Abstract

This paper will explore the evolution of the US-China dynamic and its overall impact on the 21st century international order. It investigates the growing tensions between the United States and China and whether or not it constitutes a “Second Cold War”. Additionally, it traces the relative historical development of their relationship from one focused on economic interdependence to multidimensional strategic rivalry and how it has manifested into critical tension between the two today. This paper argues that although contemporary US-China rivalry shares certain characteristics with the Cold War, significant differences in economic interdependence and global connectivity make the Second Cold War framework insufficient for understanding the current state of the geopolitics. Furthermore, it addresses the escalation in geopolitical fragmentation and militarisation after 2025, demonstrating that the extent of influence of their rivalry has extended beyond bilateral means. Finally, the paper discusses how the international adaptation of this increasingly fragmented environment has reflected the emergence of a more multiplex global order, establishing the disruption of a bipolar system as a consequence of the competition between the two nations. 

Introduction

In the contemporary technological and rapidly changing world, the question pertaining to the possible shift in the international order and an expected alteration in the influence of both developed and developing countries is progressively relevant. In particular, tense relations between the US and China, which deteriorated to its nadir since the rapprochement of the 1970s, play a crucial role in the expected reestablishment of the global order. 

Both countries are aiming to become the most powerful actors in such fields as military, innovations and digital technology, infrastructure building, and diplomatic relations. Due to being deeply interconnected in almost all production networks, Washington and Beijing are applying the de-risking and deterrence techniques; secondary states which become active participants of respective networks in their turn stand in the position of an intermediary and pursue hedging and diversification. 

This article focuses on: giving a definition to the present-day relations between the US and China; exploring the historical background and events which led to current competition; examining strategies that are exercised by Washington, Beijing and their allies; and analysing whether the above-mentioned political manoeuvres can result in an emerging multiplex world order.

1. Is US-China Strategic Competition a Second Cold War?

In the 21st century, the geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China is often described as a cold war. However, calling this dynamic a cold war implies a situation that’s very similar to what happened in the 20th century: the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. However, framing the situation this way without accounting for all of the situational and operational differences in the world today is flawed. This new rivalry between global superpowers is rather a case of strategic competition, operating under entirely distinct systemic, structural and operational principles. While there are some baseline similarities, such as a bipolar distribution of global power and security issues, the premise, context and methods of engagement have changed too much to call this a mere sequel. 

First, it is important to note the similarities that cause people to call this a second Cold War, and what constitutes this rivalry as a cold war at all. The three core similarities are: global bipolarity, where two states vastly outpace other nations; security dilemmas, where defensive moves spark escalation; and global reach, where competition extends to all regions. Similarly to the post-WWII order, global power is consolidated around two poles. Detailed in an analysis from Georgetown University’s US-China Dialogue, the similar power dynamic stems from rapid Chinese economic growth and military expansion (Su, 2019). The growth of China coupled with the continued dominance of the United States leaves both superpowers ahead of other nations in almost every field: military, economic and technological. This bipolar supremacy mirrors the dynamic between the US and USSR in the 20th century, where both states stood ahead of the rest of the world in those fields. 

Both eras are also defined by zero sum security issues, where whenever one state modernises even defensive infrastructure, the other perceives the move as an offensive threat. An example of this would be Chinese naval expansion in the South China sea, which triggered US alliance building in the region through pacts such as AUKUS and the Quad, which is an undeniable similarity to the containment doctrine of the 20th-century Cold War, where the US set out to contain the USSR by surrounding them with Soviet-opposed US allies on all sides. 

The final and most important similarity is the absence of hot conflict: direct full-scale military engagement between both superpowers is deterred by one another’s conventional and nuclear capabilities. While the US and China are indeed competing, they are not engaging in direct warfare. The US and China can fight through proxies, similarly to the proxy wars of the 20th century, an example of which would be the Iran War, where the United States and Israel are fighting Iran, which is being supplied by China. By supplying Iran, China is able to essentially combat the United States without actually engaging the US directly. 

