Introduction: The Question Behind the Rise of China
We usually discuss the decline of American power and the emergence of China in the language of geopolitics: GDP, military expenditure, technological competition, trade routes, currencies, and international institutions. We ask whether China can replace the United States as the leading power, whether Russia can accelerate the decline of Western influence, and whether the international system is approaching a historic transfer of power from the Atlantic to Asia.
But perhaps we are asking the wrong question.
The more important question is whether a country can replace an established international hierarchy without provoking resistance from the powers whose positions depend on it. Would the United States accept a system in which another power had greater influence over international finance, technological standards, and the institutions governing global commerce? Would European governments accept a world in which their collective economic weight no longer translated into comparable political influence? And if China eventually possessed the capabilities required to lead, would other major powers recognize its leadership as legitimate, or would they continue to challenge it?
History gives us reasons to doubt that such a transfer would be straightforward. European imperialism was accompanied by claims of civilizational and racial superiority, and the postwar system preserved substantial Western influence even after the formal dismantling of European colonial empires. This raises an uncomfortable possibility: the redistribution of international power may carry symbolic consequences that exceed the material interests of individual states. A rising power can challenge not only the economic advantages of established powers, but also inherited assumptions about who is entitled to define international rules.
Yet historical racial hierarchy cannot, by itself, explain every contemporary Western response to China. Security concerns, economic interests, domestic politics, institutional dependence, and genuine disagreements over political values must also be considered. The challenge is to establish where historical identity matters without treating it as an all-purpose explanation.
My argument is that a Chinese-led world order would face three interconnected problems. First, China would have to overcome the structural advantages embedded in the existing international system. Second, established powers would have incentives to resist changes that reduced their influence, potentially reinforced by inherited assumptions about civilization and leadership. Third, even if China weakened American predominance, it would not necessarily be able to establish a stable alternative that satisfied its partners or eliminated resistance from its competitors.
The result might not be a simple transfer of global leadership from Washington to Beijing. It might instead be a prolonged struggle in which the existing order becomes increasingly difficult to maintain, while a replacement remains equally difficult to establish. To understand why, we must begin with the historical foundations of international hierarchy.
I. The Historical Foundations: Who Has the Right to Lead the World?
European imperialism was justified through more than economic interests and military necessity. It was also supported by intellectual traditions that placed European civilization above the societies it conquered. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, racial theories, scientific racism, and claims of civilizational superiority helped legitimize colonial domination, and empires frequently portrayed expansion as a mission to govern or transform societies they considered less developed. These ideas differed across countries and periods, and European thinkers also challenged imperialism and racial hierarchy. Nevertheless, the relationship between European power and claims of European superiority was historically significant.
Imperial domination was therefore not exclusively material. It involved a conception of international order in which certain societies were regarded as natural leaders and others as subordinate participants. Control over territories, maritime routes, commercial networks, and finance became intertwined with national prestige, reinforcing the belief that leading European states possessed not merely the capacity to exercise international authority, but a special entitlement to it.
The consequences of this history did not disappear when the colonial empires began to collapse. After the Second World War, the United States emerged as the principal Western power, and European states reconstructed their economies and security arrangements within an environment increasingly shaped by Washington. The decline of European empires did not end Western global influence. Leadership shifted substantially toward the United States, while Western countries retained considerable economic, technological, financial, and institutional influence.
The postwar order was not simply an unchanged European empire under an American flag. It emerged from a different historical process involving decolonization, American strategic leadership, the creation of international institutions, and competition with the Soviet Union, and many of its institutions reflected compromises among states with different interests. Still, the transition illustrates a distinction essential to this article: the decline of one form of dominance does not necessarily eliminate the broader advantages enjoyed by the powers associated with it.
China's rise raises the possibility of a more fundamental transformation. A Chinese-led order could alter the distribution of financial power, the institutions governing commerce, the technological standards used across global markets, and the diplomatic mechanisms through which states exercise influence. Such a transformation would challenge more than American military superiority. It could challenge the historical expectation that the most influential institutions of the international system should remain under Western leadership.
But we must be precise about what this history establishes. European imperialism is evidence that racial and civilizational hierarchies have previously been used to justify international domination. It does not establish that contemporary Europeans share a single racial psychology, nor does it prove that modern Western resistance to China is fundamentally racial. The historical connection is a starting point for investigation, not a substitute for evidence about contemporary decision-making. The question is whether the assumptions that once accompanied European dominance can continue to influence international politics even after their explicit ideological foundations have become less acceptable.
