For much of the past decade, competition among the world's major powers has been one of the central organizing principles of U.S. foreign policy. During his first term, President Donald Trump pursued strategic competition with China and Russia, an approach that, despite important differences in tactics and rhetoric, largely continued under President Joe Biden. In his second term, however, Trump appears to be moving toward a different conception of international order, one in which great powers may increasingly seek accommodation with one another while asserting greater authority within their respective spheres of influence. Such an approach could represent a profound shift in American foreign policy. Rather than seeking to preserve a U.S.led international order through alliances and sustained competition with rival powers, Washington could become more willing to negotiate an informal division of geopolitical space among the United States, China, and Russia.

There is an understandable logic behind such a strategy. If the world's major powers recognize one another's core security interests and avoid direct confrontation within their respective spheres, they may reduce the risk of catastrophic great-power conflict. Yet the strategy also carries a potentially serious contradiction in seeking accommodation with America's rivals, Washington could weaken the alliances and partnerships that have been among the greatest sources of American power since World War II.

A Return to Spheres of Influence?

One of the central features of great-power accommodation would be an implicit recognition of spheres of influence; regions in which major powers expect greater freedom to pursue their strategic interests. Applied to Europe, such thinking could make Washington more willing to accept some degree of Russian control over occupied Ukrainian territory as part of a broader settlement with Moscow. allianceApplied to Asia, the same logic raises difficult questions about how the United States would respond to China's ambitions in its immediate neighborhood, particularly regarding Taiwan.

The United States, in turn, could seek greater recognition of what it considers its own strategic interests in the Western Hemisphere. There are historical precedents for major powers attempting to manage international order through negotiation and accommodation. Following the Napoleonic Wars, the Concert of Europe sought to preserve continental stability through cooperation among Europe's leading powers. At the end of World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin met at Yalta to negotiate crucial aspects of the emerging postwar order.

These arrangements emerged under very different historical circumstances, but they demonstrate that competition and cooperation among great powers have long existed side by side. International order has often depended not simply on defeating rivals, but also on developing mechanisms through which major powers can coexist. The critical question is whether such a system could work under today's vastly different geopolitical conditions.

America's Alliance System Is Part of Its Power

The greatest weakness in a strategy based on great-power accommodation may be that American power does not derive solely from the size of the U.S. economy or the strength of its military. One of Washington's greatest strategic advantages is its extensive network of alliances and partnerships. For decades, NATO, U.S. alliances........

© The Friday Times