New Cold Wars

The Instant New York Times Bestseller

A fast-paced account of America's plunge into simultaneous Cold Wars against two very different adversaries - Xi Jinping's China and Vladimir Putin's Russia - based on deep reporting.

New Cold Wars - the latest from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of The Perfect Weapon, David E. Sanger - tells the riveting story of America at a crossroads. At the turn of the millennium, the United States was confident that a democratic Russia and a newly wealthy China could gradually be pulled into the Western-led order. That proved a fantasy. By the time Washington emerged from the age of terrorism, the three nuclear powers were engaged in a new, high-stakes struggle for military, economic, and technological supremacy - with nations around the world forced to take sides.

Interviewing a remarkable array of top officials in the United States, foreign leaders, and tech companies thrust onto the front lines, Sanger unfolds a riveting narrative spun around the era's critical questions. Will the mistakes Putin made in his ill-considered invasion of Ukraine prove his undoing, and will he reach for his nuclear arsenal? Will China strike back at the US chip embargo, or seize Taiwan, the world's semiconductor capital?

Taking readers from the battlefields of Ukraine - where trench warfare and cyberwarfare are fought side by side - to the back rooms and boardrooms where diplomats, spies, and tech executives jockey for geopolitical advantage, New Cold Wars is a remarkable first-draft history chronicling America's return to superpower conflict, the choices that lie ahead, and what is at stake for the United States and the world.

'We have just been hurtled into a new and far more dangerous world, and David E. Sanger has been present at its creation. Sanger's brilliant book is a masterpiece of reporting, revelations, and analysis. It takes us into hidden rooms and lets us eavesdrop on secret conversations that address up-to-the-minute struggles over Russia, China, Ukraine, the Middle East, and other flashpoints, as well as crucial technological innovations. Sanger's mesmerising inside story of a world transformed will inspire and disturb, but as the author makes abundantly clear, no one who lives on this planet can ignore what is happening.'
-Michael Beschloss, New York Times-bestselling author of Presidents of War

'A cogent, revealing account of how a generation of American officials have grappled with dangerous developments in the post-Cold War era - the rise of an enduringly authoritarian China, the return of state-on-state conflict in Europe - that have produced a geopolitical mash-up of old and new ... compelling ... vividly captures Washington.'
-The New York Times

'In this book, David E. Sanger explores an America at the crossroads in international affairs ... This book may be regarded as a first draft of twenty-first century history, but the unpredictability of a Trump presidency will up the stakes for the rest of the world. Stay tuned for volume two.'
-Peter Masters, Military Books Australia