This is a special moment for me because my new book is now available: Power at Sea: The United States, China, and the Struggle for Order in the Indo-Pacific.

My career in the Hellenic Navy and my studies shaped the perspective behind this book. Some of you have already read pieces of this thinking here on GeoSec Insights. The book pulls those threads together and pushes further, examining the geography of the Indo-Pacific, the naval balance between Washington and Beijing, and the hard choices facing other states in the region.

Holding the printed book for the first time felt strange, in a good way. Sharing it here feels personal too. This newsletter is where some of the early thinking took shape, and you have been part of that conversation.

If you read Power at Sea, I would like to hear what stays with you, or where you see things differently.

If the subject interests you, Power At Sea is available in paperback and on Kindle on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HL55T6X9

Thank you for reading GeoSec Insights and for the thoughtful conversations that continue around this work.

Themistoklis (Themis) Zanidis

“A treaty can end a war, but a novel can show how that war continues inside memory.”

Literature has close ties to politics and power. Through novels, poems, stories, plays and epics, societies preserve the collective memory which includes their triumphs and their losses, their wounds, their humiliations, their fears and dreams. Usually, political power appears via official institutions, borders, armies, laws, leaders, and official decisions, but literature shows how power enters the human being: It gives language to exile, obedience, rebellion, nostalgia, faith, silence, and memory, showing how people experience the great forces of history inside their homes, their families, their language, their private fears, and the way they understand themselves.

A treaty can end a war, but a novel can show how that war continues inside memory. Additionally, borders can be drawn on a map, but a poem can explain the impact of that border to the lives of those who are affected. A regime can declare victory, national unity or progress but literature can reveal the contradiction, the loneliness, the fear, and the moral cost hidden behind official words. Literature gives us the voices behind the map turning history from an abstract sequence of events into something lived, remembered, inherited, and sometimes carried like a wound.

Every political community lives through stories. The empires had told stories regarding their superior civilization, their order, and their destiny. Nations tell stories regarding their origins, their sacrifice, and their glory. Revolutions also tell similar stories about oppression, struggle, awakening, and the heroic creation of the new order. Authoritarian regimes tell stories about loyalty, discipline, historical necessity and their domestic and foreign enemies. These stories have the power to shape how individuals perceive the worlds around them. The stories teach people what to admire and fear, what to remember and defend. From this perspective, literature matters exactly because it has an impact on every story either preserving them or complicating them.

Epics, Tragedy, and the First Language of Power

The epic is one of the oldest places where literature and power meet. Homer’s Iliad is a story of war, rage, honor, glory, and mortality, yet its emotional force comes from its awareness of suffering. The battlefield is full of heroic language, but death is always close. Kings, princes and warriors seek immortality through their reputation, however, the poem constantly reminds us of loss, grief and the fragility of human life. In this regard, Achilles is powerful and great, but he is wounded by rage and sorrow. Hector is the enemy of the Greeks, but he is also a husband, a father, and a noble man defending his city. The Iliad depicts the human cost of glory because behind every heroic name stands a world of mourning: fathers, mothers, wives, cousins, friends, the homeland, even the enemies.

The Odyssey on the other side carries a different political meaning. It is the story of returning where the memory, the identity and the struggle to find home, nostos, are powerful. The hero, Odysseus, does not simply travel through strange lands but he tries to recover himself after years of violence and displacement. This is a deeply political theme because war does not end when the soldier leaves the battlefield. It follows him into home, into the family, into language, into sleep, and into memory. In that sense, ancient literature already understood something modern societies still struggle to understand: the return from war can be as difficult as war itself.

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“Every age has its own kind of war, its own limiting conditions, and its own peculiar preconceptions.”
— Carl von Clausewitz

Executive Summary

War is one of the oldest and most persistent forms of organized human interaction, yet it has never remained static. Human societies have fought through tribal structures, ancient kingdoms, city-states, empires, feudal systems, sovereign states, ideological blocs and increasingly complex networks of state and non-state actors, while the instruments of violence have developed from spears, bows, swords and fortified cities to industrial armies, nuclear weapons, drones, cyber operations and autonomous systems. The historical record therefore presents an apparent contradiction: the character of war changes continuously, while many of the forces that generate it remain remarkably persistent.

This analysis, divided in two parts, approaches war as both a historical phenomenon and an intellectual problem. Rather than treating the major International Relations theories such as realism, liberalism, constructivism or any other school of thought, as a complete explanation, it places the major theories and theorists of war within the historical development of organized violence. That said, Thucydides has connected war with power, interest and fear. Hobbes has identified the absence of overarching authority as the source of uncertainty and insecurity. Machiavelli, on his behalf, has connected military survival with military capabilities, while Kant and later liberal thinkers have examined the political conditions and institutions as the main tools to restrain violence. Marxist approaches have exposed the connection between war, imperial ambition and material expansion, while Waltz has organized the explanations in three levels: international, state, and individual. Mearsheimer has pushed structural realism toward a more competitive understanding of great-power behavior, while Clausewitz has placed politics at the epicenter of war. Sun Tzu has emphasized on strategic advantage and the possibility of defeating the enemy without any decisive battle. Schelling has explained deterrence and coercion in the nuclear age, while thinkers like Keegan, Kaldor, Enloe and Baudrillard have challenged the theories which diminish warfare to simple relations between organized and rational states and their armed forces.

The central argument is that war is a complicated phenomenon with no single cause and no single historical form. War emerges from combinations of power, fear, insecurity, political purpose, material interest, identity, ideology, perception, ambition and human choice. International institutions and rules have the ability to restrain these forces from colliding with each other while technology can transform the means through which they operate. Inventions like railways, the telegraph, gunpowder, mass conscription, aircraft, nuclear weapons, digital networks and autonomous systems have changed significantly what armed forces could do and the ways societies experience war. However, none of the aforementioned has removed the political struggle over interests, security, order and which offers war, organized violence, its meaning.

This distinction between the nature and character of war is increasingly important. The contemporary battlefield extends from the traditional domains land, sea, air, to the new like cyberspace, the information environment and outer space, while hybrid methods allow actors to pursue strategic objectives in the ambiguous space between peace and open armed conflict. Artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and inexpensive unmanned platforms are altering operational calculations, yet the fundamental strategic question remains familiar: what political objective is force intended to achieve, against whom, at what cost, and under which conditions can violence produce a sustainable political result?

Consequently, understanding war requires historical perspective as much as contemporary strategic analysis. Every age develops its own technologies, institutions and doctrines, but the enduring interaction between political purpose, fear, power, perception and human agency explains why war continues to survive the political systems created to restrain it.

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At first glance, China’s foreign policy presents a paradox. Beijing is the only power with the economic scale, industrial capacity, military modernization, and diplomatic reach to challenge the United States as a systemic rival. Yet unlike Washington, it has not built a global network of binding military alliances.

Washington has been operating via formal defense treaties, forward military bases, alliance commands, interoperability, and long-term security guarantees. Beijing, however, has chosen a different approach to expand its influence. The mix includes strategic partnerships, infrastructure projects, political coordination, economic and trade dependence, military exercises, multilateral forums, but not legal commitments which would require China to defend another state in case of war. In other words, China has been avoiding alliances like NATO and especially clauses like NATO’s chapter 5.

This is a deliberate strategic choice. Beijing does not want to reproduce the American alliance system because it does not see that system only as a source of strength, but also as a structure of obligation, exposure, and potential entrapment. China wants partners, not allies in the strict legal sense, leverage without automatic commitments, influence without shared command, access without dependency. Above all, it wants freedom of action.

Thus, the main question is not why China has failed to create a NATO of its own but why Beijing would want one at all.

The U.S. Alliance Model and China’s Different Logic

One of the pillars of American global dominance is the country’s alliance architecture. NATO, arguably the most successful military alliance in history and one of the core Washington’s alliances, is still a part of a larger system. That said, Washington maintains treaty alliances with Australia, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, alongside other security partnerships in Europe, the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East. This system offers Washington access, intelligence networks, legitimacy, military interoperability, political and economic influence and forward deployment.

Washington perceives alliances as multipliers of its power, overcoming the limits of geography. Through its alliances, the U.S. forces have consecutive presence in Europe, the Pacific, the Middle East and East Asia, far beyond the continental United States. This extended system of alliances and partnerships has allowed the U.S. to shape regional balance according to their national interests and prevent crises before becoming direct threats. However, this system has also created political expectations since the American allies depend heavily on the U.S. protection which the U.S. depends on their cooperation and alignment. The recent war in the Middle East has shown the limits of dependence for both the U.S. and its allies.

China on the other hand perceives the alliance system differently. For the Chinese policy makers, the American alliances are not neutral security arrangements but they are instruments of containment, specifically in East Asia. In this regard, the U.S. forces in South Korea and Japan, the U.S.-Philippines alliance, the AUKUS, the QUAD, the 5 Eyes, are perceived as part of a broader system built to contain the Chinese expansion especially in the Beijing maritime perimeter. Thus, the Chinese rhetoric of “bloc confrontation” is not mere propaganda but a reflection of a real strategic concern: Chinese rise is happening within a region where the U.S. has already established an extended alliance network. Nonetheless, China is not trying to copy the U.S. but it has chosen a different, more flexible approach by forming strategic partnerships without including any defense commitments.

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China Has Partners, Not a Real Alliance System

The absence of formal alliances does not mean that China does not have close relations with other powers. First and foremost, Beijing has a close partnership with Moscow. Additionally, China has a relationship with Pakistan, deep economic ties across the Global South, growing influence in parts of Africa and the Middle East, and institutional roles in forums such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS. Finally, China has only one formal defense treaty, inherited from the Cold War, with North Korea.

All the aforementioned partnerships are not by any means equivalent to NATO or the U.S.-Japan alliance:

• They do not create a unified command system,

• They do not bind China to defend multiple partners automatically,

• They do not require Beijing to station large permanent forces across allied territory,

• They do not place Chinese security policy inside a shared alliance structure.

However, China’s partnerships are useful because they are politically broad and legally limited:

• They allow China to cooperate with Russia without inheriting all of Russia’s risks.

• They allow China to support Pakistan without being trapped in every India-Pakistan crisis.

• They allow China to engage Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Palestinians, and Gulf states without formally choosing one side in all regional conflicts.

• They allow China to present itself as a mediator when convenient and as a great-power counterweight when necessary.

This is the core of the Chinese model: maximum diplomatic space with minimum formal obligation.

The Historical Lesson: The Sino-Soviet Split

One of the reasons behind the Chinese approach is historical. More specifically, China’s alliance with the Soviet Union, in the early stages of the Cold War, started as the ideological partnerships between the two communist powers. Soon it turned into a lesson about dependance, mistrust and hierarchy. The later split indicated to the Chinese leaders that ideological alignment is not enough to keep an alliance especially since one part is treated as a lesser partner (in this case the Soviet Union treated China as not an equal partner). Consequently, the Sino-Soviet relationship deteriorated into hostility with military clashes along the borders.

This experience had a deep impact on Chinese strategic thinking by enforcing the suspicion that formal alliances can limit freedom of action and thus reduce sovereignty. The powerful ally can become a patron, constraint and eventually a threat. This is why China’s post-Mao foreign policy placed such strong emphasis on independence: Beijing’s official language regarding an independent foreign policy of peace is not just rhetorical but it reflects the conclusion that China should avoid being subordinated to another power’s strategy. China does not want to be the junior partner in anyone else’s alliance and or become responsible for the survival of weaker states.

Strategic Flexibility as a Source of Power

China’s preference for non-alliance diplomacy gives it room to maneuver. Usually, a formal alliance requires a specific and thus predictable behavior. Formal alliances create credibility tests for the most powerful member of this alliance: If an ally is attacked, the patron must respond or risk damaging its reputation. This can strengthen deterrence, but it can also pull a great power into crises it did not choose.

China wants to avoid this problem: It does not want to be forced into a war because of another country’s decision. Moreover, it does not want to risk its economic development, military modernization, or domestic stability for the automatic defense of a partner. The Chinese leaders understand that the country’s power still depends heavily on economic performance, export capacity, technological upgrading, energy security, and internal control. A rigid alliance system would reduce Beijing’s ability to calibrate its responses.

The latter is of crucial importance in the contemporary geopolitical environment. China faces pressure from the U.S., tensions over Taiwan, maritime disputes in the South China Sea and East China Sea, technological restrictions, supply-chain realignment, demographic challenges, and a slowing growth model. In this context, Beijing does not need more automatic risks but instead flexible options which are provided by partnerships not formal alliances.

Sovereignty and Control

Another important aspect of the Chinese non-alliance strategy is related to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) obsession with control. Thus, the CCP’s reading of modern Chinese history is shaped by the “Century of Humiliation,” which was the result of foreign intervention, unequal treaties, territorial fragmentation, and external pressure. Whether one accepts this narrative fully or not, it remains central to the way Beijing explains its security behavior.

Formal alliances usually require coordination, intelligence sharing, interoperability, joint planning, and foreign military access. For the U.S., this is normal alliance management but for China, it creates discomfort. Beijing neither wants foreign militaries embedded in its security architecture nor outside partners influencing its decision-making. Of course it does not want its own military to depend on allied consensus.

This is one reason China criticizes the U.S. alliance system so strongly. Beijing argues that American bases and security guarantees undermine the sovereignty of host nations and divide regions into hostile blocs. Of course, this criticism serves Chinese interests, but also it reflects China’s own preference: Beijing wants influence over others without accepting equivalent influence over itself.

Russia: Partnership Without Alliance

Today’s Sino-Russian relationship is the clearest example of Beijing’s alliance model. The two powers share opposition to U.S. dominance, criticize Western sanctions, conduct military exercises, cooperate diplomatically, and promote a more multipolar international order. Their relationship has become much closer since the war in Ukraine and the deterioration of Russia’s relations with the West.

Nonetheless, China has still avoided a formal military alliance with Russia. China benefits from Russia as a strategic partner because Moscow distracts the West, challenges NATO, supplies energy, and supports China’s broader argument against the U.S.-led order. At the same time, China does not want to inherit Russia’s war in Ukraine. It does not want to be legally tied to Moscow’s military decisions. It does not want to sacrifice its economic relations with Europe, the Global South, or parts of the international financial system for Russia’s objectives.

The relationship is therefore close but bounded. China wants Russia strong enough to weaken Western pressure, but not so powerful or reckless that it drags China into a wider confrontation. This is partnership as strategic utility, not alliance as shared destiny.

