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We Are Not Going Back to the Cold War — We Are Already in the Next One

Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, and Pyongyang have already organized themselves into a coalition. Washington keeps pretending each is a separate file.

C
Colonel (Ret.) Daniel Reeves
Senior National Security Fellow
Friday, May 22, 2026 · 9 min read
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We Are Not Going Back to the Cold War — We Are Already in the Next One

Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang. The coordination is real, deliberate, and largely unanswered. This is not the Cold War. It is the next one, and we have barely begun to organize ourselves for it.

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