Cultural memory is a form of collective memory shared by a group of people who share a culture.
The theory posits that memory is not just an individual, private
experience but also part of the collective domain, which both shapes the
future and our understanding of the past. It has become a topic in both
historiography, which emphasizes the process of forming cultural memory, and cultural studies, which emphasizes the implications and objects of cultural memory.
Two schools of thought have emerged: one articulates that the
present shapes our understanding of the past, while the other assumes
that the past has an influence on our present behavior. It has, however, been pointed out that these two approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
The idea of cultural memory draws heavily on European social
anthropology, especially German and French. It is not well established
in the English-speaking world.
Historiographical approach
Time
Crucial in understanding cultural memory as a phenomenon is the distinction between memory and history. Pierre Nora (1931–) put forward this distinction, pinpointing a niche between history and memory.
Scholars disagree as to when to locate the moment representation "took over". Nora points to the formation of European nation states. For Richard Terdiman, the French Revolution is the breaking point: the change of a political system, together with the emergence of industrialization and urbanization, made life
more complex than ever before. This not only resulted in an increasing
difficulty for people to understand the new society in which they were
living, but also, as this break was so radical, people had trouble
relating to the past before the revolution. In this situation,
people no longer had an implicit understanding of their past. In order
to understand the past, it had to be represented through history. As
people realized that history was only one version of the past, they
became more and more concerned with their own cultural heritage (in French called patrimoine) which helped them shape a collective and national identity.
In search for an identity to bind a country or people together,
governments have constructed collective memories in the form of commemorations
which should bring and keep together minority groups and individuals
with conflicting agendas. What becomes clear is that the obsession with
memory coincides with the fear of forgetting and the aim for authenticity.
However, more recently
questions have arisen whether there ever was a time in which "pure",
non-representational memory existed – as Nora in particular put forward.
Scholars like Tony Bennett
rightly point out that representation is a crucial precondition for
human perception in general: pure, organic and objective memories can
never be witnessed as such.
Space
It
is because of a sometimes too contracted conception of memory as just a
temporal phenomenon, that the concept of cultural memory has often been
exposed to misunderstanding. Nora pioneered connecting memory to
physical, tangible locations, nowadays globally known and incorporated
as lieux de mémoire. He certifies these in his work as mises en abîme;
entities that symbolize a more complex piece of our history. Although
he concentrates on a spatial approach to remembrance, Nora already
points out in his early historiographical theories that memory goes
beyond just tangible and visual aspects, thereby making it flexible and
in flux. This rather problematic notion, also characterized by Terdiman
as the "omnipresence"
of memory, implies that for instance on a sensory level, a smell or a
sound can become of cultural value, due to its commemorative effect.
Either in visualized or abstracted form, one of the largest
complications of memorializing our past is the inevitable fact that it
is absent. Every memory we try to reproduce becomes – as Terdiman states
– a "present past". This impractical desire for recalling what is gone forever brings to surface a feeling of nostalgia, noticeable in many aspects of daily life but most specifically in cultural products.
Cultural studies approach
Embodied memory
Recently, interest has developed in the area of 'embodied memory'. According to Paul Connerton
the body can also be seen as a container, or carrier of memory, of two
different types of social practice; inscribing and incorporating. The
former includes all activities which are helpful for storing and
retrieving information: photographing, writing, taping, etc. The latter
implies skilled performances which are sent by means of physical
activity, like a spoken word or a handshake. These performances are
accomplished by the individual in an unconscious manner, and one might
suggest that this memory carried in gestures and habits, is more
authentic than 'indirect' memory via inscribing.
The first conceptions of embodied memory, in which the past is
'situated' in the body of the individual, derive from late nineteenth
century thoughts of evolutionists like Jean Baptiste Lamarck and Ernst Haeckel. Lamarck’s law of inheritance of acquired characteristics and Haeckel's theory of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny,
suggested that the individual is a summation of the whole history that
had preceded him or her. (However, neither of these concepts is accepted
by current science.)
Objects
Memory can, for instance be contained in objects. Souvenirs and photographs
inhabit an important place in the cultural memory discourse. Several
authors stress the fact that the relationship between memory and objects
has changed since the nineteenth century. Stewart, for example, claims
that our culture has changed from a culture of production to a culture
of consumption. Products, according to Terdiman, have lost 'the memory
of their own process' now, in times of mass-production and commodification.
At the same time, he claims, the connection between memories and
objects has been institutionalized and exploited in the form of trade in
souvenirs. These specific objects can refer to either a distant time
(an antique)
or a distant (exotic) place. Stewart explains how our souvenirs
authenticate our experiences and how they are a survival sign of events
that exist only through the invention of narrative.
This notion can easily be applied to another practice that has a specific relationship with memory: photography.
