Although the “rules” that governed the Cold War were never so clearcut as many now imagine, they were a model of clarity compared with how America’s relations with China are currently run. The frank acknowledgment that the U.S. and the USSR were enemies made that contest easier to “manage”— and so, thanks to determination, luck, and the courage of one Soviet lieutenant-colonel, here we still are.

Our relationship with China, by contrast, is an updated version of pre-1914 great power rivalry that has evolved into something that may be more dangerous, not least because our tangled economic relationship makes it hard to say aloud how things really stand. And so it is to Treasury Secretary Yellen’s credit that in a speech at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies on April 20, she attempted to do just that. Her talk was an interesting mix: combining realism with an attempt to cling to older illusions that went, I suspect, beyond mere politeness.