North Korea: The Exception That Proves the Rule

China’s treaty relationship with North Korea is the major exception, but even this exception reveals the limits of Chinese alliance behavior. Beijing does not want North Korea to collapse because collapse could bring instability, refugees, loose weapons risks, and potentially a U.S.-aligned Korea closer to China’s border. In this regard, North Korea serves as a buffer zone between China and the American forces stationed in South Korea. However, Beijing is uncomfortable with North Korea’s provocations, nuclear program, and unpredictability.

China wants stability on the Korean Peninsula, not an uncontrolled crisis that could force Beijing into a direct confrontation with the U.S. and its allies. In this sense, North Korea is not a model for China’s future alliance system but rather a historical burden China manages because geography leaves Beijing few easy alternatives.

The SCO, BRICS, and the Alternative to Alliances

The Chinese model is not isolation but not NATO-style alliance building. For instance, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization offers to Beijing the stage for security dialogue, deep cooperation on critical issues like counterterrorism and political coordination in Eurasia. BRICS offers Beijing a broader stage, focused on the global south, for diplomacy, economic cooperation and criticism regarding Western dominance. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is the tool used by China to spread its influence across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East via infrastructure.

These mechanisms let China shape the international environment without building a collective defense system, and they allow Beijing to work with states that are even openly hostile to one another. India and Pakistan both sit within the SCO. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China participate in overlapping forums without becoming formal allies, which is an arrangement a military alliance could not accommodate.

The Chinese approach is therefore more political than legal, more transactional than ideological, and more flexible than institutional. Beijing is trying to build influence in a world where many states want alternatives to Western dominance but do not want to become Chinese satellites.

The Current Geopolitical Situation

The current geopolitical environment makes China’s strategy both more consequential and more difficult to execute. The U.S. is moving beyond its reliance on traditional alliances, forming overlapping coalitions serving primarily Washington’s national interests. In this regard, the Quad is not NATO, nonetheless is becoming more operational. Moreover, AUKUS is not a universal Indo-Pacific alliance, but it strengthens military-technological coordination among the U.S., the U.K., and Australia. Japan has been increasing its defense spending significantly while the Philippines has expanded defense access for U.S. forces. India remains formally non-aligned, but it is also deepening cooperation with Washington and other partners when it serves Indian interests.

This is the real challenge for Beijing. Washington has been using formal alliances and flexible coalitions to contain China. In this regard, the American strategic advantage is not only the established formal alliances like NATO or bilateral treaties but the ability to form networks around specific challenges: semiconductors, rare earths, shipping routes, undersea cables, military basing, cyber defense, and maritime surveillance.

China’s partnership model gives Beijing freedom, but it does not always produce reliable support in a crisis. Thus, many states want Beijing as their trade partner or want Chinese investment but fewer want to be locked into a confrontation with the U.S.. This is the structural weakness of China’s approach: it can create influence and alignment but not always loyalty and commitment.

Could China Change Course?

China could move towards a more formal alliance model if the pressure from the U.S. and its allies rise. A crisis in Taiwan or a military incident with the U.S. forces could push Beijing toward a more formal security cooperation with its current partners.

However, this would be a major shift of the Chinese strategic thinking, not just a continuation of current policy. Additionally, it would carry costs: A formal Sino-Russian alliance would alarm the EU, India, Japan and many states in SE Asia. A tighter China-Iran cooperation would expose Beijing to the unstable Middle East while a creation of a military bloc with Pakistan would deepen tensions with India and damage the image of China of a peaceful and responsible world power.

At the moment, China seems to prefer ambiguity. It wants the political benefits of anti-U.S. alignment without the legal burdens of alliance commitments. It wants Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and other partners to complicate American strategy, but it does not want to become responsible for all of their risks. In other words, the Chinese support is real but not unconditional while it serves the interests of Beijing.

Strategic Assessment

The Chinese approach to alliances is an indicator of how Beijing understands power. In this regard, China is expanding its influence via economic weight, technology and infrastructure, strategic partnerships and selective coercion. This approach offers flexibility since it allows China to engage rival states simultaneously while it reduces the risk of entrapment. Consequently, China can present itself as the responsible power which rejects the Cold War era monolithic blocs, keeps total control over its strategic movements and exploits the anti-Western alignment.

However, this approach has its own limits. During a crisis, China might discover that partners are not equals as allies. That said, Russia will support China rhetorically, but its own military, technological, political, and economic constraints will eventually limit what it can actually offer. On the other hand, Pakistan is an important partner but at a regional level since it counters India. Additionally, Iran - a regional power still surviving the U.S.-Israeli attacks by causing severe damage to the U.S. military installations and the energy infrastructure in the region, cannot be seen as a crucial partner to China. Finally, numerous global south states welcome Chinese investments and diplomatic support but they are actually navigating between China and the U.S. since they do not choose to go against Washington directly.

This is the central tension in China’s strategy. The current Chinese approach has served the Chinese interests especially today in the era of strategic competition where both the U.S. and China are trying to rewrite the global rules to better serve their national interests. However, if the competition escalates to a direct military conflict, this approach might not serve the Chinese interests.

Conclusion

China does not avoid formal alliances because it is weak, but because it perceives rigid alliances as liabilities. The Sino-Soviet split taught Beijing that even ideological partners can turn into constraints. Watching Washington taught it that alliances extend power but also create obligations, credibility tests, and entanglement.

Beijing’s model is deliberate: no NATO-style bloc, no automatic defense commitments, no foreign say over Chinese security decisions. Instead, a wide network of flexible partnerships that supports its rise, complicates U.S. strategy, and preserves its freedom of action.

China’s alliance problem is ultimately not about doctrine but about what kind of great power Beijing wants to be. The U.S. built an order around allies while China is building influence around autonomy. Whether that model survives a major crisis is one of the defining questions of the decade.

I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this issue.

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Thank you for reading GeoSec Insights. I research geopolitics, international security, war, and shifts in global power to understand the deeper forces shaping events beyond the daily headlines. If this analysis helped you see the issue more clearly, please consider sharing it with someone who may also find it useful.

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References

Australian Government, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. “Joint Leaders Statement on AUKUS.” March 14, 2023.

Liff, Adam P. “China and the US Alliance System.” The China Quarterly 233 (March 2018): 137–165. doi:10.1017/S0305741017000601.

Lüthi, Lorenz M. The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.

Ministry of Defense of Japan. “Press Conference by Defense Minister Koizumi on Tuesday, December 2, 2025, at 2:29 PM.” December 2, 2025.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. “Japan-Australia-India-U.S. (Quad) Leaders’ Meeting.” September 21, 2024.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. “Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between Japan and the United States of America.” Washington, DC, January 19, 1960.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan. “Joint Statement between the People’s Republic of China and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.” May 26, 2026.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China. “Chinese and Russian Heads of State Exchange Messages of New Year Greetings; Chinese Premier and Russian Prime Minister Exchange Messages of New Year Greetings.” January 2, 2025.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China. “Position Paper of the People’s Republic of China for the Summit of the Future and the 79th Session of the United Nations General Assembly.” September 20, 2024.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China. “Xi Jinping Exchanges Messages of Congratulations with General Secretary of the WPK and President of the State Affairs of the DPRK Kim Jong Un on the 65th Anniversary of the Signing of the China-DPRK Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance.” July 11, 2026.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization. “The North Atlantic Treaty.” Washington, DC, April 4, 1949.

Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. “Charter of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.” Saint Petersburg, June 7, 2002.

Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. “Dushanbe Declaration on the 20th Anniversary of the SCO.” September 17, 2021.

State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. The Belt and Road Initiative: A Key Pillar of the Global Community of Shared Future. Beijing, October 2023.

United States Department of Defense. “Philippines, U.S. Announce Four New EDCA Sites.” February 1, 2023.

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and People’s Republic of China. “Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance.” Moscow, February 14, 1950. United Nations Treaty Series 226. The treaty and its UNTS location are also identified in the U.S. Department of State’s official historical record.

Zhang, Ketian. “Alliances with Chinese Characteristics? The Contents and Rationale of China’s Strategic Partnerships.” International Politics 63 (2026): 386–421. doi:10.1057/s41311-025-00701-0.

Zhang, Feng. “China’s New Thinking on Alliances.” Survival 54, no. 5 (2012): 129–148. doi:10.1080/00396338.2012.728350.

Power on Canvas.

Introduction

Painting gives power an image since it has the power to turn rulers, battles, revolutions, suffering, saints, workers, martyrs, and nations into scenes that people can see, remember, and emotionally understand. A painting can organize memory in a way that is more immediate than a speech or a document. It can tell people who mattered, who suffered, who won, who sacrificed, and what should remain alive in collective memory. Through painting, history becomes visible. It receives a face, a body, a color, a gesture, and sometimes a wound.

This is why painting has always been close to power. Long before photography, cinema, television, and social media, painting was one of the main ways authority made itself visible. Kings, emperors, generals, saints, revolutionaries, and dictators needed images because power has always needed recognition. They needed portraits, battle scenes, religious icons, heroic compositions, and public murals. In these representations they wanted to appear as more than ordinary human beings. Through painting, a ruler could become the father of the nation, the defender of faith, the bringer of order, the revolutionary hero, or the chosen figure of history.

Painting and power share a deep and old connection. In pharaoh Egypt, tomb paintings did more than just decorating sacred spaces. They put the pharaoh within the cosmic order where life, death, eternity, religion and kingship were connected. The ruler appeared larger, calmer, and more permanent than ordinary life. The image created a world where power seemed natural because it belonged to the divine structure of existence. Egyptian visual culture reminds us that political authority often tries to escape time. It wants to look eternal, even when every ruler is mortal.

Moving forward in time, in Rome, mosaics, images, and portraits helped spread the memory of imperial power across the private and public domains. The emperor’s image travelled through coins, statues, wall paintings, and ceremonial art, creating a visual presence that reached far beyond the physical body of the ruler. This mattered because empire is never present everywhere at once and thus it needs symbols to travel in its place. The image becomes a substitute for authority telling distant subjects that power has a face, a center, and a claim over their world.

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Photo: NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey.

Executive Summary

Climate change is becoming one of the central risk multipliers of the international system because it increasingly interacts with the pressures that already shape instability: war, food insecurity, weak governance, public-health vulnerability, maritime disruption, debt stress, urban fragility, and contested borders. The subject of “climate refugees” should therefore be approached with precision. The phrase captures a real and growing human vulnerability, but it remains legally incomplete because people displaced by climate change or disasters are not automatically recognized as refugees under the 1951 Refugee Convention unless they also meet the existing legal criteria related to persecution.

The main argument of this report is that climate change will not replace war as the main driver of forced displacement in the near term. Conflict and violence remain the dominant drivers of many of the world’s largest displacement crises, including Sudan, Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and parts of the Sahel. However, climate change increasingly makes these crises harder to manage because it weakens food systems, damages infrastructure, increases water stress, raises disease risks, disrupts livelihoods, and places additional pressure on host communities that already absorb refugees and internally displaced people.

The year 2026 is especially important because a potentially very strong El Niño is developing at a time when global displacement and humanitarian needs are already high. NOAA’s June 2026 ENSO advisory confirmed that El Niño conditions are present and expected to strengthen into the Northern Hemisphere winter of 2026–27, with a 63 percent chance of a very strong El Niño during November 2026–January 2027 (NOAA Climate Prediction Center, 2026). The precise language matters. This report does not use “super El Niño” as an official scientific category. The more accurate formulation is a potentially very strong El Niño event that may produce significant regional effects in a warmer global climate system.

The geopolitical importance of climate mobility is also becoming more visible through early policy experiments. The Economist’s World Ahead 2026 highlighted the Tuvalu–Australia pathway under the Falepili Union treaty, which allows 280 Tuvaluans to migrate annually to Australia and may become an important precedent in the politics of planned climate mobility (The Economist, 2025). This case should not be generalized too broadly because Tuvalu’s situation is specific, small-island, and treaty-based. However, it matters strategically because it moves climate displacement from abstract future concern into a concrete policy arrangement involving sovereignty, mobility, culture, territory, and long-term state survival.

The main conclusion is that climate displacement cannot be managed only through emergency response after disasters occur. Governments and international institutions need earlier warning, stronger adaptation finance, planned mobility pathways, resilient food systems, better legal tools, stronger host-community support, and closer coordination between climate policy, migration governance, humanitarian response, and conflict prevention. The world is entering a period in which climate change will increasingly shape who moves, who stays, who becomes trapped, and which states can maintain legitimacy under repeated shocks.

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Photo: This is a modern geopolitical image of China’s strategic posture in the Western Pacific, combining naval power, regional geography, military modernization, surveillance technology, and the Taiwan question.

Key Takeaways

• The Chinese strategic culture is primarily shaped by historical memory, particularly the Century of Humiliation and the lessons drawn from internal weakness and foreign domination.

• National unification, mainly regarding Taiwan, is still the fundamental objective of the Chinese foreign policy.

• China’s grand strategy combines the economic and military expansion and regional influence-building under a framework described as active defense.

• Confucian hierarchy, Eastern strategic thought, Maoist legacy, and pragmatic adaptation to Western systems all influence modern Chinese strategic behavior.

• Beijing seeks not just to rise within the international system, but to restore what it perceives as its historically rightful central position.

PART II. Strategic Doctrine & Contemporary Behavior

The defensive orientation of the country is reflected even in Beijing’s approach to its nuclear weapons (China’s Strategic Defense in the New Era). These are not expected to be used by China for a first strike against the enemy, in contrast to the established nuclear doctrines of the U.S. and the former USSR, and now Russia, which envisaged a first strike. Instead, they are reserved solely for retaliation (a second nuclear strike) (Twomey 2006).

The tension with Taiwan in 1955 led to the development, for the first time, of a nuclear arsenal. The Soviet Union supported this effort, both due to ideological affinity (Twomey 2006). However, the alignment between the two communist regimes did not last, resulting in the withdrawal of Soviet nuclear advisors. This event directly delayed the development of the Chinese nuclear program, with the first nuclear test taking place only in 1964 (Twomey 2006). The build-up of a numerically strong nuclear arsenal was further delayed due to the consequences of the Cultural Revolution, reaching only into the mid-1980s (Twomey 2006).

To this day, China possesses a relatively small nuclear arsenal, always in comparison with those of the U.S. and Russia, while its efforts are focused on modernization rather than expansion. Furthermore, Chinese nuclear strategy, also influenced by Confucianism, rejects the concept of a first nuclear strike, restricting the use of nuclear weapons exclusively to retaliation, as already noted above (Twomey 2006).

