Geopolitics and Lessons from the Last Cold War

While the United States and its partners and allies are attempting to maintain a maritime global order to foster trade, China and Russia are great continental powers increasingly fixated on dominating territory. These differences have precipitated the Second Cold War.

This seminar will start with the geopolitical cards dealt to the United States, Russia and China. We will continue by examining the views of those on both sides, who oversaw the end of the last Cold War, to explain how the democracies won without fighting a hot war.

Sarah C. M. Paine, Ph.D., is William S. Sims University professor of history and grand strategy in the maritime history department of the U.S. Naval War College. She is a prolific, award-winning author, compiling 10 years of research in Australia, China, Japan, Russia, Taiwan and the United Kingdom to form the basis for numerous publications. Among these are: “The Japanese Empire,” “Wars for Asia, 1911-1949” and “Imperial Rivals: China, Russia and Their Disputed Frontier.” She has also written “Nation Building, State Building, and Economic Development,” Modern China: Continuity and Change 1644 to the Present,” as well as five naval books, including “Naval Blockades and Seapower: Strategies and Counter-Strategies 1805-2005” and “New Theaters of Naval Warfare.” Most recently she co-edited “From Quills to Tweets: How America Communicates about War and Revolution.” Sarah’s degrees include a B.A. in Latin American Studies from Harvard University, an M.I.A. from Columbia University School for International and Public Affairs, and M.A. in Russian from Middlebury College and a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University. She is currently working on a history of the Cold War.