A World Again Transformed

Remarks to Chinese Attendees at the Cambridge Executive Leadership Program

Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)

By video, 8 July 2026

Five hundred and thirty-four years ago, for the first time, the world became one. Christopher Columbus – an Italian adventurer – was looking for a faster way to Asia. Instead, he erased the Atlantic as a barrier between Europe and America. This transformed the globe. It fused ecosystems that had evolved separately for millions of years, triggering almost immediate demographic collapse in the Americas, fueling long-term population booms in Europe, Asia, and Africa, creating new global agricultural and industrial realities, and catalyzing new cuisines everywhere. For the first time in history, there were true “world powers” – countries whose interests and policies could not be ignored anywhere in the world – and they were all European.

Europe gained access to huge mineral resources: gold and silver in quantities previously unimaginable. Europe, Asia, and Africa also benefitted from the arrival of new foodstuffs developed over millennia by native Americans: cacao, cassava, chiles, maize, papayas, peanuts, potatoes, pumpkins, squashes, sweet potatoes, tapioca, tomatoes, turkeys, pineapples, and vanilla. Can anyone imagine today’s national cuisines without these ingredients?

The Americas gained bananas, citrus fruit, coffee, grapes and wine, rice, sugarcane, and wheat. Its peoples added donkeys, horses, mules, and oxen as beasts of burden and cattle, chickens, goats, hogs, and sheep as sources of protein. They also saw the introduction of many technologies they had lacked.

This so-called “Columbian Exchange” is the foundation of the modern world and its immense populations. But it came at a horrific initial cost.

Animal-vectored diseases like influenza, malaria, measles, mumps, smallpox, typhus, whooping cough, and yellow fever almost immediately killed well over 90 percent of the original inhabitants of North and South America – about ninety-five million people. Native Americans had no inherited immunity to these illnesses. Those who survived are the ancestors, with European, African, and Asian settlers, of the handsome mixed-race populations of the Americas today.

Our recent experiences with climate change and pandemics remind us that, however great the benefits, planetary integration can give rise to planetary problems that demand planetwide answers.

The five centuries that followed “the Columbian Exchange” have seen a succession of world orders. In the first three of these centuries, Europeans settled the Americas and Australia, forcibly transported Africans to the Americas, underwent scientific and industrial revolutions, conquered West Asia and North Africa as well as India and Southeast Asia, and extended their rivalries to the globe.

In the late 18^th century, they also attempted to establish relations with China in accordance with the principles of “state sovereignty” that they had worked out in the hard-won 1648 Peace of Westphalia. But China expressed disinterest in European science and technology and rejected the notion that other states could be equal to it. It sent the Europeans packing.

By the early 19^th century of the international calendar European settlers in the Americas had rebelled and established themselves as newly independent states. Their actions separated the Americas from the rest of the world, where imperialism reigned unopposed. European great powers, having refused to take no for an answer from China (then still the world’s largest economy) began to carve it up into “spheres of influence.” In 1884, at Berlin, they agreed to subdivide Africa among them. As the 19^th century came to an end, the United States crossed the Pacific to join the ranks of European imperialist powers, overthrowing the Hawaiian monarchy and conquering the Philippines. It then opposed the division of China in its “Open Door” policy.

The 20^th century began with an outbreak of war that challenged Europe’s imperial structures, then dissolved them, replacing them with new nations based on ethnolinguistic nationalism. The vindictive peace that followed the First World War excluded both Germany and the Soviet Union (as the successor to Czarist Russia) from roles in managing European security and established no alternative to European imperialism abroad. These failures laid the groundwork for the Second World War. Japan, left out of a world order still dominated by Europe, began a rampage through China that culminated in its erasure of Euro-American colonialism in Pacific Asia.