Additionally, the many differences will be discussed to show how this is not a cold war but rather a large scale strategic competition. First, stemming from the differences in contextual situations, the defining difference between the original Cold War and this new competition is the economic architecture. Detailed in more analysis from Georgetown University, the US and the Soviet Union operated in distinct economic blocs with little to no trade (Cui, 2019). For comparison, the modern global economy is highly integrated. Research featured by the Brookings Institution shows that this high level of economic interdependence serves as a complex restraint on total confrontation (Kim et al., 2023). The US and Chinese economies are bound by global supply chains, investments and shared financial markets, preventing the competition from reaching the same scale as in the 20th century. 

Another key contextual difference is in the nature of third parties. In the first Cold War, the global situation, ideological battle and rigid alliance structures forced most third party states to pick a side. Today’s international structure allows for flexibility. Most nations explicitly refuse to choose a side. While European and Indo-Pacific partners look to the US for security guarantees, they maintain China as their primary trading partner. Nations like India or middle powers in the Global South engage in multi-alignment, cooperating with Washington on security while utilising Chinese funding or infrastructure loans via the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Egypt remains a major military collaborator with the United States, receiving foreign military financing despite China’s growing economic and even military collaboration with Egypt (Eshetu, 2026). 

Because the US and China compete inside the same international framework, the network centrality has become more important to this new competition than military containment. Rather than exclusively trying to contain China from the outside using military means like alliances and military bases, as was done in the Cold War, the US uses de-risking. De-risking essentially means restricting Chinese access to important nodes needed for the current global framework, such as lithography tools needed for microchip production (Farrell et al., 2019). China can also exploit these frameworks and uses its dominance in rare earth element refining and battery manufacturing to hold its own leverage. 

The current competition focuses on emerging technology like AI, quantum computing, biotechnology and advanced semiconductors, all of which are crucial to the development of stronger economies and more effective militaries. Nations that build the primary infrastructure for these technologies can set the standards for governance and regulations of said technologies (Ge, 2026). If a state can write the rules on how a technology may be used, those rules can be written to benefit said state, which is why competition in these sectors is so fierce. This differs from the 20th-century’s arms race, which was not about being able to define the frameworks of how technology can be used, but rather about creating technology that could annihilate the other party. The reason for competition was different. The modern competition operates below the threshold of kinetic war through offensive cyber capabilities. Massive data hacking, intellectual property theft and digital influence operations represent an increasing conflict that was technologically impossible during the 20th century. By competing in the digital world, both players can try to one up the other though surveillance, spyware and even propaganda campaigns – all without any form of direct combat. China especially has pulled ahead in cyber warfare (Shah, 2026). 

A large point of contention differentiating the new from the old is that of the very nature of these competitions. The Cold War was an existential battle of ideologies, where the communist world and Western liberal capitalism were ideologically near opposites and thus inherently opposed to one another. Both sides sought to completely annihilate the other, without also annihilating themselves, which indeed was achieved by the West. With the fall of the USSR, most communist nations turned completely away from the ideology, while the survivors underwent economic reform, killing off communism on the world stage. However, the new competition is not an ideological war. China already utilises state capitalism as its ideological model, which is not nearly as different and certainly not opposed to the existence of Western capitalism. China’s goals also differ from the USSR’s: their goals are not to spread communism or any form of ideology, but rather are to ensure their own security and continued existence. China is also just more interested in the direct domination of a specific region, the Indo Pacific, differing from the USSR’s and US’s interests in direct global dominance (Li et al., 2021). 

The current ideological friction also occurs on a smaller scale, centred around governance models and institutional rules. The United States has enjoyed promoting a rules-based international order rooted in liberal values, open markets and human rights because it benefits them to do so. China meanwhile, gains more from focusing on promoting national sovereignty, state security and economic development. The struggle is over who gets to write the rules of global institutions, trade networks and digital data flows, rather than a total war of systemic annihilation. 

A final point differentiating this rivalry is the existence of shared threats. The US and the Soviet Union could ignore transnational ecological realities. In contrast, the US and China face deep ecological and biological interdependence. Issues like climate change, pandemic management, financial stability and AI regulation require a baseline of international coordination. While the US and China must compete for a systemic advantage within the current frameworks, they also are forced to work together to attempt to avoid planetary catastrophes. Detailed in the US-China Joint Statement addressing the climate crisis, the United States and China are indeed making mutual moves in order to curb climate change’s effects. 