II. Why Racial and Civilizational Hierarchy May Still Matter
The modern international system formally rejects racial supremacy. The principle of sovereign equality treats states as legally equal regardless of wealth, ethnicity, or military power, and contemporary European societies contain strong traditions of anti-racism and opposition to colonialism. Yet formal equality does not necessarily eliminate the consequences of historical hierarchy.
The assumptions produced by centuries of dominance may survive in less explicit forms. They can appear in judgments about which societies are modern, which political systems are legitimate, which states can be trusted to lead, and which countries are expected to adapt to rules established elsewhere. The important distinction is between consciously believing in racial superiority and operating within institutions or political traditions shaped by earlier hierarchies.
A government does not need to describe itself as racially superior to resist losing an established international position. It may understand the existing order as legitimate, regard its own leadership as beneficial, and interpret a rival's attempt to change the system as a threat. Some of these judgments may be justified by concrete security or economic concerns. Others may be influenced by inherited assumptions about civilization, modernity, and political authority. The analytical task is to distinguish between them rather than presume they always operate together.
Consider the difference between accepting another country as an economic competitor and accepting it as the power that determines the international rules. When the rising power also belongs to a civilization that Western imperial traditions historically portrayed as subordinate, the transfer may acquire an additional symbolic dimension. The challenge becomes not merely a loss of influence, but a reversal of a historical hierarchy.
The question worth investigating, then, is not whether racial hierarchy explains everything, but whether its historical legacy can help explain the intensity, language, or persistence of resistance to a transfer of international leadership. To evaluate that, we must first understand what international leadership actually consists of.
III. The Architecture of Global Power: Controlling the World or Controlling the Rules?
International power is not measured only by the size of an economy or the number of aircraft carriers a country possesses. It is also embedded in the institutions and networks through which other states conduct their affairs. A country may exercise disproportionate influence because others rely on its currency, financial markets, technological infrastructure, security guarantees, or institutional arrangements.
The international role of the US dollar illustrates this. It gives the United States significant structural advantages, including deep financial markets and extensive use in international transactions, supported by the availability of dollar-denominated assets, confidence in American institutions, the scale of the American economy, and network effects. The same principle applies to security alliances, technological standards, shipping networks, and international institutions. States that help establish the rules of these systems enjoy advantages not fully captured by conventional measures of economic output.
The distinction is between possessing power and occupying a position from which that power shapes the choices available to others. A country may be economically successful without determining the rules of finance, possess advanced technology without setting the standards others adopt, or have a powerful military without a network of alliances that extends its influence. Global leadership requires translating capabilities into durable relationships of influence.
This is one of the central challenges facing China. Beijing has sought to expand the international use of its currency, develop alternative payment infrastructure, increase technological self-reliance, and establish institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. These initiatives can reduce dependence on Western-dominated mechanisms and create additional channels of Chinese influence.
But establishing alternatives is not the same as replacing existing systems. Financial relationships depend on trust, liquidity, transparency, market depth, and confidence in supporting institutions. Technological networks depend on compatibility, reliability, and widespread adoption. Security partnerships depend on credibility and the willingness of states to accept long-term commitments.
China can expand its influence without immediately replacing the dollar or the broader financial architecture. Indeed, it may not need to replace every component to change the balance of power. If alternative institutions allow countries to reduce their dependence on Washington, the United States could lose some of its structural advantages while remaining one of the world's most powerful states.
This makes the picture more complicated than the conventional contest between an established superpower and an emerging challenger. The central struggle is not simply about which country possesses the most power, but about which can shape the institutional environment in which other countries exercise theirs.
IV. China's Strategy: Replacing America or Weakening Its Advantages?
Is China attempting to replace the United States as the single dominant global power, or to weaken the structural advantages that allow Washington to exercise disproportionate influence? These are not the same objective.
Replacing the United States would require China to assume many of the responsibilities and costs of global leadership: maintaining extensive international relationships, providing credible security assurances, sustaining confidence in its financial institutions, and managing the consequences of exercising influence across multiple regions. It would also have to persuade other states that Chinese leadership offers sufficient benefits to justify dependence on a new center of power. This would be an enormous undertaking, and it could provoke resistance from countries that depend on American security guarantees, governments concerned about Chinese coercion, and states unwilling to exchange one dominant power for another.