The war ended with the Soviet Union occupying and imposing its politico-economic model on the territories it had conquered from Nazi Germany. Meanwhile, the United States imposed its own system in the European and Asian countries it had liberated from German or Japanese militarism. China, like Russia before it, underwent a traumatic revolution. In the ensuing bipolar order of the “Cold War,” European colonialism evaporated amidst a proliferation of new states. India sought to remain aloof from post-colonial realignments. China emerged as a swing state. Beijing first allied itself with Moscow, then identified with the nonaligned movement and broke with the USSR, cooperating with Washington while avoiding an entangling alliance with America.

As the 20^th century ended, the Soviet system died of its own defects and, amidst much disorder and suffering, Moscow turned inward and abandoned its ambitions for global hegemony. The Cold War and the bipolar world order were over. There was no longer any apparent check on American power, which inherited a network of alliances it began to treat as an empire with behavior that validated Lord Acton’s aphorism that “power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The United States replaced foreign policies based on comity and respect for the views of allies, partners, and friends with coercive unilateralism that increasingly ignored all but its own interests. Like the Soviet Union in its terminal phase, the United States boosted military spending to irrational and ultimately unsustainable levels. Islamist reprisal for American policies in Palestine and elsewhere in West Asia drew America into a series of wars with no clear objectives or termination strategies. By the third decade of the 21^st century, the United States, among other things:

· had ceased to keep international agreements or respect international law,

· was closing its market to foreign producers of goods and services with ill-considered, erratic protectionist policies,

· had sought to retard the development of China and other countries through tightening export controls,

· was engaged in low-intensity combat with non-state actors in at least eighty-two countries,

· had precipitated and lost a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine,

· was first distancing itself from its European allies, then bullying them,

· had joined Israel in genocide in occupied Palestine and in attacking Iran, while backing Israeli efforts to annex southern Lebanon,

· had turned its back on the rule of law at home and militarized its domestic law enforcement,

· had engaged in murder and other acts of piracy in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific,

· had reasserted political dominion over the Panama Canal,

· had decapitated the government of Venezuela and asserted mercantilist control over its energy resources and was attempting to do the same to Iran,

· had threatened to annex Canada and Greenland (the self-governing territory of Denmark, a NATO ally), and

· had joined Israel in an unprovoked war of aggression against Iran, which it lost.

The five hundred-year-long era of Euro-Atlantic dominance of world affairs is clearly at an end. So too are liberal internationalism and the so-called American “unipolar moment,” which fell victim to the equivalent of a nervous breakdown in the United States and Washington’s egomaniacal alienation of its allies, partners, and friends abroad. The American watchword became “I want it. No one can prevent me from taking it. I am prepared to kill people to get it.” This is banditry, not statecraft.

For decades, students of geopolitics had debated whether China would seek to revise or overthrow the American-sponsored post-World War II order as it rose. Ironically, it turned out to be the United States, not China, which repudiated and overthrew that order. Washington now rejects the rules on which the international system it originally espoused was based, while Beijing seeks to restore and enhance them.

The way in which a new international system and constellation of power is emerging echoes the turmoil that a rising Europe unleashed upon the world five centuries ago. This time it is the United States, not Europe, that bumptiously pursues territorial expansion, colonial control of natural resources, extortionate demands, and foreign capitulation to its power. But unlike Europe in the 16^th century, the United States is not winning but losing global primacy.

Is the new world disorder a momentary convulsion born of American distress at declining “greatness” or something likely to persist? The post-World War II order was far from perfect, but – overall – it was politically and financially stable, economically buoyant, technologically progressive, and optimistic. Its economies and sea lanes were open. Shipping was secure. Institutions were often actually able to perform the functions for which they had been established. What we are experiencing today is none of these things. But the current disorder will not last.

Some assert that we are entering an age in which spheres of influence – the primacy of great powers within their regions – will be the norm. This is the stated ambition of the Trump administration with respect to the Western Hemisphere. But the effort to impose unconstrained U.S. domination in the Americas – including Greenland, Canada and South America in addition to the Caribbean and Central America – is doomed to fail.