At the conventional level, the country’s leadership seeks the development of the armed forces’ capabilities, since their strengthening constitutes the second main pillar of China’s revival, alongside economic growth, ensuring the “Never Again” of the Century of Humiliation (Allison 2018). The foreign powers that defeated China were militarily powerful, especially in terms of their navies. For this reason, Beijing places emphasis on the sea, as it does not wish under any circumstances to repeat the historical mistake of turning its back on the oceans, a decision made in the 15th century under the Ming dynasty, which withdrew the country from maritime affairs (Papasotiriou 2013).

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Naturally, the transformation of China from a traditionally land power into a maritime one, correcting the Ming mistake. requires time. Yet the Chinese, due to their culture, can demonstrate particular strategic patience, as we will see further below.

We must also note an important parameter of Chinese strategic culture concerning wartime human losses. Chinese society is tolerant of such losses, in contrast to the West and especially the U.S., so long as Chinese troops fight for the greatness of China (Allison 2018).

Nevertheless, it is clear that the Chinese are not always in a defensive posture, even though their strategic culture is defensive. This paradox is summarized in their expressed strategic doctrine of active defense (China’s Strategic Defense in the New Era): defense at the strategic level, but offense at the operational and tactical levels (Defense Intelligence Agency: China Military Power). Both in times of peace and in times of war, their grand strategy is realist (realpolitik) and therefore flexible (Allison 2018). They faithfully follow Sun Tzu’s advice to be as flexible as water (Koliopoulos 2008).

Indeed, on several occasions during the 20th century they chose to attack first, confirming another significant element of Eastern strategic thought: surprise. Examples include the Korean War in 1950 against the U.S., the 1962 attack on India, the 1969 clashes with the USSR, and the 1979 attack on Vietnam. Surprise attack is a Chinese choice, especially when the country is under pressure, showing indifference even to the size of the opponent (Allison 2018), while applying the doctrine of active defense (Ashraf 2017).

The emphasis that the Chinese place on surprise, deception, and intelligence naturally derives from the tradition of Eastern strategic thought. To show the importance of the above in a single phrase: surprise is considered the key to victory, and deception the key to surprise (Koliopoulos 2008).

It would be a mistake to assume that modern Chinese strategic culture is shaped solely by historical memory. It is a fact that the Chinese armed forces (PLA) systematically study the country’s ancient strategic culture, while not overlooking the fact that it has its limitations in the modern strategic environment (Chiselli 2018). Realistically, and in order to bridge this gap, the PLA does not hesitate to study above all the doctrines of other armed forces as well as their technological achievements, so as to draw conclusions about their methods of operation (Chiselli 2018).

Chinese traditional culture rests upon doctrines and beliefs that continue to permeate its principles to this day. The most important of these is undoubtedly Confucianism, as already noted. Confucianism is not a religion but rather an ethical philosophy, and it served as the country’s ideology during the imperial period (Papassotiriou 2013). According to this doctrine, hierarchy is of crucial importance, as it determines both order and harmony. The Chinese desire that the order governing their social culture be extended to the level of international relations. In other words, they do not seek expansion through conquest, and for this reason military involvement is considered the last resort. A characteristic feature of Chinese culture is that it does not seek to export itself or to impose itself forcibly on other peoples (Twomey 2006).

Furthermore, Confucianism is based on the idea of moral order. In practice, this means that rulers must first and foremost be educated and must govern morally (Papassotiriou 2013). Political hierarchy is identical to social hierarchy and must be harmonious and balanced (Jacques 2012). The model of government and society is based on the family. Within the framework of the Confucian family, the duty of the descendants is to respect the authority of the father, who in turn must protect and care for the members of his family (Jacques 2012). In the Chinese reality, the state is the father, whom the children (the citizens) owe respect and obedience, while the exchange is protection and prosperity. Therefore, the state is a necessary good, as it is the source of order, morality, and meaning (Jacques 2012). Finally, it should be noted that ancestors are of paramount importance within the framework of Confucianism, as they are considered to be permanently present (Jacques 2012).

Confucianism is only one branch of traditional culture. The other branch is Taoism, which is contemporary with Confucianism. It is more introspective and mystical, as it seeks spiritual liberation (Braudel 2007). Buddhism has had a comparatively smaller influence on traditional Chinese culture than Confucianism and Taoism.

The second main pillar of Chinese culture, as we have already noted, is communism. The People’s Republic of China, at its founding in 1949, was supported on three pillars, all under the leadership of Mao Zedong (Papasotiriou 2013). The first concerns the CCP, the second the state, and the third the People’s Liberation Army (Papasotiriou 2013). The gradual emancipation of the CCP from the USSR was completed in 1956 with Nikita Khrushchev’s condemnation of Joseph Stalin (Papasotiriou 2013). Yet Soviet self-criticism affected the CCP and Mao personally, who invited Chinese intellectuals to speak freely about the regime (Papasotiriou 2013).

This move marked the beginning of a process that led to the exile of 700,000 educated Chinese to prisons and labor camps across the country (Papasotiriou 2013). At the same time, the CCP elite distanced itself from the USSR and proclaimed the Great Leap Forward, that is, the radical modernization of the Chinese economy (Papasotiriou 2013). The mobilization of peasants led to a reduction in production, with the result of a sharp increase in deaths from malnutrition and a contraction of the country’s GDP (Papasotiriou 2013).

The solutions proposed by Chen Yun were highly pragmatic and were eventually accepted by Mao (Papasotiriou 2013). The new Chinese economic policy emphasized development through the use of specialized personnel and the provision of material incentives, measures that diverged considerably from what could be called “communist” (Papasotiriou 2013). With this policy, the Chinese economy managed to re-enter a growth trajectory.

Since then, pragmatism has characterized the CCP, whose leader later launched the last domestic political campaign: the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), which, by the Party’s own admission, inflicted the heaviest losses on the people, the Party, and the state since its founding (Papasotiriou 2013).

The country entered the modern era under the guidance of Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yun, who undertook the task of rapprochement with the West abroad and disengagement from Mao’s Cultural Revolution at home (Papasotiriou 2013). Ultimately, the internal reforms provoked, in 1989, widespread reactions, mainly by students, which led to the events of Tiananmen Square, with losses estimated at 3,000 (Papasotiriou 2013). Despite the internal unrest, the growth of the Chinese economy was impressive, and it continued with undiminished intensity during the first decades of the 21st century, making the country the second-largest economy in the world. In 1997, the handover of Hong Kong by the British authorities to China constituted a milestone, as it satisfied Chinese demands for Western reparations for the damages suffered by the country during the Century of Humiliation (Papasotiriou 2013).

Concluding the reference to China’s political ideology, it should be noted that the CCP is pragmatic, as it has abandoned communist ideology (Feldman 2015). For example, individualism, a hallmark of Western civilization but not of Sinic civilization, has been in full development in recent years, because it is promoted by the Party and its policies that encourage entrepreneurship and consumerism (Feldman 2015). Moreover, the Chinese elites themselves do not appear to be particularly ideologically driven.

Chinese culture displays significant differences compared to its Western counterpart. To understand this difference, we should note that until the late 18th century, that is, relatively recently, China had no conception of diplomatic relations, as it had no established ties with other states: it neither maintained embassies abroad nor permitted foreign embassies on its soil. In fact, it did not even have a Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is indicative that as late as 1792–1794, Britain unsuccessfully attempted to integrate the country into the European international society of sovereign states as an equal member (Papasotiriou 2013).

The above may appear unusual for Western political thought and culture, but one must not forget that in the Chinese worldview the emperor was the sole ruler on earth, since he was the “Son of Heaven” (Allison 2018). Confucius’s saying that since there are not two suns in the sky, there cannot be two emperors on earth, is indicative (Allison 2018).

Samuel Huntington, in his work The Clash of Civilizations, classifies China under the Confucian civilization, recognizing the significant influence Confucianism has exerted on Chinese culture. In contrast to Western civilization, which primarily promotes individualism, freedom, free markets, democracy, and individual rights, concepts that the Chinese regard with suspicion, as they do anything foreign to them, Chinese culture prioritizes the supremacy of the state over society, and the supremacy of society over the individual (Allison 2018).

Another difference between the two civilizations is found in their perception of time, which is of exceptional importance as it clearly illustrates Beijing’s strategic patience, something that must always be considered (Allison 2018). More specifically, the Chinese, owing to their millennia-long historical trajectory, think in terms of centuries and even millennia, giving priority to securing long-term benefits. The West, by contrast, expects more immediate returns (Allison 2018).

Regarding human rights, Beijing does not reject the fact that they have universal application; however, it incorporates into them “Asian values” in order to justify the different practices of the Chinese authorities, namely, the emphasis on hierarchy and the paternalistic role of the state (Feldman 2015). It would not be an exaggeration to note that China is primarily a civilization which only recently became a nation-state (in the 19th century), and only after being forced to do so by the great powers of the time (Jacques 2012).

We have seen how historical memory significantly influences Chinese culture at the strategic level. But the memories of the Century of Humiliation are not the only ones. For the greater part of its history, China stood at the center of the international system (Twomey 2006). The country’s leading position was so self-evident that it was considered “natural,” both by Chinese society and by the peoples bordering China.

Hierarchy is also of exceptional importance for the Chinese, who perceive their country as superior to all others within the Asian state system (Twomey 2006). It is a fact that Chinese culture and civilization influenced neighboring states such as Taiwan (which Beijing considers Chinese territory), Korea, Japan, and Vietnam (Feldman 2015), while today its radiance is widely diffused even in the West.

For Chinese culture, the country is the center of the world. Indeed, in the Chinese language, the word used for China (Zhongguo) means “Middle Kingdom.” “Middle” here does not refer geographically to a country situated between others, but to one located between Heaven and Earth. This is indicative of the Chinese worldview.

For the Chinese, the rise and dominance of the West is merely a temporary phenomenon, which the current CCP leadership has promised the people will come to an end (Allison 2018). The reader thus understands that in reality, Chinese leadership does not merely aspire to rise to the top of the international system, but to return the country to the position it occupied for centuries and to which it rightfully belongs. Modern China demands respect and recognition from the other powers (Allison 2018).

Conclusion

It is a fact that Chinese culture constitutes a component of Beijing’s soft power, which strengthens the country’s international presence as its economy continues to grow (Nye 2011). Beyond culture, other key components of soft power are political values and foreign policies (Nye 2011), which, however, Beijing does not particularly emphasize on a global scale.

The Chinese may be the only nation in the world so intensely bound to its history. Always faithful to the perception of the superiority of their culture and civilization, they ultimately came into contact with the other great powers — and were defeated by them. This was the infamous Century of Humiliation, the era during which the pendulum of power shifted toward the West.

Yet, imbued with the teachings of Confucianism and Taoism, and carried forward by the triumph of Maoism, the Chinese returned to the forefront of world affairs, developing a peculiar form of nationalism (Braudel 2007). For the West and for the United States they are usurpers of hegemony; for themselves, they are restorers to the rightful position to which they belong. They ardently desire respect and recognition from all.

China’s strategic culture does not explain every political decision made by the country’s leadership, but it undoubtedly constitutes a valuable tool for understanding the international system as it is shaped today by Beijing’s rapid rise. As Napoleon remarked: the dragon appears to have awakened…

I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this issue.

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Thank you for reading GeoSec Insights. I research geopolitics, international security, war, and shifts in global power to understand the deeper forces shaping events beyond the daily headlines. If this analysis helped you see the issue more clearly, please consider sharing it with someone who may also find it useful.

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Bibliography

Katsoulas, Spyros. 2017. The Concept of Strategic Culture. Athens: Stratigikon.

Koliopoulos, Konstantinos. 2008. Strategic Thought from Antiquity to the Present. Athens: Poiotita.

Papassotiriou, Charalambos. 2013. China: From the Heavenly Empire to the Emerging Superpower of the 21st Century. Athens: Poiotita.

Paschalidis, Grigoris. 1999. Introduction to the Concept of Culture, in Introduction to Greek Culture, Vol. A. Patras: Hellenic Open University Press.

Allison, Graham. 2018. Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? New York: First Mariner Books.

Ashraf, Junaid. 2017. “String of Pearls and China’s Emerging Strategic Culture.” Strategic Studies 37.

Braudel, Fernand. 2007. Grammatica of Civilizations. Athens: MIET.

Defense Intelligence Agency. 2019. China Military Power: Modernizing a Force to Fight and Win. Washington: DIA Military Power Publications.

Feldman, Noah. 2015. Cool War: The Future of Global Competition. New York: Random House, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.

Ghiselli, Andrea. 2018. “Revising China’s Strategic Culture: Contemporary Cherry-Picking of Ancient Strategic Thought.” Cambridge University Press.

Gray, Colin S. 1981. National Style in Strategy: The American Example. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Haglund, David G. 2014. “What Can Strategic Culture Contribute to Our Understanding of Security Policies in the Asia-Pacific Region?” Contemporary Security Policy 35.

Huntington, Samuel. 2017. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Athens: Patakis.

Jacques, Martin. 2012. When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order. New York: Penguin Books.

Nye, Joseph S. 2011. The Future of Power. New York: PublicAffairs.

Snyder, Jack L. 1977. The Soviet Strategic Culture: Implications for Limited Nuclear Operation. RAND Corporation.

The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. 2019. China’s National Defense in the New Era. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press.

Twomey, Christopher P. 2006. Chinese Strategic Cultures: Survey and Critique. SAIC.

Sun Tzu. 2008. The Art of War. Athens: Oxy.

Ying, Fan. 2000. “A Classification of Chinese Culture.” Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal 7(2).

Power shapes space through architecture.

Introduction

If art gives form to political imagination, architecture is perhaps its most visible expression. Buildings serve practical needs, but they also organize space, shape memory, and teach people how to experience power. A palace, a parliament, a temple, a triumphal arch, a monument, a skyscraper, a train station, an airport, or a government square speaks before anyone says a word. Our buildings and our cities are statements telling people where authority lives, how it wants to appear, what kind of emotions it wants to produce, and what kind of story a society wants to talk about itself.

Architecture is power made visible. From the beginning of organized political life, rulers understood that power needed physical form. Laws could command obedience, armies could enforce order, and wealth could sustain authority, but buildings gave power permanence. They made it appear stable, sacred, and almost natural. A ruler may die, a dynasty may collapse, a regime may change, but the structure often remains. This is why architecture has always been one of the favorite languages of power: it survives longer than speeches, and it speaks loudly even when nobody is speaking.

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Photo: UN Security Council Chamber /Public Domain

The United Nations Security Council is not weak because it lacks authority. It is vulnerable because its authority increasingly rests on a political structure that no longer reflects the world it is expected to govern. Eight decades after 1945, the Council still carries the legal weight of the postwar order, but it operates in a world shaped by decolonization, demographic change, regional power shifts, strategic competition, and rising demands for representation. The question is therefore not whether the Council still matters because it clearly does. The deeper question is whether it can remain legitimate without reform.

