New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion, and America’s Struggle to Defend the West

Sanger, a veteran reporter, tells a familiar story about how the hopeful era that followed the Cold War gave way to renewed great-power competition. Instead of bending to a “rules-based order,” China and Russia became aggressive and assertive. That shift led to the ferocious war in Ukraine and the growing prospect of one over Taiwan. The book’s strength lies in extensive and direct conversations with policymakers in Washington, most of whom are content to go on the record. Sanger vividly conveys the immediacy of decision-making, showing how short-term preoccupations shape the long term. Sanger faults President Joe Biden for failing to use U.S. leverage to rein in Israel’s war in Gaza but by and large offers a sympathetic account of his administration. One interesting feature of the book is the attention it pays to cyberpolicy. When Biden met Russian President Vladimir Putin in June 2021, the two leaders spent little time discussing Ukraine and instead focused on ransomware attacks on the United States launched from Russia. In 2022, the United States was ready, with the aid of the big tech companies, to help defend Ukraine’s information technology systems from what Washington expected would be a Russian cyberwar. But the United States was not quite prepared for the attack that actually arrived, which resembled the great wars of the previous century more than a futuristic techno-war.