Signs of global instability

It’s July 2025, and our world seems to face signs of growing instability in power relations. The Israeli effort at regional hegemony hasn’t fared well. The American effort to shore it up hasn’t either, though events are still in progress. The war in Ukraine continues, with growing signs of it being Vladimir Putin’s Afghanistan. North Korea emerges as a rising military power willing to assist Russia and Iran with their anti-status quo actions. China’s steady growth in military power is carefully watched, and its efforts with the BRICS countries and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (without India, it seems) seek a rival basis for international order, monetary flows and much else.

These are among the factors that warrant the perception of global instability. Of course, there are many others to mention on other continents, between global powers great and small. However, what does all this point to in terms of peace and war?

The United States and China are the world’s great powers today. The United Kingdom, India, the European Union, Russia, Israel, North Korea and other nations — including South Korea, of course — are major powers, either in military or economic terms (or both). They are allies or presumptive allies of the two superpowers in one way or more. We need to use this prism to understand global conflicts.

In turn, the war in Ukraine, which can be viewed as a proxy war of the West against Russia, is also a conflict between the United States and the global order China wishes to create — or China and Russia, if you will. The logic of self-determination and noninterference and of the predominance of Western powers and the U.S. dollar in international relations doesn’t sound like a foundation for conflict, but it is one way of expressing it. Wars often surround efforts to create geographic bases for power projection, including economies. These support the more mundane, albeit vital, flows of trade and commerce, along with access to land, air and sea routes.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s brief forays into reorganizing the Western hemisphere — Mexico, Canada and Greenland — seem destined to fail in their current forms. Just as with the “tariff war,” power concessions can be demanded, but nation-states tend not to give in unless it’s in their perceived self-interest. Trump’s imprudent, if serious, efforts to shore up power relations with these states also reflect global competition with China and its presumptive ally, Russia, in terms of access to scarce resources, expansion of trade routes and economic cooperation.

After having supported a lot of funding to Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was embarrassed by the October 2023 attacks. His already precarious leadership position has systematically used this conflict as a basis to pursue aggression against Palestinians and Arab peoples in the Middle East. A declining leader with military power and perceived power predominance regionally is a danger. That is especially so if it is the proxy of a superpower willing to provide military support.

Trump also has cooperated with Israel due to a shared interest in regime change, overdue but difficult with an oppressed domestic population in Iran. Trump leads a drifting, if not declining, superpower. He’s failed in the Western hemisphere, he’s failed in the war in Ukraine, and he has little that matches China's rising fortunes. He’ll likely end up with a mostly destroyed — for the moment — Iranian nuclear project and little else. The war will tamp down. The Israeli proxy leader will go in time, creating yet more instability.

Major powers can teach lessons as well as receive leadership, or what passes for leadership, from superpowers. Currently, the responsible and prudent courses of action and rhetoric from the United Kingdom and EU powers are important. The stabilizing influence of Saudi Arabia should be accentuated. South Korea’s new president would do well to capitalize on the synergistic potential of the country to act as a stabilizer without creating the impression of alignment with China and the North. That includes improving cooperation and comity with Japan. Qatar and the Emirates also have balancing roles to play should they see the logic of global instability. There are many other potential stabilizers.

The world today needs sober leadership focused on the interests of state and cooperation for peace in the world. Demagogues, populists and autocrats tend to be threats to a world order based on freedom and the free flow of commerce. Many signs point to a need for Chinese President Xi Jinping and Trump to act responsibly for the good of the world. That would be a more fully formed new bipolarity. But nothing much in the present shows it’s likely to happen. Shame.

Bernard Rowan (browan10@yahoo.com) is associate provost for contract administration and academic services and professor of political science at Chicago State University. He is a past fellow of the Korea Foundation and a former visiting professor at Hanyang University.