Executive Summary

The United Nations Security Council (UN/SC) remains today the most authoritative institution in the international system for decisions regarding peace, war, sanctions, peacekeeping mandates, and the legal authorization of collective security action. Its decisions still carry a unique legal weight because the Council is the only UN body empowered to adopt binding measures under the UN Charter, including sanctions and the authorization of force. For that reason, the debate over Security Council reform is not a technical discussion about institutional design, but a strategic debate about the future legitimacy of global security governance.

However, the UN/SC was designed in 1945 to preserve great-power participation inside a collective security framework after the failure of its predecessor, the League of Nations (LoN). This design offered permanent seats and veto power to the United States, the Soviet Union, later represented by the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, France, and China. At the time, this reflected the power distribution that emerged from the World War II. Eight decades later, the UN/SC still carries the authority of the post-1945 order while operating inside a far more complex, multipolar, and regionally fragmented world.

In today’s geopolitical landscape, the distance between legal authority and political legitimacy is widening. Since 1945, the UN itself has expanded from 51 founding members to 193 member states, while decolonization, demographic growth, economic redistribution, and regional power shifts have transformed the global balance of power. That said, Africa has no permanent seat despite representing more than a quarter of UN membership. Additionally, Latin America has no permanent seat while the world’s most populous state, India, and a rising economic and military power, remains outside permanent membership. Other important powers like Japan, Germany and Brazil, also remain excluded from permanent representation. At the same time, the Islamic world and much of the Global South see the UN/SC as structurally distant from their political weight and security concerns.

This resulting not the immediate collapse of the UN/SC but the gradual weakening of its practical relevance. In other words, the Council will continue to exist, meet, vote, mandate peace operations, renew sanctions regimes, and serve as the primary diplomatic theatre for global crises, however, its ability to create binding consensus on the highest-stakes conflicts is becoming increasingly constrained by great-power competition, veto politics, geopolitical fragmentation, and the growing frustration of states excluded from permanent representation.

In this regard, formal reform has become a necessity because the UN/SC’s current structure no longer reflects the political, demographic, and regional realities of the twenty-first century. Simultaneously, a formal reform remains highly unlikely because any amendment to the UN Charter requires adoption by two-thirds of the General Assembly (UN/GA) and ratification by two-thirds of UN members, including all five permanent members of the Security Council (United Nations, 1945). This gives each current permanent member an effective veto over reforms that could undermine its own privilege.

Consequently, we should not expect an immediate institutional reform, but a rather a progressive adaptation to 21st century realities and to the evolving power distribution regionally and globally. These adaptions could eventually prevent the UN, and its most crucial body, the UN/SC, from becoming obsolete.

The main judgment of this report is that the UN/SC faces a high-probability risk of legitimacy erosion and a medium-to-high probability risk of functional bypass over the next decade. The Council is not obsolete, but its unreformed structure is increasingly misaligned with the world it is expected to govern. The challenge for member states is therefore to manage a difficult contradiction: serious reform is essential for long-term legitimacy, while incremental practice-based reform is the most realistic path for near-term risk mitigation.

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Photo: This is a symbolic visual journey through Chinese historical memory, blending old maps, maritime encounters, imperial architecture, calligraphy, and modern China.

Key Takeaways

• The Chinese strategic culture is primarily shaped by historical memory, particularly the Century of Humiliation and the lessons drawn from internal weakness and foreign domination.

• National unification, mainly regarding Taiwan, is still the fundamental objective of the Chinese foreign policy.

• China’s grand strategy combines the economic and military expansion and regional influence-building under a framework described as active defense.

• Confucian hierarchy, Eastern strategic thought, Maoist legacy, and pragmatic adaptation to Western systems all influence modern Chinese strategic behavior.

• Beijing seeks not just to rise within the international system, but to restore what it perceives as its historically rightful central position.

PART I. Historical Memory & Cultural Foundations

Issue Overview: China’s Path from Humiliation to Strategic Revival

When the West thinks of China, it often imagines a rising power in purely economic or military terms. But behind the numbers, ships, and missiles lie something far older. A worldview shaped by thousands of years of history, humiliation, and philosophy. To understand China’s next moves, one must first understand its strategic culture, a lens through which Beijing interprets the world, justifies its actions, and defines its destiny.

Introduction

19th, 20th, and 21st Century: China’s Path from Humiliation to Dominance

It is an indisputable fact that the most significant rivalry of the modern era is between the United States (U.S.) and the People’s Republic of China (China), as they are the two most powerful states of the modern international system. The evolution of this rivalry, hegemonic, as termed in the discipline of International Relations, can affect the entire state system in multiple ways. For this reason, various scholars attempt to analyze the behavior of the U.S. and China to extract, as safely as possible, conclusions regarding the form their rivalry will take in the near future.

Obviously, International Relations theory constitutes the basis of analysis, with multiple levels (system, state, individual), as well as the areas upon which it focuses. The purpose of this paper is to concentrate on the field of Chinese strategic culture, as it constitutes an indicator that can help provide a broader understanding of the country’s strategic behavior and the policy decisions made by its leadership. However, caution is needed: strategic culture[1] is a tool for understanding strategic behavior, but it should always be treated as such. As a concept, it can explain every political decision, since actors inevitably possess culture, but it cannot predict future state behaviors. It constitutes only one parameter of Chinese strategy, essentially offering an interpretation of the causes for specific strategic decisions (foreign policy decisions), by no means the only one, since strategy by nature is a continuously evolving process.

More specifically, the strategic objective of Chinese foreign policy is national unification, that is, today, the annexation of Taiwan into the mainland, so that unity is restored after it was disrupted by the victory of Mao’s communists in 1949 and the flight of the nationalists to the island of Taiwan (Papasotiriou 2013). Its rapid economic development presupposes that trade routes and supply lines remain unaffected by any threat, whether originating from state or non-state actors.

In China’s National Defense in the New Era (2019), the Chinese national strategy is recorded. According to it, Beijing explicitly considers the U.S. solely responsible for the intensification of international strategic competition, since its policies undermine China (China’s Strategic Defense in the New Era). The U.S., as the most powerful actor in the East Asian region, possesses the strongest navy in the world and a network of alliances/agreements with states that are Beijing’s rivals in the area. Consequently, China, which fervently desires its economic development to continue unimpeded, seeks to protect its fragile trade routes and supply lines from the American threat, while at the same time replacing the U.S. as the leader of its region by increasing its influence economically, politically, diplomatically, and militarily.

This will be achieved through economic strengthening, in the framework of which the colossal investment program One Belt One Road has been launched, and through the attainment of naval supremacy with the clear reinforcement of the Chinese armed forces in all sectors (Ashraf 2017). Finally, it seeks the reform of the entire International System of states to its own advantage.

The characteristics of Chinese strategic culture, to which we will refer more extensively later, are the following: traditional culture with centuries of history and principal influences from Confucianism, Taoism, and to a lesser extent Buddhism; Eastern strategic thought as depicted in the work of Sun Tzu; and historical memory, since the Han Chinese are a people profoundly tied to their millennia-long history, the origins of which go back to around 2200 BC (Papasotiriou 2013).

Other characteristics of modern Chinese strategic culture are Maoism as political ideology, as well as Western influences that affect the country’s political elites. Another feature is the partial abandonment of isolationism, as the country increasingly concludes economic agreements with other states, and also the partial abandonment of the doctrine of “peaceful rise,” since it now appears to assert sovereignty dynamically in the South China Sea at the expense of its neighbors and the U.S. (Ashraf 2017).

Therefore, Chinese strategic culture is shaped by geopolitical, historical, economic, and religious factors, offering the framework within which the leadership’s strategic ideas and policies are formulated (Gray 1981).

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Evidence & Analysis: Foundations of Modern Chinese Strategic Culture

Chinese Strategic Culture

Modern Chinese strategic culture is distinct and unique, both because of the country’s geography and because of its millennia-long history. It is naturally rooted in modern Chinese culture, which is a mixture of three elements: traditional culture, communist ideology, and Western influence (Fan 2000).

Culture constitutes a constantly evolving entity, dependent on geopolitical and technological changes (Twomey 2006). Traditional Chinese culture possesses a history of thousands of years[2], a language, despite its variations during its evolution, and incorporates different religions, philosophies, and schools of thought such as Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism (Fan 2000), as we will see below.

Similarly, modern Chinese strategic culture, shaped over the centuries, developed because of the shock of defeat in the Opium Wars and the Century of Humiliation. Contributing to this formation was also the definitive collapse of the imperial system in the 20th century, since the Confucian system proved inadequate for the industrial age (Papasotiriou 2013).

For modern Chinese, their history teaches that any internal weakness or division will ultimately be exploited by foreign powers (Twomey 2006). In particular, the most recent Century of Humiliation was the result of internal division, which facilitated the invasion of foreign powers (British, French, Dutch, Germans, Americans, Soviets, and especially Japanese) (Twomey 2006).

Because of their millennia-long history, the Chinese shape their strategy based on principles drawn from historical events (Allison 2018). A characteristic example is the enormous investment program that will help the country project its power on a global scale, shifting the balance of power in Asia through the unification of Eurasia (Twomey 2006).

This specific investment program, announced by current President Xi Jinping during an official visit to Kazakhstan in 2013, is equivalent to 25 Marshall Plans and is called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) (Ashraf 2017), formerly known as One Belt One Road (OBOR), or, in Greek translation, the “New Silk Road”, showing its connection to the historical Chinese trade routes.

Historical memory is omnipresent in modern China. These extremely traumatic memories of the Century of Humiliation lead the leadership of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) to pursue internal stability imperatively, regardless of cost (for example, with regard to human rights) (Twomey 2006).

The objectives of the Chinese leadership are threefold. First, it seeks the restoration of the country’s grandeur, meaning its return to the dominance it enjoyed before Western intrusion (demand for regional supremacy). Second, it seeks to secure absolute control over the territories of greater China, including Taiwan (demanding from neighboring states that they recognize and respect Chinese superiority). And finally, it desires the revival of its historic sphere of influence, both land and maritime, so that it will be accepted and respected by the other great powers (Allison 2018).

Recovering lost prestige and respect is of paramount importance. As long as the Chinese President promises this, while simultaneously delivering economic growth regardless of environmental cost, the Party retains legitimacy within society (Twomey 2006). Consequently, historical memory contributes to the shaping of Chinese strategic culture in such a way that it relentlessly pursues internal stability and cohesion, meaning it must display no weakness outwardly that could invite foreign powers (as in the events in Hong Kong and the harshness with which demonstrators have been and continue to be treated by the authorities).

Indeed, internal instability combined with exposure to the industrialized West in the first half of the 19th century brought about the end of Chinese dominance. Since then, military confrontations with foreign powers consistently resulted in Chinese defeat, indicatively: in 1839 with the First Opium War; in 1856 with the Second; in 1894 with Japan’s invasion and the conquest of Manchuria; in 1899 with the Boxer Rebellion, against which eight states united and ultimately overthrew the Qing dynasty in 1912; the renewed civil war; and the new Japanese invasion in 1937, which caused the deaths of more than 20 million Chinese (Twomey 2006).

The communist seizure of power in 1949 marked the end of the Century of Humiliation. Precisely these achievements of Mao (leader of the communists) remain to this day the core of the CCP’s legitimacy, as he is credited with saving the country and expelling the foreign powers (Twomey 2006).

Today, Chinese students are taught the feeling of shame associated with the Century of Humiliation and the aforementioned defeats. The lesson drawn from these defeats is simple: Never again, and nothing is ever forgotten (Twomey 2006). Patriotism, a peculiar form of nationalism, is reinforced by the need to avenge the national humiliation suffered by the country. Moreover, it is extremely useful for the CCP, since it derives legitimacy from society, especially at a time when economic growth appears to be slowing (Twomey 2006).

The current CCP leadership seeks the strengthening of the country and the expulsion of the U.S. from its periphery, even as it recognizes that, essentially, it was because of Washington that the much-desired stability and security existed in the region, which allowed for uninterrupted economic prosperity. Geographically, the field of confrontation is located in the South China Sea (Allison 2018).

International relations scholars have long commented on Beijing’s reluctance to replace the U.S. as overseer in areas from which the latter withdraws. This Chinese reluctance may appear surprising, but it is entirely consistent with the country’s strategic culture, which is primarily defensive (Allison 2018).

Of course, this development was influenced by Confucianism as well as the Eastern tradition of strategic thought, summarized masterfully in the work of Sun Tzu, who was himself a follower of Confucianism (Koliopoulos 2008). According to this doctrine, presented in the form of maxims in The Art of War, war is one of the available tools of politics and must be employed rationally (Koliopoulos 2008). Furthermore, offensive operations are considered particularly costly and should therefore be avoided. What is paramount is systematic analysis, knowledge of oneself, of the opponent, and of the battlefield (Koliopoulos 2008).

Supreme success is defined as the enemy’s surrender without battle (Sun Tzu 2008), since for Chinese strategists’ war is primarily psychological and political (Allison 2018). Moreover, the best strategy is to attack the enemy’s strategy itself in order to achieve victory as quickly as possible (Koliopoulos 2008).

I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this issue.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading GeoSec Insights. I research geopolitics, international security, war, and shifts in global power to understand the deeper forces shaping events beyond the daily headlines. If this analysis helped you see the issue more clearly, please consider sharing it with someone who may also find it useful.

Share

Bibliography

Katsoulas, Spyros. 2017. The Concept of Strategic Culture. Athens: Stratigikon.

Koliopoulos, Konstantinos. 2008. Strategic Thought from Antiquity to the Present. Athens: Poiotita.

Papasotiriou, Charalambos. 2013. China: From the Heavenly Empire to the Emerging Superpower of the 21st Century. Athens: Poiotita.

Paschalidis, Grigoris. 1999. Introduction to the Concept of Culture, in Introduction to Greek Culture, Vol. A. Patras: Hellenic Open University Press.

Allison, Graham. 2018. Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? New York: First Mariner Books.

Ashraf, Junaid. 2017. “String of Pearls and China’s Emerging Strategic Culture.” Strategic Studies 37.

Braudel, Fernand. 2007. Grammatica of Civilizations. Athens: MIET.

Defense Intelligence Agency. 2019. China Military Power: Modernizing a Force to Fight and Win. Washington: DIA Military Power Publications.

Feldman, Noah. 2015. Cool War: The Future of Global Competition. New York: Random House, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.

Ghiselli, Andrea. 2018. “Revising China’s Strategic Culture: Contemporary Cherry-Picking of Ancient Strategic Thought.” Cambridge University Press.

