Original subtitles

NARRATOR: 16th of June, 2021.

The eyes of the world are on Geneva.

Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin meet face to face

for the first time as leaders of their countries.

They will discuss issues including cybersecurity, nuclear arms control

and the Kremlin's position on the conflicts

in Ukraine, Syria and Afghanistan.

Since Biden took office in January 2021,

tensions between the two countries have been stretched

to breaking point.

- In many ways, after all, the Cold War was never ended.

When Putin came back and when Russia reasserted itself,

then actually all that happened in many ways

was that the old Cold War was restarted.

NARRATOR: In 1985, Geneva was the location

for another historic summit.

President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev

met at the height of the Cold War to try and de-escalate tensions.

- The differences between America and the Soviet Union

are deep and abiding.

It's difficult for us to understand the ideological premise

that force is an acceptable way to expand a political system.

NARRATOR: 36 years later, the Biden-Putin summit

bears remarkable similarity to the Reagan-Gorbachev meeting.

This time the key underlying issue is not nuclear weapons

or the advent of America's Strategic Defence Initiative,

but the growing influence of their fellow superpower..:

China.

- There are some who argue that Xi Jinping wants China

to be a regional power, a regional hegemon.

There are others who argue that he has much more of a global ambition.

What we can say at this point is that Xi Jinping

is probably taking advantage of the idea

that America is a declining power.

NARRATOR: Since 2010,

China has been the world's second largest economy

and it is expected to surpass the United States by 2030.

In recent years, US friction with China and Russia has intensified,

due to economic and technological conflict,

and massive military build-up of the two nations.

These confrontations have led to the Kremlin and Beijing

forging a close alliance to try and isolate America and its allies.

- We are not seeking a new Cold War

or a world divided into rigid blocs.

NARRATOR: Did the Cold War really end the division of the world

or are we now facing the emergence of a New Cold War,

even deadlier than the last?

TRANSLATOR: A week ago, a country stated in this hall

that it does not seek a new Cold War

and it has no intention of creating division.

We hope that this public pronouncement

made before the whole world will be shown in action.

NARRATOR: Mistrust between East and West

has grown since the end of World War Two.

In May 1945, the world was celebrating German surrender,

but British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was ill at ease.

He was concerned that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin

would take advantage of the withdrawal of American troops

to expand his dominance in Eastern Europe.

To counter it, he devised a top-secret plan

to attack the Soviets - Operation Unthinkable.

- Operation Unthinkable was Churchill's plan

to push the Soviets out of occupied East Germany

and back beyond their previous borders if they needed to.

It would have been a mass preponderance of force

that not only involved the British and the Americans,

but also the Polish and the Germans;

bringing the Germans onside to push the Soviets out of their territory.

NARRATOR: But Stalin discovered the secret plan

thanks to his Soviet spy network.

- This could well have been a result of what is known as

the Cambridge Five, named after their place of recruitment,

Cambridge University in the 1930s,

a group of influential British figures who were converted Marxists

sympathetic to the Soviet Union.

NARRATOR: The Cambridge Five managed to infiltrate

the British Foreign and War Office,

its intelligence services and its embassy in Washington,

informing the Soviet Union of Western state secrets

until the early 1950s.

Tensions between East and West were further aggravated

by the birth of the Communist People's Republic of China in 1949,

under Mao Zedong.

In the first decades of Mao's China,

the nation faced extreme difficulties.

At least 20 million people died in the Great Famine

between 1958 and 1962.

Reforms imposed in 1961 succeeded in stabilising the situation,

but the repression of the Cultural Revolution launched in 1966

brought the economy to a standstill once again.

As the Chinese regime struggled to industrialise and expand,

the United States and the Soviet Union established themselves

as the world's dominant superpowers,

fighting proxy wars

over spheres of influence across the globe.

- We saw the threat of war, that constant threat of war,

and we saw proxy wars that were carried out

in Vietnam, Angola and elsewhere.

- So much of the Cold War was fought by proxy

rather than by direct confrontation between the two powers.

NARRATOR: The Americans and Soviets were careful

to avoid direct confrontation,

preferring instead to fund competing militias

in South and Central America, the Middle East and Indochina.

Millions died in these proxy wars in over four decades of conflict.

Having become a nuclear nation in the mid-1960s

and by supporting communism in proxy wars in Africa and Central America,

China's influence gradually grew on the world stage.

