World War II, resulting from the attempt of the fascists in Germany to return colonial practices to Europe, pulled the European powers into a terrible conflagration. At the conclusion of the war, with the European powers severely weakened, it was the United States, the most powerful of Europe’s settler colonies, that took over the neo-colonial management of the planet. Now, almost eighty years later, the primacy of the United States has entered twilight. US intellectuals, returning to Ancient Greece again, argue that the rise of China threatens the US and makes war inevitable; this theory, the Thucydides Trap, is drawn from the argument in the History of the Peloponnesian War that the rise of Athens drew Sparta into a necessary war to defend its interests. [2] The United States has imposed a hostile conflict on China, and on other countries that it deems to be a threat. China does not seek to supplant the US, only to inaugurate a multipolar world order. The idea of a Thucydides Trap is part of the hybrid war that now grips the planet.

Our dossier no. 36 (January 2021) explores the emergence of a new cold war imposed by the United States on China and the forms of hybrid war that have been utilised as part of this new strategic scenario.