The Monroe Doctrine was conceived and proclaimed to ensure that European empires could not extinguish the hard-won self-determination of the nations of the Americas. The Trump administration has reinterpreted it as somehow establishing a right of the United States to impose its sovereignty on every other republic in the Western Hemisphere. But hegemony and colonialism have always generated their own antibodies. The Americas will prove no exception to this axiom. The countries of the Western Hemisphere will not yield their independence to anyone. They will instead strengthen and arm themselves in cooperation with each other and with extra-hemispheric partners.

That’s part of the reason that a system affirming the sovereignty of the world’s middle-ranking powers seems far more likely than one based on assertions of dominance by each region’s greatest power. Iran will not accept dictation from Israel or the United States. The Arab states in West Asia will not accept the hegemony of either Iran or Israel. Turkey is repositioning itself between Europe, Russia, Central Asia, and the Middle East, and now aspires to join the BRICS grouping. Canada feels compelled to balance the United States by reaching out to both China and Europe. The countries of South Asia all want cordial relations with India but will not accept subordination to it. ASEAN seeks to maintain a balance in its ties with China, Europe, the United States, India, Russia, and Japan. Japan is adopting a more self-reliant military posture and has ceased to be politico-economic wallflower in its region. If China asserts a right to control the decisions and alignments of its neighbors in Pacific Asia, Japan will catalyze the formation of intra- and extra-regional coalitions to oppose it.

Most pundits argue that we are witnessing the arrival of what they call a “multipolar system.” But the concept of a “multipolar order” is a caricature of the far more complex geopolitical geometry that is emerging. Confucius was right to insist on the “rectification of names” [正名]. He argued correctly that social and political disorder arise when language loses its connection to truth and words misdescribe reality. Unfortunately, the word “multipolar” does this.

A pole is one of two endpoints to a line. As such, it describes a two-dimensional relationship unconstrained by others. But statecraft today is no longer dominated or regulated by a contest between two quasi-feudal overlords. Nor do all roads lead to Washington, Moscow, New Delhi, Beijing, Tokyo, Berlin, Paris, Brasilia, Brussels, Jakarta, or any other great power capital. The emerging international system is multifaceted, has multiple actors, varies from region to region in geometry as well as in complexity, and functions in four – not two – dimensions.

Independent middle-ranking powers increasingly maneuver for national advantage in a world in which they have autonomy. They do not require the guidance of patrons to calibrate and balance their interests or the risks of pursuing them. They greatly prefer self-interested relations with multiple competing hegemons to any choice between them. They can determine what political, economic, cultural, and military relationships they desire with others. They can afford – indeed, it is in their interest – to be promiscuous. They seek to diversify their dependencies rather than clinging to a single patron. When they engage in demeaning acts to show their fealty to a great power, they are transparently insincere. They can practice political or economic polygamy and attach or distance themselves from patrons as they see fit.

Much the same is true for the world’s companies. They do not want to choose between the United States, China, or other patrons. They are tired of being battered by arbitrary and capricious decisions they cannot appeal. Businesses want predictability and reliable dispute resolution mechanisms. They seek security by diversifying markets, adding suppliers of critical industrial inputs and commodities, and developing additional, safer and more efficient trade routes. Innovative companies are not intimidated by export controls. They understand that technology has no assured nationality and that, in the end, nothing can stop its diffusion. As companies everywhere pursue expanded opportunities in new markets, they demand that governments simplify and speed financial transactions, the transit of goods, and customs clearances. That’s why many find cooperative programs like the “Belt and Road” so appealing.

A better word than “multipolar” for this complex and dynamic emerging order is “multi-nodal.” A node is a three-dimensional object at which many connections can converge. Its political, economic, or military ties to others can vary in width and intensity. Nodes can reposition themselves in both space and time. Countries, considered as nodes in the international system, can couple or decouple from other countries and both form and dissolve networks or coalitions. So can companies.