Catherine Keenan explains how the act of taking a picture can underline
the importance of remembering, both individually and collectively. Also
she states that pictures cannot only stimulate or help memory, but can
rather eclipse the actual memory – when we remember in terms of the
photograph – or they can serve as a reminder of our propensity to
forget. Others have argued that photographs can be incorporated in
memory and therefore supplement it.
Edward Chaney
has coined the term 'Cultural Memorials' to describe both generic
types, such as obelisks or sphinxes, and specific objects, such as the
Obelisk of Domitian, Abu Simbel or 'The Young Memnon', which have
meanings attributed to them that evolve over time. Readings of ancient
Egyptian artefacts by Herodotus, Pliny, the Collector Earl of Arundel, 18th-century travellers, Napoleon, Shelley, William Bankes, Harriet Martineau, Florence Nightingale or Sigmund and Lucian Freud, reveal a range of interpretations variously concerned with reconstructing the intentions of their makers.
Historian Guy Beiner
argued that "studies of cultural memory tend to privilege literary and
artistic representations of the past. As such, they often fail to engage
with the social dynamics of memory. Monuments, artworks, novels, poems,
plays and countless other productions of cultural memory do not in
themselves remember. Their function as aides-mémoire is subject
to popular reception. We need to be reminded that remembrance, like
trauma, is formulated in human consciousness and that this is shared
through social interaction".
Between culture and memory: experience
As
a contrast to the sometimes generative nature of previously mentioned
studies on cultural memory, an alternative 'school' with its origins in gender
and postcolonial studies underscored the importance of the individual
and particular memories of those unheard in most collective accounts:
women, minorities, homosexuals, etc.
Experience,
whether it be lived or imagined, relates mutually to culture and
memory. It is influenced by both factors, but determines these at the
same time. Culture influences experience by offering mediated
perceptions that affect it, as Frigga Haug states by opposing conventional theory on femininity to lived memory.In
turn, as historians such as Neil Gregor have argued, experience affects
culture, since individual experience becomes communicable and therefore
collective. A memorial, for example, can represent a shared sense of loss.
The influence of memory is made obvious in the way the past is
experienced in present conditions, for – according to Paul Connerton,
for instance – it can never be eliminated from human practice.[citation needed]
On the other hand, it is perception driven by a longing for
authenticity that colors memory, which is made clear by a desire to
experience the real (Susan Stewart). Experience, therefore, is substantial to the interpretation of culture as well as memory, and vice versa.
Traumatic transmissions are articulated over time not only through
social sites or institutions but also through cultural, political, and
familial generations, a key social mechanism of continuity and renewal
across human groups, cohorts, and communities. The intergenerational
transmission of collective trauma is a well-established phenomenon in
the scholarly literature on psychological, familial, sociocultural, and
biological modes of transmission. Ordinary processes of remembering and
transmission can be understood as cultural practices by which people
recognize a lineage, a debt to their past, and through which "they
express moral continuity with that past." The intergenerational preservation, transformation, and transmutation of traumatic memory such as of genocide tragic historical legacy can be assimilated, redeemed, and transformed.
Studies
Recent
research and theorizing in cultural memory has emphasized the
importance of considering the content of cultural identities in
understanding the study of social relations and predicting cultural
attitudes. For example, researchers compared people's memories for
personal events versus collective events for the nation in China and the
US.
Participants in the US showed a negativity bias in their collective
memory--remembering more negative than positive events--but participants
in China remembered equal numbers of positive and negative memories. In
2008, the first issue of quarterly journal Memory Studies concerning subjects of and relating to cultural memory was published by SAGE.
Other approaches
Jan Assmann in his book "Das kulturelle Gedächtnis", drew further upon Maurice Halbwachs's theory on collective memory. Other scholars like Andreas Huyssen have identified a general interest in memory and mnemonics since the early 1980s, illustrated by phenomena as diverse as memorials and retro-culture. Some might see cultural memory as becoming more democratic, due to liberalization and the rise of new media. Others see cultural memory as remaining concentrated in the hands of corporations and states.
A Second Cold War, Cold War II, or the New Cold War has been used to describe heightened geopolitical tensions in the 21st century, usually between, on one side, the United States and, on the other, either China or Russia—the latter of which is the successor state of the Soviet Union, which led the Eastern Bloc during the original Cold War.
The terms are sometimes used to describe tensions in multilateral relations, including the China–Russia relations.
Some commentators have used them as a comparison to the original Cold
War, while others have discouraged their use to refer to any ongoing
tensions.