Gray, Colin S. 1981. National Style in Strategy: The American Example. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Haglund, David G. 2014. “What Can Strategic Culture Contribute to Our Understanding of Security Policies in the Asia-Pacific Region?” Contemporary Security Policy 35.

Huntington, Samuel. 2017. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Athens: Patakis.

Jacques, Martin. 2012. When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order. New York: Penguin Books.

Nye, Joseph S. 2011. The Future of Power. New York: PublicAffairs.

Snyder, Jack L. 1977. The Soviet Strategic Culture: Implications for Limited Nuclear Operation. RAND Corporation.

The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. 2019. China’s National Defense in the New Era. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press.

Twomey, Christopher P. 2006. Chinese Strategic Cultures: Survey and Critique. SAIC.

Sun Tzu. 2008. The Art of War. Athens: Oxy.

Ying, Fan. 2000. “A Classification of Chinese Culture.” Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal 7(2).

[1] Our purpose is to introduce the reader to Chinese strategic culture. For the sake of clarity, since the term itself is not particularly developed in Greece — we will here provide what we consider the most complete definition: strategic culture constitutes a set of beliefs, mentalities, and behavioral patterns of a geographically defined collective entity with a historical experience (Katsoulas 2017). The term was coined in 1977, when Jack Snyder, in a study, attempted to show the different approaches of American and Soviet strategists to limited nuclear war (see Jack L. Snyder, The Soviet Strategic Culture: Implications for Limited Nuclear Operation, RAND, 1977). As the reader may understand, this definition is multidimensional, since there is difficulty even in defining the concept of culture itself, as the latter is a linguistic borrowing (see Grigoris Paschalidis, Introduction to the Concept of Culture, in Introduction to Greek Culture, Vol. A, HOU, 1999). The strategic culture of a state depends on its internal structures, socio-economic organization, political regime, geography, and historical memory (Katsoulas 2017). It does not concern only the conduct of war, as it also arises from technological infrastructure and is based on political ideologies, consequently linking it to the geopolitical position of each state (Haglund 2014). These are only some of the factors influencing the decision-making process in the field of international relations. States in the international system are considered fundamentally rational actors, but it is well known that they do not all act in exactly the same way. This very differentiation is what the theory of strategic culture attempts to explain (Katsoulas 2017). Two further observations regarding strategic culture: First, the concept of culture should not be confused with that of education (paideia), as it is broader and indeed encompasses it (Paschalidis 1999). Second, culture is often confused with the concept of civilization, especially in the Greek language, since as noted it is a linguistic borrowing. It is not the purpose here to analyze the etymology of the two terms, but it suffices to mention that they are essentially complementary, as they both describe the same phenomenon: human creation in a specific era (Paschalidis 1999). Culture refers more to intangible achievements, while civilization refers to material ones (Paschalidis 1999). Finally, it is important to highlight the distinction between strategic culture and strategy so as to avoid confusion. Strategy is understood as the alignment of means and ends under the prism of an actual or potential conflict, and it presupposes the existence of at least one opponent (Koliopoulos 2008). In conclusion, the continued study of strategic culture will further contribute to understanding the role of culture in international relations (Chiselli 2018).

[2] Spoken Chinese differs considerably from region to region; however, the same is not true for the written language, since the use of ideograms rather than an alphabet rendered it uniform throughout the entire country (see Ch. Papassotiriou, China: From the Heavenly Empire to the Emerging Superpower of the 21st Century).

Before states act, they imagine who they are.

Introduction

Power is a complicated concept, expressed in different ways depending on the context. We usually discuss about military capabilities, how geography shapes policies, borders, technology and innovations, markets, treaties, and alliances. Power can sometimes be measured, and sometimes it remains more vague, symbolic, and difficult to define. Concepts such as hard power, soft power, and smart power help us describe some of its forms, but they do not exhaust its meaning. Power can also speak through buildings, paintings, novels, films, music, monuments, symbols, uniforms, ceremonies, and myths.

People, individually and collectively, express themselves reflecting the realities of their times. Thus, Art and Power, or perhaps more precisely power and imagination, are deeply connected. Before states act, they imagine what they fear, what they remember, what they have suffered, what they deserve, and what kind of future they believe belongs to them. Art is one of the places where that imagination becomes visible. Do not forget that human beings have always been storytellers. We understand the world through stories, and these stories reflect the ways we perceive the reality around us. In our stories, we preserve our ancestors, our most dramatic and epic moments, our dreams for the future, our arrogance, our fears, our triumphs, and our worst disasters. From those stories, we create art as a way to express who we are, what we believe, and what we remember.

This series will explore how power is depicted through major forms of art: architecture, painting, literature, cinema, music, monuments, and memory. Using examples from different civilizations, eras, and political contexts, Art and Power will look at the ways our stories reflect and influence our geopolitical realities. The goal is not to move away from geopolitics, but to look deeper into the human imagination behind it. Because power is never only what states possess but more importantly, what societies believe about themselves.

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Photo: UN General Assembly Hall / UN Photo

Executive Summary

The international system has entered the face of strategic competition between the great powers which is translated in structural instability. The later is characterized by declining predictability, uneven power and the progressive disbelief in the rule of law. This transformation does not constitute a stable transition toward multipolarity but instead, it reflects a condition of competitive disorder where power politics multiply and at the same time the institutional constraints lose their effect.

Regarding middle and smaller powers, this context generates asymmetric risks. The common characteristic of these aforementioned states is that they lack the capabilities to shape systemic outcomes in accordance with their interests. Consequently, they are vulnerable to shifts in global security , finance, energy, trade and technological governance. Due to their limited power, they seek to anchor their national security and prosperity in international institutions and alliances. However, in the current era of great power competition such mechanisms are not sufficient.

This report evaluates the principal risks facing small and middle powers over the 2026–2035 horizon. It draws on a realist understanding of international politics that emphasizes anarchy, survival, and power asymmetries, while integrating institutional and economic evidence from NATO, the European Union, the United States, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, SIPRI, IISS, RAND, and other authoritative sources. The analytical framework is influenced by Professor Panagiotis Ifestos’ long-standing argument that systemic anarchy never disappeared and that periods of apparent stability merely masked underlying power realities.

The core judgment of this report is that the margin for strategic error for middle and small powers is narrowing. In a system where coercion increasingly replaces persuasion, and where great powers selectively apply rules, states that fail to invest in their strategic capacity, political, military, economic, and cognitive, will experience declining autonomy and heightened exposure to external shocks.

Key findings:

• Coercive diplomacy and grey-zone pressure against middle and small powers is rising.

• The alliances are still necessary but they are becoming increasingly conditional and interest driven.

• International Institution are no longer secure protection.

• Strategic passivity has high long term risks.

The consequences of strategic inaction are real as they include a progressive loss of decision-making freedom, economic vulnerability, and increased susceptibility to security crises triggered by external actors.

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Photo: NATO Military Committee meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Credit DoD photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Dominique A. Pineiro / Public Domain

Key Takeaways

• The war in Iran has exposed a serious political split inside the Atlantic alliance regarding the limits of European support for U.S. military action outside NATO’s collective-defense framework, which can potentially damage the alliance itself (NATO 1949).

• Several European nations like France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Poland have each restricted aspects of U.S. military access linked to the conflict. This selective and uneven alliance response has led top U.S. officials to state openly that Washington will rethink its commitment to NATO.

• Recent reporting indicates that U.S. officials have discussed punitive options against allies viewed as uncooperative, including symbolic measures against Spain and a reassessment of U.S. diplomatic support for certain British interests. NATO officials have also clarified that the founding treaty has no mechanism for suspending a member state, which makes some of these options legally difficult but politically significant.

• The most important consequence is political since trust among the allies has weakened, while Washington is more willing to judge allies by their defense spending and their strategic usefulness, access, and political alignment in crisis.

• The U.S. can readjust its commitment to NATO and even create an “alliance of the willing” and the strategic useful to its core interests in a more transactional terms, relying more on flexible coalitions rather than automatic alliance solidarity (NATO 2025).

Introduction

The war against Iran has opened a new and serious fault line in transatlantic relations. The main issue is not whether NATO still exists as the central military alliance in the Euro-Atlantic space but whether Washington and key European capitals still understand alliance solidarity in the same way. Now, the answer appears to be no as NATO is facing its most severe crisis since it was founded in 1949.

Several European governments have made clear that they do not consider NATO membership an automatic obligation to facilitate a U.S.-led war outside the treaty’s collective-defense framework. That distinction is central since NATO was created to defend allied territory against external attack, not to function as a blank check for every military operation launched by one member beyond the North Atlantic area. Article 5 remains tied to collective defense, and Article 6 defines the treaty’s scope (NATO 1949; NATO 2025). Consequently, the Iran war falls outside that default logic. What has changed is that the core European allies are no longer treating this as a technical legal point but instead, they are enforcing it politically and operationally.

That is why the restrictions imposed by those allies matter. More specifically, reports suggest that Spain closed its airspace to U.S. military aircraft involved in attacks on Iran and had already refused the use of jointly operated bases for those operations. Italy denied U.S. aircraft access to Sigonella for Middle East operations without prior authorization. France also maintained restrictions on U.S. military flights and related support tied to the conflict. Germany even though allowed the use of Ramstein Air Base from the U.S. forces; it has repeatedly denied its participation in the war by rejecting calls to send its warships in the Strait of Hormuz. Additionally, Poland has rejected the informal U.S. request to send its Patriot air defense system to the Middle East. Polish officials, including the Minister of Defense, stated that the Patriot systems are crucial for protecting polish air space and the Eastern flag of NATO.

Together these decisions alongside the denial of the U.K. to enter the war in Iran indicate that Europe’s strategic priority is different from the American and the assumption that the U.S. forces have automatic access across allied territory in no longer valid. In this strategic environment, NATO is still there but it is becoming a conditional alliance in practice, a very different political climate from the one that defined earlier phases of the transatlantic relationship.

This conditional logic became clearer after many reports suggested that an internal Pentagon email outlined possible measures against NATO allies that Washington believes failed to support U.S. operations in the Iran war. The reported options included measures against Spain and a possible reassessment of U.S. diplomatic support for British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands. The key point is not that NATO can easily suspend a member state; the treaty does not provide a simple mechanism for that. The real point is political indicating that parts of the U.S. administration are now thinking about alliance discipline in punitive terms. This means that NATO membership may remain formally equal, while U.S. treatment of allies becomes increasingly unequal in practice.

The consequences for U.S.-Europe relations are already visible

To begin with, trust among allies have been damaged because several European states appear to believe that they were expected to absorb the military, political, and economic risks of a U.S.-Israeli war without meaningful prior consultation. That matters because alliances do not function only through treaty text but also through process, especially consultation before escalation. When that process weakens, support becomes conditional. In other words, for the European allies solidarity cannot be demanded especially since Washington took unilateral action without their fully support in a war that many Europeans consider reckless and strategic mistake.

Additionally, the war in Iran has reinforced European concerns about the increasingly transactional character of U.S. leadership. The clearest sign came on March 31, when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declined to clearly reaffirm America’s commitment to NATO’s collective-defense principle and said the matter was ultimately up to President Donald Trump. Even if this was intended as leverage, the message was damaging because it blurred the line between disagreement over the ongoing war in Iran and the credibility of America’s broader security guarantee to Europe. Since these issues are linked, NATO begins to look less like a strategic community and more like a conditional bargain: support Washington when asked or face the consequences later. To make matters worse, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that Washington should re-examine its security relations NATO after the war in Iran.

The American statements are particularly dangerous specifically for European states that are closest to Russia. Europe and Russia know that the value of NATO rests above all on the credibility of U.S. power. If Washington begins to imply that collective defense itself is open to political bargaining, then deterrence weakens. In this context, even if the immediate dispute is about Iran, the strategic audience includes Russia as well. That is why careless ambiguity on Article 5 has effects far beyond the Middle East (NATO 2025).

Also, the economic consequences of the war are pushing Europe toward greater caution. Recent reports suggest that the E.U. was considering reviving parts of its 2022 emergency energy toolkit because of the risk of prolonged market disruption linked to the war. This matters for transatlantic relations because it increases the domestic political cost, in Europe, of alignment with U.S. strategy. Even where direct dependence on Middle Eastern energy is lower than in previous decades, price shocks, shipping disruption, and market anxiety still hit European economies quickly. The longer that pressure continues, the harder it becomes for European governments to justify support for an open-ended conflict that they did not choose.

The result is a deeper shift in the political psychology of the alliance. Europe still depends on the U.S. for deterrence, logistics, intelligence, and high-end military capability. Nonetheless, it is increasingly unwilling to underwrite U.S. strategic decisions outside Europe without consultation, legal cover, and some sense of political control. This tension is not new, but the Iran war has exposed it more clearly than before.

Washington’s next moves

The U.S. is unlikely to totally abandon NATO even though President Trump has stated that he is considering of removing the U.S. form this “paper tiger” alliance. According to the Article 13 of NATO’s Treaty, a member state can withdraw one year after giving notice of denunciation (NATO 1949). The main obstacle however is the U.S. domestic law were the 2023-2024 FY2024 NDAA states the U.S. President cannot suspend, terminate, denounce or withdraw the U.S. from NATO unless the President has the consent of 2/3 of the Senate or an Act of Congress. In other words, the U.S. President cannot unilaterally withdraw Washington from NATO. But still the President has more room to pull the U.S. out of NATO’s integrated military structures, like France in 1966 and Greece in 1974, which is expected to have catastrophic result for the alliance’s credibility.

Let’s not forget that NATO is still one of the most efficient frameworks through which Washington projects military power in Europe and anchors deterrence against Russia. However, the U.S. might reshape the relationship with is European partners in unprecedent ways that make it harder, narrower, and more explicitly interest based. So, what we might expect next if not a total U.S. withdrawal from the alliance?

The first likely shift is toward a more demanding definition of allied reliability. European allies will increasingly be judged not only by whether they meet spending targets, but by whether they provide tangible support in a crisis: access to bases, overflight rights, logistical flexibility, and political backing when Washington sees a major strategic interest at stake.

The second shift will likely be toward more bilateral and subregional arrangements. If the Iran war has shown that alliance-wide access cannot be assumed, then Washington will seek more dependable channels with those allies that remain willing. That means stronger emphasis on countries that provide stable operational infrastructure, fewer assumptions about consensus, and a greater preference for concrete commitments over general declarations. In other words, NATO may remain the formal umbrella, but the operational core may become more selective or an “alliance withing the alliance”.

