THE DISTRIBUTION OF POWER IS SHIFTING FROM WEST TO EAST

Foreword

In science and technology studies it is necessary to take into account the vagueness and complexity of many new risks, as well as their tendency not to remain confined within well-defined geopolitical boundaries.

We live in a historical era in which the international distribution of power is shifting from the West to the East. The unipolar era is over, marking the end of a 500-year period since European maritime powers connected the world in the early 16th century and organized it under their rule ever since.

The response of the West, and in particular Europe, to these enormous and continuous changes in the international distribution of power is an instinctive and short-sighted reaction. It fails to reflect sufficiently on how the world has changed, how our position in it is changing, and it fails to take a step back to evaluate the options available to us and what our goals should be to maximize security and prosperity.

Strategic thinking is missing at a time when we need it more than ever. It is therefore time to return to grand strategy and consider how to address today's major challenges in terms of aligning potentially unlimited aspirations with limited means.

Background

Before WW2 most Americans believed it was not worth expending blood and iron to fight against Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. US is separated from the rest of the world by two giant oceans. And it's very hard for any country in Europe or East Asia to get at the United States.

When the cold war ended and the Soviet Union pulled out of Eastern Europe, the Warsaw Pact dissolved and then the Soviet Union itself broke apart. What should the US do with NATO? What should happen to the American military presence in Europe?

Put isolationism aside was not an issue after World War II.  The Grand Strategy said that the US should only keep troops in Europe if there is a country  (Soviet Union) that threatens to dominate all of Europe to become a regional hegemon.

Then the Soviet Union went away. But US believed it should remain in Europe to serve as a pacifier. And of course, this was an argument that resonated with the European elites.

But a fair amount of US citizens were interested in pulling the Americans out of Europe, bringing them back home, spending less money on defence and having more interest, more money spent on the American public.

The main problem for the US was that after the cold war, it was essentially  to wear like a 200 kilos gorilla who has no constraints on itself. And the problem would then be it would punch in every direction. It would exhaust its resources and make a lot of enemies: to be a hegemon can also be a a curse.

If the US can do anything it means it can be everywhere, it doesn't have to have priorities, it doesn't have to have much strategic thinking, it can make a lot of mistakes and absorb the cost, it has incentive to embrace ideologies of being benign hegemon so as to intervene anywhere to save other peoples.

It's easy to have ideologies of civilizing missions or humanitarian interventionism if  the military option will always be available, able to transform the world which would then give rise to a class of hawks which would argue for war as the solution to everything.

Current situation

The West has to first define what are the most important foreign policy goals, the vital interests, and then to think about what military means are available to protect those goals. And grand strategy is all about looking for a state's vital interests: what areas of the world are worth fighting and dying for? Where are you willing to expend blood and iron?

Those are the vital interests. And in the case of the US, the vital interests outside of the Western Hemisphere have historically been Europe, East Asia, and the Persian Gulf. And the reason is that's where the other great powers are. And the US has always cared about those areas where there are other great powers because smaller powers really can't challenge the US in any meaningful way. It's just the other great powers. And if you look at Europe, of course, that's where you saw countries like Napoleonic France, Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany.

It's where the heart of the Soviet threat was located. It was  in Eastern Europe. And then of course East Asia mattered greatly because of Japan mainly and today it matters greatly because of China.

After 2017, for the first time in our history, the most important area for the US outside of the Western Hemisphere is East Asia because China is by far the most powerful great power on the planet besides the United States.

The Russians are the other great power. The Americans, the Chinese, the Russians , those are the three great powers. But the Russians are the weakest of the three great powers. China is really a peer competitor of the US in almost every sense of that term.

So for the first time in American history, East Asia has become the most important area and Europe is of secondary importance.  The third area is the Persian Gulf: the US has always cared greatly about who controls the oil in the Persian Gulf.

Now the US considers all of East Asia a vital interest and considers China and Chinese hegemony in East Asia as a threat to American national interest.

The US always needed an enemy

The US always needed some rival great powers. Not a rival regional hegemon, but a rival great power like the Soviet Union or like China and Russia today.

In the early 1990s China was nowhere near as powerful as it is today. Nobody considered China a great power in 1992. And the Soviet Union was gone by December 1991. So the US was Godzilla. When the CIA director William Burns wrote Ukraine was the reddest of red lines, in 2014 a huge shift happened with the Maidan event organized  by the CIA.

The four countries that are at the top of the American hit list are today China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. And unsurprisingly, the Russians are working with all three of those other countries. There are North Korean troops in  Russia today that may be involved in an offensive in the northern part of Ukraine. And there's all sorts of evidence that the Russians and the Chinese are helping the Iranians.

The Russians view the Europeans as an enemy and they want to do everything they can to sew dissension in Europe and cause trouble in Europe moving forward so that Europe can't cause them trouble and then finally they will go to great lengths to turn Ukraine into a dysfunctional rump state that can't threaten them.

The Clinton administration was pushing NATO expansion, was going to great lengths to tell Yeltsin it was not a threat to Russia and that the Clinton administration wanted friendly relations with Russia for the foreseeable future.

But what the Clinton people didn't understand, but many people did understand at the time, is that once you set the train in motion for NATO expansion and you effectively opened the door to endless expansion right up to Russia's border, a situation was created that at some point was going to blow up.

