No more cold wars

"I believe the best guard against prejudice is a frequent examination of our opinions, and a cool estimate of the arguments opposed to them — You must as Cicero says identify yourself in imagination, first with your adversary and then with your judge — and above all you must have resolution to abide by the result even if it should be adverse to your preconceived opinions." US President John Quincey Adams

I was disgusted to read just now that Sir Niall Ferguson thinks that we need to be frightened of losing the second cold war which apparently must be waged, if that is the right word, between 'the West' and China.

Why must we have a second cold war? Why does the USA have any interests in Asia, much less the UK or Nato?

I have slowly come to agree with another American president, Herbert Hoover, that Chamberlain and Daladier should not have gone to war with Germany and that Franklin D Roosevelt who wanted us to go to war in 1939 deliberately provoked an attack by Japan in 1941. Far better had Lord Halifax been Chamberlain's successor as Prime Minister, not Churchill, and spoken to Germany about the peace that Hitler very much wanted.

I also see that containment of the USSR was necessary but the cold war was not and could have been ended had we agreed to a unified democratic Germany when it was offered by the USSR in 1955, that Nato should have been wound up in 1991 and the Anglo-Americans are repeating the same mistakes now.