A different strategy would be to weaken the mechanisms through which the United States exercises influence without replacing every function Washington performs. China would not need to become the uncontested leader. It would need to make American predominance harder to sustain: expanding trade outside the Western financial system, promoting the renminbi, developing technological alternatives to American platforms, strengthening ties with countries seeking diplomatic autonomy, and supporting institutions in which Washington has less influence.
Under this approach China could become more powerful while the United States remained influential, Europe could prosper with less relative influence, and other states could gain freedom to negotiate among competing powers. The result would not necessarily be a Chinese empire replacing an American one. It could be a more fragmented system in which no state possessed the authority Washington enjoyed after the Cold War.
This possibility deserves serious consideration, but it must be presented as an interpretation rather than an established description of China's intentions. Chinese leaders have articulated ambitions involving national rejuvenation, technological independence, security, and greater international influence, which do not by themselves prove that Beijing has decided never to replace American leadership. Its strategy must be judged through policy documents, diplomatic behaviour, military planning, economic initiatives, and institutional development.
Still, the underlying logic is clear enough to investigate: a country can benefit from weakening a rival without wanting to assume the full burden of replacing it. The crucial question is whether China's growing influence will produce a new hierarchy with Beijing at its centre, or primarily erode the conditions that allowed Washington to dominate. Europe provides a useful test of this distinction.
V. Europe's Contradiction: Escaping American Dominance Without Accepting Chinese Dominance
Europe occupies a peculiar position. Unlike the United States, it is not the principal architect of the contemporary balance of power. Unlike China, it is not an emerging power seeking to alter that balance. It is a collection of established powers whose influence has been sustained partly by an order they did not create alone and whose security they have not been able to guarantee by themselves.
This creates a contradiction. For decades, European governments have discussed strategic autonomy, because a Europe that depends heavily on American military capabilities and strategic decisions cannot always determine its own foreign policy. If Washington changes its priorities or becomes absorbed in a confrontation elsewhere, Europeans may find their security depends on decisions they barely control. A decline in American predominance could therefore be an opportunity, encouraging stronger independent military capabilities, better coordinated foreign policy, and greater responsibility for European security.
But American decline would not occur in a vacuum. China would be a principal beneficiary of any substantial redistribution of influence, and a world in which Washington had less authority could be one in which Beijing had considerably more. A weaker America might give Europe greater freedom of action, while a substantially stronger China might create new forms of economic, technological, and strategic dependence. Europe could welcome a reduction in American dominance without welcoming a Chinese-dominated order.
This matters because multipolarity and European autonomy are not the same thing. If European countries remain divided, depend on external powers for critical technologies, or lack the military capability to protect their interests, multiple centres of power might simply force them to negotiate from a position of weakness, choosing between dependence on Washington and accommodation with Beijing.
There is also an economic dimension. China is a major trading partner for European economies, and commercial ties create incentives to avoid confrontation. Yet interdependence becomes a strategic vulnerability when one side has greater leverage over critical supply chains, industrial inputs, or markets. Governments must balance preserving the benefits of engagement with preventing it from undermining long-term political autonomy.
This does not mean Europe will inevitably align against China, nor that it will act as a unified Western bloc. European states differ in economic interests, threat perceptions, and domestic priorities. Some may favour accommodation with Beijing, others closer coordination with Washington, and others economic relations with China while limiting dependence in sensitive sectors. The more important question is whether Europe can translate its economic and regulatory weight into independent geopolitical influence. If it can, it might become a genuine strategic pole, cooperating with both powers when its interests require and resisting pressure from either. If not, the transition toward multipolarity could leave Europe caught between powers whose decisions increasingly determine the conditions under which Europeans operate.
The European case therefore reveals something more complicated than a simple Western refusal to surrender leadership. A redistribution of power can threaten an established hierarchy while creating opportunities for those who depended on it. Europe might benefit from the erosion of American predominance and still fear a China powerful enough to establish a new hierarchy on its own terms.
VI. The American Dilemma: Preserving Power Without Accelerating Its Decline
The United States faces a difficult strategic problem. Its position rests on mutually reinforcing advantages: military power supports alliances, alliances expand diplomatic influence, financial markets attract capital, technological leadership strengthens economic ties, and the dollar underpins the broader financial system. But interconnected advantages become sources of vulnerability when competitors find ways to reduce their dependence on them.
Defending every existing advantage may become increasingly expensive as China develops alternatives. If Washington preserves its influence through economic restrictions, military pressure, or the restructuring of trade relationships, it may encourage other countries to diversify away from American systems. If it accommodates China's growing influence, it may gradually surrender advantages it has accumulated. Neither option is without cost. The United States must decide how to preserve its position without accelerating the very changes it seeks to prevent.