Soon after Mao's death in 1976,

the "sleeping giant" began to awaken.

The new leader, Deng Xiaoping,

promoted a series of economic reforms

to open up the Chinese market to foreign trade and investment

that would give it the resources it desperately needed to expand.

During the 1980s, while China was reinventing its economy,

the Reagan administration was stepping up

its anti-communist rhetoric.

The Soviets, meanwhile, were slipping into economic decline.

The bipolar world, dominated by the USA and the Soviets for so long,

was faltering, and the emergence of the Americans as a hegemonic power

was just around the corner.

- Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

(cheering)

NARRATOR: The arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev to the Kremlin in 1985

prompted profound political and economic reform in the Soviet Union,

as he sought to change its fortunes.

His plans meant an opening up of the regime to dialogue with the West,

in pursuit of inward investment.

- Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika

were also vitally important for easing tensions

between the West and the East in the Cold War.

NARRATOR: While glasnost and perestroika tried to improve

the Soviet Union's economy in the short term,

they ended up accelerating its demise.

As the other Eastern Bloc nations chafed against Gorbachev's reforms,

the ties that previously bound the Soviet empire together

began to unravel.

- When you think of Ronald Reagan at the wall,

saying, "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall,"

that was probably the height of American power

in the late-20th century.

So you have to think about that moment

and what came after.

It turns out that the post-Cold War became a much more complex world.

NARRATOR: In 1989, just as the sun was setting on the Soviet empire,

communist China was experiencing the biggest wave of protests

since the birth of the People's Republic in 1949.

On May 15th that year,

Mikhail Gorbachev arrived in Beijing for the first Sino-Soviet summit

since the rupture of relations between the two communist giants

in 1959.

The summit meant the restoration of relations between the two countries,

just as the influence of communism on the world stage

seemed to be on the wane.

The changes implemented by Gorbachev in the USSR

inspired more than a million demonstrators

to gather in Tiananmen Square

at the time of the Soviet leader's visit.

This was the largest mobilisation of a protest movement

in China's history.

The protests spread to other cities across the country,

and in the last weeks of May,

martial law was imposed in Beijing.

Chinese Army troops were also deployed throughout the city;

but the people gathered in the square remained there defiantly.

Eventually, on the night of June 3rd,

the Chinese Army was ordered to disperse the protestors

in Tiananmen Square by any means necessary.

Tanks and heavily armed troops confronted the demonstrators.

The repression was brutal and clashes ensued into the next day.

Even today, it is not known exactly how many people died

as Chinese authorities have never released an official figure.

- In that massacre was the determination,

the final decision that China would keep its Leninist-Marxist state

and have a hybrid economy.

NARRATOR: As China reaffirmed its communist credentials,

the USSR was beginning to crumble.

In October 1990, several Soviet republics

declared their independence,

and on December 21st 1991,

the Soviet Union was formally dismantled.

The Cold War was over

and the United States proclaimed victory.

- The end of the Soviet Union was seen by many

as the herald of a new era,

which would either be an era of friendship

between America and Russia,

or just simply the era of one single superpower,

the United States being dominant in the global hegemon.

Well, it turned out that neither of those was really true.

America actually began at that point

a slow decline from Imperial status.

And although Russia at first certainly professed a desire

to have much, much warmer relations with the United States,

from the first it was clear that the interests of these two countries

were different.

- The post-Cold War period is characterised by religious conflict

in the Middle East,

by the war on drugs in Latin America,

the emergence of terrorism as a significant force worldwide,

and by a United States that tried to deal with all of these.

NARRATOR: Gorbachev's successor, Boris Yeltsin,

sought to strengthen Russia's relationship with the West.

But differences over issues including NATO expansion

and US intervention in the Balkans and Iraq,

ended up pushing Russia towards China, India and Iran.

At the turn of the century, a new threat to the West emerged -

Islamic extremism in the shape of Al Qaeda.

(screaming)

NARRATOR: After the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001,

George W Bush's administration swiftly launched the War on Terror.

The United States...will hunt down

and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.

(screaming)

NARRATOR: The magnitude of the 9/11 attacks on American soil

was unprecedented.

Bin Laden, the Saudi-born leader of Al-Qaeda,

was now the most wanted man in the world.

- (speaks own language)

NARRATOR: Faced with the Taliban's refusal

to hand over Bin Laden,

on the 7th of October 2001,

US forces invaded Afghanistan.

