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Abstract
The world order appears to be reverting to geopolitical blocs with associated spheres of influence. Although the Cold War officially ended three decades ago, a cold peace has arisen, manifested in the return of old adversarial dynamics amid Russia’s resurgence and sharpening strategic competition between China and the United States. As a result, three tentative blocs are emerging, albeit ones that are less ideologically driven than those of the Cold War: a renewed yet diminished Western bloc; a large but leaderless Eurasian bloc; and a confluence of swing states not bound to any particular hegemon. While such divisions increase the likelihood of global conflict, the West’s relative political cohesion should enable it to continue to hold sway. Nonetheless, the West’s ability to retain a global leadership role could yet be undermined by the emergence of an increasingly illiberal America.
Notes
1 Grant Shapps, ‘Defending Britain from a More Dangerous World’, UK Ministry of Defence, 15 January 2024, https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/defending-britain-from-a-more-dangerous-world.
2 See, for instance, Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World and the Rise of the Rest (London: Penguin, 2008), pp. 1–2. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken likewise told the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in March 2023 that the ‘post-Cold War world is over, and there is an intense competition underway to determine what comes next’, which he said would be characterised by strong rivalry between the US and its adversaries, China and Russia. Antony Blinken, ‘American Diplomacy and Global Leadership: Review of the FY24 State Department Budget Request’, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 22 March 2023, https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2d392f68-f342-6511-8716-757358078495/032223_Blinken_Testimony.pdf. While it is true that several dangerous touchpoints are now coalescing – Russia’s unprovoked war in Ukraine, the eruption of war between the Israelis and Palestinians, and ongoing skirmishes in the South China Sea – the inflection point arguably occurred in the late 2000s, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.
3 See Yuen Foong Khong, ‘The US, China, and the Cold War Analogy’, China International Strategy Review, vol. 1, no. 2, February 2019, pp. 223–37.
4 Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry, ‘The Unravelling of the Cold War Settlement’, Survival, vol. 51, no. 6, December 2009–January 2010, pp. 39–62.
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6 Stephen Kotkin, ‘The Cold War Never Ended’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 101, no. 3, May/June 2022, p. 67.
7 See Lawrence Freedman, The Revolution in Strategic Affairs, Adelphi Paper 318 (London: Routledge for the IISS, 1998), pp. 5–10; and Edward Luttwak, ‘From Geopolitics to Geo-economics’, in G.Ó. Tuathail, S. Dalby and P. Routledge (eds), The Geopolitics Reader (London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 125–30.
8 Richard Sakwa, ‘The Cold Peace: Russo-Western Relations as a Mimetic Cold War’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, vol. 26, no. 1, February 2013, pp. 203–24. See also Walter Russell Mead, ‘The Return of Geopolitics’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 93, no. 3, May/June 2014, pp. 69–74.
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13 President of Russia, ‘Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development’, 4 February 2022, http://www.en.kremlin.ru/supplement/5770.
14 India is projected to be the world’s third-largest economy by the late 2020s. See International Monetary Fund, ‘India’, April 2023 update, https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/IND.
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18 See Kotkin, ‘The Cold War Never Ended’, p. 67.
19 See Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry, ‘Democratic Internationalism: An American Grand Strategy for a Post-exceptionalist Era’, Working Paper, Council on Foreign Relations, November 2012, https://cdn.cfr.org/sites/default/files/pdf/2012/11/IIGG_WorkingPaper11_Deudney_Ikenberry.pdf.
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23 NATO, ‘NATO 2022 Strategic Concept’, 29 June 2022, p. 5, https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2022/6/pdf/290622-strategic-concept.pdf.
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31 President of Russia, ‘Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development’.
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36 See Heather Ashby et al., ‘What BRICS Expansion Means for the Bloc’s Founding Members’, United States Institute of Peace, 30 August 2023, https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/08/what-brics-expansion-means-blocs-founding-members.
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44 Gesine Weber, ‘Methodology: Conceptualizing Global Swing States’, in Conley et al., Alliances in a Shifting Global Order, p. 7.
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49 See Glaser and Small, ‘China’, p. 15.
50 See Arta Moeini et al., ‘Middle Powers in the Multipolar World’, White Paper, Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, March 2022, pp. 1–2, https://peacediplomacy.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Middle-Powers-in-the-Multipolar-World-2.pdf.
51 See Ishmael, ‘A World Divided’, p. 14. See also James Adams, David C. Gompert and Thomas Knudson, ‘From Quad to Quint? Vietnam’s Strategic Potential’, Survival, vol. 66, no. 1, February–March 2024, pp. 57–65.
52 See Ikenberry, ‘Three Worlds’.
53 See Ian O. Lesser, ‘The Myth of the Monolithic “Global South”’, in Conley et al., Alliances in a Shifting Global Order, pp. 17, 19.
54 See Crabtree, ‘Indo-Pacific Dilemmas’; and Matias Spektor, ‘In Defense of the Fence Sitters’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 102, no. 3, May/June 2023, pp. 8–16.
55 Shivshankar Menon, ‘Out of Alignment’, Foreign Affairs, 9 February 2023, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/out-alignment-war-in-ukraine-non-western-powers-shivshankar-menon.
56 Jean Kachiga, The Pulse of China’s Grand Strategy (Abingdon: Routledge, 2022), p. 207.
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59 Richard Higgott and Simon Reich, ‘The Age of Fuzzy Bifurcation: Lessons from the Pandemic and the Ukraine War’, Global Policy, vol. 13, no. 5, September 2022, pp. 627–39.
60 See ibid.
61 See Irene Mia, ‘Argentina’s Foreign Policy Under Milei: Limited Disruption?’, Survival, vol. 66, no. 1, February–March 2024, pp. 49–56.
62 See Da Wei, ‘Security Concerns Are Reasonable, Spheres of Influence Are Not’, Washington Quarterly, vol. 45, no. 2, Spring 2022, pp. 93–104.
63 See Stephen Wertheim, ‘The Price of Primacy’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 99, no. 2, March/April 2020, pp. 19–29.
64 Brendon O’Connor, Lloyd Cox and Danny Cooper, ‘Australia’s AUKUS “Bet” on the United States: Nuclearpowered Submarines and the Future of American Democracy’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, vol. 77, no. 1, January 2023, p. 47.
65 See ‘Trump Says He Would “Encourage” Russia to Attack Nato Allies Who Do Not Pay Their Bills’, BBC, 11 February 2024, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68266447.
66 See Nathan P. Kalmoe and Lilliana Mason, Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2022).
67 See O’Connor, Cox and Cooper, ‘Australia’s AUKUS “Bet” on the United States’.
68 See US Congress, ‘National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024’, 118th Congress, H.R.2670, https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/2670/.
69 Hugo Meijer and Stephen G. Brooks, ‘Illusions of Autonomy: Why Europe Cannot Provide for Its Security If the United States Pulls Back’, International Security, vol. 45, no. 4, Spring 2021, pp. 7–43.
70 See Hal Brands, ‘The Chinese Century?’, National Interest, no. 154, March/April 2018, pp. 35–45; and ‘The Chinese Century Is Well Under Way’, The Economist, 27 October 2018, https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/10/27/the-chinese-century-is-well-under-way.
71 See Wertheim, ‘The Price of Primacy’.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Zeno Leoni
Zeno Leoni is a lecturer in defence studies in the Defence Studies Department of King’s College London.
Sarah Tzinieris
Sarah Tzinieris is a research fellow in the Department of War Studies of King’s College London.