Two of the earliest uses of the phrase “new Cold War” were in 1955 by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and in 1956 when The New York Times warned that Soviet propaganda was promoting a return of the Cold War. Other past sources, such as academics Fred Halliday, Alan M. Wald, David S. Painter, and Noam Chomsky, used the interchangeable terms to refer to the 1979–1985 and/or 1985–1991 phases of the Cold War. Some other sources used similar terms to refer to the Cold War of the mid-1970s. Columnist William Safire argued in a 1975 New York Times editorial that the Nixon administration's policy of détente with the Soviet Union had failed and that "Cold War II" was then underway.
In May 1998, George Kennan described the US Senate vote to expand NATO to include Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic
as "the beginning of a new cold war", and predicted that "the Russians
will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies".
British journalist Edward Lucas wrote in February 2008 that a new cold war between Russia and the West had already begun.
Usage in a multilateral context
In a 2016 op-ed for The Straits Times,
Kor Kian Beng wrote that the phrase "new Cold War" between US-led
allies versus Beijing and Moscow did not gain traction in China at
first. This changed in 2016 after the United States announced its plan
to deploy Terminal High Altitude Area Defence
(THAAD) in South Korea against North Korea, but China and Russia found
the advanced anti-missile system too close for comfort. The US also
supported a tribunal ruling
against China in favor of the Philippines in the South China Sea.
Afterwards, the term "new Cold War" appeared in Chinese media more
often. Analysts believe this does not reflect China's desire to pursue
such a strategy but precautions should still be in place to lower the
chances of any escalation.
In June 2019, University of Southern California (USC) professors Steven Lamy and Robert D. English agreed that the "new Cold War" would distract political parties from bigger issues such as globalization, global warming, global poverty, increasing inequality, and far-right populism.
However, Lamy said that the new Cold War had not yet begun, while
English said that it already had. English further said that China poses a
far greater threat than Russia in cyberwarfare but not as much as far-right populism does from within liberal states like the US.
In his September 2021 speech to the United Nations General Assembly, US President Joe Biden
said that the US is "not seeking a new Cold War or a world divided into
rigid blocs." Biden further said that the US would cooperate "with any
nation that steps up and pursues peaceful resolution to shared
challenges," despite "intense disagreement in other areas, because we'll
all suffer the consequences of our failure."
In May 2022, David Panuelo, President of the Federated States of Micronesia,
used the term to state his opposition to a proposed cooperation
agreement between China and ten island nations, by claiming it could
create a "new 'cold war' between China and the west."
In June 2022, journalist Michael Hirsh used the term "[global] Cold War" to refer to tensions between leaders of NATO
(North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and China and its ally Russia,
both countries striving to challenge the US's role as a superpower.
Hirsh further cited growing tensions between the US and China as one of
the causes of the newer Cold War alongside NATO's speech about China's
"systemic challenges to the rules-based international order and to areas
relevant to alliance security". He further cited the Russian invasion
of Ukraine in 2022 as one of factors of the newer Cold War's rise.
In July 2022, James Traub used the term while discussing how the ideas of the Non-Aligned Movement,
a forum of neutral countries organized during the original Cold War,
can be used to understand the reaction of democratic countries in the
developing world to current tensions. In the same month France, the United States and Russia scheduled high-level, multi-country diplomatic visits in Africa.
An article reporting on these trips used the term "new Cold War" in
relation to what "some say is the most intense competition for influence
[in Africa] since the [original] Cold War".
An article published in the July 2022 issue of the journal Intereconomics
linked the possible "beginning of a new cold war between the
West and the East" with "the rebirth of a new era of conflict, the end
of the late 20th century unipolar international security architecture
under the hegemony of the United States, [and] the end of
globalisation".
In August 2022, an analysis article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz
used the term to refer to the US's "open confrontation with Russia and
China". The article continues on to discuss the impact of the current
situation on Israel, concluding that "in the new Cold War, [Israel]
cannot allow itself to be neutral." In the same month, Katrina vanden Heuvel
used the term while cautioning against what she perceived as a
"reflexive bipartisan embrace of a new Cold War" against Russia and
China among US politicians.
In September 2022, a Greek civil engineer and politician Anna Diamantopoulou
further stated, despite unity of NATO members, "the West has lost much
of its normative power," citing her "meetings with politicians from
Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East." She further stated that the
West will risk losing "a new cold war" unless it overcomes challenges
that would give Russia and China a greater world advantage. She further
gave suggestions to the Western powers, including the European Union.
In September 2023, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un
called for an accelerated increase in the production of domestic
nuclear weapons in response to the world entering a "new Cold War"
between the United States and a "coalition of nations" including China,
Russia, and North Korea.
In December 2023, Gita Gopinath, first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), warned that the deepening "fragmentation" between the two power
blocs—one by the United States and European allies; another by China and
Russia—would lead to "cold war two", impacting "gains from open trade" and risking potentially loss of up to US$7 trillion.
