Drawing on his extensive experience as a historian and diplomat, Philip Zelikow warns that the United States faces an exceptionally volatile time in global politics and that the period of maximum danger might be in the next one to three years. He highlights lessons from the anti-American partnerships developed by the Axis powers in World War II and Moscow and Beijing during the early Cold War. Zelikow reminds decision-makers who face Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea today to remember that adversaries can miscalculate and recalculate and that it can be difficult to fully understand internal divisions within an adversary’s government, how rival states draw their own lessons from different interpretations of history, and how they might quickly react to a new event that appears to shift power dynamics.
