The US Opioid Crisis: Is It A Theatre Of Cold War II?

It featured in Xi-Biden talks late last year, with the US trying to stanch fentanyl inflows in an eerie echo of the Opium Wars. In Cold War II, drug control matters as much as missile control

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A Joe Biden presidency would be better for Russia than a Donald Trump one, Russian President Vladimir Putin said this week, calling the current US leader more "predictable." Coming from a Cold War adversary, this may be taken in America as a backhanded endorsement of Trump, whose anti-Nato rants have made US allies in Europe sit up. Shorn of Eurocentricity, though, the Cold War II underway is actually a US-China face-off, so what matters more is who China's Xi Jinping would rather have in the White House. As Xi has been discreet, this is a mystery. Between a business-focused Trump and a Pax Americana-oriented Biden, Xi's pick may go by his country's quest for global heft now that it has dumped "Hide your strength, ide your time." Where trade and geopolitics converge, though, who wins this year's US polls may make no difference to China. This covers not just high-end chips and AI, but, in a twist of irony worthy of a Mobius strip, also opioid drugs. The last time Xi and Biden met, three months ago, apart from a restored military h