In The Diplomat June 2024 article, University of Bonn (Germany) professor Maximilian Mayer and Jagiellonian University (Poland) professor Emilian Kavalski opined that the China–Russia relations
have been stronger than before and that Xi's China will "fully back
Putin’s effort to threaten and undermine [Western] liberal democratic
states", threatening European security and dashing any hopes that the
relations between the two countries would become further strained. Mayer
and Kavalski further criticised Europe for lacking "historical
templates" and its "tripartite approach to China—as [its] partner,
competitor, and rival—"as "woefully outdated because it [the approach]
lacks a security angle altogether." Both the professors further advised
Europe to address China's strong ties with and strong support for
Russia's further aggressive plans toward Europe.
Usage in the context of China–United States tensions
The US senior defence official Jed Babbin, Yale University professor David Gelernter, Firstpost editor R. Jagannathan, Subhash Kapila of the South Asia Analysis Group, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, and some other sources have used the term (occasionally using the term "Pacific Cold War") to refer to tensions between the United States and China in the 2000s and 2010s.
Donald Trump,
who was inaugurated as US president on 20 January 2017, had repeatedly
said during his presidential campaign that he considered China a threat,
a stance that heightened speculations of the possibility of a "new cold
war with China". Claremont McKenna College professor Minxin Pei said that Trump's election win and "ascent to the presidency" may increase chances of the possibility. In March 2017, a self-declared socialist magazine Monthly Review
said, "With the rise of the Trump administration, the new Cold War with
Russia has been put on hold", and also said that the Trump
administration has planned to shift from Russia to China as its main
competitor.
In July 2018, Michael Collins, deputy assistant director of the CIA's
East Asia mission center, told the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado
that he believed China under paramount leader and general secretaryXi Jinping,
while unwilling to go to war, was waging a "quiet kind of cold war"
against the United States, seeking to replace the US as the leading
global power. He further elaborated: "What they're waging against us is
fundamentally a cold war — a cold war not like we saw during [the] Cold
War (between the U.S. and the Soviet Union) but a cold war by
definition". In October 2018, Hong Kong's Lingnan University professor Zhang Baohui told The New York Times that a speech by United States Vice-president Mike Pence at the Hudson Institute "will look like the declaration of a new Cold War".
In January 2019, Robert D. Kaplan of the Center for a New American Security
wrote that "it is nothing less than a new cold war: The constant,
interminable Chinese computer hacks of American warships’ maintenance
records, Pentagon personnel records, and so forth constitute war by
other means. This situation will last decades and will only get worse".
In February 2019, Joshua Shifrinson, an associate professor from Boston University,
said concerns over a new cold war was "overblown", saying US-China
relations were different from that of US–Soviet Union relations during
the original Cold War, and that ideology would play a less prominent
role in their bilateral relationship.
In June 2019, academic Stephen Wertheim called President Trump a
"xenophobe" and criticised Trump's foreign policy toward China for
heightening risks of a new Cold War, which Wertheim wrote "could plunge
the United States back into gruesome proxy wars around the world and
risk a still deadlier war among the great powers."
In August 2019, Yuan Peng of the China Institute of International Studies said that the financial crisis of 2007–2008
"initiated a shift in the global order." Yuan predicted the possibility
of the new cold war between both countries and their global power
competition turning "from 'superpower vs. major power' to 'No. 1 vs. No.
2'." On the other hand, scholar Zhu Feng said that their "strategic
competition" would not lead to the new Cold War. Zhu said that the
US–China relations have progressed positively and remained "stable",
despite disputes in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait and US President Trump's aggressive approaches toward China.
In January 2020, columnist and historian Niall Ferguson
opined that China is one of the major players of this Cold War, whose
powers are "economic rather than military", and that Russia's role is
"quite small".
Ferguson wrote: "[C]ompared with the 1950s, the roles have been
reversed. China is now the giant, Russia the mean little sidekick. China
under Xi remains strikingly faithful to the doctrine of Marx and Lenin.
Russia under Putin has reverted to Tsarism."
Ferguson wrote that this Cold War is different from the original Cold
War because the US "is so intertwined with China" at the point where
"decoupling" is as others argued "a delusion" and because "America's
traditional allies are much less eager to align themselves with
Washington and against Beijing." He further wrote that the new Cold War
"shifted away from trade to technology" when both the US and China signed their Phase One trade deal.
In a February 2020 interview with The Japan Times,
Ferguson suggested that, to "contain China", the US "work intelligently
with its Asian and European allies", as the US had done in the original
Cold War, rather than on its own and perform something more effective
than "tariffs, which are a very blunt instrument." He also said that the US under Trump has been "rather poor" at making foreign relations.