The worst deal given to Russians pushed them to accept the offering in the east: so why not just lean towards the Chinese?

The US defeated in Iran

Now the US, while challenging China,  has been effectively defeated in Iran. What does this mean for countries like Russia and China? How would it work to their advantage or  disadvantage?

After the US is driven out of the Persian Gulf completely or almost completely the last thing the US will want to do is think about fighting another war in the Persian Gulf. It's very important to understand that China's position in East Asia and Russia's position in the Ukraine war has improved because of  the war against Iran.

What's happened here is that US has pulled all sorts of military assets out of East Asia to fight in the Middle East. And given the limited number of ships able of fighting in one theatre at a time and the wear and tear on the US Navy  in this war in the Persian Gulf, it's quite clear that it is to  China's advantage. US military forces in East Asia have been greatly weakened.

Is US going to remain as powerful as ever in terms of its capabilities while it is in deep trouble in terms of its ability to use that power, to project power, to win friends and allies around the world? All of that has been badly damaged as a result of this fiasco in Iran and as a result of the Ukraine fiasco as well.

The Europeans and the Americans are going to lose against the Russians in Europe

These pair of defeats will weaken US in terms of its ability to project power and to influence countries diplomatically.

Vladimir Putin recently visited the southern Kuril Islands which the Japanese say belong to them.  This of course angered the Japanese greatly. And this tells clearly that relations between Japan and Russia are terrible.

And this is in large part because the Japanese have sided with the Ukrainians against the Russians. But also the North Koreans recently launched a missile that landed in the waters just to the west of Japan.

Japan has significant problems with Russia, North Korea and China while, at the same time, the US has pulled forces out of Japan, out of South Korea and has pivoted away from Asia in recent months because of the war against Iran. And the question is: what lesson  the Japanese are going to learn from that?

Meanwhile Putin makes the point that from now on they will start to seize ships of the Europeans given that the Europeans have engaged in piracy. So  it's all spiralling out of control. Will there be a huge shift in the distribution of power, a new order?  Hopefully there will be some great power diplomacy where all leaders would meet and try to bark out something before bringing out  guns. Unfortunately there's not much historical precedent for this.

Considerations

1. Geopolitical uncertainty

It is a time of great geopolitical uncertainty, because the US is unwinding its own global order. Trump is attempting to systematically dismantle the checks on his power,  capture the machinery of government, and weaponize it against his domestic enemies. What kind of political system the US will be when this revolution is over? Ultimately, the revolution is more likely to fail than succeed, but there will be no going back to the status quo. The US will be the principal source of global risk.

2. China electrostate, US petrostate

The defining technologies of the 21st century run on electrons: drones, robots, batteries, AI. China has become the first electrostate. The US is cementing as the world's largest petrostate. While Washington asks countries to buy 20th-century energy, Beijing offers 21st-century infrastructure. Emerging markets will increasingly favour China’s offering.

The AI race raises the stakes: the US may build the best models, but China may win the market if it can power and deploy AI at scale.

3. The Donroe Doctrine

President Trump is reviving and reinterpreting the logic of the Monroe Doctrine in an effort to assert US primacy over the Western Hemisphere.

But taking out Maduro was the easy part; transitioning to a stable, US-friendly, if not democratic government will be more challenging. Across the region, heavy-handed American tactics will risk spurring backlash and unintended consequences.

4. Europe under siege

France, Germany, and the UK each has a weak, unpopular government under siege from the populist right, the populist left, and the Trump Administration. All three risk paralysis at best and destabilization at worst and already the UK leader has been replaced. Europe’s ability to address its economy, fill the security vacuum left by America’s retreat, and sustain support for Ukraine past 2026 will suffer.

5.  Emerging and developing economies

China now represents close to 18 percent of global GDP, while India is projected by the International Monetary Fund to become the third-largest economy within the next decade. Emerging and developing economies together account for more than 40 % of global output in purchasing power terms. These changes are reshaping how influence is distributed.

6. Politics, Armed Forces, Economy, Finance

Rising geopolitical tension is also reflected in military spending. Its heavy  increase reflects growing concerns about security and competition between major powers.

Global changes directly affect people. Economic fragmentation influences prices, employment, and access to goods. Political instability affects security, migration, and access to basic services.  Challenges such as climate change, public health crises, and financial instability require coordinated responses.

Conclusion

Global political systems are entering a new phase. For decades, international relations have largely been shaped by a concentrated global order, supported by multilateral institutions and a small number of dominant powers. This structure is now evolving.

Power is becoming more distributed. Countries outside the traditional centres of power are gaining economic and political influence. Regional blocs are assuming a more influential role. At the same time, coordination among countries is becoming more complex.

As power shifts across regions, decision-making becomes more complex. Agreements require broader consensus. Alliances shift more frequently. Negotiations involve a greater number of actors with competing priorities.

A fragmented system makes these responses more difficult. At the same time, a more distributed system can create opportunities for broader participation, if managed effectively.

International institutions, major powers, financial organizations, regional bodies, and civil society all play a role in shaping outcomes. Their strategies, timelines, and levels of responsibility will determine whether this shift leads to greater stability or greater risks. This includes more inclusive decision-making processes, stronger accountability mechanisms, and continued investment in economic resilience and sustainable development.