For these reasons, the 21st-century US-China strategic competition constitutes a case of strategic competition rather than a revival of the Cold War. The structural similarities of bipolar power balance and strategic conflict are clear, however the economic integration, technology-focused competition and fluid modern alliance structure create a completely new geopolitical environment. Competition cannot be conducted in the same way when the realities of global geopolitical frameworks are wildly different. Rather than working to collapse an isolated adversary, both sides are fighting for centrality within a single, shared global system. Using historical frameworks blindly obscures the unique dynamics of this century’s competition. Addressing this rivalry effectively requires a clear understanding of its new characteristics.

2. Strategic Competition and US-China Relations: A Conceptual Analysis of their Historical development

The US and China’s relationship has only recently been deemed to be a rivalry. The 1980s was considered to be their “honeymoon period” since both nations had forged a strategic partnership mainly to counter the Soviet Union and its perceived threats, engaging in military, scientific, educational and technological cooperation. Nevertheless, this stability did not last as in 1989 the US began having major human rights concerns with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its oppressive nature that was demonstrated after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. Furthermore, the issue of Taiwan became an increasingly complex one. China had deemed Taiwan as a part of itself while the US was simultaneously maintaining informal relations with Taiwan, supplying it with arms to resist potential Chinese invasion. Soon the Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1995-96 emerged, and it was a pivotal moment that encapsulated the complex dynamic between the US and China, demonstrating that although they were economically intertwined and cooperative, they were still considered strategic rivals (Winkler, 2023). 

While tensions did rise between the two nations, the US’s economic and strategic interest with China concurrently grew along with China’s economy. Despite the strain on their political alignment, China’s economy was expanding exponentially, predominantly through new trade and investment opportunities their new hybrid economy had offered their historically communist economy. China initially began with designated “special zones”, and in 1980 the previously rural town of Shenzhen had become an economic experiment. The objective of this was to see if market-driven economic policies could thrive in a communist system. After months, results demonstrated this new initiative as successful and viable for larger scale projects. In fact, the town had seen a significant boom in its prosperity, thus the small fishing village with a population of 30,000 evolved into an economic hub with an astonishing current population of 18 million. China had done the same experimentation on several other cities and bore witness to each city’s transformation, and so in 1993 a constitutional change was made for the entire Chinese economy to adopt a socialist market economy. This fundamental change was a major contributor to China’s eventual inclusion in the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The US saw these advancements as major opportunities of investment. China was once not considered the economic super power it currently is, however through such significant developments, the US recognised the substantial capacity of China as a regional and economic ally. Thus, America supported China’s integration into the global economy. On 11th December, 2001, China became the 143rd member of the WTO, unlocking massive economic, institutional and trade opportunities (WTO, 2021; CFR, 2025). 

DG Okonjo-Iweala, the Director-General of the WTO, effectively characterises the sheer significance of China’s accession to the WTO in 2001, stating that it was a “pivotal event in the history of the multilateral trading system” (WTO, 2021). Previously, China contributed to less than 1% of global trade, yet the year in which they joined the WTO, this number leaped to 4% and has continued to exponentially grow to be the world’s largest contributor to international trade, currently exporting over 16% of all goods globally (UNCTAD, 2021). The key takeaway is that their integration into the global market was heavily encouraged by the US, as they had seen the substantial promise of China’s manufacturing capabilities (CFR, 2025). Hence, these catalysed economic and manufacturing advancements were encouraged in hopes of capitalising off of China’s progress. It had opened the doors to a vastly wider market for Beijing, and thus manufacturers had the opportunity to shift from the production of just locally sought after goods to mass low-end and cheap-export goods. A massive surge of foreign direct investments (FDI) occurred, in which many international companies relocated their production facilities to China to exploit its low cost labour, turning China into a global manufacturing hub built on the utilisation of unregulated policies. WTO membership provided China with more predictable access to major international markets and reduced many of the trade barriers facing its exports (CFR, 2025; Fan et al., 2021). This drastic expansion in China’s manufacturing industry required more human resources than previously, triggering a large internal migration from rural to urban areas, contributing to local progression as cities began to substantially expand to meet the demand for housing and factories, which overall strengthened the quality of life for many in China. The combination of these results allowed China to accumulate capital, advance their technological capabilities and expand their industrial capacity, effectively making China one of the most powerful nations at the time (UNCTAD, 2021). 