On 24 May 2020, China Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that relations with the US were on the "brink of a new Cold War" after it was fueled by tensions over the COVID-19 pandemic.
In June 2020, Boston College political scientist Robert S. Ross wrote that the US and China "are destined to compete [but] not destined for violent conflict or a cold war."
In July, Ross said that the Trump "administration would like to fully
decouple from China. No trade, no cultural exchanges, no political
exchanges, no cooperation on anything that resembles common interests."
In August 2020, a La Trobe University
professor Nick Bisley wrote that the US–China rivalry "will be no Cold
War" but rather will "be more complex, harder to manage, and last much
longer." He further wrote that comparing the old Cold War to the ongoing
rivalry "is a risky endeavour."
In September 2020, the UN Secretary General António Guterres
warned that the increasing tensions between the US under Trump and
China under Xi were leading to "a Great Fracture" which would become
costly to the world. Xi Jinping replied by saying that "China has no
intention to fight either a Cold War or a hot one with any country."
In March 2021, Columbia University professor Thomas J. Christensen
wrote that the cold war between the US and China "is unlikely" in
comparison to the original Cold War, citing China's prominence in the "global production chain" and absence of the authoritarianism vs. liberal democracy
dynamic. Christensen further advised those concerned about the tensions
between the two nations to research China's role in the global economy
and its "foreign policy toward international conflicts and civil wars"
between liberal and authoritarian forces.
In September 2021, former Portuguese defence and foreign minister Paulo Portas described the announcement of the AUKUS
security pact and the ensuing unprecedented diplomatic crisis between
the signatories (Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States)
and France (which has several territories in the Indo-Pacific) as a
possible formal starting point of a new Cold War.
On 7 November 2021, President Joe Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan stated that the US does not pursue system change in China anymore, marking a clear break from the China policy
pursued by previous US administrations. Sullivan said that the US is
not seeking a new Cold War with China, but is looking for a system of
peaceful coexistence.
In November 2021, Hal Brands and Yale professor John Lewis Gaddis wrote in Foreign Affairs
that while it was no longer debatable that the United States and China
has been entering into their "own new cold war," it was not clear that
the world has also been following suit and entering into a new cold war.
According to a poll done by Morning Consult,
only 15 percent of US respondents and 16 percent of Chinese respondents
think the countries are in a cold war, with most rather categorizing it
as a competition.
In August 2022, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement condemning US House speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan. This statement demanded, among other things, that the US "not seek a 'new Cold War'".
Joe Biden and Xi Jinping at the G20 Summit in Bali, 2022
Following a November 2022 meeting between Biden and Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Bali, Biden told reporters that "there need not be a new Cold War".
In early 2023, Jorge Heine, former Chilean ambassador to China and professor of international relations at Boston University,
said the looming new Cold War between the US and China has become
apparent to "a growing consensus", and described the new Cold War as
"more alike than [it is] different" from the one fought between the US
and Soviet Union, and saying the presence of "ideological-military
overtones is now widely accepted."
In early May 2022, Hoover Institution senior fellow Niall Ferguson said at the Milken Institute Global Conference that "Cold War II began some time ago".
In January 2025, Ferguson wrote that the US has had "a second cold war"
with China for at least six years and that the war further intensified
under the Biden administration. Ferguson drew comparisons between Trump
and then-US President Ronald Reagan, like assassination attempts on them, but further suggested that Trump use the Reagan administration's past approach in foreign policy.
In early February 2025, Michael McFaul, a Stanford University political science professor and former US ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, wrote via The Dispatch
that Trump still viewed China as a major rival during his second term.
McFaul criticised the second Trump administration for risking its
chances to win "Cold War 2.0". He further criticised the
administration's foreign policy decisions—for example, calling Canada a
potential 51st state candidate, announcing possibility of obtaining Greenland from a NATO ally Denmark by either sale or military force, and attempts to shut down United States Agency for International Development
(USAID)—for giving China and its ally Russia more advantage and risking
ties with longtime US allies. McFaul further wrote, "We will not be
able to win Cold War 2.0 on our own."
Usage in the context of Russia–United States tensions
Sergey Lavrov,
the Russian Foreign Minister since 2004, has expressed criticism
towards the use of the term "new cold war" on multiple occasions.
Sources disagree as to whether a period of global tension analogous to the Cold War is possible in the future,
while others have used the term to describe the ongoing renewed
tensions, hostilities, and political rivalries that intensified
dramatically in 2014 between Russia, the United States and their
respective allies.
Sources opposed to the term argue that while new tensions between
Russia and the West have similarities with those during the Cold War,
there are also major differences, and provide Russia with new avenues for exerting influence, such as in Belarus
and Central Asia, which have not seen the type of direct military
action in which Russia engaged in less cooperative former Soviet states
like Ukraine and the Caucasus region.
