Weekly Geopolitical Report – Back to the Future? Prospects for a New Cold War Against China (October 12, 2020)
by Patrick Fearon-Hernandez, CFA | PDF
This edition of our Weekly Geopolitical Report explores the prospects of a new Cold War between the United States and China. Based on the author’s personal experiences at the end of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, this report explores the various costs that would likely arise from a new Cold War and what those costs imply for investment strategy.
When I asked her if she had any trouble getting her ticket from St. Petersburg to Moscow to join me for the long weekend, she said, “No.” Then, with a sly grin and a meaningful glance deep into my eyes, she added, “I just asked for help from a friend in the KGB who works for President Gorbachev.” I suppose I grinned a bit, too, since she had just confirmed her association with Soviet intelligence, which I had suspected ever since we met in a hotel bar in St. Petersburg weeks before. If I did let a grin slip out, it probably also reflected the irony of knowing how badly my office at the CIA was going to react to this forbidden dalliance when I got back to Washington. But it was a beautiful, bright, crisp autumn morning in Moscow in September 1991, just after the attempted coup against Gorbachev, and I was still young.