During this period, amongst many other countries, the US began becoming increasingly economically intertwined with China and had been somewhat reliant on them for importing things such as technology, raw materials and low-cost goods. Chinese exports to the US rose from $100 billion in 2000 to $338 billion in 2008, and as predicted, the world, and in this case particularly the US, was reeling in the benefits of China’s development (Prasad, 2009). However, optimism started to shift into concern as its expansion continued. Initially, China had been viewed as a viable source of support to the American economy. Washington believed that integration into the global market would encourage reform within China itself while giving the US essentially unlimited access to the Chinese market, thus helping America to economically expand while maintaining its international dominance (CFR, 2025). However, this intended outcome was not reached, and by 2008 China had developed enough to no longer be considered a nominal supporter of the US economy and was instead considered a potential threat to its dominance. Although China was not yet considered a global superpower, the country’s capability to evolve into one became more evident (Winkler, 2023). 

Up until this point in time, the US was the dominant international economic model; however, as the 2008 financial crisis emerged from within the US, its economic resilience began to be questioned. Due to a combination of subprime mortgages and low interest rates, the housing bubble popped and essentially sent the US into a severe recession that took years to fully recover from. This recession subsequently triggered a critical global economic downturn, causing frozen credit markets, international bank failures and an entire sovereign debt crisis across Europe. Likewise, China was heavily impacted by this predicament as it saw an abrupt decline of 17% in its exports in 2009, which slowed down its overall economic growth. Since China’s economy had become increasingly dependent on foreign trade, this also caused around 20 million workers to lose their jobs as a direct result of this crisis (Dollar, 2018; Morrison, 2009). While both the US and China were significantly affected by the recession and had varied responses to the emergency, what affected the global perception of each of them was the nature of the crisis. Harvard’s Joseph Nye argues that the crisis mainly damaged American soft power because it highlighted the danger of the weaknesses in America’s financial regulations, as well as the failure of Wall Street, undermining the overall attractiveness of the American economic model that was considered to be the exemplar of a stable economic frame (Nye, 2010). Simultaneously, China’s continued growth encouraged perceptions that the global balance of power was shifting, which is why 2008 was considered to be a turning point particularly for the US-China dynamic. The crisis not only weakened the perception of US economic competence but also strengthened global perceptions of China’s relative economic resilience (Nye, 2010; Dollar, 2018). 

That same year Barack Obama was elected to be the 44th president of the United States, and one of his main initiatives involved America’s rebalance to Asia, whose objective was to move the US’s strategic, economic and diplomatic focus away from the Middle East and Europe and instead towards the Asia-Pacific region, partly because they wanted to manage China’s rising influence in the region and internationally. Through this campaign, the US strengthened their alliances with regional countries such as South Korea, Japan, Australia and the Philippines and shifted many military and naval assets to the Asia-Pacific. Furthermore, Obama sought after US involvement with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which was a regional free trade agreement established to bring Asian and US economies closer and set trade standards (McBride, 2026; Solís, 2017). Although China was not a part of this rebalance, the US maintained cooperation with Beijing throughout Obama’s term. As China was steadily developing its military and economy into the superpower it is currently deemed to be, it became evident that Washington itself began being seriously apprehensive towards China’s expansion, recognising it as a plausible threat to their supremacy (Winkler, 2023). 

However, America’s cautious and diplomatic approach when dealing with their relationship with China changed drastically under the administration of Donald Trump in 2017. During his first term, Trump managed to entirely shift America’s dynamic with China from one centred around diplomacy and interdependence towards an intense economic and strategic conflict, primarily through his Trade War and tariffs on Chinese exports. Beginning in 2018, Trump’s Trade War on China raised substantially large tariffs, reaching up to 25% on all Chinese goods. These tariffs had been put in place to address what the Trump administration deemed to be unfair trade practices in China’s favour and to protect American business. In retaliation, China also began implementing proportional tariffs on US imports, mainly targeting the agricultural and automobile industry within America (Sutter, 2026). This conflict was far more than an economic competition as Trump accused China of intellectual property theft, and so the issue of China’s technological advancements became a major concern of national security (Sutter, 2026). As Trump’s first term ended, the Biden administration demonstrated a continuation of this conflict and maintained the competitive framework of holding tariffs and restrictions against China, further cementing this conflict within America (Sutter, 2026). 

