For a time, it was believed that Donald Trump’s rapprochement with Vladimir Putin would bring about a new world order dominated by a triad of superpowers: the USA, China, and Russia.The specter of this alliance would redefine the global chessboard, creating a bloc capable of bypassing any multilateral organization and reshaping the rules of the economy and geopolitics in its image.
However, history rarely allows for such convenient alignments. Geostrategic reality, as demonstrated by the failed treaties of the 20th century, resists overly stable equations.
In Beijing, this triad of governance was met with suspicion. Trump’s rapprochement was seen as an attempt to dismantle the alliance between Moscow and Beijing, ending their strategic cooperation and thereby weakening China’s advance.
The logic is simple: for Trump’s protectionist and isolationist doctrine to work, it was imperative to separate Putin from Xi Jinping.
A Russia absorbed by the West would limit China in terms of energy and mineral resources, hindering its technological and commercial race. Ukraine, which holds about 6% of the world’s rare earth reserves, and Russia itself, whose economic dependence on China grows year after year, would be key pieces in this plan.
Washington, however, failed to foresee that its foreign policy undermines what it tries to offer Putin—a return to globalization through the G7—by distancing itself from its historical allies.
As Henry Kissinger once said, “peace can only be achieved through hegemony or a balance of powers.”
While the USA closes itself off, China reopens. Beijing positions itself as a guarantor of globalization through the voice of Premier Li Qiang. By rejecting the triad as a model for world order, Beijing sends a clear signal to other global actors: they can trust China to preserve the system’s predictability.
At the same time, it nullifies Trump’s main move—the reintegration of Russia into the Western system—by delivering to Putin exactly what Washington proposed, but without the electoral fluctuations of the United States and with the security of a “limitless” alliance.
Although the new configuration accelerates the rise of the BRICS and repositions blocs like Lusophony, it exposes a central problem: the stability of recent decades was guaranteed by a balance of forces between two opposing blocs that contained each other.
China’s rise, in the current context, does not create new balances; it tilts the scale. If Beijing consolidates itself as the sole axis of stability, without a counterweight of equal stature, we will face asymmetric globalization. Decision-making centers will shift without significant resistance, compromising the autonomy of regional actors.
Trump, as unpredictable as he may be, will never accept this loss of hegemony without reaction, just as empires have rarely retreated peacefully. The Thucydides trap has long been indexed to the USA-China conflict, but China’s association with the old continent heightens the fear.
The question is not whether the world accepts China’s rise, but whether the White House allows it without direct confrontation. As Henry Kissinger once said, “peace can only be achieved through hegemony or a balance of powers.” It remains to be seen which awaits us in the new world order.
*Executive Director of PLATAFORMA