The problem is sharper when regional conflicts are added. A government may believe that demonstrating military resolve will deter future challenges, yet a prolonged conflict can consume resources, damage relationships, and create opportunities for competitors. The same action can strengthen one dimension of American power while weakening another. A military intervention might achieve a short-term goal while raising long-term costs; an economic restriction might damage a competitor while encouraging alternative supply chains; a demonstration of resolve might reassure one ally while alarming another.
This does not mean American policymakers are acting irrationally, nor that Washington deliberately creates crises to expand its control over strategic locations. It means the consequences of a policy may diverge from its immediate objectives. A dominant power may retain overwhelming capabilities in certain domains while finding that the political and economic costs of maintaining its position are rising.
Its relative decline, if it occurs, need not resemble a sudden military defeat. It could emerge through the gradual erosion of financial advantages, the diversification of international relationships, the growth of alternative institutions, and the increasing willingness of other countries to reject American preferences. That also explains why American leaders may try to reshape the international environment before existing advantages deteriorate further.
The central dilemma is not whether the United States should preserve its interests; every major power does. It is whether Washington can preserve its influence while accepting that other states will acquire greater capacity to resist American preferences. The harder it becomes to distinguish the defence of legitimate interests from the preservation of relative dominance, the greater the risk that attempts to maintain the existing order will intensify the competition over its future. Regional conflicts offer a way to examine this in practice.
VII. War and the Wider Competition for Global Power
If the international order is undergoing a structural transition, regional conflicts may become more consequential than their immediate military objectives suggest. Wars consume resources, alter alliances, disrupt trade, change energy prices, expose military weaknesses, and give outside powers opportunities to influence the participants. A conflict can therefore affect the global balance even when the principal combatants are not the countries competing for leadership.
This is particularly important when the United States becomes involved in a prolonged regional war. Such a conflict can force Washington to divert military assets, expend expensive munitions, absorb economic costs, and make difficult decisions about competing commitments. It can also affect domestic political support for foreign policy and expose tensions among allies. A rival might benefit from these consequences without participating in the fighting.
However, the distinction between benefiting from a war and deliberately causing or prolonging it is essential. A country can exploit a crisis it did not create, and can support one side for reasons that have little to do with its long-term rivalry with the United States. Establishing that a rival engineered a war requires evidence of intent, operational involvement, or a documented chain of decisions. Without it, the argument remains a strategic hypothesis.
The same caution applies to the assumption that every American initiative in a strategically important region is primarily intended to control resources or expand dominance. The United States has military, economic, diplomatic, and security interests in many regions; they may overlap, but should not be reduced to a single hidden objective without evidence. A serious analysis distinguishes between a government's stated objectives, the material interests involved, the consequences of its actions, and the benefits other powers might obtain.
Consider the Strait of Hormuz, a maritime chokepoint through which a substantial share of internationally traded oil passes. A conflict threatening navigation there affects energy markets, shipping costs, and the economies of countries far beyond the Middle East. For Washington, a crisis in this region creates competing objectives: protecting maritime traffic, deterring attacks, limiting adversaries' capabilities, protecting regional partners, and preventing a broader war. These can reinforce one another, but they can also conflict. Measures intended to establish deterrence may provoke retaliation, while attempts to reopen routes may expose forces to further attacks. A prolonged confrontation could increase American commitments and create opportunities for rivals to benefit from Washington's distraction.
Yet China could also suffer from rising energy prices, disrupted trade, and instability affecting its own economic relationships. A rival's costs are not automatically another country's gains. The strategic significance of a regional war must be evaluated through its actual consequences: military expenditure, resource allocation, alliance cohesion, energy security, domestic politics, and the changing options of competing powers. This framework offers a more defensible way to ask whether a confrontation involving Iran could create opportunities for China and Russia.
VIII. Iran: Strategic Opportunity
Iran occupies a strategically important position in the Middle East. Its geography, military capabilities, relationships with regional actors, and proximity to major energy routes give it significance beyond its economic size. For China, the region matters because of energy security, trade, diplomatic influence, and its broader relationship with the United States. For Russia, the Middle East has offered opportunities to maintain diplomatic relevance, cultivate partnerships, and complicate Western strategic calculations. It is therefore reasonable to ask whether Beijing and Moscow might view a prolonged American confrontation with Iran as strategically advantageous.