The evolution of the US-China dynamic is extremely complex. It has gone from a relationship that initially thrived off of economic interdependence and a willingness to incorporate China into the international system to a constant competition where cooperation is viewed as a vulnerability. Yet paradoxically, both nations are still currently very much dependent on one another, highlighting how different this is from the complete ideological separation of the first Cold War. The US-China competition has evidently extended beyond their bilateral relationship and is affecting the global order as a whole, and so the consequences of their rivalry is more evident than ever as it has contributed to the broader geopolitical fragmentation and militarisation we see in today’s world.

3. Geopolitical Fragmentation and Militarisation After 2025

The post-2025 period introduced a completely altered intensity, scope and interaction of multiple actors with diverse objectives within the political realm. The primary change lies in the fact that recently states tend to pursue militarisation due to increasing competition in such areas as infrastructure, technologies, production and finance (Schindler et al., 2024). Both the US and China seek the enhancement of their defensive capabilities and strategic autonomy for being able to deter their opponent in case of unforeseen geopolitical tension. 

This transformation was triggered by Donald Trump’s second presidency (2025-present). According to the National Security Strategy published in late 2025, the US’s primary goals are military dominance in the Western hemisphere and deterrence to prevent war in the Indo-Pacific (White House, 2025). Trump prioritised nuclear modernisation and advanced conventional weapon programmes; for example, in 2025 the US allocated $9.9 billion to the programme for the nuclear-armed Columbia-class submarine and $13.9 billion to the programme for the conventionally armed Virginia-class submarine, whereas China allocated an estimated $336 billion to its military (1.7% of China’s GDP in 2025) and developed prototype J-36 and J-50 sixth generation combat aircraft and the H-20 strategic bomber, achieving initial operational capability (SIRPI, 2026). Furthermore, the National Security Strategy also stated that the US “must continue to improve commerce (and other)” with countries of the Quad (Australia, Japan and India) to encourage them to contribute to Indo-Pacific security (White House, 2025). It is visible that Trump’s administration not only finds military advancements a necessity, but international cooperation and intensified alignment with states that share joint interests with the US are also crucial. Specifically, Trump highlights the importance of the “Burden-Sharing and Burden-Shifting” strategy which calls US allies to “assume primary responsibility for their regions and contribute far more to our collective defense” (White House, 2025). Such an approach, in the long-term, may strengthen strategic autonomies and international capabilities of the US’s allies. Since allied states, especially powerful in financial and military spheres, have to deal with greater responsibility for the regional security, their dependence on American support may shed, which will result in more autonomous foreign policy and better chances of deterring great powers by threatening to impose significant costs on them (Blankenship, 2023). Following this strategy, a multiplex international order, where authority and influence are distributed among multiple actors with divergent interests rather than single hegemon, can be expected to emerge (Acharya et al., 2019) 

As stated previously, in the contemporary political realm both the United States and China are undertaking various measures to surpass one another in technological and economical races and achieve network centrality. Due to being deeply interconnected via Global Production Networks (GPNs), the US has minimal chances in containing China, and Beijing cannot establish a block beyond Washington’s influence (Schindler et al., 2024). This trend is very visible in the US’s policies pertaining to the semiconductors market. In January 2025, the US Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) imposed sanctions on advanced computing semiconductors and expanded measures intended to prevent their diversion to CCP, while in August 2025 it closed a regulatory loophole that had authorised several Chinese semiconductor fabs to receive technology produced by the US without additional licensing requirements (BIS, 2025a; BIS, 2025b). Evidently, Washington tries to restrict China’s access to American technological innovations and advanced computing; China, on the other hand, increases their domestic technological self-reliance by “coordinating personnel” around S&T breakthroughs to increase “the quality of independent talent” (IISS, 2026). Hence, both countries de-risk strategic GPNs by changing them geographically, which makes third countries important producers, consumers, transit points and potential alternative locations for supply chains.