In February 2016, at the Munich Security Conference, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg
said that NATO and Russia were "not in a cold-war situation but also
not in the partnership that we established at the end of the Cold War", while Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev,
speaking of what he called NATO's "unfriendly and opaque" policy on
Russia, said "One could go as far as to say that we have slid back to a
new Cold War". In October 2016 and March 2017, Stoltenberg said that NATO did not seek "a new Cold War" or "a new arms race" with Russia.
In February 2016, a Higher School of Economics university academic and Harvard University visiting scholar Yuval Weber wrote on E-International Relations
that "the world is not entering Cold War II", asserting that the
current tensions and ideologies of both sides are not similar to those
of the original Cold War, that situations in Europe and the Middle East
do not destabilise other areas geographically, and that Russia "is far
more integrated with the outside world than the Soviet Union ever was".
In September 2016, when asked if he thought the world had entered a new cold war, Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov,
argued that current tensions were not comparable to the Cold War. He
noted the lack of an ideological divide between the United States and
Russia, saying that conflicts were no longer ideologically bipolar.
In August 2016, Daniel Larison of The American Conservative
magazine wrote that tensions between Russia and the United States would
not "constitute a 'new Cold War'" especially between democracy and
authoritarianism, which Larison found more limited than and not as
significant in 2010s as that of the Soviet-Union era. Andrew Kuchins, an American political scientist and Kremlinologist
speaking in December 2016, believed the term was "unsuited to the
present conflict" as it may be more dangerous than the Cold War.
In August 2017, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov
denied claims that the US and Russia were having another cold war,
despite ongoing tensions between the two countries and newer US
sanctions against Russia. A University of East Anglia graduate student Oliver Steward and the Casimir Pulaski Foundation senior fellow Stanisław Koziej in 2017 attributed Zapad 2017 exercise, a military exercise by Russia, as part of the new Cold War.
In March 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin told journalist Megyn Kelly
in an interview: "My point of view is that the individuals that have
said that a new Cold War has started are not analysts. They do
propaganda." Michael Kofman, a senior Research Scientist at the CNA Corporation and a fellow at the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute
said that the new cold war for Russia "is about its survival as a power
in the international order, and also about holding on to the remnants
of the Russian empire". Lyle Goldstein, a research professor at the US Naval War College claims that the situations in Georgia and Ukraine "seemed to offer the requisite storyline for new Cold War". Also in March 2018, Harvard University professors Stephen Walt and then Odd Arne Westad criticized the application of the term to increasing tensions between Russia and the West as "misleading", "distract[ing]", and too simplistic to describe the more complicated contemporary international politics.
In October 2018, Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer told Deutsche Welle that the new Cold War would make the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and other Cold War-era treaties "irrelevant because they correspond to a totally different world situation." In February 2019, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that the withdrawal from the INF treaty would not lead to "a new Cold War".
Russian news agency TASS
reported the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying "I don't
think that we should talk about a new Cold War", adding that the US
development of low-yield nuclear warheads (the first of which entered
production in January 2019) had increased the potential for the use of nuclear weapons.
In July 2024, after the United States announced its intention to deploy long-range missiles in Germany from 2026, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov
told a reporter of a Russian state-run television network, "We are
taking steady steps towards the Cold War," and then said, "All the
attributes of the Cold War with the direct confrontation are returning."
Some observers, including Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, judged the Syrian civil war to be a proxy war between Russia and the United States, and even a "proto-world war".
In January 2016, senior UK government officials were reported to have
registered their growing fears that "a new cold war" was now unfolding
in Europe: "It really is a new Cold War out there. Right across the EU
we are seeing alarming evidence of Russian efforts to unpick the fabric
of European unity on a whole range of vital strategic issues".
Some political analysts argue that Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, which started the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, marked the beginning of a new Cold War between Russia and the West or NATO.
By August 2014, both sides had implemented economic, financial, and
diplomatic sanctions upon each other: virtually all Western countries,
led by the US and European Union, imposed punitive measures on Russia, which introduced retaliatory measures.
In 2014, notable figures such as Mikhail Gorbachev warned, against the backdrop of a confrontation between Russia and the West over the Russo-Ukrainian War, that the world was on the brink of a new cold war, or that it was already occurring. The American political scientist Robert Legvold also believes it started in 2013 during the Ukraine crisis. Others argued that the term did not accurately describe the nature of relations between Russia and the West.
In October 2016, John Sawers, a former MI6
chief, said he thought the world was entering an era that was possibly
"more dangerous" than the Cold War, as "we do not have that focus on a
strategic relationship between Moscow and Washington". Similarly, Igor Zevelev, a fellow at the Wilson Center, said that "it's not a Cold War [but] a much more dangerous and unpredictable situation". CNN opined: "It's not a new Cold War. It's not even a deep chill. It's an outright conflict".
