U.S. COLD WAR WITH CHINA: FIRST STOP, EQUATORIAL GUINEA

In the first Cold War, the Truman Doctrine laid out the premises for prioritizing an anti-communist crusade that lasted an entire generation and served as the pretext for U.S. support for apartheid South Africa and countless other anti-democratic regimes around the world. Last week's Democracy Summit, noted CUNY Presidential Professor Branko Milanović, is most likely "a prelude to the creation of an unwieldy association of states that will be used by the United States to spearhead its ideological crusade in the escalating geopolitical conflict with China and Russia." Milanović, who earned his Ph.D. in 1987 at the University of Belgrade and later became chief economist in the World Bank's research department, recalled that in the first Cold War, there was at least the option of a non-aligned movement, in which his native country joined with India to offer an alternative to the Manichean geopolitical choice between the Soviet Union and the United States. "The clash between China and the United States is a clash driven by geopolitical considerations... It has nothing to do with democracy," Milanović concluded.