By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine was never simply a regional conflict. His illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 was the proof of concept for a broader Russian test of the so-called rules-based international order, probing how far the West would go to defend that order. The ensuing war forced Europe to consider its dependence on the United States and required U.S. leaders to reassess their appetite for foreign commitments. It ushered China into a new role as Russia’s backer. It made countries thousands of miles away grapple with essential questions about their futures: How should they balance partnerships with large, warring powers? What material and moral stances taken now will seem prudent decades down the line?

During the two decades that followed the Cold War, many of these questions seemed less central. The collapse of the Soviet Union greatly reduced the West’s fear of another world war, a fear that had led Western leaders to tolerate Soviet spheres of influence in central and eastern Europe. Many political leaders and analysts hoped that multilateralism and new efforts toward collective security would diminish the relevance of zero-sum geopolitical rivalries for good. But after the 2008–9 global financial crisis took a toll on Western economies, Putin consolidated power in Russia, and China’s global influence rapidly expanded, geopolitics swiftly began to revert to a more ancient, hard power–based dynamic. Larger countries are again using their advantages in military force, economic leverage, and diplomacy to secure spheres of influence, that is, geographic areas over which a state exerts economic, military, and political control without necessarily exercising formal sovereignty.

Even though another world war is not yet on the horizon, today’s geopolitical landscape particularly resembles the close of World War II, when U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin sought to divide Europe into spheres of influence. Today’s major powers are seeking to negotiate a new global order primarily with each other, much as Allied leaders did when they redrew the world map at the Yalta negotiations in 1945. Such negotiations need not take place at a formal conference. If Putin, U.S. President Donald Trump, and Chinese President Xi Jinping were to reach an informal consensus that power matters more than ideological differences, they would be echoing Yalta by determining the sovereignty and future of nearby neighbors. 

Unlike at Yalta, where two democracies bargained with one autocracy, regime type no longer appears to hinder a sense of shared interests. It is hard power only—and a return to the ancient principle that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” In such a world, multilateral institutions such as NATO and the EU would be sidelined, and the autonomy of smaller nations would be threatened.

It is no accident that over the past two decades, the nations now driving the return of power politics, China, Russia, and the United States, have all been led by figures who embrace a “make our country great again” narrative. Such leaders dwell on a resentful comparison between what they perceive to be their country’s current, restricted position, a constrained status imposed by both foreign and domestic adversaries, and an imaginary past that was freer and more glorious. The sense of humiliation such a comparison generates fuels the belief that their country’s redemption can come only by exercising hard power. Commanding and extending spheres of influence appears to restore a fading sense of grandeur. For China, Taiwan alone will not suffice. For Russia, Ukraine can never be adequate to fulfill Putin’s vision of Russia’s rightful place in the world. The United States began to look toward annexing Canada.

Another trajectory remains possible, one in which the EU and NATO adapt rather than wither. In such a scenario, they could continue to serve as counterbalances to U.S., Russian, and Chinese efforts to use hard power to achieve narrow state interests, threatening the world’s peace, security, and prosperity in the process. But those potential counterbalancing forces will have to fight for such an alternative, and take advantage of the obstacles that a more globalized world poses to great powers’ wish to carve it into pieces.

 

Vicious Circles

The term “sphere of influence” first cropped up at the 1884–85 Berlin Conference, during which European colonial empires formalized rules to carve up Africa. However, the concept had shaped international strategy long before that. During the 1803–15 Napoleonic Wars, France attempted to expand its influence by conquering nearby territories and installing loyal puppet regimes, only to be countered by coalitions led by the United Kingdom and Austria. The British and Russian Empires engaged in protracted struggles for dominance over Central Asia, particularly Afghanistan. The Monroe Doctrine, adopted in 1823 by the United States, asserted that European powers would not be allowed to interfere in the Western Hemisphere, effectively establishing Latin America as a U.S. sphere of influence.

It is worth noting that the Monroe Doctrine was, in part, inspired by Russian Emperor Alexander I’s efforts to counter British and American influence in the Pacific Northwest by expanding its settlements and asserting its control over trade. In an 1824 accord, however, Russia agreed to limit its southward expansion and acknowledge American dominance over the Western Hemisphere. Alexander I recognized that encouraging further European colonization of the Americas risked sparking more instability and war.

