Of course, one might argue that China’s ascendancy will lead to bipolarity, which is a
relatively peaceful architecture, even if it is not as pacific as unipolarity. After all, there was
no shooting war between the superpowers during the Cold War. Indeed, the security competition
between them was not especially intense after the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was
more dangerous before then, mainly because the USA and the Soviet Union had to come
to grips with the nuclear revolution and also learn the rules of the road for dealing with
each other under bipolarity, which was then a new and unfamiliar structure. China and the
USA, however, would have the benefit of all that learning that took place during the Cold
War, and could deal with each other from the start much the way that Moscow and
Washington dealt with each other after 1962.