Western democracy is weaker in this new cold war than it was in the first one | Rafael Behr

For democrats, a stubborn economic malaise is more existentially threatening than any example set in Moscow or Beijing

Once again the world is divided into competing spheres of eastern and western power, but is it a new cold war or reheated leftovers from the last one? The answer is a bit of both. For Vladimir Putin, the superpower rivalry of the 20th century never ended, although in economic and military terms there was a clear winner and it wasn't the Soviet Union. Russia's president is determined to reverse that humiliation, in the national imagination, at least. In other realms, the trajectory is further decline.

Russia can still make a global nuisance of itself. A nuclear-armed rogue state with an appetite for territorial expansion can't be ignored. But parity with the US is a distant memory for the Kremlin. For China it is a destination on the near horizon.