It is politically naive to interpret major American maneuvers as mere reactions to scandals or attempts to evade domestic obligations. Such interpretations reduce a country as significant as the United States to the behavior or mood of its administration, turning structural changes in the international system into fodder for media gossip. What is occurring is far deeper; it concerns a historical moment in which the power that shaped the global order after World War II discovers that its ability to define this system is no longer absolute. The tools of persuasion that accompanied its rise are no longer sufficient in themselves to ensure its continued central position.
During its ascendance, the United States did not lead the world solely through brute force; it led by example. It offered an open economy, a massive market, technological innovation, prestigious universities, and financial institutions that made the dollar the global currency of trust. While military power was part of the equation, it wasn’t the core of attraction. Today, however, the landscape is gradually changing. Sanctions, trade restrictions, and the reshaping of supply chains are taking center stage in foreign policy, and a significant military presence in areas of tension has become a message in itself. This shift does not signify a direct decline, but it reflects a transition from a phase of establishing rules to a phase of safeguarding them.
This transformation incurs escalating strategic costs. Every containment step requires greater financial and political resources, and every alliance demands meticulous management in a world that is no longer as clearly unipolar as it was in the early 1990s. Nonetheless, the United States remains an exceptional power by the standards of knowledge-based economies, innovation, capital markets, and the pivotal role of its currency in global trade. The question is no longer whether it is still strong, but how it uses this strength in an environment where competitive spaces are expanding.
Europe exemplifies a complex model of this delicate balance. It is neither fully submissive to American decisions nor completely independent of the Atlantic security umbrella that has developed over decades of Cold War. With the outbreak of war in Ukraine, the limits of independence and dependence have been laid bare. The continent has paid a high economic price in energy matters and has reordered its industrial priorities under increasing security pressure. At the same time, it sees cohesion with Washington as a strategic guarantee against a more tumultuous international environment. What we observe here is neither pure subservience nor complete liberation, but an unequal interdependence that has evolved over time and has become part of the very structure of the Western system.
In this context, a significant psychological dimension emerges that cannot be ignored. Major powers develop narratives about themselves as the center of global stability. When this narrative is shaken, even without an actual collapse of hard power elements, anxiety about status arises. This anxiety does not imply that policies are driven by emotion; rather, it suggests that protecting one’s self-image becomes a parallel objective to safeguarding material interests, prompting naval deployments, the imposition of restrictions, and the showcasing of alliances—not just to achieve specific outcomes, but to assert that the center of gravity has not yet shifted.
However, the scene cannot be reduced to the anxieties of an old power. The rising power itself faces profound challenges. China, while accumulating immense industrial and technological capabilities, is still testing its ability to transform this accumulation into comprehensive global leadership. Moreover, its political and economic model does not present itself as a universally applicable alternative that can replace the existing structure. Thus, the world finds itself between two powers: one defending a historically central position and the other seeking to expand its presence without yet bearing the full burdens of the system.
We are thus at a moment of transition rather than collapse, where patterns of leadership and tools of influence are changing, and centers of gravity are redistributed without the complete disintegration of the international structure. In such moments, major states tend to cling to their status, for acknowledging that the times have changed is not merely a political decision but a review of a historical identity formed over decades, if not centuries.
The pressing question is not whether the United States is on the brink of falling nor whether China is on the path to inheriting the system, but whether the international system can absorb this transformation without slipping into open conflict. The most perilous aspect of transitional moments is not the rise of one power or the decline of another, but each side’s attempt to prove to itself, before others, that it remains as it was in a world that is no longer as it once was.
