Global Duopoly In The Making: Are We Heading Toward a US-China-Led World?

The explicit articulation of the ideological and substantive shift in American security and foreign policy contained in the US National Security Strategy (NSS) 2025, released last week, did not surprise us. As we wrote in our recent book, Everything All At Once: India and the Six Simultaneous Global Transitions, Pax Americana, as we have known it for the past 70 years is in its last throes, and the maneuvers of the Donald Trump administration will only serve to hasten its end. As we also underlined in the volume, however, there is a method to the madness. And it is premised on a deep ideological adherence to MAGA (Make America Great Again), which is likely to outlast its progenitor. In the detritus which has resulted from the wrecking ball Washington has taken to the international rules-based system in the form of the NSS to define a new “America First” foreign policy doctrine, it is now abundantly clear that the US no longer guarantees world order. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: What the US-China Tariff Truce Really MeansStates big and small across geographies need to make sense of how to protect and perchance promote their core national interests. India is no exception.Despite the “four mentions of India” in the NSS being touted by the usual suspects as signs that Washington hasn’t entirely forgotten New Delhi, there is near-unanimity among sober minds in the strategic and foreign policy establishment that India has, to put it mildly, been deprioritised by Trump.In view of the above, the much-heralded emergence of a multipolar world on which the US NSS has put its seal of imprimatur is, we argue, only one aspect of the affair. The more significant takeaway, to our mind, is that the NSS fans the very real fear of the advent of an (albeit ‘messy’) 'Global Duopoly' wherein the US and China, as the dominant world powers, would cooperate with each other in their respective interests even as they continue to pursue their long-term strategic competition. To put it simply, Washington and Beijing could well cut a deal; de facto if not de jureWhere that would leave other nations including the Intermediate Powers such as India, which will have to shape their policies going forward factoring in this possibility, is the question which ought to be exercising our minds.Not Pawn or Proxy, India Must Rise as the Third Pole Against US-Beijing BinaryShorn of its previous ambitions of promoting liberal democracy, free trade, and globalisation, the new Trumpian logic propelling Washington’s worldview is clear: China is the only peer state that the US has to engage with holistically. Relations with other states are either seen through the “sphere of influence” prism (Latin America) or a transactional lens (most if not all of Asia). Africa is viewed primarily as a source of commodities while Europe is characterised as a fit case for US intervention to help the continent reclaim its cultural nationhood which has allegedly been diluted thanks in the main to mass migration.The view from Washington when it looks over its shoulder has China looming large. With Taiwan no longer an ideological issue, ditto evangelising democracy, the US with a GDP of $29.16 trillion (2024) sees China (GDP $18.27 trillion, also 2024) as the only global heavy hitter with an exceedingly efficient industrial ecosystem which has catapulted the Chinese economy in size in nominal terms to four times that of Germany’s economy, and nearly six times that of the Indian economy.The emergent Sino-US rivalry, though, is no Cold War redux with two clean-cut economic blocs. The US and China are still tied at the hip economically despite Trump’s tariff disruptions.In the mutually profitable economic engagement between the two twenty-first century superpowers, the US’ total goods trade with China was worth an estimated $664.0 billion in 2024, third only to Mexico and Canada. This relationship also represents a significant welfare gain for US consumers who have been the beneficiaries of cheaper goods imported from China.The other striking feature of the NSS 2025, which gives rise to apprehensions of a duopoly overshadowing the opportunity for the rest of the world provided by multipolarity, is Washington’s regression to an approach towards international politics dating back to the 1880s. This is the ‘spheres of influence’ strategy, which marked the final stage of the colonial expansion of European powers in Africa and Asia and their efforts to carry on the mutual competition for colonies peacefully through agreed-upon procedures. The Great Britain-Germany agreement of May 1885 which provided for “a separation and definition of their respective spheres of influence in the territories on the Gulf of Guinea” was the first legal use of the term.BRICS is a Win for Both Russia and a Multipolar, Non-West-Dominated World OrderIn a looser, non-legal sense, spheres of influence have been an imperial/great power instrumentality for control from the beginning of recorded history.Cut to NSS 2025. Washington’s intent to dominate Latin America and the Western Hemisphere is clear; the Monroe Doctrine redux, as it were. At the same time, South East Asia is largely ignored by the NSS. Could this not be construed as the region being left to China’s sphere of influence? It’s worth keeping in mind that most states in SE Asia are well-integrated into Chinese supply chains and have signed up for the RCEP trading bloc of which Beijing is the prime mover.Thus, the window of opportunity afforded to India by a multipolar world to try and get a place on the high table of global governance may not be open any longer. A cozy duopoly between the US and China will hardly permit any leverage for India to play off one against the other and find greater space for itself.Instead, the NSS should prod us into focusing ever more sharply on building our comprehensive national power. The direct implication is to further accelerate our economic growth with greater regional equity and ecological security. Therein lies our way forward.(Rajiv Kumar is Chairman, and Ishan Joshi Director (Partnerships & Programs) and Senior Fellow, Pahle India Foundation. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)Reconnecting India and China: Lessons in Development and Diversity

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The End of Pax Americana and a Global Duopoly in the Making

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