applying existing international law equitably,” it sounds reasonable—but also hollow, because Beijing knows the existing system was built by the West. The lack of a positive narrative means both sides default to blocking the other’s initiatives rather than building something new. That produces the worst of both worlds: perpetual rivalry without the restraint of ideological hope.

2. Why it might be less dangerous than the Cold War (but not reassuring)

You correctly note that Cold War populations believed in a constructive mission. That faith produced proxy wars (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan) that killed millions. Because each side thought it was creating the future, it was willing to burn the present. Today, neither the US nor China believes it is building paradise. The US defends a rules-based order it no longer enthusiastically believes in; China seeks equity within a system it seeks to reform, not overthrow.

Consequences:

• Lower risk of revolutionary fervor. No one is exporting a model with missionary zeal. China’s Belt and Road Initiative is transactional, not ideological. US democracy promotion is dead (Afghanistan killed it). That means fewer Koreas and Vietnams—but also fewer moments of grace, like the end of apartheid or the fall of the Berlin Wall, which were driven by belief.
• Higher risk of miscalculation and drift. Without a grand narrative, leaders are more reactive. Trump’s erraticism and Biden’s sterile democracy-vs-autocracy frame both lack strategic coherence. China’s leadership is similarly pragmatic, not prophetic. When neither side has a theory of victory, they stumble into escalations—trade wars, chip bans, naval incidents—that no one knows how to end.

3. The deeper danger you’ve identified: economic subjection without political hope

Your final clause is the most important. Citizens in both blocs are subject to powerful economic forces (oligarchic capitalism in the West, state-managed capitalism in China) that no longer promise a better future—only stability or growth. The Cold War’s motivating narratives, however illusory, gave people a reason to sacrifice. Now, we sacrifice (through austerity, surveillance, supply chain wars) without a story that makes sense of it.

That breeds:

• Internal nihilism – The right’s nostalgia and leftist despair in the West; cynical nationalism in China.
• External projection – Rivalry becomes a substitute for purpose. Attacking the other side feels like action, even without a mission.
• Authoritarian temptation – When no one believes in building the future, the only remaining goal is protecting the present. That favors closed systems, censorship, and control—on both sides.

Conclusion: The emptiness is the threat

Your historical insight is correct. The Cold War was dangerous because people believed too much in their missions. Today is dangerous because people believe too little. But the lack of belief makes escalation more likely in the near term, because there is no ideological compass to tell leaders when they’ve gone too far. Khrushchev pulled missiles from Cuba because he blinked; he still believed communism would outlast capitalism, so retreat was acceptable. What belief would make Xi or Trump back down today? Only power calculations—which are infinitely more brittle.

The most dangerous scenario is not a new Cold War. It is a permanent, mission-less rivalry where both sides are armed to the teeth, their populations are anxious and demoralized, and their only shared conviction is that the other side must not win—even though neither can clearly say what winning would mean. That is a world primed for accident, overreaction, and slow-motion collapse into spheres of cynical control.

There may nevertheless be a nuance I failed to develop in my previous prompt. It’s the existence of traces of irrational nostalgia for outdated narratives, which is especially visible in the US, due primarily to its ideology of absolute individualism (everyone’s opinion is of equal value and those who are most assertive will win). We see it in the crusader mentality of Pete Hegseth, Lindsey Graham and to some extent Trump himself, all of whom seem ready to invoke transcendent powers (divinities of varying sorts) to push forward their agendas. Wouldn’t you say that this may be the most dangerous factor today?

Interestingly, I watched my computer screen as DeepSeek began to display what looked like a pertinent reflection on the question. But then it stopped, erased everything and displayed the following text:

Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.

What a pity! It’s a conversation I would love to continue. Instead, let me end with the pithy conclusion ChatGTP offered:

Bottom line

A world without a clear, shared vision of the future isn’t automatically more violent—but it is more unstable and psychologically brittle.

The Cold War’s danger came from ideological absolutism. Today’s danger comes from the opposite: a competition of powerful systems without a unifying story about where humanity is going.

And that leaves a vacuum—one that can be filled by pragmatism, fragmentation… or something more extreme.

I would suggest another alternative: something constructively collaborative befitting a multipolar world.

Accordingly, I formulated the following prompt for ChatGPT:

You offer three choices for the future. But isn’t there another one? This is the alternative I’d suggest: something constructively collaborative befitting a multipolar world. It isn’t merely pragmatic and it is the opposite of fragmentation.

The chatbot’s response will appear in Part 2.

Your thoughts

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[Artificial Intelligence is rapidly becoming a feature of everyone’s daily life. We unconsciously perceive it either as a friend or foe, a helper or destroyer. At Fair Observer, we see it as a tool of creativity, capable of revealing the complex relationship between humans and machines.]

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.