Great powers’ drive to establish spheres of influence persisted through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, shaping new alliances and ultimately triggering World War I. In his wartime effort to delegitimize the Austro-Hungarian, German, and Ottoman Empires, however, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson pointed out that colonialism amounted to an oppressive boot on the neck of nations’ self-determination. In the process, U.S. allies, in particular, France and the United Kingdom, suffered collateral damage and struggled to maintain their colonies in the face of a rising tide of nationalist sentiment. Given the close connection between “spheres of influence” and colonialism, by the end of World War II, both concepts came to be seen as backward and a likely catalyst for conflict.

Yalta marked a decisive return of politics based on spheres of influence, but only because the participating democracies tolerated it as a necessary but hopefully short-lived evil, the best available means to prevent another catastrophic world war. The United Kingdom and the United States had each become war-weary. By August 1945, no democratic politician could reasonably oppose demobilization. Stalin did not suffer from this problem. But if deterrence could not be supplied, the only other way to prevent Stalin from ordering the Red Army westward was to engage his demands.

In the nineteenth century, power politics had hinged on military and economic might. In the second half of the twentieth century, the ability to shape global narratives through soft power became almost as vital: the United States exerted influence through its dominance in popular culture, provision of foreign aid, higher education, and investments in overseas initiatives such as the Peace Corps and democratization efforts. The Soviet Union, for its part, actively promoted communist ideology by mounting propaganda and ideological outreach campaigns that attempted to shape public opinion in far-flung countries. Moscow even pioneered a new kind of attack on democratic states under the broader banner of “active measures”: a long-game strategy aimed at polarizing democratic publics by propagating disinformation.

But after 1991, as ideological battles gave way to market liberalization, democratization, and globalization, spheres of influence appeared to lose relevance. Without the stark ideological divide of the Cold War, many political scientists assumed that world politics would shift toward economic interdependence, demonstrating through action the benefits of working in teams to solve hard problems. The global spread of democratic norms and the swift integration of former Soviet and Eastern bloc states into international institutions reinforced the belief that power could—and should—be diffused through collective frameworks; the Cold War’s geopolitical fault lines seemed to vanish. The 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, a pivotal agreement intended to define NATO’s relationship with Russia after the Cold War, was seen as a case in point. And the act explicitly committed its signatories to avoid establishing spheres of influence, directing NATO and Russia to aim to create “in Europe a common space of security and stability, without dividing lines or spheres of influence limiting the sovereignty of any state.”

 

Hard Return

But in truth, power politics had begun to resurface well before Russia invaded Ukraine. NATO’s U.S.-led intervention in Kosovo in 1999 (which particularly incensed Putin) and the United States’ 2003 invasion of Iraq (over the objections of close U.S. allies) both suggested that the leaders of the supposed new era of collective security still believed that when a strong state does not get its way, it is acceptable to escalate militarily. More recently, the United States and China have been locked in a struggle for global technological and economic dominance, with Washington imposing sanctions on Chinese tech giants while Beijing invests heavily in alternative supply chains and its massive Belt and Road Initiative. China has also militarized the South China Sea and has pursued expansive and legally disputed territorial claims. The United States and its allies, meanwhile, have increasingly used financial sanctions as tools to constrain adversaries.

Russia, for its part, has continued to innovate brilliantly from a position of material weakness. It has effectively deployed hybrid warfare to weaken the West, including cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns to, for example, affect the 2016 Brexit referendum and the U.S. presidential election that same year. It is clear from Putin’s many recent speeches that he had never really abandoned an understanding of geopolitics that rested on spheres of influence and always struggled to understand why NATO should continue to exist, much less expand. If the alliance’s purpose had been to defend the West against the Soviets, after the Soviet Union collapsed, NATO’s expansion effectively made the entirety of Europe, and particularly the former Warsaw Pact states, an American sphere of influence. For Putin, this was an unacceptable outcome. Beginning with its assault on Georgia in 2008, Russia has relied on hybrid warfare and the use of proxy armed forces, efforts that escalated with the illegal 2014 annexation of Crimea and culminated in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The Ukraine war, and the settlement terms that now appear to be emerging, mark an even more pronounced return to nineteenth-century-style–style geopolitics in which great powers dictate terms to weaker states. Russia, along with the U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has demanded that Ukraine accept territorial losses and remain outside Western military alliances, an outcome that would render the country a satellite of Russia. If these pressures succeed, the outcome will normalize the use of military force to advance national interests, and, more dangerously, reward its use. That distinction is crucial and new. Although major powers have attempted to use force to get their way throughout the past few decades, their attempts have consistently backfired and failed to prove that force is an effective tool for advancing national interests. The U.S. military’s interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya were all costly failures. Russia’s military efforts on behalf of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad failed, and its incursion into Ukraine was faltering. The greatest shift in U.S. foreign policy since the end of World War II has now gifted it victory.

