The confrontation between China, Russia, and the US is intensifying, the world order of the 1960s is returning to reality

Countries that had little taste for a liberal-ordered world tethered to US leadership eventually became bolder in seizing their opportunities: Russia moved on neighbors Georgia and Ukraine, China began asserting its claim over most of the South China Sea, and Iran fomented trouble across the Middle East. America's belief in that system was being tested when this onslaught took place.

Dismal failures to remake Iraq and Afghanistan with all the power America could bring at its zenith after the Cold War led, in turn, to disillusionment and retreat. The 2008-09 global financial crisis rattled America out of its strategic sleep, and this was followed by a decade-long era that scrambled American politics far more than it did the nature of U.S. strategic prerogatives themselves. When Washington launched competition against China under Donald Trump, with the US also seemingly at war or near war with many of its allies, it showed just how uncertain American direction had become.

In 2022, two full years into Traumenschen's administration, when Vladimir Putin was blatantly seeking to reabsorb the Ukraine after concluding a special compact with Xi Jinping-lead China, there could be no doubt that history had brought down the curtain on the post-Cold-War era. The beginning of this era is characterized by several features.

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China Rises in Tech

First, blocs are back. Not so long ago, the geopolitical division was fading. Coalitions of enemies are now facing off around the world.

The assault on the norm of non-aggression in Europe involves a cohort of Eurasian autocracies: North Korea, Iran, and China (who were all instrumental allies in helping Russia attack Ukraine). They face off against a cadre of fellow advanced democracies - in North America, Europe, and the Indo-Pacific region - that back Kyiv to preserve a larger order from which they have benefited broadly.

These alignments are not absolute - most countries of the Global South seek to stay on both sides - but they are taking root as international competition grows.

With ties to the West strained, a truculent Russia is redoubling its connections with fellow revisionists: just look at Putin's new treaty alliance with Pyongyang. At the same time, America is working to shore up and weave more tightly together its alliances in order not simply to contain but hold back autocracies across Eurasia.

The contests that ensue spill over regional borders. This year, the US has been pressuring partners in Europe and Asia to cut off exports of high-tech gear typically sold from American manufacturers to China - a prime example of how geopolitical fissures are being recast into economic-technological bonds.

Two, the battle of ideas has been rejoined. Sorry, but nobody seems to have notified Russia and China that the democratic imperative is simply irresistible. They are reworking global norms and institutions, so autocracies are safer. They think their illiberal systems output more discipline, effort, and eventually strength than flabby democracies, and they will force and destabilize states to prove it.

Russia has deployed disinformation, cyber-attacks, and sabotage against democracies on both shores of the Atlantic. Beijing uses everything from friendly media to bribes, cyber-warfare, and economic penalties in an attempt to silence dissent and promote division within Taiwan as well as other open communities. A lot of the fear-mongering around artificial intelligence is better framed as concern over how it may be deployed in political warfare: Moscow and Beijing can use AI-enhanced propaganda to strike against weaker democratic adversaries.

Three, The battle for techno-primacy Two decades ago, America's technological lead was simply awe-inspiring. But now, no longer is a severe imbalance true.

The US has finally and very reluctantly accepted that after decades of psycho-societal fatuity, China is now a front-runner in cyberweapons and hypersonic missiles. China is investing enormously in artificial intelligence, Quantum Computing, and other Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies. As has been the case in history with geopolitical competition and technological competition. This era could be where if China wins, it will win against us somewhere significant in strategic terms. Perhaps this time, before AI becomes a decisive success, China will run away with all its key emerging technologies.

Read more: End of the Post-Cold War Era and the Catch-up of Dictatorships.

That implies industrial policy is here for the long run, as geopolitical foes are building up enclosures and ramping up interests in significant industries from semiconductors to clean energy. It also implies regular economic warfare, where both countries battle using the tools of modern mercantilism - subsidies and export controls, investment curbs, and tariffs - to hasten their march to innovation stardom while slowing down competitors.

Fourth, competition is destroying the process of global problem-solving. U.S. and Chinese officials have blamed each other for causing the pandemic, further eroding trust on issues from Covid to climate change at a time when transnational challenges are worsening in their complexity and severity, but its two biggest emitters of planet-warming gases remain unable to reach a consensus. The superpowers can't even agree to protect critical supply chains.

The US and China have previously cooperated to quell Somali pirates. Well, Beijing is now in the business of negotiating treaties to calm down the Houthi terrorists who are shelling that very Red Sea and Gulf of Aden and arming them with weapons from Iran, prodding by Russia. Freedom of navigation on the seas may not be taken for granted as much in years to come, despite being a seemingly very basic norm. Anticipate, moreover, that efforts to address transnational challenges - not just climate change but also the regulation of disruptive technologies - will take place inside like-minded (e.g., G7) groups rather than across them.

The real war is imminent

The fifth and final is that real war looms large in an age of cold wars, tech wars, and trade wars. Ukraine is not literally at war, but it may well be the country in Europe most ravaged by conflict since 1945. There are many facets and a variety of clashes in the Middle East. These state-versus-state wars are at or near all-time high levels. You should expect that the trend is not going to reverse for a long time.

No matter how the war in Ukraine terminates, Russia will exit with a professional army, a geared-up economy, and an interminable subterranean hatred for everything Western. Deciding that Iran has reached the point at which steps to prevent it from becoming a nuclear-armed power are imperative, undercutting its framework of sponsoring violent instability throughout the Middle East.

China is hoarding food and energy, churning out ships, planes, and bullets by the hundreds of thousands, and making ever-prettier territorial designs on the Pacific. From the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea to the Second Thomas Shoal in the South, should one or more of these hotspots ignite, it could, as a top U.S. official warned recently, result in "open conflict" between Beijing and Washington.