A third shift may be toward informal tiering inside NATO. This should not be presented as a formal NATO structure. There is no confirmed public document creating three official categories of allies. However, the reported U.S. discussions point toward a practical ranking of allies based on usefulness and cooperation. In this logic, the most valuable allies are those that spend more, provide access, allow overflight and basing, support U.S. operations, and align with Washington’s priorities beyond Europe. Allies that refuse access or political support may remain inside NATO, but they could face reduced trust, reduced influence, symbolic pressure, or even U.S. troop redeployments away from their territory. That is the real meaning of the reported “tiered” approach: not the legal division of NATO, but the political differentiation of allies. That said, Washington is likely to push harder on the idea that alliance solidarity must be reciprocal across theaters. This does not mean every ally will be forced to support every American involvement elsewhere, but it does mean the U.S. may increasingly link support for Europe’s security to broader expectations of European alignment. That would mark a serious change from the older transatlantic model, which often allowed a gap between U.S. military leadership and European political hesitation.

Europe’s Response

For Europe, this creates a difficult strategic reality. Many European governments want greater strategic autonomy, but autonomy requires capability. If Europe wants more freedom to say no to Washington in crises outside the NATO treaty framework, it will eventually need to carry more of the burden for security inside Europe. Otherwise, it risks falling into an unsustainable middle position: politically more distant from Washington, but militarily still dependent on it.

Spain is the clearest example of this dilemma. Madrid has tried to defend its position as a legal and political choice but not as an anti-NATO move. In this regard, the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has downplayed the dispute with Washington and emphasized that Spain remains committed to cooperation within the limits of international law. However, the reported Pentagon email suggesting possible punitive measures against Spain shows how easily European refusal can be interpreted in Washington as disloyalty rather than strategic disagreement. This is important because Spain’s position may encourage other European governments to insist on clearer legal limits before supporting future U.S.-led operations outside Europe. At the same time, it may also expose them to stronger American pressure if Washington decides to link NATO solidarity with broader political alignment.

Germany represents the other side of Europe’s response. Berlin is not simply talking about autonomy; it is trying to build the military weight that autonomy requires. On April 22, 2026, Germany unveiled a new military strategy and reaffirmed the goal of expanding the Bundeswehr to 260,000 active personnel, with a broader force target of 460,000 including 200,000 reservists. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius also repeated Germany’s ambition to become Europe’s strongest conventional military force. This matters for NATO because Germany’s military development is no longer only a national modernization project. It is becoming part of Europe’s answer to a less predictable U.S. security guarantee.

This does not mean Europe is ready to replace the U.S. because it is not. Europe still depends heavily on U.S. intelligence, logistics, airlift, missile defense, nuclear deterrence, command-and-control, and high-end military capabilities. But the direction is changing. The new NATO spending commitment adopted at The Hague in 2025, which calls for allies to reach 5% of GDP annually by 2035, including 3.5% for core defense and 1.5% for broader defense- and security-related spending, shows that European defense planning is moving into a harder phase. The political argument is now being matched, slowly and unevenly, by a capability debate.

That is why the future of NATO after the Iran war is more likely to defined by gradual hardening. The alliance will survive, but with less trust, less automatic solidarity, and more explicit bargaining. The rhetoric may still be sometimes harsh but in practice it may increasingly revolve around access, leverage, burden-sharing, and strategic usefulness.

Conclusion

Consequently, the Iran war is not expected destroy the Atlantic alliance, but it has accelerated its political transformation. Washington will not walk away from Europe, but it may decide that it can no longer treat all European allies in the same way. Europe on the other hand has realized that they are no longer prepared to equate alliance membership with automatic support for American wars and thus they need to take care their own defense. That mutual recalibration is now underway.

The future of NATO, therefore, will depend less on public declarations than on whether Washington and Europe can rebuild a working balance between leadership and consent. If the U.S. tries to remake the alliance through pressure alone, it will deepen European hedging. If Europe demands autonomy without building the military capacity to support it, its room for independent action will remain limited. The alliance will endure, but the post-Iran-war version of it is likely to be narrower, tougher, and more transactional than the one that came before.

References

NATO. 1949. The North Atlantic Treaty. Washington, DC, April 4, 1949.

NATO. 2025. The Hague Summit Declaration. June 25, 2025.

NATO. 2025a. “Collective Defense and Article 5.” Last updated November 12, 2025.

Reuters. 2026a. “Europe Pushes Back on Some U.S. Military Operations as Concerns over Iran War Mount.” March 31, 2026.

Reuters. 2026b. “Pentagon Declines to Reaffirm NATO’s Collective Defense, Says Up to Trump.” March 31, 2026.

Reuters. 2026c. “EU May Revive 2022 Energy Crisis Measures in Response to Iran War.” March 31, 2026.

United States. National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024. Public Law 118-31. 137 Stat. 136. Enacted December 22, 2023.

Photo: Map of Ukraine, with Russian-occupied regions highlighted / Open source

Introduction

The Russia–Ukraine war has entered a phase in which endurance matters more than momentum. What matters now is not only the daily movement of the front line, but which side can continue absorbing military, economic, and political pressure for longer, and under what conditions that balance may shift by 2027.

At this stage, a simple prediction is not enough. What is needed is a structured assessment of plausible futures. In this paper, I draw on the scenario-building discipline associated with RANE/Stratfor-style analysis to examine the most plausible trajectories of the war through the end of 2027. The purpose is not to claim certainty, but to identify the principal drivers of change, outline the main scenarios, and highlight the indicators that may reveal which direction the conflict is taking.

Forecast question

What are the plausible trajectories of the Russia–Ukraine war between now and the end of 2027?

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GeoSec Insights Is 11 Months Old, and I Wanted to share something personal.

I still remember when this started mostly as an idea: a small independent space where I could write seriously about power, security, strategy, and the forces shaping the world. I did not know exactly how far it would go. The only thing I knew was that I wanted to build something with discipline, honesty, and a clear voice.

Eleven months later, GeoSec has become more real than I expected. More than 2,100 people have subscribed, more than 3,200 follow the platform, and readers now come from 118 countries. For an independent project-built step by step, this means a lot.

But numbers are not the whole story.

What matters more to me is that GeoSec has slowly become a place where I can bring together the things I care about: geopolitics, history, strategy, writing, and the deeper question of how power works in human life.

In one month, on June 19, GeoSec Insights will reach its first anniversary. To mark that moment, I will launch a new paid essay series:

Art & Power: Culture, Empire, and the Geopolitical Imagination

This series is personal to me. Before I studied international relations and political science, I studied culture. Art, literature, architecture, cinema, monuments, memory, these were never separate from politics in my mind. They were another way of understanding how societies imagine themselves, how states tell stories about power, and how empires try to make their authority feel natural, beautiful, eternal, or unavoidable.

With Art & Power, I want to open a more reflective space inside GeoSec.

The series will look at power not only through wars, borders, institutions, alliances, and strategy, but also through stone, images, stories, music, symbols, fear, ambition, beauty, and memory.

GeoSec will continue to publish geopolitical analysis, policy briefs, scenario assessments, and strategic forecasts. That remains the core of the platform. But as GeoSec enters its second year, I also want it to grow in a way that feels true to me.

In the coming weeks, I will share more details about the structure of the series and the essays that will follow. For now, I simply wanted to introduce the idea behind it and explain why it matters to me.

Thank you for being here during these first 11 months. Whether you have been reading from the beginning or only recently joined, your presence matters.

The first year is almost here.

And something new is coming.

Photo: National Institutes of Health (NIH), public domain

Scientific power does not collapse overnight, but once its foundations begin to weaken, the strategic consequences can last for decades

Key Takeaways

• Scientific research is a crucial but rather underexamined domain of the Great Power competition with long-term implications.

• The American scientific dominance has been declining because of closing openness and political interference in research institutions.

• China is on a state-driven research strategy which links science, industrial policy, and talent development.

• Historical precedents suggest that scientific leadership shifts over time and usually precedes wider geopolitical change.

• If the current trends continue, scientific research in global level can move from the West to a multipolar of Beijing driven context, reducing Washington’s influence over talent and innovation.

Issue Overview

Great Power competition is usually assessed through hard and soft power indicators such as military capabilities, economic scale, technological deployment, and political influence. At the same time, far less attention is paid to scientific research itself, even though it underpins all of these domains. For most of the 20th century, the United States was the world’s dominant scientific power. As the world’s science powerhouse, American universities attracted global talent, federal agencies funded long-term basic research, and an open academic culture produced breakthroughs ranging from the internet to modern biotechnology.

However, that position is now under strain. A growing body of evidence suggests that the U.S. research ecosystem is weakening because of internal policy choices, while China is expanding its scientific capacity through sustained investment and strategic coordination. This shift is gradual rather than sudden, but its implications are structural. Scientific leadership shapes who control knowledge flows, sets technical standards, and hosts future innovation clusters.

This policy brief examines the erosion of America’s scientific edge, China’s parallel rise, and the historical and strategic meaning of this transition, as from laboratories to lecture halls, the balance of global brainpower is shifting and the competition between great powers may take a different turn. This is undoubtedly a crucial indication for the future of global affairs. The historical paradigm is clear, even though history does not repeat itself: before World War I, the shift of power between the British Empire and the rising German state could already be seen in scientific research, as German institutions had begun to surpass the world-famous British ones.

Analysis. The Erosion of U.S. Scientific Dominance

Ross Andersen, in the article Every Scientific Empire Comes to an End[1], warns that American dominance in science and technology is entering a period of decline, fundamentally driven by self-inflicted policy decisions (Andersen 2025). He draws comparisons with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, arguing that political and ideological interference, budgetary pressure, institutional disruption, and immigration barriers can cause damage even to the most advanced research systems. Andersen suggests that these developments are pushing top scientists out of the country and weakening the backbone of scientific research. With more science shifting toward short-term, privately funded projects, the U.S. risks losing a generation of open, long-range inquiry, and with it, the edge that’s kept America ahead.

Some of these dynamics are already visible. Federal support remains a central pillar of the American research system, especially in higher education. In 2023, the federal government funded 55 percent of academic R&D expenditures, while 63 percent of academic R&D was devoted to basic research rather than near-market development (NCSES 2025a). This matters because universities and publicly supported research environments still provide much of the institutional space for long-range inquiry that is less likely to be sustained by commercial logic alone. At the same time, the broader U.S. R&D system is increasingly dominated by the private sector. Total U.S. R&D reached $937 billion in 2023, and a large share of that activity was concentrated in business-led research and especially experimental development rather than basic science (NCSES 2026; NCSES 2025b). The issue, therefore, is not that private capital has no role in scientific innovation. It is that private investment does not replace the public and academic base on which foundational research has historically depended (NCSES 2025a; NCSES 2026).

The international talent dimension is equally important. U.S. scientific leadership has relied for decades on the ability to attract foreign students, researchers, and faculty, particularly at the graduate level. That dependence remains substantial. In 2023, foreign-born workers accounted for 22 percent of the U.S. STEM workforce, and the United States still hosted the largest number of internationally mobile students in the world, even though its global share has declined since 2017 (NSB 2026). More importantly, the latest enrollment signals point to growing pressure on that pipeline. Open Doors 2025 reported that the United States hosted 1,177,766 international students in the 2024/25 academic year, but it also recorded a 7 percent drop in new international enrollments and a 3 percent decline in international graduate enrollment. The Fall 2025 Snapshot then showed a further 1 percent decline in total international enrollment, a 12 percent drop in graduate enrollment, and a 17 percent decline in new international student enrollment (IIE 2025a; IIE 2025b). For a research system that depends heavily on internationally mobile graduate talent, these are not marginal shifts. They point to a weakening inflow at exactly the stage most closely linked to the future research workforce.

Visa policy has become part of that problem. In March 2026, NAFSA reported that F-1 visa issuance during May through August 2025 was 36 percent lower than in the same period a year earlier (NAFSA 2026). That figure should be treated carefully, since visa issuance does not translate automatically into final enrollment totals. Still, the broader signal is difficult to ignore. When the United States becomes more restrictive, less predictable, or more administratively burdensome for foreign students and scholars, it weakens one of the key advantages that long sustained its scientific leadership. In a more competitive global environment, scientific prestige is no longer enough by itself. It must be reinforced by policy coherence and institutional predictability (NAFSA 2026; NSB 2026).

Last, Washington intervention in prestige American institutions regarding their governance, redirection of their scientific research topics and their ideological realignment, will further erode stability (Andersen 2025). The actual power of the American scientific system is based historically on a combination of federal support, university autonomy, openness to global talent, and a decentralized research culture capable of sustaining inquiry across fields without constant political realignment. Once that balance begins to weaken, the damage is rarely immediate, but it is cumulative. The deeper risk for the United States is not simply fewer discoveries in the short term. It is the erosion of the institutional foundations that made American scientific dominance possible in the first place (Andersen 2025).

China’s Rising Scientific Capacity. Shifting Patterns of Scientific Collaboration

At the same time, China is moving in the opposite direction. Its rise is not limited to industrial output. It is increasingly visible in science itself. Research on global chemical space shows that China has driven much of its expansion since 2013, while the U.S. position has stagnated in several areas. Chinese universities have also strengthened their global standing. In the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2026, Tsinghua University ranked 12th and Peking University 13th, confirming that elite Chinese institutions are now central actors in the global research landscape (Bermúdez-Montaña et al. 2025; Times Higher Education 2025).

The same pattern is now visible in scientific collaboration. China is not simply publishing more. It is also becoming more influential inside international research networks. Recent studies show that Chinese scholars have sharply reduced the leadership gap with the United States in collaborative scientific teams, and some projections suggest parity in bilateral leadership roles by 2027–2028 (Wu, Esposito, and Evans 2025). Meanwhile, U.S.–China scientific collaboration is no longer moving on the path of convergence that defined earlier decades. Since around 2018–2019, the two sides have started to diverge, with collaboration shrinking and knowledge flows gradually realigning (Kitajima and Okamura 2025). This points to something deeper than a temporary fluctuation. China is consolidating both its domestic scientific base and its international influence, while the United States risks losing ground in one of the most important arenas of long-term competition.

The History Parallels. Germany Before World War I

Historical precedent highlights the significance of these trends. At the turn of the 20th century, Imperial Germany became the global leader of science as it dominated in fields like physical chemistry, theoretical physics, and Nobel‑winning research. German institutions attracted top global talent until political upheaval and Nazi interference dismantled that system, forcing scientists like Einstein, von Neumann, Fermi to emigrate to the U.S. This transfer of scientific capital boosted the Americans’ rise as the world’s top scientific power.