In January 2017, former US government adviser Molly K. McKew said at Politico that the US would win a new cold war. The New Republic
editor Jeet Heer dismissed the possibility as "equally troubling[,]
reckless threat inflation, wildly overstating the extent of Russian
ambitions and power in support of a costly policy", and too centred on
Russia while "ignoring the rise of powers like China and India". Heer
also criticised McKew for suggesting the possibility. Jeremy Shapiro, a senior fellow in the Brookings Institution, wrote in his blog post at RealClearPolitics, referring to the US–Russia relations: "A drift into a new Cold War has seemed the inevitable result".
Speaking to the press in Berlin on 8 November 2019, a day before the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned of the dangers posed by Russia and China and specifically accused Russia, "led by a former KGB officer once stationed in Dresden", of invading its neighbours and crushing dissent. Jonathan Marcus of the BBC opined that Pompeo's words "appeared to be declaring the outbreak of a second [Cold War]".
On 24 February 2022 Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and have forcibly occupied many territories within the nation since. Soon after, journalist H. D. S. Greenway cited the Russian invasion of Ukraine and 4 February joint statement between Russia and China (under Putin and Xi Jinping) as one of the signs that Cold War II had officially begun.
In March 2022, Yale historian Arne Westad and Harvard historian Fredrik Logevall in a videotelephony
conversation asserted "that the global showdown over Ukraine" would
"not signal a second Cold War". Furthermore, Westad said that Putin's words about Ukraine
resembled, which Harvard journalist James F. Smith summarized, "some of
the colonial racial arguments of imperial powers of the past, ideas
from the late 19th and early 20th century rather than the Cold War".
In June 2022, journalist Gideon Rachman asserted the Russian invasion of Ukraine as the start of a second Cold War.
Comparison to the first Cold War
An academic Barry Buzan wrote in the International Politics journal article that, similar to the first Cold War, the Second Cold War is deterred from turning into a "hot" war between superpowers due to mutual assured destruction and nuclear deterrence with nuclear weapons. Buzan further determined that proxy wars and half-proxy wars are found in both first Cold War and Second Cold War.
Historian Antony Beevor stated in October 2022 that "it is no longer [about] the old divide between left and right" but rather "a change in the direction of autocracy
versus democracy", a change made apparent by the Russian invasion of
Ukraine; in his opinion, this cold war is "much scarier" than the first,
as "one of the most worrying aspects" of the new cold war is a total
disregard for diplomatic agreements. Niall Ferguson said "Cold War II is different, because in Cold War II, China's the senior partner, and Russia's the junior partner", and "in Cold War II, the first hot war breaks out in Europe, rather than Asia."
Another difference is the higher economic interdependence at the beginning of the Second Cold War, as stated in a September 2023 journal article of Geopolitics.
Temperature dependence of the relative static permittivity of water
The relative permittivity (in older texts, dielectric constant) is the permittivity of a material expressed as a ratio with the electric permittivity of a vacuum. A dielectric
is an insulating material, and the dielectric constant of an insulator
measures the ability of the insulator to store electric energy in an
electrical field.
Permittivity is a material's property that affects the Coulomb force
between two point charges in the material. Relative permittivity is the
factor by which the electric field between the charges is decreased
relative to vacuum.
Likewise, relative permittivity is the ratio of the capacitance of a capacitor using that material as a dielectric,
compared with a similar capacitor that has vacuum as its dielectric.
Relative permittivity is also commonly known as the dielectric constant,
a term still used but deprecated by standards organizations in
engineering as well as in chemistry.
Definition
Relative permittivity is typically denoted as εr(ω) (sometimes κ, lowercase kappa) and is defined as
Relative permittivity is a dimensionless number that is in general complex-valued; its real and imaginary parts are denoted as:
The relative permittivity of a medium is related to its electric susceptibility, χe, as εr(ω) = 1 + χe.
In anisotropic media (such as non cubic crystals) the relative permittivity is a second rank tensor.
The relative permittivity of a material for a frequency of zero is known as its static relative permittivity.
Terminology
The historical term for the relative permittivity is dielectric constant. It is still commonly used, but has been deprecated by standards organizations, because of its ambiguity, as some older reports used it for the absolute permittivity ε.
The permittivity may be quoted either as a static property or as a
frequency-dependent variant, in which case it is also known as the dielectric function. It has also been used to refer to only the real component ε′r of the complex-valued relative permittivity.
Physics
In
the causal theory of waves, permittivity is a complex quantity. The
imaginary part corresponds to a phase shift of the polarization P relative to E and leads to the attenuation of electromagnetic waves passing through the medium. By definition, the linear relative permittivity of vacuum is equal to 1, that is ε = ε0, although there are theoretical nonlinear quantum effects in vacuum that become non-negligible at high field strengths.