While China took a neutral position in the conflict,

Bush had the support of an unexpected ally -

Vladimir Putin's Russia.

Russia provided the United States with intelligence information.

Putin also supplied helicopters to the new Afghan government,

which was fighting the Taliban alongside the US.

In return, Russia sought closer relations with the West

and for the United States to support their efforts

to suppress Islamic terrorist groups in Chechnya.

But the new-found friendship between Russia and the United States

would not last long.

On March 19th, 2003,

the United States invaded Iraq,

having accused Saddam Hussein

of harbouring weapons of mass destruction.

Russia and China, whose oil companies had contracts in Iraq,

opposed the intervention.

By the end of 2003, the American-led international coalition

had captured Saddam Hussein and brought down his government.

As US interference in the Middle East increased,

it imperilled its economic ascendancy

over the rest of the world.

- When you look at the American experiments overseas

after the Reagan administration,

you essentially have to look at some major foreign policy failures.

Maybe the last US foreign policy victory was the invasion of Panama,

with the ousting of Manuel Antonio Noriega.

But then after that, the US began its experiments in the Middle East,

beginning with the first war of Iraq,

followed by the enormous presence of the US in the Middle East

throughout the 1990s and of course over the last 20 years.

NARRATOR: With billions spent in Afghanistan and Iraq,

by the end of 2007, the United States was also facing

an unprecedented economic collapse -

the Great Recession.

Russia and China took advantage of the American malaise.

- When you think about the struggles to win the war

in Afghanistan and Iraq,

that undermines America's position militarily around the world.

When you think about the economic collapse, in 2007-08,

that questions the American economic model.

China, Russia have all benefited from that.

NARRATOR: Vladimir Putin's administration

had significantly improved the Russian economy

while China recorded unprecedented growth

during the first decade of the 2000s.

By 2010, China had become the second largest economy on the planet.

- We're at a very, very important moment in global history

where we can see rising power in terms of China,

we can see potentially a declining power in terms of the USA.

And China may well take advantage of that.

NARRATOR: With China's new economic might

came its resurgence onto the world stage.

The techniques the new superpower was using to influence geopolitics

were vastly different and more sophisticated

than the blunt instruments of the Cold War.

- China has recently tried its hand

at soft power and economic diplomacy.

In particular, it's been focusing on areas like Africa and Latin America,

taking advantage of hostile and long-running tensions

between the United States and those nations,

and using that to build new footholds to expand its influence

around the world.

NARRATOR: The Chinese soft power has grown exponentially

thanks to the One Belt, One Road initiative.

Revealed for the first time in 2013 by President Xi Jinping,

the One Belt, One Road initiative

is a diplomatic and commercial policy

based on five principal values -

mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity,

mutual agreement on non-aggression,

mutual agreement on non-intervention in internal affairs,

equality and mutual benefit,

and peaceful coexistence.

This initiative has successfully managed to expand

the Chinese sphere of influence worldwide.

- One of the things that the West has finally realised

is a significant challenge to the West

is the One Belt, One Road initiative that China has embarked on,

this extraordinary programme that Xi Jinping has admitted

is not going to be completed in his lifetime.

What's fascinating about that is the way that China is increasingly

locking countries into trade relationships

as it seeks not just markets, but actually more importantly,

for China, natural resources. It needs energy resources.

So it's very cleverly building up client states,

not just in Asia, in Africa, in the Middle East.

We can see it doing that in Latin America as well.

NARRATOR: While China increased its sphere of influence worldwide,

Russia was looking to re-establish its influence in the areas

that were once part of the Soviet Union.

But its means of doing so would be deeply unsettling to the West,

as the old wounds of the Cold War began to re-open.

NARRATOR: After the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001,

the world seemed united against terrorism.

But the deep divisions between Washington and Moscow

which emerged due to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003,

would continue to grow.

And in 2004, the US-backed incorporation of the Baltic nations

Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia into NATO

proved a critical turning-point.

- NATO expanded, and the Russians didn't like it.

And although attempts were made to provide Russia

with a few, frankly, pretty cosmetic ways of influencing NATO,

basically, it's an alliance in and of itself.

For the Russians, they say,

"Look, NATO has no function other than to be an anti-Russian force."

NARRATOR: In April 2008, the accession of Georgia and Ukraine

to NATO was delayed, due to Russian opposition.

- President Putin had long resented any attempts by NATO or the EU

to expand into its former Soviet zones of influence.