Nowadays is obvious that the U.S. is facing a different political context but a comparable dynamic as self-imposed restrictions risk driving scientific capital abroad. China today has positioned itself to attract that scientific capital just as Washington did almost 100 years ago.

Structural Trends and Quantitative Signals

Long-term analyses reinforce the possibility of a systemic shift. Academic M. Yuasa suggested that centers of scientific excellence shift every 80–100 years, moving historically from Italy to Britain, France, Germany, and eventually the U.S. This pattern suggests that a natural cycle now shifting toward China which reflects a structural cycle and not a sudden failure.

At the same time, macro-level studies warn that scientific disruption, truly breakthrough innovation, is slowing globally, even in high-output systems. An analysis of millions of papers and patents shows a persistent decline in “disruptive” innovation, raising concerns about scientific vitality in general, even in the U.S (Park, Leahey & Funk 2021). This suggests that institutional resilience is more important than ever before. In the context where breakthroughs are more difficult to generate, systems that sustain the attraction of top global talent gain significant strategic advantage.

Erosion at the Base: U.S. Education and the Research Pipeline

The weakening of U.S. scientific capacity does not begin at the level of elite laboratories or federal research agencies. It starts much earlier, in the education pipeline itself. Recent results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that American students are reaching the end of secondary education with weaker core skills than in previous years. In 2024, average twelfth-grade scores in both mathematics and reading fell by three points compared with 2019, and the average scores in both subjects were the lowest ever recorded for those assessments. Only 24 percent of twelfth graders performed at or above NAEP Proficient in mathematics, while 37 percent did so in reading (NAEP 2024). These outcomes matter well beyond K–12 education because they shape the entry quality into higher education especially in STEM. There, the weak preparation in mathematics continues to narrow the pool of students able to persist in demanding programs. Thus, the major issue is not merely access to college, but the academic readiness required to move through it successfully.

International data reinforces this concern, though they also require precision. In PISA 2022, the United States scored 465 in mathematics, below the OECD average of 472, while scoring 504 in reading and 499 in science, both above OECD averages. Even so, U.S. performance in mathematics remained well behind the strongest systems, particularly in East Asia and several European cases, and was lower than its own 2018 level (OECD 2023). The broader strategic issue is that the United States still possesses world-class universities and research institutions, but its domestic talent pipeline is under growing strain. That weakness increases the importance of foreign-born talent at precisely the moment when the country’s STEM system remains deeply dependent on it: according to the National Science Board, foreign-born workers accounted for 22 percent of the U.S. STEM workforce in 2023, and earlier NSF reporting showed they made up 43 percent of doctorate-level scientists and engineers. At the same time, STEM persistence remains uneven. As of 2021, only 55 percent of students who entered postsecondary education with a declared STEM major had completed a STEM credential, while 29 percent had left college without any degree. The result is a structural problem rather than a temporary fluctuation: weaker preparation at the school level constrains the production of homegrown researchers, while continued dependence on internationally mobile talent leaves the system more exposed to policy shocks, visa uncertainty, and geopolitical competition over highly skilled labor.

Policy Options

In this context, policy makers face several policy options:

1. Stabilization and potential expansion of federal funding for basic research insulated from short-term political cycles.

2. Make America attractive again to global scientific talent by easing visa restrictions and reducing surveillance-driven deterrence.

3. Protection of institutional autonomy which includes both institutions and research facilities/agencies.

4. Rebalancing collaboration controls to manage security risks without eliminating scientific exchange.

Other Recommendations

• Scientific research should be treated as strategic asset, not as discretionary spending.

• National Security enforcement should be separated from broad academic oversight.

• Prioritization of long-term research capacity.

• Tracking scientific indicators as defense and economic metrics.

• Targeted reinvestment in pre-college education (especially on fields like STEM) should become a top federal educational priority.

Conclusion. Toward a Multipolar Scientific Order?

In conclusion, if these trends persist in the future, global science will probably shift from the American dominance toward a more multipolar system in which China will have a central role. This could mark a structural shift as scientific leadership changes slowly, but once momentum is lost, it is difficult to recover.

America’s rise as the world’s leading scientific power that was based on a specific model: sustained federal investment in basic research, institutional autonomy for universities, and an unusually open system for attracting global talent. For much of the postwar period, this model worked remarkably well, and the U.S. unquestionably dominated high-impact research output, hosted the majority of top-ranked universities, and absorbed scientific talent displaced by political instability elsewhere.

However, these foundations are now weakening. Federal research funding as a share of GDP has declined steadily since its Cold War peak, and real growth in basic research budgets has failed to keep pace with system-wide expansion. In this regard, American institutions still produce world-class research, but their relative position is shifting as other institutions, notably Chinese, are rising fast in respected global rankings and publication volume. At the same time, immigration restrictions have reduced the U.S. attractiveness to global talent especially regarding early-career scientists.

China on the other hand is committed to long-term, state-backed investments in engineering and science. Thus, China is linking fundamental research with applied development under a broader industrial strategy. Nowadays, Chinese institutions graduate more STEM PhDs annually than the American institutions while China is leading globally in total scientific publications with increasingly citation impact. Also, the return of Chinese-trained scientists has accelerated, reversing decades of one-way talent flow.

Scientific leadership cannot be translated into geopolitical dominance overnight. However, in time it can significantly reshape industrial competitiveness, military capability and normative influence over global standards and knowledge production. If history follows its near-cyclical rhythms, the U.S. may already be past the apex of its scientific dominance. China’s ascent, by contrast, is still unfolding, driven less by momentary advantage than by sustained policy choice.

The outcome is not predetermined but absent deliberate efforts to restore funding stability, talent openness, and institutional autonomy, the balance of global scientific power is likely to continue shifting. The consequences of that shift will be felt well beyond laboratories and institutions.

References

Andersen, Ross. “Every Scientific Empire Comes to an End: America’s Run as the Premier Techno-Superpower May Be Over.” The Atlantic, July 31, 2025.

Bermúdez-Montaña, Marisol, et al. “China’s Rise in the Chemical Space and the Decline of US Influence.” ChemRxiv, January 27, 2025.

Institute of International Education (IIE). 2025a. Open Doors 2025 Report on International Educational Exchange. New York: IIE.

Institute of International Education (IIE). 2025b. Fall 2025 Snapshot on International Student Enrollment: Key Findings. New York: IIE, November 2025.

Kitajima, Kensei, and Keisuke Okamura. “The Altering Landscape of US–China Science Collaboration: From Convergence to Divergence.” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 12 (2025).

NAFSA: Association of International Educators. 2026. “NAFSA Responds to Decline in F-1 Visa Issuance in Summer 2025.” March 2026.

National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). 2024. Declines in 12th-Grade Mathematics and Reading Continue. National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education.

National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES). 2025a. “Funding Sources of Academic R&D.” National Science Board, Science and Engineering Indicators 2026. Alexandria, VA: National Science Foundation.

National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES). 2025b. National Patterns of R&D Resources, 2023–24: Data Update. Alexandria, VA: National Science Foundation.

National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES). 2026. “U.S. R&D Totaled $937 Billion in 2023.” National Science Foundation, February 27, 2026.

National Science Board (NSB). 2026. The State of U.S. Science and Engineering 2026. Alexandria, VA: National Science Foundation.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 2023. PISA 2022 Results: The State of Learning and Equity in Education. Paris: OECD Publishing.

Park, Michael, Erin Leahey, and Russell Funk. “The Decline of Disruptive Science and Technology.” Nature 613 (2023): 138–144.

Times Higher Education. 2025. World University Rankings 2026. London: Times Higher Education.

Wu, Renli, Christopher Esposito, and James A. Evans. “Shifting Power Asymmetries in Scientific Teams Reveal China’s Rising Leadership in Global Science.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122, no. 43 (2025).

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2025/07/science-empire-america-decline/683711/

Photo: President Trump / Official White House Photo

I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that ‘for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism... he’s got his hand on the nuclear button and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in for it.

President Nixon

Executive Summary

Donald Trump’s recent rhetoric toward Iran has revived an old strategic debate in a much sharper form than the U.S.-China trade war ever did. His April 7, 2026, warning that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran did not make a deal, was definitely not routine diplomatic language. It was deliberately framed in a maximalist way to underline the fact that the U.S., under his presidency, might be willing to go further than any other leader would openly dare to. This matters as it fits to the logic behind the Madman Theory1 which suggests that a leader can gain leverage by convincing the opponents that he/she might be less predictable and thus more willing to escalate unexpectantly (Reuters 2026a).

In this paper we argue that President Trump’s current rhetoric offers a stronger case for the Madman Theory than the older tariff-war example. The trade war showed a preference for disruption, abrupt pressure, and strategic uncertainty. But the current Iran war moved that style into a far more dangerous setting, where the language of coercion was no longer about tariffs, market pressure, or negotiation tactics, but about civilizational destruction. That shift matters analytically because it shows the same strategic instinct operating at a much higher level of risk (Reuters 2026a; Reuters 2026b).

At the same time, the very rhetoric that may create short-term fear abroad also creates new political costs at home. Trump’s opponents have again turned to the language of presidential incapacity and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, not because removal is realistically within reach, but because his recent statements have reopened the debate over whether his conduct reflects strategic calculation or dangerous unfitness for office. Reuters reported on April 10 that Representative Jamie Raskin plans to reintroduce legislation for a presidential-capacity commission, while a separate Reuters explainer noted that some Democrats are again discussing whether Trump is fit to discharge the duties of office. Yet the constitutional threshold remains extremely high, and Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment has never been used to remove a president involuntarily (Reuters 2026c; Reuters 2026d; Congress.gov 2026).

The central conclusion is straightforward. President Trump’s recent rhetoric does resemble the Madman Theory. It may still generate tactical leverage by creating fear and compressing the opponent’s decision-making space. However, the constant use of this strategy bears significant costs, which we have witnessed so far, as it damages credibility, strengthens domestic opposition, unsettle close allies and finally makes even harder to recognize deliberate coercion from impulsive escalation. In this regard, what starts as a strategic unpredictability can become a strategic overextension.

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Photo: Munich Security Conference 2026/ Public domain

The war unfolding around Iran is not only a regional escalation; it is occurring at a moment when the foundations of the post-1945 international order are already under strain. The international system built on multilateral institutions, democratic alignment and open trade has been challenged by the raise of powers that favor disruption over reform. As the Munich Security Report 2026 suggests, global affairs are entering an era of wrecking ball politics, where demolition is the first choice. In this context, the Iran war underscores not only a regional instability but mostly the broader transition towards a more fragmented international system where power prevails over rules.

Key Takeaways

• The post 1945 world order is undergoing active dismantling which is driven by political forces which favor disruption than reform. This period is characterized as wrecking ball politics, which is described in the Munich Security Report 2026, where demolition and rupture have replaced renovation and incremental adjustment.

• The U.S. as the fundamental architect and guarantor of the post-war international order, is now shifting away from multilateralism, open trade and liberal democratic norms. This recalibration is deep as it questions the foundational logic that international institutions, rules, and alliances enhance rather than constrain national power.

• Due to this strategic uncertainty, Europe and the Indo-Pacific states are forced in strategic adjusting through defense acceleration, hedging behavior, and new trade alignments.

• Global trade fragmentation is increasing; however, liberal economic cooperation has not yet collapsed. Instead, it has been re-networked outside traditional U.S. leadership structures, often through regional or multilateral frameworks anchored in WTO law even as enforcement mechanisms weaken.

• The emerging system favors leverage over law. However, without material backing the rules are eroding. Thus, the defining question for 2026 is whether rule-invested actors can convert commitment into capability before erosion becomes normalization.

Issue Overview

The Munich Security Report of 2026 argues that the international system is currently under destruction. This argument highlights the current structural shift is about how political authority is exercised both internationally and domestically. In this context, political actors are increasingly promoting demolition instead of reform which is considered progressively insufficient.

That said, across the Western world, institutional reform has lost its political credibility. Survey data from the Munich Security Index indicates that in the G7 states, only small minorities believe that current government policies will eventually leave the next generation in better position than today. At the same time, the majority of the surveyed expect significant decline. This loss of faith reflects skepticism that democratic systems can deliver meaningful course correction.

The current political situation has produced leaders who are in favor of destruction as a necessity rather than risk. Furthermore, institutional constraints are portrayed as bureaucratic stagnation while multilateral commitments are described as sovereignty dilution. International rules are reframed as optional instruments rather than binding frameworks. Thus, the most important development is that this governing logic has extended to the international order itself.

For approximately 80 years, the postwar system rested on three interlocking assumptions:

1. Multilateral institutions and international law secure stability.

2. Open trade and economic interdependence support prosperity and reduce conflict.

3. Democratic solidarity strengthens collective security.

Munich 2026 claims that these pillars of the postwar international order are not facing episodic disagreements but structural strain. The current transition concerns contestation over the framework itself.

Evidence & Analysis

Multilateralism and International Law. From Constraint to Optionality

The report refers to a clear shift regarding Washington’s posture towards international institutions. Withdrawals from key organizations and agreements, significant reduction of funding, and intense skepticism regarding global governance structures marks a redefinition of national interest. The U.S. National Security Strategy 2025 emphasizes the primacy of nations while it criticizes the sovereignty-sapping international organizations.

Also important is the normative shift as previous U.S. administrations justified deviations from the International Law via legal reasoning. However, the current U.S. administration has been direct as international norms and rules are not inherently binding in case they conflict with the express American strategic priorities. The risk is a potential normalization of rule-optional behavior. Once great powers detach rhetorical commitment from legal constraint, medium or even smaller powers reassess their own incentives to comply. This does not immediately collapse the system, but it will weaken predictability, which is the cornerstone of order.

Open Trade. Fragmentation Without Systemic Breakdown

Trade policies have become an instrument of leverage-based bargaining rather than a domain of predictable liberalization. The report underlines the imposition of broad tariffs and increasing reliance on economic coercion to secure bilateral concessions. At the same time, Beijing continues market-distorting practices and strategic control over key supply chains chokepoints.

The system is therefore pressured from both ends, yet fragmentation does not equal collapse. The data suggests that a surge in new and revived trade negotiations outside direct US leadership as governments are doubling down on trade agreements anchored in WTO principles even as enforcement mechanisms weaken.

This is a critical nuance as the liberal trade architecture has been redistributed across regional and plurilateral networks. WTO principles still anchor many agreements even as dispute settlement mechanisms are significantly weakened.

The implication is structural diversification rather than systemic implosion. Liberal economic order persists, but leadership is decentralized. Fragmentation increases complexity and reduces uniformity, yet it also reduces systemic dependency on a single hegemon.

