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Presidential hopeful Mike Pompeo, who has made a career out of stoking fear and selling an apocalyptic us-vs.-them worldview, has found a perch at a think tank synonymous with Cold War thinking to build his 2024 campaign.

Pompeo, radioactive in the corporate world because of the sanctions placed on him by Beijing, has accepted employment at the storied conservative Hudson Institute.

The think tank was founded in 1961 by the brilliant Herman Kahn, immortalized as the title character in the searing Cold War satire "Dr. Strangelove."

A key thinker in the paranoid swirl of Cold War policy, Kahn maintained that a nuclear war could be won, with a cost that might be high, but not immeasurable.

Kahn wrote in his 1960 book "On Thermonuclear War": "It might well turn out… that U.S. decision makers would be willing, among other things, to accept the high risk of an additional 1 percent of our children being born deformed [from radioactive fallout] if that meant not giving up Europe to Soviet Russia."

Since the contrarian Kahn passed away, control of the Hudson Institute has drifted into the hands of the Republican and military establishments. Its current president, John Walters, served as former President George W. Bush's drug czar, and its senior vice president is Scooter Libby, the disgraced advisor of Iraq war architect Dick Cheney.

The institute's donors from the military sector include Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. Other donors include foreign entities such as the government of Japan, the Korea Foundation, and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office.

Last summer, the institute hosted a speech by Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen, who addressed "current U.S. policy and assistance toward Taiwan."

Unsurprisingly with this list of donors, the Hudson Institute is highly critical of China and is pushing for a new Cold War, publishing a spate of articles and reports warning of the challenge China poses to U.S. hegemony.

Recent articles include: "China's Threat to the Bible," "Chinese Drones Are Spying on Americans," and "The Pentagon Needs To Rethink Its Worst-Case Scenarios Against China And Russia."

In 2019, Pompeo chose a gala fundraiser for the institute to step up the Trump administration's rhetoric against China.

"Today, we're finally realizing the degree to which the Communist Party is truly hostile to the United States and our values," he told diners, accepting an award from the institute that has also been given to hardline conservatives such as Cheney.

Pompeo has gotten tremendous political leverage dragging the world closer to conflict, claiming Beijing is an evil on par with the Nazis or ISIL.

He makes this claim even though the People's Republic of China has not indulged in any overseas military adventures since its founding, while the U.S. is still mired in disastrous campaigns that brought untold suffering to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan – campaigns thinkers at the Hudson Institute supported with their "research."

Pompeo frequently and breezily blames China for destroying millions of American jobs. But trade with China has overall created tremendous wealth for both nations.

It is U.S. policy that has failed U.S. workers. For example, Apple made record mobile phone sales in China in the last quarter.

But spooked by the Trump administration's erratic sanctions policy, Apple is also moving some of its production out of China.

These jobs are not moving back to the U.S. – they are going to Vietnam and India.

Even if anti-China hawks like Pompeo succeed in their dream of completely decoupling the U.S. and Chinese economies, manufacturing jobs would not return to the United States.

China and the U.S. are competitors vying to shape the institutions, standards and trading rules of the 21st century. The two nations are not involved in some Manichean struggle between good and evil.

Looking back over the decades, perhaps the most striking thing about Kahn was his willingness to boldly ask and answer unthinkable questions about atomic extinction that humanity had never before faced – without ever asking whether a Cold War was desirable, or even necessary.

For a certain kind of conservative mind, there is no questioning that the U.S. always faces dangerous enemies, or that America's vision must dominate the world.

But this blind spot could have far-reaching strategic effects – unintentionally creating or amplifying the threats it seeks to mitigate.

As Donald Trump proved, stoking fear and blaming someone else for your own problems is good politics.

Pompeo undoubtably has this lesson in mind as he uses his new platform as a fellow at the Hudson Institute to build support for a run as the 2024 Republican nominee for the presidential race.

The U.S. and China could be economic and technological rivals, pushing each other to be their best.

But if one side decides the other is an enemy, this thought will surely become reality.

It would be a tragic and costly error if the world enters a new Cold War to feed the political ambition of the likes of Mike Pompeo.

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