And so as Georgia set to join NATO from 2007-2008,

this is something that Putin wants to express

that he just would not stand for.

NARRATOR: Russia responded to NATO's expansion

by distributing Russian passports

in the Georgian separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Georgia responded by attacking Russian separatist groups

in the region.

On August 7th, 2008, Russia invaded Georgia

and began a bombing campaign of the disputed areas.

Georgian troops retreated as the West called for a ceasefire.

- All Russian troops and any irregular and paramilitary forces

that entered with them must leave immediately.

NARRATOR: With its invasion of Georgia,

Russia had sent a clear message to former Soviet republics

seeking closer ties with the West.

- It's a warning to those parts of the former Soviet Empire

that they're not entirely free of Mother Russia

and that Mother Russia, the Great Bear, is still there.

- It's argued that if NATO and the US had acted more robustly

in reaction to Russia's advances into Georgia,

then you might not have had the annexation of Crimea

six years later.

(banging shields)

(protestor shouts)

NARRATOR: In February 2014,

a popular uprising removed Russian-backed Ukrainian President

Viktor Yanukovych from power.

The response was immediate and deadly.

Russia invaded and the Crimean Peninsula was annexed

to its territory.

- In many ways, the Russian invasion of Georgia served as a testbed

for what would later come with Crimea.

Various weapon systems were tested for the first time,

along with shock tactics and cyber warfare techniques.

New methods of causing confusion amongst the populace

were experimented with and later honed not just for the Crimea,

but more broadly against Ukraine as a whole.

NARRATOR: In Georgia, the Russian military

launched the latest new weapon in its arsenal...

Cyber attacks.

Several Georgian networks and servers suffered failures

which hampered communication systems and access to information.

- From the crippling of online banking systems

to the crashing of government websites,

the cyber attacks lasted for weeks and weeks.

NARRATOR: Russian intelligence services were also accused

of launching cyber attacks against Ukraine

in the build-up to its invasion of Crimea.

- The key to this is, it's hybrid warfare,

so it stopped short of the tanks rolling in.

Article Five of the NATO charter

is a mutual defence arrangement.

An attack on one is an attack on all.

But is a cyber attack an attack?

It certainly is, but it's not quite the same.

And so responding to these has proved very, very difficult

for Western democratic countries.

(crowd chanting)

- Putin wants his empire back.

On the other hand, the European Union and the United States

has also been quite clear with Russia

that a line has got to be drawn and this far, no further.

The difficulty, it seems to me with this,

is that it may be a wise policy,

but it also leaves the prospect of Vladimir Putin's disruption

to continue at a low level just to say to the West,

"You haven't actually won the Cold War."

NARRATOR: The West responded to the invasion of Crimea

by imposing sanctions on Russia.

They were the toughest measures taken against the country

since the end of the Cold War,

and heralded a new policy in Washington.

- Europe and America are united

in our support of the Ukrainian government

and the Ukrainian people.

We're united in imposing a cost on Russia for its actions so far.

NARRATOR: After Russian acts of aggression

against the former Soviet republics,

relations between Russia and the United States have plummeted.

- We never really settled the Cold War.

We just had a period we could pretend that it wasn't happening

because Russia was relatively weak.

Now that Russia has found ways of rebuilding its strength

and projecting its strength in a symmetric form,

now we have to come to terms with the fact

that we never properly resolved that old conflict.

NARRATOR: Just as during the last Cold War,

Russian and American interests clashed in conflicts abroad.

In the Syrian Civil War which broke out in 2011,

Russia supported the government of Bashar al-Assad,

while the Americans supported the opposition rebel groups.

- What we now see with all the various wars,

whether it's in terms of the war in Georgia,

whether it's the annexation of Crimea,

whether it's the conflict in the Donbas

and more recently, the Russian intervention into Syria,

the Russians believe they are just simply defending their interests

against the West that is trying to undermine and marginalise them.

NARRATOR: It is not just foreign meddling in proxy wars

that has highlighted the revived tension between East and West,

but a dramatic escalation of events in 2018

highlighted how far Russia would go to reassert its power.

- During the weekend of the 4th of March, 2018, in Salisbury,

the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia

were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent

of the type developed by Russia,

part of a group of nerve agents known as Novichok.

NARRATOR: The attack led to accusations, ultimatums

and the expulsion of Russian diplomats around the world.