The following table gives some typical values.
Low-frequency relative permittivity of some common solvents
The relative low frequency permittivity of ice is ~96 at −10.8 °C, falling to 3.15 at high frequency, which is independent of temperature. It remains in the range 3.12–3.19 for frequencies between about 1 MHz and the far infrared region.
Measurement
The relative static permittivity, εr, can be measured for static electric fields as follows: first the capacitance of a test capacitor, C0, is measured with vacuum between its plates. Then, using the same capacitor and distance between its plates, the capacitance C with a dielectric between the plates is measured. The relative permittivity can be then calculated as
For time-variant electromagnetic fields, this quantity becomes frequency-dependent. An indirect technique to calculate εr is conversion of radio frequency S-parameter measurement results. A description of frequently used S-parameter conversions for determination of the frequency-dependent εr of dielectrics can be found in this bibliographic source. Alternatively, resonance based effects may be employed at fixed frequencies.
Applications
Energy
The relative permittivity is an essential piece of information when designing capacitors, and in other circumstances where a material might be expected to introduce capacitance into a circuit. If a material with a high relative permittivity is placed in an electric field,
the magnitude of that field will be measurably reduced within the
volume of the dielectric. This fact is commonly used to increase the
capacitance of a particular capacitor design. The layers beneath etched
conductors in printed circuit boards (PCBs) also act as dielectrics.
Communication
Dielectrics are used in radio frequency (RF) transmission lines. In a coaxial cable, polyethylene can be used between the center conductor and outside shield. It can also be placed inside waveguides to form filters. Optical fibers are examples of dielectric waveguides. They consist of dielectric materials that are purposely doped with impurities so as to control the precise value of εr within the cross-section. This controls the refractive index
of the material and therefore also the optical modes of transmission.
However, in these cases it is technically the relative permittivity that
matters, as they are not operated in the electrostatic limit.
Environment
The relative permittivity of air changes with temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure.
Sensors can be constructed to detect changes in capacitance caused by
changes in the relative permittivity. Most of this change is due to
effects of temperature and humidity as the barometric pressure is fairly
stable. Using the capacitance change, along with the measured
temperature, the relative humidity can be obtained using engineering
formulas.
Chemistry
The relative static permittivity of a solvent is a relative measure of its chemical polarity. For example, water is very polar, and has a relative static permittivity of 80.10 at 20 °C while n-hexane is non-polar, and has a relative static permittivity of 1.89 at 20 °C. This information is important when designing separation, sample preparation and chromatography techniques in analytical chemistry.
The correlation should, however, be treated with caution. For instance, dichloromethane has a value of εr of 9.08 (20 °C) and is rather poorly soluble in water (13g/L or 9.8mL/L at 20 °C); at the same time, tetrahydrofuran has its εr = 7.52 at 22 °C, but it is completely miscible with water. In the case of tetrahydrofuran, the oxygen atom can act as a hydrogen bond acceptor; whereas dichloromethane cannot form hydrogen bonds with water.
This is even more remarkable when comparing the εr values of acetic acid (6.2528) and that of iodoethane (7.6177). The large numerical value of εr is not surprising in the second case, as the iodine atom is easily polarizable; nevertheless, this does not imply that it is polar, too (electronic polarizability prevails over the orientational one in this case).
Lossy medium
Again, similar as for absolute permittivity, relative permittivity for lossy materials can be formulated as:
in terms of a "dielectric conductivity" σ (units S/m, siemens per meter), which "sums over all the dissipative effects of the material; it may represent an actual [electrical] conductivity caused by migrating charge carriers and it may also refer to an energy loss associated with the dispersion of ε′ [the real-valued permittivity]". Expanding the angular frequencyω = 2πc / λ and the electric constantε0 = 1 / μ0c2, which reduces to:
where λ is the wavelength, c is the speed of light in vacuum and κ = μ0c / 2π = 59.95849 Ω ≈ 60.0 Ω is a newly introduced constant (units ohms, or reciprocal siemens, such that σλκ = εr remains unitless).
Metals
Permittivity is typically associated with dielectric materials, however metals are described as having an effective permittivity, with real relative permittivity equal to one. In the high-frequency region, which extends from radio frequencies to the far infrared and terahertz
region, the plasma frequency of the electron gas is much greater than
the electromagnetic propagation frequency, so the refractive index n
of a metal is very nearly a purely imaginary number. In the low
frequency regime, the effective relative permittivity is also almost
purely imaginary: It has a very large imaginary value related to the
conductivity and a comparatively insignificant real-value.
_(cropped).jpg)