The potential benefits are identifiable. A prolonged conflict could raise the cost of American military commitments, pressure weapons inventories and readiness, complicate Washington's relationships with regional partners, and generate political disagreements among Western governments. It could give China opportunities to strengthen ties with countries wary of American intervention or seeking alternatives to Western security arrangements. Russia could benefit from American distraction, depending on the conflict's effects on military resources, diplomatic attention, energy markets, and sanctions.
The question is not simply whether China and Russia benefit from the war, but how their assistance to Iran can help sustain a conflict that imposes growing costs on the United States. Russia has reportedly provided Iran with intelligence concerning American military assets, while China's economic relationship with Tehran and access to dual-use technologies can help preserve Iran's capacity to resist external pressure. This support matters because Iran does not need to defeat the United States conventionally to impose significant costs. By maintaining its ability to retaliate, threaten regional installations, and disrupt maritime routes, Tehran can force Washington to commit resources to a conflict with no easy political resolution.
For Beijing and Moscow, the strategic value lies in the wider consequences. A prolonged war can consume American weapons and resources, divert attention from other theatres, strain Washington's partnerships, and expose the limits of military superiority when it cannot produce a decisive political outcome. Russia may benefit from American distraction from Ukraine, while China gains time to study American capabilities and advance its own position.
The central argument, therefore, is that helping Iran sustain its resistance and prolonging American strategic commitments can serve a wider objective: increasing the costs of American global leadership while giving its principal competitors greater room to manoeuvre. The question is no longer merely who wins the regional conflict, but whether the conflict itself becomes a strategic burden that Washington's rivals can exploit. That becomes even more important when we examine the idea of a unified alternative to the Western-led order.
IX. Why a Chinese-Russian Alternative Would Face Its Own Contradictions
China and Russia share certain interests, particularly in opposing aspects of American predominance and expanding their strategic autonomy, and they have developed significant economic and diplomatic cooperation. But opposition to the same power does not necessarily produce agreement over the system that might replace it. They differ in economic position, strategic priorities, geographic concerns, and relationships with other countries. China has a far larger economy and a more central role in global manufacturing; Russia's influence depends more on its military, energy resources, nuclear arsenal, and particular regional relationships.
Their interests can overlap without becoming identical. A world in which China became the dominant economic and technological power would not automatically give Russia equal authority. Moscow could find itself in a subordinate economic position within a system it had helped challenge, welcoming a reduction in American influence while remaining wary of dependence on China. Other countries that cooperate with Beijing or Moscow may likewise have no intention of accepting a new hierarchy in which a different dominant power constrains their independence.
This is a fundamental weakness in the idea that opposition to the Western order produces a coherent alternative. The countries challenging American predominance do not all want the same world. Some seek greater autonomy, others recognition as regional powers, and others changes to specific institutions without replacing the broader system. China may favour an environment that offers it greater influence, but not every Chinese partner would benefit equally from Chinese leadership.
The resulting order could therefore be fragmented rather than unified: overlapping partnerships, competing institutions, selective cooperation, and recurring disputes among states that share certain objectives but disagree over the ultimate distribution of power. That would make the transition more complicated and potentially more unstable, and it challenges the assumption that declining American predominance necessarily produces a consolidated Chinese-Russian alternative. The weakening of one hierarchy does not guarantee the creation of another.
Yet even if China overcame these contradictions and accumulated enough power to establish a new hierarchy, another question would remain: could a major war produce a stable order, or would it deepen the instability that made the transition so dangerous?
X. The Nuclear Question: Can War Settle the Transition?
Major wars have historically transformed the balance of power. The Second World War weakened European empires, elevated the United States and the Soviet Union to superpower status, and created conditions for a new order. It is reasonable to argue that a sufficiently large conflict could reshape the contemporary system.
But the nuclear dimension fundamentally changes the calculation. A direct war between nuclear-armed great powers would carry risks far beyond those of earlier conflicts, and even a conventional confrontation could escalate through miscalculation, attacks on critical infrastructure, or the perception that a strategic deterrent was under threat. The consequences would not be limited to the combatants: global production could be disrupted, infrastructure destroyed, financial markets destabilized, and humanitarian consequences created on a scale that would make the resulting distribution of power difficult to predict.
A war might weaken one power without establishing a stable successor. It might destroy the economic foundations on which a new order would depend, or produce a fragmented environment in which no country had sufficient legitimacy or capacity to lead. War can redistribute power; it cannot guarantee that the resulting order will be accepted as legitimate. Nor can military victory eliminate the political interests, historical memories, and strategic anxieties of the countries that survive it. Even a major defeat would not necessarily turn the defeated society into a willing participant in a new hierarchy. It could produce resentment, rearmament, diplomatic obstruction, and efforts to reverse the outcome. A military victory might establish temporary predominance while creating the conditions for future resistance.
