The former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFall, has been analyzing the rise of autocracies

around the globe and the threats they pose to small D democracy for decades.

He chronicles these challenges and prescribes policy to deal with them in a new book,

Autocrats v. Democrats, China, Russia, America, and the new global disorder.

We spoke recently, and I asked him if the U.S. is in a new Cold War with China.

Yes.

And no.

And that's one of the hypotheses that I wanted to wrestle with in the book.

So let's take China for a minute. Two global powers, superpowers?

Yes, they're ahead of everybody else.

Ideological conflict, yes.

The book's called Autocrats versus Democrats.

Do they have global aspirations?

Both countries do, just like the Soviets and the Americans did during the Cold War.

So that's on the similarity side.

The differences, I think, are probably even more important.

One, our economies are intertwined between China and the United States in a way that the Soviet and American economies never were.

That's different, and that requires a different strategy for dealing with China.

In addition, China is integrated into the global economy in a way that the Soviet economy never was.

And if we think our Cold War strategies are going to work with that, we're wrong.

Second, yes, there's an ideological conflict, but I don't think it's as acute as it was during the Cold War. But third, the

biggest difference is us. We are more isolationist today in both parties, not just the Republican

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