Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is equally keen to give Turkey the global status the Ottoman Empire once held. Defying Washington’s warnings, Erdogan purchased the S-400 missile defense system from Russia. He has denounced Russia for its invasion of Ukraine but abstained from joining the West’s sanctions regime lest it provoke economic reprisals from Moscow. Even so, Turkey and Russia have backed opposing sides in the civil wars in Syria and Libya. Erdogan displayed similar transactional behavior in the summer of 2023 when he agreed to support Sweden’s accession to NATO to ensure the purchase of F-16s from the United States, which followed in January.

Other emerging and developing countries that favor a multipolar world order are similarly inclined to straddle tensions between the West and the China-Russia strategic partnership. Though it is a “major non-NATO ally” of the United States, Brazil has opposed the dominance of the U.S. dollar in international trade. During a visit to China in April 2023, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called for the de-dollarization of international trade and urged the BRICS group of nations to devise their own currency. Aspiring to a larger role on the world stage, Indonesia, an emerging power in Asia and chair of the 2022 G20 summit, has indirectly chided the United States for its “megaphone diplomacy” on Ukraine and refused to take sides in the Sino-American competition. However, it has criticized China’s claims in the South China Sea, conducted military exercises to safeguard its maritime interests and increased defense spending by 20 percent in November 2023.

Concerns about the impact of U.S. sanctions on Russia have prompted some countries to settle payments in renminbi, as Singapore and Malaysia have done. However, the main reason for the Global South’s interest in de-dollarization is the growing trade with and aid from China. ASEAN’s trade with China more than doubled in 2022, now accounting for one-fifth of the region’s global trade. Trade between Brazil and China rose to $154 billion in 2022. Not only is China the lender of first and last resort for many developing countries, but it is also the principal supplier of developmental aid to sub-Saharan Africa. Brazil is also increasing its commercial presence in Africa. India, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates are also involved.

Even smaller countries assert their interests in a world that seems increasingly unmoored. Tiny Qatar, home to a U.S. air base and a haven for exiled Hamas leaders, has assumed a surprising diplomatic presence in the world. It helped to evacuate tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover in 2021 and mediated the release of Israeli hostages and wounded Palestinian fighters in the war in Gaza. At the other end of the spectrum, the Houthis, a militant Shia sect in the failed state of Yemen financed by Iran, have attacked commercial vessels in the Red Sea in retaliation for Israel’s offensive in the Gaza war. To protect shipping through the Red Sea and Suez Canal, the United States and the United Kingdom have launched airstrikes against Houthi missiles, which could provoke a military response from Iran.

Depending on their outcomes, a raft of global elections in 2024 could exacerbate turbulence in world politics. Though Xi Jinping has thus far exercised restraint, the victory by the Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan’s presidential election on January 13 will certainly increase friction between Beijing and Taipei. The U.S. presidential election in November 2024 will likely have a more profound effect on international stability.

A second term for Biden would result in a continuation of policies pursued during the past three years. International turbulence would persist, but sufficient guard rails would be in place to contain it. If Donald Trump regains the White House, however, a winners-versus-losers standard would replace Biden’s democracy-versus-autocracy argument, which would redound to the benefit of Xi, Putin, and other tyrants. Trump’s continued indifference to democratic values would reinforce the Global South’s perception that the rules-based order is a hypocritical contrivance to justify Western dominance. The planned 10 percent tax on all imports Trump has proposed would cripple global trade, provoke beggar-thy-neighbor policies not seen since the interwar period of the twentieth century, and set relations with Beijing on a collision course.

Moreover, America’s support for Ukraine would wither, as would any prospect of negotiations. The prospect of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would end, and the United States would abandon any interest in the Middle East save for drawing closer to Saudi Arabia. America’s alliances in Europe and Asia, which Biden has restored, would languish or cease to exist. Putin would expand westward, probably starting in the Baltic States. The United States would avoid a conflict with China, however, because Trump is likely to concede Taiwan to China.