In addition, more economic and diplomatic sanctions against Russia

were imposed by the United States and some European countries.

- Putin's willingness to use assassination as a political tool

shows once and for all that any nostalgic idea

that the Cold War was won

and ended with the implementation of democracy in Russia...is misplaced.

Putin has re-established a firm, autocratic control in Russia,

unwilling to abide by international laws and norms.

Furthermore, the use of assassination in this way

has further increased tensions between the West and Russia,

with retaliation coming in the forms of sanctions,

and then those sanctions causing Russia to find other ways

to boost its economy and to bring in resources.

NARRATOR: As friction between the West and Moscow increased,

so did hostilities between the United States and China,

especially after the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House

in 2017.

The following year, Trump began a trade war against the Chinese.

- The Trump administration in particular understood

that there had to be potentially a firebreak,

where there had to be a moment where the West stood up to China

and said, "We understand what you're doing,

you have a right to develop economically,

but we have to do this on equal terms.

- We've lost 70,000 factories

since China joined the World Trade Organisation.

You've seen that, you've heard about it. 70,000.

- One reason scholars and politicians have liked to use

the idea of a new cold war to explain the competition

between the United States and China

is because this competition is not just economic or military.

But also at its heart is an ideological competition

of two different ways of seeing and organising the world.

While the United States champions free liberal democratic capitalism,

for China, it is a centralised, autocratic hybrid

between capitalism and communism.

- Socialism with Chinese characteristics

is effectively capitalism, almost in as pure a form as you can get,

in that it is about, we want access to your resources

and here is the money.

there are no liberal values.

There are no liberal international structures around that,

it's a straightforward relationship.

NARRATOR: The success of the Chinese One Belt, One Road initiative

has changed the face of the global trade and diplomatic world.

With ties between Russia and China growing closer

and the decline of American power becoming ever more evident,

how will this new Cold War affect us?

NARRATOR: With their trade war against China still unfolding,

the United States accused President Xi's regime

of military and commercial cyber espionage.

- There's a long history, decades-long history

of Chinese intellectual property theft,

including against technologies.

NARRATOR: In 2019, the United States government

accused Chinese tech company Huawei of industrial espionage

on a massive scale and claimed its devices were a danger

to American national security.

Huawei was banned in the United States,

and some countries, such as the UK,

were asked not to adopt the Chinese company's 5G technology.

- For the United States, they see the adoption of Chinese technology

linked to the Chinese government itself

as an unacceptable security risk,

and have put significant political pressure on the UK

not to adopt these networks.

- We want trade deals not to be national security deals

under a patina of commerce.

NARRATOR: As Sino-US relations deteriorated further,

on October 1st, 2019

China commemorated the 70th anniversary

of the founding of the People's Republic

with a spectacular military parade.

This revealed its expanded new military capabilities

to apprehensive onlookers in the West.

Today, China has the largest navy in the world

and has consolidated its military strength

with the construction of new missile silos

and the testing of a possibly game-changing

hypersonic weapons capability.

- Mike Pompeo, the former Secretary of State under Trump,

declared China as the most dangerous threat to the United States,

because what it really offers is a different way

of interacting with the world and a different global order.

NARRATOR: The diplomatic and commercial ascent of China

through its One Belt, One Road policy

has threatened US hegemony, just at the moment

that its relations with Russia reached their lowest ebb.

As Joe Biden was sworn in

as the 46th President of the United States in 2021,

his most pressing foreign policy engagement

was a meeting with Vladimir Putin.

- I'm heading to the G7, then to the NATO Ministerial

and then to meet with Mr Putin,

to let him know what I want him to know.

NARRATOR: In June 2021,

in an attempt to iron out their differences

and establish the basis of a new relationship,

Putin and Biden met in Geneva.

While Russia and China have developed multilateral co-operation

and also fought against the US influence in Central Asia,

the two nations' interests have recently clashed.

Disputes have emerged over the area

composed of former Soviet republics

Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan,

Turkmenistan, Tajikistan

and Kyrgyzstan.

Historically, Russia has been the principal commercial partner

of the region, but as China's growth expands through Central Asia,

Russians have seen their influence waning

and concerns have been raised in Moscow.

- Xi Jingping has made it clear that he wants to rebalance the economy.

He wants to move from an export-led economy to an internal economy.

Simultaneously, it's also clear that he has a foreign policy agenda.