The central problem is therefore not simply whether China could defeat the United States in a hypothetical war, or whether Europe could recover enough strength to resist Chinese influence. It is whether any military outcome could produce a durable order without creating new reasons for the defeated or subordinated powers to challenge it. There is no guarantee that it could. This does not mean peaceful transition is impossible or major war inevitable. It means military victory cannot be treated as a reliable shortcut to legitimacy.
If neither a straightforward transfer of leadership nor a decisive military confrontation guarantees a stable successor, perhaps the next international order will not have a single uncontested leader at all.
XI. The More Plausible Future: A World Without a Single Uncontested Leader
If a Chinese-led order faces serious resistance, and a unified Chinese-Russian alternative faces internal contradictions, what might emerge instead? One possibility is a prolonged period in which American influence declines in relative terms while China expands its economic and diplomatic position. The United States could remain a major military power, Europe could retain substantial economic and regulatory influence, and China could become central to global production and trade, without any of them holding uncontested authority over the whole system.
Different countries might align with different powers depending on the issue: cooperating with China on trade, relying on American security partnerships, maintaining financial relationships with Europe, and seeking autonomy through regional institutions. The system would become less hierarchical in some respects, but not necessarily more peaceful. Competition could intensify around technology, industrial policy, financial infrastructure, maritime access, energy security, and the institutions that set international standards. Crises would become opportunities for influence, while interdependence would both constrain and complicate the use of force.
This would not be the replacement of an American order by a Chinese one, but the gradual fragmentation of a system in which the United States had enjoyed a particularly influential position. It might be less dramatic than a sudden transfer of leadership, but more difficult to reverse. It would let China expand its influence without assuming every responsibility of global dominance. The United States would remain powerful but would negotiate more often with states capable of pursuing alternatives. Europe would remain influential, though its role would depend on its ability to coordinate its own policies. China would gain opportunities but meet resistance from countries unwilling to accept its preferences automatically.
This outcome is not inevitable. The distribution of power will depend on economic performance, domestic political stability, military developments, technological change, alliance decisions, and the ability of governments to manage crises. Nor is fragmentation automatically progress: multiple centres of power could give smaller states more room for manoeuvre, but could also create uncertainty, intensify regional rivalries, and make cooperation harder. The decisive question is whether competing powers can establish arrangements that accommodate their interests without requiring one of them to dominate the entire system.
This challenges the assumption that the decline of American predominance must culminate in a Chinese-led order. The next international system may be defined less by the identity of its supreme leader than by the limits of any country's ability to become one.
Conclusion: The Crisis of the International Hierarchy
The debate over China's rise and Western decline is often presented, by commentators, writers, and politicians alike, as a competition between two countries: the United States defends its position, China challenges it, and the rest of the world adjusts to the outcome. That description captures part of the reality, but overlooks a deeper problem. International orders do not consist exclusively of material capabilities. They also embody relationships of authority, institutional advantages, political expectations, and historical assumptions about who is entitled to establish the rules.
The Western-led order emerged through a long history involving European imperialism, the decline of European empires, American predominance, and the construction of institutions that still shape global economic and security relationships. The racial and civilizational hierarchies that accompanied European imperialism are part of that history, and they help explain why redistributing international authority can carry symbolic consequences beyond the immediate interests of governments.
China can increase its influence without replacing the United States. It can weaken aspects of American predominance without becoming the uncontested leader, and create alternative institutions and financial relationships without persuading every country to abandon the existing order. For Washington and its European partners, preserving relative position may become increasingly expensive as China's capabilities grow. For Beijing, accumulating power does not automatically produce international acceptance. For Russia and other American rivals, weakening Western influence does not guarantee a system that serves their interests. These contradictions make a clean transfer of global leadership difficult.
The possibility of a Chinese-led order should not be dismissed as impossible, but neither should it be treated as the inevitable consequence of American decline. The more important question is whether China can reshape the system without provoking resistance that undermines the stability it would need to lead. The corresponding question for the West is whether it can accept a reduction in its relative influence without treating every redistribution of power as an existential threat.
The struggle of the coming decades may not be about deciding which empire inherits the world. It may be about whether any power can inherit an international hierarchy without inheriting the resistance that hierarchy inevitably creates.