Toward a More Stable World

The turmoil that engulfs today’s world is the antithesis of the liberal-democratic order that Washington confidently envisioned would reshape the world in America’s image. As it happened, the United States failed to see that resurgent nationalism, historical grievances, and, beginning with the Yugoslav wars, recurring violence were incompatible with a world bounded by America’s values. The current disorder may presage a return to the balance-of-power system that maintained an uneasy equilibrium prior to World War I or succumb to the anarchy of the Hobbesian state of nature. But it could transmute into a stable world order, the emergence and persistence of which will depend on a mutuality of interests to sustain it rather than a vague rules-based order that lacks universal consent and thus validity in international law. Determined by non-Western and Western countries, democracies and autocracies, the rules must be consensual, enforceable by the stakeholders when disruptions of peace occur, and subject to dispute settlement by the principal parties to the dispute and the larger international community.

Restoring America’s commitment to the United Nations as the global forum for reasoned debate and conflict resolution will contribute to stability. The United States should cease its penchant for responding to the collective will of the UN, a body it conceived as an option rather than an obligation. It should further assume a leadership role in extending UN Security Council membership on a permanent and/or rotational basis to countries from the developing world so that every region shares a stake in preserving international stability.

Even though it will no longer be the sole rule-maker, the United States will still play a vital role in ensuring the stability of the evolving world order. Militarily, it will be incumbent on Washington to balance the competing interests of major adversaries such as China and Russia and regional powers. Both to deter countries from unwelcome actions and to respond to threats, it will be important for the United States to maintain a robust and operationally ready military force, restrict access to certain dual-capable technologies, and champion arms control agreements. Strengthening relations with America’s allies in Europe and Asia, as the Biden administration is doing, and, in concert with China, harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to control its destructive power will be critical to preserving U.S. security and geopolitical stability.

Maintaining a dialogue with America’s adversaries is essential. This is especially important with China, where the United States has a codependent relationship in trade and investment. Unfortunately, partly out of ignorance and partly out of fear that U.S. global preeminence is ebbing, Americans on the Right and Left have demonized China as the latest anti-Christ. If its history is any guide, it seems unlikely that Beijing’s ambition is to control the world, its military modernization and power projection in the South China Sea notwithstanding. More plausibly, China wants to be recognized by Washington as a great power with core interests no less important than those of the United States.

The thaw in U.S.-China relations that has followed the Biden-Xi summit last November is a positive sign. But it beckons more than opinion-page cheerleading to evolve substantively. At the very least, the Biden administration should end its industrial policy and unwind trade sanctions against Beijing, which are bad for American business and the public and unlikely to impede Chinese trade with Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Protectionism intensifies bilateral hostilities and elevates the risk of military confrontation.

Restoring free trade will pay economic as well as geopolitical dividends. In an increasingly competitive world, creativity and innovation will be the key to comparative advantage. Instead of raising import barriers to contain China’s rise, the United States should seek to regain its former leadership in science and technology by increasing government R&D spending in semiconductors, robotics, quantum computing, AI, and medical science. The objective should be to increase investment to the level it had reached two decades ago.

Lastly, the United States can remain a powerful force for political and economic liberalism in the world. Liberalism has not outlived its purpose, as Putin self-servingly claimed before the G20 summit in 2019. True, only 8 percent of the world’s population lives in a fully functioning democracy, but more than half of the world’s population will go to the polls in 2024 to voice their individual opinions. Rather than lecture the developing world to practice democracy, like nineteenth-century circuit riders preaching the gospel in rural America, the United States can again become a model for others to emulate. To do so, it must dampen the culture wars that divide the country into hostile camps, reduce crime, resolve the border crisis, increase educational opportunities and skills training for women and minorities, acknowledge the reality of value pluralism, and increase developmental aid to the most vulnerable societies, as China and other countries have done.