It's a very interesting time when we think about China,

in the sense of we assume it's going to become this dominant superpower,

replacing the United States of America.

NARRATOR: What is clear is that China now represents

a far greater threat to the West than to Russia,

with whom they have common areas

of strategic economic and military interest.

- It's convenient for them both to be disruptors

of the political system globally.

We can see that in the way that Russia operates,

we can see that occasionally in the way that China operates.

So it's very much a marriage of convenience

rather than one in which they are equal partners.

NARRATOR: One example is the combined Sino-Russian interest

in the Arctic, where Russia, in particular,

retains a strong military and strategic interest.

- Look up to the Arctic,

where you start to see broader Russian remilitarisation

of that strategically important and economically vital bloodline,

which has vast amounts of natural gases and oils and fossil fuels,

but it's also a whole new trade route for the world.

As ice melts due to climate change,

the Northern Sea route,

which runs across Russia's northern Arctic coastal rim,

can reduce trade times, shipping movements,

between Asia and Europe by up to ten days.

So that saves time and it saves fuel.

NARRATOR: Over the next few years, China also plans to construct

a Polar Silk Road and make full use of the Arctic and Antarctic regions.

Both China and Russia are determined to do whatever it takes

to keep America out of it.

- This is another point at which the superpowers, the global powers

who are rising up against each other

will come to loggerheads.

The Chinese have an interest there with the Polar Silk Road initiative

and they're working with the Russians.

But the Americans also see this as a point of contention.

They are also an Arctic state.

And so it's here that you're likely to see contests

between the great powers.

NARRATOR: The results of the Biden-Putin meeting

were inconclusive and failed to bring about a significant thaw

in the relations between Washington and Moscow.

Months after the summit, in August 2021,

US troops withdrew from Afghanistan.

After 20 years of US intervention,

the Taliban immediately returned to power,

further damaging America's credibility.

- The major concern, of course, is that after 20 years

nothing will change from pre-9/11.

We're already seeing part of the consequences

internal to Afghanistan.

(clamour)

- We went back to where everything started.

So now you can simply think what has been achieved in 20 years

is a question mark.

NARRATOR: The chaotic withdrawal of US forces

from Afghanistan was reminiscent of the withdrawal from Saigon

at the end of the Vietnam War, over 40 years earlier.

To the watching governments in Moscow and Beijing,

it highlighted the decline of the United States

as a hegemonic military power in the world.

The position of the Cold War victors now hangs in the balance.

Russia and China have managed to substantially increase

their international influence

and effectively challenge the once-untouchable United States.

- It's still not known exactly what US ambitions are for the future.

There's been lots of inconsistency

between the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations.

But there are those who are talking about a US foreign policy

based on realism and restraint.

The argument here is that the US will do away with its pursuit

of a liberal hegemony, pursuing a remaking of countries

with American liberal values,

and will instead just seek to prioritise US national interests

and the maintenance of US power.

The questions for the future are whether or not

the US would stick up for a Georgia or a Ukraine again,

or whether or not the US will sacrifice its best in a fight

to protect places like Taiwan against the Chinese.

These are the questions for the future.

NARRATOR: Focused on internal issues,

the Americans are calling for greater international co-operation

to confront the new threats from the Sino-Russian partnership.

- We're not seeking... I'll say it again.

We are not seeking a new Cold War...

..or a world divided into rigid blocs.

The United States is ready to work with any nation

that steps up and pursues peaceful resolution

to shared challenges,

even if we have intense disagreements in other areas...

..because we'll all suffer the consequences of our failure

if we do not come together to address the urgent threats

like COVID-19 and climate change

or enduring threats like nuclear proliferation.

NARRATOR: Though the great powers continue to be at loggerheads

strategically, a new threat has emerged

that goes beyond the prize of global domination -

climate change.

Can the players of the new Cold War work together

in the face of this existential threat to humanity?

- China has made it clear it wants to be a leader on this.

America has made it clear that it wants to be a leader

on tackling climate change as well.

Thinking positively about the relationship between the two states,

this could be one of the areas where they co-operate.

At the moment... we're not at that point.

NARRATOR: Will the world's new superpowers be able to put aside

their differences to tackle the impending climate crisis,

just as they managed to do, when faced with the prospect

of nuclear annihilation?

Or will self-interest and the conflicting objectives

of the world's most powerful nations

trump the common threat and condemn us all to a much darker,

more uncertain future?

What is certain is that there has never been more at stake.

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