An older style of power politics is fast becoming entrenched in other ways, too. Establishing spheres of influence involves a dominant power abridging the sovereignty of geographically proximate states, as Trump is seeking to do with Canada, Greenland, and Mexico and as China is attempting with Taiwan. A political order based on spheres of influence also relies on other great powers’ tacit agreement not to interfere in each other’s spheres.

 

Open Circuit

Measured by its economic and military might, Russia is no longer a great power. But the way today’s Russia is often conflated with the Soviet Union gives it perceived power beyond its actual means, it remains a potent nuclear power. In a scenario in which the United States, China, and Russia all agree that they have a vital interest in avoiding a nuclear war, acknowledging each other’s spheres of influence can serve as a mechanism to deter escalation. Negotiations to end the war in Ukraine could resemble a new Yalta, with China playing a role akin to the one the United Kingdom played in 1945. At Yalta, Britain was weakened by World War II but still considered a great power thanks to its legacy of empire, balanced U.S. and Soviet interests while securing its geopolitical concerns.

Neatly carving up spheres of influence, however, has become a much trickier project than it was at Yalta. It was easier to delineate, and to respect, geographically coherent spheres of influence in a less globalized world dependent on steel and oil; today, the critical resources that large powers need are spread out across the globe. Taiwan is a particular flash point because the chips it produces are critical to countries’ growth and national security; the United States cannot afford to let China dominate access to those chips. Neither does the United States want to permit Russia sole access to Ukraine’s rare-earth minerals. A country’s maritime strength has become much more important: it is more possible than ever to imagine Japan and Taiwan within a U.S. sphere of influence, even though they neighbor China. This is why China is seeking to become a maritime power and working tirelessly to disrupt U.S. maritime influence.

Even if Trump and Putin move toward a more cooperative relationship with Xi, that could leave European states to fend for themselves. Countries such as Germany and France may be forced to develop independent security strategies. Eastern European states, particularly Poland and the Baltics, would likely push for greater defense commitments that their fellow European states may be unable or unwilling to provide. That outcome would also undermine the strategic importance of U.S. allies in Asia, forcing them to seek alternative defense arrangements or even nuclearization. The European Union could be moved to evolve into a sovereign federal state more closely resembling the United States. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom each remain capable middle powers, and France and the United Kingdom have their nuclear deterrent, but together, and perhaps only together—a united Europe would have significantly less to fear from China, Russia, and the United States both militarily and economically.

If, instead, the United States and Russia align against China, then Japan and South Korea in particular may find themselves trying to balance between Washington and Beijing, yielding more independent foreign policies, increased military self-reliance, and efforts to diversify their security and economic agreements. Japan might accelerate its military buildup and seek closer ties with regional partners such as Australia and India, while South Korea could attempt to hedge its position by deepening its relationship with China.

If Russia aligns more closely with China—and Europe remains firmly aligned with the United States, that would reinforce a Cold War-style two-bloc system. If Russia (wary of giving the impression that it is subordinate to China) and European states pursue a more independent path, however, that could contribute to a more multipolar world in which they act as swing powers, leveraging their influence between China and the United States. In this case, global geopolitics would resemble a hybrid of nineteenth-century great-power maneuvering with twenty-first-century strategic blocs. Australia would face difficult choices regarding its economic and security alignments. It could strengthen its defense cooperation with the United States, deepen its engagement with India and Japan, and increase military spending to bolster its deterrence. But if China were to secure its desired sphere of influence in Asia, Australia might seek to emerge as a regional stabilizer, asserting greater autonomy instead of remaining a junior partner in a U.S.-led bloc.

Spheres of influence are rarely static; they are constantly contested. The re-emergence of spheres of influence signals that the nature of the global order is being tested. This shift could lead to a transition back to the power politics of earlier eras. But there is an alternative: after experiencing a few cycles of destabilizing crises, the international system might reassert itself, reverting to a rules-based order centered on multilateral cooperation, economic globalization, and U.S.-led or collective security arrangements that discourage expansionist ambitions.

For the time being, however, the United States is no longer serving as a reliable stabilizer. Where Washington, until recently, was considered the primary check on regionally expansionist regimes, it now appears to be encouraging those same regimes, and even imitating them. Whether this transition ultimately returns to a predictable balance of power or inaugurates a prolonged period of instability and war will depend on how effectively spheres of influence are contested, and how far countries such as China, India, Iran, Russia, and the United States are willing to go to secure them.

 

 

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