This kind of strategy can also be observed in the infrastructure competition. China’s Belt and Road Initiative has created extensive transportation, energy, logistics and production connections across Europe, Asia and Africa; it numbers about 31,750 finance commitments in 200 countries (AidData, 2026). The World Bank claims that states participating in the BRI corridor’s economy could significantly benefit in terms of poverty reduction, trade increase of 2.8-9.7% and FDI increase of 7.6% (World Bank, 2019). Consequently, those countries may potentially participate more in global markets and become more influential. Schindler et al. (2024) argue that infrastructure centrality itself can generate structural power; this theoretical relationship is evident in Central Asia, where Turtugulova et al. (2026) affirm that the BRI progressively integrates China-centred logistics, energy and trade networks in respective regional economies. This is an example of how China is using the BRI as a tool for its expansion beyond individual infrastructure projects, which results in a broader economic environment in which participating states operate. 

At the same time, Washington and its allies from the Group of Seven (G7) took the countermeasure of presenting the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) which aims to provide sustainable development in partner countries and consequently reorient China’s allies (Simonov, 2025). Countries can benefit from this initiative by also addressing public health issues and enhancing connectivity. The PGII has approximately 7,850 projects across 162 countries; it is noteworthy that the United States is more likely to vote in favour of loan packages for states that had already received relatively little aid from the Chinese BRI (AidData, 2023). Such competition does not necessarily force secondary states into exclusive alignment. Instead, it gives them an opportunity to pursue a hedging strategy and expand their bargaining power by increasing their strategic value to competing great powers. 

India can be used as the strongest example of this dynamic. Although by the 2025 US-India COMPACT Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi strengthened their defence, technological and economic cooperation in such areas as semiconductors and artificial intelligence, at the same time India maintained relations with China (Government of India, 2025; Kara, 2025). Kara (2025) describes this approach as strategic hedging, through which India benefits from both competing powers while reducing the risks of losing its strategic autonomy to either of these actors. Furthermore, comparable strategy can be observed in Kazakhstan’s international policies. It simultaneously increases integration into Chinese BRI networks and cooperates with the US in investment and critical minerals transportation (Turtugulova et al., 2026). The above-mentioned strategies showcase that secondary states are not aligning with a singular actor; on the contrary, they follow the hedging strategy and balance between multiple competing great powers while exploiting overlapping relationships and preserving strategic autonomy. This behaviour corresponds with Acharya et al.’s (2019) vision of a multiplex world, in which multiple actors operate through overlapping networks and retain differentiated interests. 

Nevertheless, regional conflicts may potentially transform competition of “soft power” and network centrality into wider confrontations between the US and China. Taiwan (which is central to global semiconductor production) and the South China Sea (a global trade corridor) are the convergent points of military and technological rivalry. In 2025, China escalated military activity around these two areas: 3,764 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft interventions into Taiwan’s air defense and 163 operations in the South China Sea were registered (Lin et al., 2026). In response, Washington expanded military support for Taiwan and enhanced cooperation with the Philippines, Japan and Australia (US Department of Defense, 2025). Those tensions incentivise other countries to pursue more balanced strategic relationships with the US and China; for instance, ASEAN countries have undertaken several institutional strategies aimed at managing great-power competition and preserving regional autonomy (Koga, 2018). 

Ultimately, the post-2025 period portrays an intensification of geopolitical fragmentation rather than the bipolarity observed during the Cold War. While the US and China increasingly compete in military, technological and infrastructural sectors through interconnected networks, secondary states respond by hedging, diversification and balanced selective alignment. The emerging order can therefore be understood as militarised multiplexity; in our case, the rivalry between the US-China intensifies, yet power remains distributed among multiple actors and institutions which participate in global overlapping networks.

4. Evolution: State Strategies in a Fragmented World

One must remember that as the US-China relationship evolves, other countries evolve alongside it, adapting and adopting old and new foreign policy as the global political context shifts, making policies once deemed to be a safe bet now carry risk in a modern setting. Historically, through global conflict and similar strains upon the political stage, hedging has been chosen as a strategy by many states in response, disregarding those with immediate allegiances or those which would consider strategic autonomy a better alternative. 

