Perhaps the middle powers could take a leaf from Qatar’s book and play the mediating role to make things happen

“As these things go, the shift of global power will have to play out before countries agree to talk — after the great powers test the limits of what they can achieve through aggression, or aggressive posturing. That is when a new modus vivendi might be thrashed out. One assumes China will manage to push the US back in the Western Pacific but not push it out altogether, and Russia will get what it seeks: a near-abroad as its zone of influence. Whether this will be a stable arrangement depends on the answers to key questions: Who will come in place of today’s rulers; can the great powers agree to live and let live; and what roles the middle powers will play?”

As Donald Trump assumes office again as US President, the world is caught amidst seminal change. Since World War II, even the most powerful countries were willing to limit national sovereignty, in that they agreed for the most part to abide by global rules and cooperative action. Such rules were framed on a wide range of subjects. Not just trade and tariffs, but also nuclear arms, the law of the sea and the sanctity of national borders.

This has changed, for two reasons. The first is the rise of China, and the accompanying shift of global power. China is not a status quo power, so it wants to shake things up and challenge the US. The second is the rise of strongmen as rulers in the great-power countries: Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and now Trump.

These two developments have revived something that had more or less died out after World War II — wars of choice by the great powers, aimed at territorial conquest. The US war on Iraq served advance notice of what was to come. Three years ago, Putin invaded Ukraine. Xi seems to be preparing a Chinese assault on Taiwan. And Trump now threatens the use of force to acquire the Panama Canal and Greenland.

This has been accompanied by other changes. A preference for unilateral action over multilateralism. A diminished role and utility for the United Nations and the World Trade Organisation, and for action to meet climate change targets. Geopolitics was always about power, but increasingly it is about power unrestrained by rules. That’s true in the South China Sea, genocide in Gaza, a huge new dam upstream of the Brahmaputra in Tibet and economic sanctions that affect non-combatant third countries.

Underlying these is a change in mindset, from seeing interdependence and trade networks as an advantage to viewing them as vulnerability. So, we see a movement away from more than half a century of trade liberalization. Out, therefore, with globalization, in with ‘my country first’. Out with networked economies, in with self-reliance. Out with market efficiency, in with national security. This approach didn’t work well the last time it was tried, a century ago, but the lessons of history don’t seem to hold much sway.

Perhaps the most important change is that the country that originated much of the rule-making of the past, the United States, is now the most unreliable nation on earth. A Financial Times columnist asked the other day whether America had become a rogue state. No one knows what it will do next, least of all its allies. All of this makes the world a more turbulent place, with many more uncertainties and risks than before.

Laws and agreements reflect pre-existing power structures, and the cooperative agendas that were hammered out since World War II were made possible by the pre-eminence of a Western paradigm. And put in place by the most powerful country to emerge from the war. If that world order, so to speak, is now breaking down, we have to go back to the root cause: The threat posed to the West by the rise of China, at a speed and on a scale without precedent. The Western response — fueled by perceptions that China has not played by accepted trade rules, systematically worked to de-industrialize the West and also stolen Western technologies — has been trade sanctions, tariffs, technology denials and such.

These may have come too late in the day. China’s industrial pre-eminence will remain unchallenged. Last year, it produced 12.6 times as much steel as the US, 22 times as much cement and three times as many cars — with whose electric models it now threatens to overwhelm the Japanese and German car markets. China’s shipyards also accounted for over half the ship output. By 2030, China’s manufacturing sector is projected to be bigger than that of the entire Western world. It is already far and away the global leader in every sunrise industry.

These strengths are useful only if China can continue to access world markets, which are progressively sought to be denied. Yet China enjoyed a record trade surplus in 2024, approaching a trillion dollars. In several areas, it is now ahead of the West in technology. To be sure, the Chinese economy now faces serious structural problems that could undermine its continued rise. But one could argue that it is dealing with them at least as successfully as Western countries with structural problems, like the UK and Germany, even the US.

The reality to be dealt with is that the more the West feels threatened, the quicker it has abandoned whatever rules it once played by. In the new world, it is every country for itself, and might is right. Indeed, every country’s defense budget is being raised, and one must hope that does not spur wider conflict. Even if this is avoided, the old world isn’t coming back. But can the new world agree to new rules?

As these things go, the shift of global power will have to play out before countries agree to talk — after the great powers test the limits of what they can achieve through aggression, or aggressive posturing. That is when a new modus vivendi might be thrashed out. One assumes China will manage to push the US back in the Western Pacific but not push it out altogether, and Russia will get what it seeks: a near-abroad as its zone of influence. Whether this will be a stable arrangement depends on the answers to key questions: Who will come in place of today’s rulers; can the great powers agree to live and let live; and what roles the middle powers will play?

Reform of today’s global institutions like the Security Council will have to be addressed. Ideally, the Council should abolish the veto and adopt the weighted voting that prevails in the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. This should make today’s veto countries more responsive to international opinion, and reflect the new global power reality. In trade, plurilateral arrangements are more likely than fully global trading rules. A new global compact on how to help African countries, home to most of the world’s poorest, will be essential. None of this will be easy, or the outcomes certain. Perhaps the middle powers could take a leaf from Qatar’s book and play the mediating role to make things happen.