Starting new cold war 'dangerous'

US senator challenges fast-growing views of zero-sum struggle with China

It is "distressing and dangerous" for the political establishment in Washington to drum up a new cold war with China, a trend that risks jeopardizing the interests of both countries along with the cooperation the world badly needs, a prominent US politician said on Thursday.

In the article Washington's Dangerous New Consensus on China published in Foreign Affairs, US Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont challenged what he said was a "fast-growing consensus" emerging in the United States that views US-China relations as a zero-sum economic and military struggle.

"The prevalence of this view will create a political environment in which the cooperation that the world desperately needs will be increasingly difficult to achieve," wrote Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats and twice ran unsuccessfully for the party's presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020.