As noted by Ciorciari and Haacke (2019), hedging is loosely defined, despite its significance in modern international relations (Ciorciari & Hacke, 2019). One would thus draw from Cheng-Chwee Kuik’s (2008) landmark writings on this, defining hedging as essentially insurance, rather than fence-sitting, wherein a state utilises contradicting foreign policy (such as South Asian states’ reliance on the US for military support and on China for trade), to theoretically prevent them from having to “pick a side” binarily (Kuik, 2008). In essence, Kuik frames it as a deliberate strategy selected by states, rather than a show of weakness or indecision. Considering the Global South, Brazil, for instance, has developed a policy of hedging described as a “pendulum” strategy, treating national security arrangements as ‘bipolar’, whilst allowing trade agreements to function in a multipolar format (Kalout & de Sa Guimaraes, 2022). A following essay of Kuik’s (2021) delves deeper into these fundamentals, theorising that the sustainability of hedging is determined by the degree of uncertainty and unreliability of both members of a bi- or multi-polarity and would almost certainly lead to one of three conclusions – band-wagoning, balancing or persistence – until the situation either cools or escalates into war (Kuik, 2021). 

Firstly, band-wagoning describes where the hedger would switch strategy to side with the dominant power, were its main rival to capitulate or lose support through a lack of confidence. One could use the example of an oligopoly when considering this, wherein the major powers treat the political realm as a market to be dominated, and smaller, hedger/ unallied states act as traders reacting to volatility within and between those powers, fluidly or gradually shifting and dissolving alliances as the situation develops. This can indeed be seen to have been triggered by a show of unreliability, more than a show of strength: the relationship between the Philippines and the US broke down over Washington’s criticism of the Duterte leadership, leading to the Philippines’ diplomatic ties to China and Russia being strengthened, with President Duterte even having gone so far as to downplay Philippine court rulings regarding the South China Sea (Heydarian, 2016). Notably, the Philippines once again changed tack under the leadership of Duterte’s successor, Marcos Jr (after the incumbent US President Trump announced his support for the drug war (Human Rights Watch, 2018)), highlighting how fluid diplomatic paths such as this can be. 

Balancing refers to a direct response to the aggressor, rather than simply shifting one’s allegiance away, often leading to a multipolarity, whether internally (were a state to augment its own military capacity to come out as a competitor to the belligerent power) or externally (banding together other vulnerable nation-states in new or deepened alliances to combat the threat). Japan’s development over the last c.15 years is a classic example of this, as it heavily developed its military following tensions over the Senkaku/Diaoyu/Diaoyutai Islands, as they are called in Japanese, Chinese and Taiwanese respectively (the three countries with a stake in them). Japan recorded not just record budget increases of 20% to ¥6.8 trillion in 2023 (Al-Jazeera, 2022) and significant purchases of means of counter-striking, but also further cooperation with both the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and AUKUS. Kuik used the phrase “all major fronts” when describing issues such as these, meaning that once a state has proven itself to be a belligerent across effectively all significant domains (e.g., land disputes by China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands; rare-earth element export restrictions (CSIS, 2026); cyber dominance as China arguably engages in a techno-feudalist race against the US; and ever-increasing pressure on the Taiwan Strait), it had been unambiguously proven to be unreliable – across all major fronts (Kuik, 2008; 2021). Desire for strategic balancing across Europe is gaining traction too, as EU states recognise the unpredictable nature of the Trump administration to the West and the rising influence of China through African loan schemes and the BRI, whilst much of West Asia and the Middle East is at war. In times as uncertain as these, proactive national defence spending is increasingly being seen as necessary. 

However, even as pressure ramps up, states may choose to continue to hedge, to persist, if the conditions for a switch to band-wagoning/ balancing are not met, typically by just altering foreign policy to take a more cautious tone, acknowledging the instability around them. Kuik himself was Malaysian and thus used Malaysia as a case in point, arguing that unlike the Philippines or Japan, Malaysia had sustained relationships with both the US and China, buying military equipment from Washington and exploring further trade policies with Beijing, geopolitically far enough removed from both that no risk was apparent (Kuik, 2008). Were full-scale war to ever break out of course, all persistence in hedging would end, but as an intermediatory strategy, it is commonly used as a means for a state to keep their options open; to “hedge their bets”, so to speak. 