We are entering a multi-nodal system, and we are doing so in a world in which Asia has become the center of gravity in world affairs. Sixty percent of all humans alive today are Asian. Eighty-seven percent of global patents now originate in Asia. Asia’s contribution to global growth stands at 60 percent. Its exports amount to 55 percent of global trade. Asia accounts for half of global energy demand. Most economists predict that by the end of the century both China and India will have GDPs that are each about half again bigger than that of the United States and twice that of Europe. Of course, it is far from certain that China and India will not make mistakes or that the United States will cease doing so. Maybe Europe will get its groove back.

For now, however, as the United States does itself in by adopting counterproductive politico-economic theories and practices, Europe remains adrift. It is beginning to wobble in the direction of China and India or perhaps pick a fight with them. European societies no longer lead in most fields of science, technology, or industry. China and a few other Asian nations are the new leaders, with diminishing competition from the United States. Europeans are internally divided on where to go and what to do. They have no plan for peace on their subcontinent, no plan for their economic reinvigoration, and no concept of their place in a world no longer dominated by the United States or “the West.”

Europe is a delightful tourist destination. It retains many of the attributes of its past greatness. But the European Union seems structured to frustrate and punish efforts to take decisive action on the challenges confronting it. Its default position is wringing its hands while sitting on them. It’s hard to get anywhere if that’s your posture. It’s a pretty good definition of fecklessness.

As Europe and China decouple from the American market, each is beginning to flirt with the other as an alternative to the United States. Chinese investment and technology transfers to Europe can now balance past European investments and technology transfers to China. The basis for a newly cooperative relationship between China and Europe is willy-nilly being laid. 万事俱备只欠东风.^[i]

Sino-European industrial cooperation will not necessarily be limited to the non-defense sector. Here, the recent past is a possible guide to the future. In 2013, Türkiye sought to avoid dependence on either U.S. or Russian air defense systems by buying the export version of the Chinese HQ-9 [红旗-9]. American sanctions on Türkiye’s participation in the manufacture of the F-35 then blocked that sale. Ironically, this led to Türkiye’s purchase of the Russian S-400 system as well as a commitment to develop its own fifth-generation fighter jet, the “Kaan.”^[ii]

At least some other European states are likely to echo Türkiye’s decision to cooperate with China as they react to U.S. decoupling from them and seek to avoid overdependence on either American or Russian military systems. Meanwhile, Türkiye’s efforts to build a fighter jet to replace its aging F-16s may well lead it to seek Chinese rather than American technology transfers, given the poor state of US-Turkish relations. Türkiye’s aspiration to join the newly established Saudi Arabian defense arrangement with Pakistan, much of whose advanced military technology was codeveloped with China, underscores this emerging possibility.

We have exited the post-World War II order. Past power blocs and alignments have declining relevance. No great power now has an automatic followership. In the emerging international system, it’s every nation for itself. That is true in West Asia, where American dominance has been offset by regional powers (such as Egypt, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and the UAE) that now develop their own agendas and capabilities. It is true in East Asia, where Washington is militarily present but politically disengaged and absent from key institutions of regional economic governance like the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

In Europe, there is rising apprehension that things may be falling apart. NATO and the EU’s effort to “weaken and isolate” Russia has backfired. NATO unity is crumbling, the EU is adrift, political establishments are discredited, and populist nationalism is redividing the subcontinent. 各人自扫门前雪.^[iii] This is in part a reaction to the sociopathic behavior of President Trump and his sidekicks, but it also reflects a vote of no confidence in European elites. The disintegration of NATO and the EU now seems more likely than the breakup of the Russian Federation that some in the West have openly wished for. Europe has long been less than the sum of its parts. Increasingly, China, Russia, and the United States once again find themselves dealing directly not with Europe as a whole, but with its self-interested parts.