Democratic Solidarity. The West as Geography, Not Norm

Public opinion data in NATO member states indicate that majorities perceive the West as less united than a decade ago. This perception reflects an ideological divergence. Rhetorical friction between the U.S. and the European allies has sharpened. European governments have expressed concern about disregarding established rules and partnerships.

At the same time, softer rhetoric toward authoritarian leaders alters alliance psychology. The cohesion of the transatlantic relationship historically rested on shared normative framing. When that relationship becomes contested, alignment shifts from identity-based alignment to interest-based calculation. It does not mean that NATO dissolves under such circumstances, however, its cooperation basis becomes transactional. This distinction is important as identity creates automatic alignment while transactional alignment requires continuous renegotiation.

Europe. Acceleration Through Uncertainty

The Europeans are facing a dual dynamic as the ongoing Russian military pressure and the fluctuating of the American strategic signaling. Especially, Washington’s approach is perceived as oscillating between reassurance, conditionality, and coercion.

This combination has resulted in accelerating defense spending commitments and renewed emphasis on capability building which Europe obviously lacks. NATO’s agreement on higher spending targets (5% of GDP) highlights that adaptation is under pressure. Yet capability gap between the U.S. and Europeans remain significant especially in high-end military assets and strategic enablers.

In this strategic environment, the European leaders are not necessarily seeking strategic independence for ideological reasons, but they are trying to adjust to the new realities. Strategic autonomy, once aspirational, now appears as risk mitigation. This shift is gradual but real. Capability accumulation takes time while political will, withing the EU, is still uneven. Nonetheless, the trajectory is moving toward partial decoupling of security dependence.

Indo-Pacific. Hedging as Strategy

Regarding the Indo-Pacific region, the strategic uncertainty leads to hedging rather than that alignment. Regional actors have significantly increased defense budgets while they deepen security cooperation while they maintain a pragmatic approach to China as far as the economic ties are concerned.

In contrast to Europe, institutional fallback mechanisms are limited while the region also lacks the presence of a NATO-like guaranteed structure. This lack of collective defense mechanism boosts strategic ambiguity.

The regional pattern is layered balancing:

• Strengthening bilateral defense cooperation.

• Avoid full strategic alignment.

• Preserve economic flexibility.

Development and Humanitarian Strain

Even before current disruptions, the world was off track on all 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Funding retrenchment deepens structural gaps. Reform conversations focus on efficiency and survival rather than expansion. Humanitarian architecture operates under financial compression. The long-term consequence is increased vulnerability in low- and middle-income states. While not immediately destabilizing at a systemic level, accumulated fragility can produce second-order geopolitical effects over time.

Risk Perception. Psychological Decentering of the United States

The Munich Security Index highlights a significant shift as in most of the surveyed states, the perceived risk related to the U.S. has increased. Moreover, less than 50% of the responders claim that Washington’s leadership is necessary for solving major global challenges like financial stability, conflict resolution and climate change. In other words, the U.S. remains powerful and important global actor however, its perception as indispensable is declining which indicates a broader strategic shift.

Policy Options

The report underscores the pressure and the responses which are already underway. That said, several options are available for states that still prefer a ruled-based international order.

Option 1. Secure Crucial International Institutions through Coalitions

As we have noticed, the international consensus is significantly declining, thus smaller coalitions can preserve international cooperation in areas like trade and security. These forms of international cooperation can be deepened among like-minded actors. This development can preserve operability but not replace universalism.

Option 2. Invest in Material Capability

Normative commitments are insufficient without actual capability. Defense modernization, technological competitiveness, and supply-chain resilience are foundational to preserving leverage within a power-first environment. Institutions require backing power.

Option 3. Reform to Restore Credibility

Public skepticism toward democratic governance is a driver of demolition politics. The address of institutional performance, governance inefficiency, economic stagnation, and inequality, is fundamental in international order preservation because external stability rests on internal legitimacy.

Option 4. Diversify Strategic Partnerships

States can reduce their overdependence on specific actors by widening their economic and diplomatic relations. This can reduce their vulnerability to abrupt policy shifts by great powers as diversification is actually risk management.

Recommendations

1. Shift from reactive to anticipatory strategy. Preparation for volatility/uncertainty rather than assuming restoration of past stability.

2. Prioritization capability accumulation over rhetorical defense of norms. Norms without enforcement weaken quickly.

3. Strengthen regional frameworks as buffers. Regional resilience can compensate for global fragmentation.

4. Link domestic reform to foreign policy credibility. Internal governance performance affects external leverage.

Conclusion

Munich 2026 captures the ongoing structural transition of the international system. The latter is not collapsing but it is shifting from rules-first system toward power-first. This shift is driven by domestic political frustration, recalibrated great-power strategy, and growing skepticism toward institutional efficacy. In this context, fragmentation is increasing, however, global order has not yet been dissolved. Slowly but steadily trade networks are adapting while regional coalitions are forming. Additionally, due to the uncertainty, investments in defense have dramatically raised.

The decisive variable is whether actors committed to rule-based stability convert commitment into capability. If they do, the system evolves into a hybrid structure: less universal, more regional, but still governed by predictable frameworks in key domains. If they do not, leverage will define outcomes more than law. The transition is underway while the question is who adapts first, and who adapts effectively. Munich 2026 does not predict collapse but instead it diagnoses inflection. That distinction matters.

References

https://securityconference.org/en/publications/munich-security-report/2026/

Photo: Radar installation at Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland. Source: U.S. Space Force / Department of Defense, Public Domain

Greenland is no longer a remote Arctic outpost; it is becoming a quiet stress test for NATO itself. As climate change accelerates access, U.S. homeland-defense priorities increasingly shape Arctic decision-making, and European allies struggle to match strategic responsibility with capability, Greenland sits at the intersection of alliance cohesion, deterrence credibility, and great-power competition. This February 2026 risk report examines why the real danger is not an Arctic war, but a gradual erosion of collective defense through unilateralism, gray-zone pressure, and institutional lag. For policymakers, defense planners, and strategic investors, this analysis explains what is already shifting beneath the surface, and what to watch next.

Introduction: Greenland’s Return to Power Politics

Once dismissed as a frozen outpost on the edge of the world, Greenland is suddenly burning hot in the great game of global power. Its ice, its location, and its resources have transformed the island into one of the most strategically sensitive territories in the Arctic system. What was long treated as geopolitical background noise has become a central variable in great-power competition and alliance politics.

Greenland constitutes an Arctic island state belonging to the Kingdom of Denmark while enjoying extensive self-government, including its own parliament and executive authority. Its population, estimated at approximately 56,000 inhabitants in 2020, is concentrated primarily along the western coastline, with around 12,000 residents in Nuuk, the capital. Geographically located in North America and bordering the Arctic Ocean, Greenland is defined by its environment: roughly 81 percent of its surface is permanently covered by ice.

Until recently, the island concerned the international public primarily as a travel destination or for environmental reasons since, due to its geographic position, it serves as an excellent indicator of climate change. The global temperature rise causes ice melting, resulting in a chain of negative environmental impacts across the planet. The deep concern of scientists, NGOs, and global public opinion about the climate is not shared by several governments and companies, as the melting of Arctic ice creates opportunities both in trade and in energy, as we will see below. Due to its location, Greenland is part of the geopolitical system of the Arctic, which has recently attracted the interest of the Great Powers.

For a number of governments and corporations, the retreat of Arctic ice created opportunity rather than alarm. New shipping routes, access to fossil fuels, and the prospect of rare earth extraction reframed the Arctic as a frontier of economic and strategic competition. Greenland, by virtue of its geography, was pulled into this shift whether it sought it or not.

Today, Greenland is no longer merely part of the Arctic system. It is becoming one of its key pressure points. That development has direct consequences for NATO, an alliance that has long benefited from Arctic stability without ever fully governing it.

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Photo: Aerial view of an LNG terminal with storage tanks and a docked LNG carrier/ Open Source

Europe did not only replaced Russian gas oil with LNG but it actually rewired its whole energy security architecture. Thus, what has emerged since 2022 is not just autonomy but rather a new system of managed interdependence shaped by long term infrastructure commitments, maritime chokepoints and the global markets. LNG has stabilized Europe in crisis but it has introduced new strategic exposures like the dependence on sea routes, Washington’s export capacity and the regulatory execution speed within Europe.

The real question regarding European security is no longer supply sufficiency but whether this LNG based system strengthens resilience or forces Europe into a new set of geopolitical constraints.

Energy security is not only about supply volumes, but about power, structure and control. The abrupt reduction of Russian flows exposed the extent to which European energy security relied on single-direction pipeline systems and demonstrated how infrastructure can function as a geopolitical instrument. Europe’s response was immediate: diversification of suppliers, rapid LNG deployment, new terminals, new transmission routes. Systemic disruption was avoided. However, replacing pipeline gas with LNG does not automatically produce autonomy. What has emerged is a new energy geometry shaped by global markets, maritime corridors, multiple exporting states and reconfigured internal transmission systems. The central question is not whether LNG replaced Russian gas but the strategic system Europe has constructed in its place.

Managed interdependence

European energy security underwent a structural shock during 2022–2023. Until then, Russian pipeline gas had accounted for roughly 40% of EU imports. Supply reductions exposed the vulnerability of natural gas pipelines as a single-direction system. LNG operates under a different structural logic.

Pipeline networks are geographically fixed and dependent on bilateral routes. LNG is mobile while its pricing is linked to future markets, between domestic gas costs and international availability and broader supply and demand.

In structural terms, LNG transforms gas from a route-bound commodity into a globally traded energy system. However, LNG flexibility does not eliminate exposure. Key maritime ports such as Suez and Bab el-Mandeb become critical since LNG requires operationally uninterrupted sea transport, or deliveries to Europe can be delayed within days.

Europe moved from reliance on a single dominant supplier to managed interdependence across multiple exporters, including the United States, Qatar, Algeria and intermittently Nigeria. A significant portion of European gas consumption now depends on US liquefaction capacity.

Although exports operate within market logic, they remain embedded in domestic regulatory and political frameworks. Upstream production decisions and export policies therefore influence European supply balance. Energy security is defined by system architecture and exposure management.

LNG: stabilizer or transitional layer

The European Commission’s REPowerEU initiative accelerated LNG infrastructure expansion, including Floating Storage and Regasification Units (FSRUs), to increase import capacity. Storage policy shifted from commercial optimization to strategic buffering.

In the short term, LNG strengthened energy systems security by offering high storage levels, additional import capacity, and diversified supply contracts which boost operational flexibility.

LNG infrastructure requires large-scale capital expenditure and operates over several decades not only in terms of payoff but also of contracts that further influence the long-term role of gas under transition policy regulations. A broader mix of contracts reduces the risk that a disruption from one supplier would trigger immediate shortages. Investment decisions under crisis can determine long-term system configuration, creating inconsistencies between supply security and energy security, the latter of which passes through sustainability in the case of the EU.

LNG acts as a bridge fuel with geopolitical significance and system-level implications for infrastructure alignment, sustainability targets that refer not only to climate but also to resilience, and long-term energy system design. The duration of LNG’s role depends on structural substitution pathways.

European policy implications

Diversification must be embedded in system design. Procurement should avoid overconcentration on any single exporter, because resilience depends on distributed supply rather than substituting one dependency with another.

Infrastructure resilience is equally strategic. LNG terminals, pipelines, and control systems require physical and cyber protection within EU security planning. System reliability depends not only on volumes, but on continuous operability. Maritime access remains a technical prerequisite for LNG supply stability. Secure sea lanes therefore link energy security directly to naval presence and diplomatic capacity.

Contract arrangements must support decarbonization pathways. Since LNG infrastructure operates over decades, flexibility is necessary to avoid locking the system into volumes that may exceed future demand.

Regional hubs can strengthen redistribution capacity beyond LNG. Greece, positioned between LNG and future energy entry points and Southeast European transmission networks, facilitates northbound reallocation during supply stress and enhances cross-border stability.

Even if LNG demand declines over time, the need for flexible cross-border flow remains. Integrating energy hubs into a coordinated EU structure strengthens internal system balance and joint negotiating capacity, ensuring that LNG, while transitional, is used efficiently and consistently across the Union.

EU innovation and structural exit

While LNG remains essential for European security of supply, the EU has developed a policy architecture that aims to fundamentally reduce gas dependence through demand reduction, diversification, and accelerated deployment of low-carbon energy systems. REPowerEU placed storage as a strategic buffer rather than an optimisation tool. Currently, innovation is treated not only as technological breakthroughs but also as implementation at scale: ensuring demand flexibility, electrifying technically viable sectors, expanding renewable power generation, utilising advanced biofuels, and developing hydrogen production and transport infrastructure to substitute natural gas in industry and heavy transport.

The key constraint in the adoption of new energy technologies is implementation that can accelerate uptake. Permitting procedures, grid expansion, hydrogen backbone development, and industrial transformation timelines remain underlying bottlenecks. In several member states, renewable and grid approvals still require years. Hydrogen projects face infrastructure gaps, fragmented frameworks, and delayed decisions, as in the implementation of REDIII (Renewable Energy Directive III). Biofuel scale-up depends on feedstock consistency and enhanced conversion technologies. Without regulatory speed in authorising innovative technologies for market reach, well-planned and coordinated infrastructure, especially across borders, and matched industrial acceptance, natural gas and consequently LNG substitution cannot scale at the necessary pace. Otherwise, LNG remains systemically relevant regardless of strategic objectives.

The EU possesses substantial instruments, including Horizon Europe and industrial frameworks supporting net-zero manufacturing. Still, a translation gap persists between research participation and deployment at industrial scale, not due to patent filing or research output, but due to the shift from intellectual property to physical implementation. Moving from IP to permitting, financing, integration, and industrial deployment involves time lags, bureaucracy, and regulatory requirements. Administrative complexity, fragmented markets, infrastructure constraints, and slow financing approvals delay implementation and slow system transformation.

Bureaucracy thus becomes a geopolitical variable. Slow delivery prolongs reliance on gas and LNG. The constraint to the EU’s energy security is not technological capability, but execution speed, infrastructure alignment, and institutional coordination and effectiveness.

Author Bio

*Dr. Panagiota Pimenidou is a Chemical Engineer with a PhD in hydrogen production from the University of Leeds and extensive academic experience in the UK and Greece. She has held academic posts at Ulster University and the University of Bradford and currently contributes to EU-funded research projects on sustainable fuels and advanced materials. Her research focuses on low-carbon fuels, hydrogen technologies, catalyst development and emissions reductions, with particular emphasis on process evaluation and validation, fuel performance, and the technical challenges associated with transitioning energy systems toward lower-carbon pathways.

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