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Amidst growing speculation about a new Cold War — be it with Russia, China or both — something strange has happened with the way in which commentators discuss the original one. In recent years, nostalgic appeals to the “post-1945 liberal international order” have helped to gloss over the distinctly bipolar nature of the Cold War order. The result is a romantic read of history, conflating the liberal aspirations that flourished immediately before and after the Cold War with the very different reality that existed for the almost half a century in between. In January 2022, for example, a New York Times