Africa has become a central arena for geopolitical rivalry over natural resources, but this, the fragmentation of the world order, and U.S. retrenchment are enabling its many states to expand their global influence. Many see Africa as the continent of the future and are willing to put their money where their mouth is. Africans are casting off the last vestiges of European colonialism, diversifying alignments, strengthening their roles in global institutions like BRICS and the G20, and securing better terms in trade, finance, and diplomacy by negotiating more assertively with China, India, Russia, Gulf Arab states, Brazil, and other emerging partners.

The greatest challenge to the freedom of maneuver of middle-ranking and smaller states at present is in the Western Hemisphere, where the United States has professed a desire to exercise exclusive dominion. The jury is out on whether it can achieve this. Extra-hemispheric powers like China offer the states of the Americas government-financed investment in their infrastructure, a growing market for their goods, and diplomatic support for their independence. It is not clear what the United States now offers beyond military intimidation, subjugation, and sanctions, all of which discredit hegemony rather than make it acceptable.

Let me close by making some fearless predictions.

In a world that is indifferent to moral and legal principles and in which law no longer constrains power, states large and small are ineluctably driven to focus on national resilience and survival. This impels them to do what Canadian Prime Minister Carney urged at Davos in January – accept reality, band together for mutual protection, and seek logistical autonomy by diversifying their trade patterns and supply chains. 狡兔三窟^[iv] They have no choice but to build the strongest militaries they can.

In a dynamic multi-nodal order, states cannot afford eternal allies or perpetual enemies, so they will seek to avoid commitments to unconditional alliances in favor of impermanent ententes – limited partnerships for limited and contingent purposes. Flexibility, not constancy, will aid survival. The world is in the process of returning to something resembling the 19^th century European balance of power, in which states maneuver to preclude their domination by others in a system regulated by mutual fear, calibrated cooperation, and constant recalculation rather than by international law.

But the European balance of power of two centuries ago incorporated only five great powers – Britain, France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia. The 21^st century international system will be one of many regional as well as global balances. Networks and coalitions are bound to come and go, sometimes amidst violence.

The uncertainties inherent in such a system will gradually compel states to replace crumbling global rule-making and regulatory institutions with bilateral and regional or functional arrangements. This is already happening, as institutions like the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank (AAIB), Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SC), Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC), and BRICS attest. Over the past decade, the number of bilateral and regional trade agreements has risen from about 290 to 375.

The specialized agencies of the United Nations will survive to the extent that they serve the interests of their participants. But the Security Council and the UN itself have proven incapable of managing global peace and development or meeting the challenges of planetwide problems like climate change, pandemics, and migration. They have been unable to mount an effective response to genocide and other gross violations of universally recognized rights. They are fading into irrelevance and are in danger of going the way of the League of Nations. One way or another, they will either accept reform or find themselves replaced.

In the interim, where regional and functional groupings do not spring into existence to manage issues of multilateral interest, rulemaking may devolve to ad hoc gatherings. Universality is not essential to rule making. There is nothing to stop the participants in a gathering from agreeing rules to apply among themselves, leaving non-participants to their own devices. As the French saying goes, “the absent are always wrong.”^[v]

It is clear that we are entering a very different world from that of the Cold War or the American “unilateral moment.” It is a world that will avoid catastrophes only if it respects the principles established in the Peace of Westphalia. The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, articulated in 1954, encapsulate this vision for international relations:

• mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty,

• mutual non-aggression,

• mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs,

• equality and co-operation for mutual benefit, and

• peaceful co-existence.

In many ways, these principles are the opposite of those now guiding the international behavior of the United States or US-China relations. But to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln in his inaugural address following the American civil war: “Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.” He predicted that relationships that have been lost can be recovered “when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Lincoln knew that strategy is a marathon, not a charge, and that peace must be shaped by steady hands. You are rising stars in great Chinese enterprises. Do you have such hands?

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^[i] All set but for the final push.

^[ii] In Turkish, this means “king of kings.”

^[iii] Sauve qui peut. Every man for himself.

^[iv] A cunning rabbit has three tunnels to and from its burrow.

^[v] Les absents ont toujours tort.