In a multipolar world, great powers can either handle hegemonic transitions through rigid alliances or opt for managed accommodation
When Germany emerged as Europe’s industrial powerhouse in the 19th century, the established powers spent years attempting to contain it, culminating in a war no serious statesman desired, yet none proved skilful enough to prevent. Today, as we navigate the transition from American unipolarity, a similar question looms: will this shift follow that tragic pattern, or can it be managed through institutional adaptation as Zhou Enlai and Richard Nixon did in the early 1970s?
The multipolar order is not approaching; it’s already here. Economic fundamentals have decided this outcome. The only question is whether it will be managed through patient statecraft or approached through confrontation that risks catastrophic miscalculation.
Two factors fundamentally distinguish today’s great power competition from past hegemonic transitions. First, the proliferation of nuclear weapons has created a dynamic of mutual assured destruction that renders total war irrational.
Putin’s nuclear brinkmanship amid the Ukraine war shows not strength but desperation, simultaneously reminding all parties why direct great power confrontation has become strategically suicidal. This doesn’t eliminate conflict, but it fundamentally changes the character of great power competition via proxy wars and economic confrontation.
Second, technological interdependence creates unprecedented costs for systemic rupture. Semiconductor supply chains span multiple continents; artificial intelligence requires global talent pools. China holds around US$730 billion in US Treasury securities. The United States relies on Dutch equipment, Taiwanese fabrication and rare earth elements processed largely in mainland China to build advanced microchips.
China’s technology objectives, meanwhile, depend on American design software, Japanese precision machinery and Western market access. These embedded relationships would be catastrophically disrupted by war between both powers, creating powerful domestic constituencies in all major economies that have a strong interest in avoiding systemic breakdown.
The Soviet Union’s collapse shows why multipolarity emerges from economic realities rather than military conquest. Command economies cannot generate the innovation required for sustained competition. In the 1980s, the Soviet Union’s military expenditures were estimated to have accounted for 15 to 17 per cent of its gross national product while civilian productivity stagnated. Without market pricing, the Soviet economy was flying blind.
Central planners could not efficiently allocate resources. The Soviet dissolution was a systemic adjustment, not a contingent outcome of Western pressure.
China’s trajectory validates Nixon’s prediction that its people, with their “enormous economic power”, would become a global force. China’s gross domestic product has grown from less than US$150 billion in 1978 to over US$17 trillion today. As Nixon predicted, as military confrontation becomes less feasible, “the competition changes and becomes much more challenging in the economic area”.
US-China bilateral trade almost reached US$660 billion in 2024. Economic realities create powerful incentives for managed competition rather than systemic rupture.
When Zhou received Nixon’s 1971 Kansas City speech outlining a five-power world, including China, he studied it so carefully that he showed an unaware Henry Kissinger his personal copy with Chinese annotations during their July 1971 secret meeting, recognising it as a blueprint for China’s managed emergence within a stable system that would benefit both powers over decades.
Zhou’s genius lay in understanding what Nixon offered: recognition of China’s legitimate place in the international order and a pathway to achieving it without the catastrophic war that had destroyed so many rising powers. The framework acknowledged China’s legitimate interests in Asia, that equilibrium among major powers served everyone better than hegemony, and that institutional structures could evolve to accommodate new power distributions if approached with sophistication.
What followed was strategic patience of the highest order. China joined the UN Security Council, engaged with Bretton Woods institutions and took part in global governance, not because these institutions were perfect, but because they offered platforms to Beijing that could gradually reshape to reflect its growing weight. This kind of statecraft understood that power is most effectively exercised when it need not constantly be exercised.
Nixon understood this required reciprocal respect. As he wrote in 1967, in fashioning Asia’s future, “there is no room for heavy-handed American pressures; there is need for subtle encouragement of the kind of Asian initiatives that help bring the design to reality”. The framework succeeded because it acknowledged that China’s path to great power status would be determined primarily by Chinese decisions, not American management.
Today’s strategic environment presents a stark choice. The path of confrontation promises an immediate assertion of sovereignty but delivers isolation from markets and technology as well as the mobilisation of American and allied power against perceived threats, a heightened risk of military conflict and the potential for devastating miscalculation.
The path of patient accommodation requires accepting temporary compromises and tolerating institutions not yet fully reflecting current power distributions. However, it delivers continued market access, technology transfers and economic growth, gradually leading to decisive advantages. It also gives time for capabilities to mature while avoiding premature tests, preserves the stability needed for growth and creates opportunities to reshape institutions from within.
Nixon’s five-power framework offers a continuing pathway through managed competition within institutional constraints that seeks to avoid systemic conflict. History offers two models for managing hegemonic transitions: the rigid alliance structures that preceded the first world war or the framework Nixon and Zhou constructed for managed accommodation.
The birth pangs of multipolarity will continue. Institutional reform is never painless and accommodating other powers inevitably generates friction. But Mao and Nixon proved that great power status can be achieved through patient statecraft rather than confrontation, providing the template for today’s leaders. The question is whether our leaders possess the wisdom of Zhou to study it and the will of Mao Zedong to implement it.
