{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02765874561745228, 'fraction_numerical': 0.006622516556291391, 'mean_word_length': 4.944444444444445, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Mao's China and the Sino-Soviet Split: Ideological Dilemma

those years and the post-1993 period. There is no better way for them to grasp that geopolitical phenomenon than by reading this book. Most of the data, episodes, and conceptual frameworks used in the first edition remain in the revised version, and the involvement of the United States in the Cold War against the Soviet Union and in hot wars in Korea and Vietnam is chronicled in clear language. The first edition’s emphasis on the theme of frustration America’s leaders and people often felt about their inability to steer the world toward an era of global peace and prosperity remains. But the overall framework is still that of “great power politics” (p. 175) in which the United States and other states pursued their “interests” (p. 109 and elsewhere) and collided with one another in the process. Today’s readers might wonder why so much was made of “national interests” in relation to events taking place in remote corners of the world, or for that matter about the alleged spread of Communism. In a sense, the Cold War–era America depicted in this volume is one that oscillates between the extremes of wild self-confidence and a paranoiac fear of anything deemed to be alien. A basic “challenge to American supremacy,” to borrow from the book’s subtitle, may not have been so much external aggression as internal divisiveness. The country’s “intense encounters with the outside world during the Cold War years” (p. 248) did not actually end with the termination of the Cold War, however. Cohen’s revised volume presents a detailed chronicle of the ways in which Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush coped with the new challenges post–Cold War America faced, ranging from the fragmentation of Yugoslavia to the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. Today’s readers, however, would also be aware that themes like globalization, foreign aid, cultural and educational exchanges, efforts to stem environmental degradation, and the promotion of human rights have been of equal or greater significance to “national interests,” which are now increasingly shared across borders. These various activities are establishing connections across the globe, and ultimately those connections might produce the world that Americans have long envisaged, a world of interdependence and mutual well-being. In this sense, too, Cohen’s volume will serve as a welcome invitation to readers everywhere to immerse themselves in the Cold War saga and to contemplate the sharp contrast between then and now.