The theorists Kai He and Huiyun Feng (2023) developed the idea of a fourth outcome alongside band-wagoning, balancing and persistence, known as buck-passing – linking to the case study of New Zealand (He & Feng, 2023). A theory first explored by Christensen and Snyder (1990), it notes that some states simply make use of a powerful neighbours’ national security, leading them to commit significantly less money towards national defence than they otherwise might have to (Christensen & Snyder, 1990). This voluntary reliance on another country’s defence schemes typically stems from either a lack of capability (insufficient funds; inability to raise a navy due to being land-locked etc.) or by simply being unable to justify the cost in terms of security benefit. This is exemplified in He and Feng’s chosen case of New Zealand, wherein New Zealand’s proximity to the Australian-US military treaties and Five Eyes intelligence sharing provides a high level of military protection for New Zealand – and as New Zealand is formally a member of few international defence treaties, the amount of guarantees or funding that Wellington must itself provide is limited. CSIS describes this as “opportunistic”, but times are changing. Inflating national budget commitments to defence signal that Wellington’s tone is shifting, viewing China reportedly more and more as an active threat, and consequently moving towards military partnerships such as AUKUS in a form of balancing, with defence spending planned to reach 2% of GDP by 2033 for the first time since the 1990s (Craymer, 2025). Similar to how Kuik explored the eventualities surrounding hedging, this could be seen as an eventuality of decades’ worth of buck-passing, with Reuben Steff exploring this in his 2024 article ‘“Our region is now a strategic theatre”: New Zealand’s balancing response to China’ and in his 2025 book New Zealand’s Geopolitics and the US-China Competition, linking deeply to the idea of this potentially being a new cold war, to the extent that the very first chapter is titled: ‘New Zealand’s Geopolitical Awakening in the Second Cold War’. 

Every country in the world has allies; none are ever truly isolated: one may see North Korea as cut-off, for instance, yet compared with North Sentinel Island, it has functioning trade agreements (if limited). Some pursue strategic autonomy as a means of safeguarding self-interest (such as the EU), deliberately avoiding “structural dependence” on either superpower to ensure the retention of all national sovereignty – although one must note that strategic autonomy does not equal complete self-sufficiency, as most countries would steer clear of potentially isolationist policies at all costs. EU strategic autonomy is documented by Daniel Fiott (2025), exploring the theories of wedging and binding against hedgers – wherein a major power would, respectively, attempt to cast a “wedge” between the hedger and its rival or “bind” a hedger closer to itself, thus strongarming its way into a new alliance (Fiott, 2025). 

One could argue that decades of globalisation has already remapped the world as a multiplexity, a discordant choir of semi-harmonious allegiances between countries with shared ideologies, military/trade arrangements or pasts; yet as strained interdependent relationships send signals of distrust across the political stage, each in turn endlessly altering nations’ perceptions of one another, NGOs and international institutions would continuously be forced to play catch-up alongside. By that logic, globalisation itself could be described as cyclical, that 195+ countries each pursuing their own goals could only be kept at bay by global organisations for so long, inevitably abandoning hedging for any one of Kuik’s or He and Feng’s eventualities, driving them back into a state of war. However, global politics is never predetermined, as with state sovereignty comes state independence to create whatever law one’s legislature sees fit to create. Few countries desire war, and even less desire unpredictability. Consequently, countries may just continue to evolve in an evolving political realm, hedging their bets as best they can as the world fluctuates between relative peace and relative chaos.

Conclusion

In this contemporary, progressing world, perhaps it is futile to discuss complex, flowing multiplexity or cold, factionalised multipolarity, as geopolitics becomes fragmented and lost under an illusion of togetherness – how can one speak with certainty as if the world will not have further transformed by tomorrow? One can point to past conflicts, drawing parallels and making models, working within the assumption that human nature itself, not just history, is cyclical, ultimately repeating itself as successive generations fail to logically learn from the mistakes of the past. However, this would be a conflict that defies all reasonable logic, as the US and China’s own economic interdependence and interconnectedness should theoretically intertwine them, not drive them apart. This article sought to explore this developing bipolarity and to analyse the intricacies of a conflict that has been brewing for decades. 

In conclusion, some would argue that in an age of prosperity, any form of war manufactured by a first-world country would yield nothing but a Pyrrhic victory to the “winner” and further devastation to the weaker state, leading to such conflict being perceived as little more than an exemplification of the belligerent’s own greed. Others might claim that, in many ways, war is necessary. Yet as propagandised visions of national supremacy and foreign malice distort the changing political climate in the eyes of the public – as the world visibly shifts away from Washington’s status quo – one could argue that this entire strategic rivalry is just another sign that globalisation itself is on borrowed time.

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