The world’s future will hinge on a choice between unilateral confrontation, as exemplified by U.S. President Donald Trump; multilateral confrontation, as in America’s alliance with the EU; or multilateral cooperation, as advocated by China. It’s clear which one will be better for mankind.
Click to watch and read U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s interview with former Fox News host Megyn Kelly on January 30, 2025.
A country’s vision of the world determines its foreign policy. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed during a January interview that multi-polarization is not only a normal state but also what the Trump administration prefers. “[I]t’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power,” he said. “That was an anomaly. It was a product of the end of the Cold War, but eventually you were going to reach back to a point where you had a multipolar world, multi-great powers in different parts of the planet.”
This indicates that all major powers and groups of countries have recognized the value of a multipolar world. But the consensus on the multipolar nature of today’s world doesn’t necessarily reduce conflicts between countries. This is because there have always been three judgments regarding a multipolar world. Strategic choices may result in three scenarios.
The first is the scenario of multi-polarization featuring unilateral confrontation, as represented by the Trump administration. Immediately after acknowledging the reality of a multipolar world, Rubio stressed that multi-polarization means “The Chinese will do what’s in the best interests of China… and the United States needs to do what’s in the best interest of the United States.” Multi-polarization, in his understanding, means that countries proceed from their own interests and fight. So ideas such as collective action and international cooperation can be ignored.
The second scenario is one featuring multilateral confrontation, as represented by the U.S. and EU during the Biden presidency. Biden once divided the world into camps of “democratic nations” and “revisionist authoritarian nations” and openly attempted to rally allies and partners to confront such countries as China and Russia. In 2023, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated clearly that the world has entered a multipolar era, and Germany needed to build “fair, respectful and equitable” partnerships all over the world. Although his words were less blunt than Biden’s, the diplomatic choices of countries in the European Union exposed Europe’s confrontational worldview as little different from the U.S. government under Joe Biden.
Third is a scenario featuring multilateral cooperation — something China would like to see. President Xi Jinping has emphasized repeatedly that multi-polarization is a primary characteristic of global development, the inevitable outcome of contemporary development and a realistic choice for human progress. Therefore, a multipolar world should be equitable and orderly, rather than fragmented, disordered and divided into camps. “Multilateral cooperation” differs from “multilateral confrontation” in that the former holds mutual respect, fairness, justice and win-win cooperation as the fundamental principles of international relations, while the latter’s vision for the future world is that of groups of countries confronting one another.
These widely different visions are based both on profound political and philosophical ideals and on strategic choices in real-world political decision-making. Despite the apparent dramatic difference between “unilateral confrontation” and “multilateral confrontation,” the philosophical foundations of both share the colors of hegemonism and power politics. The multilateral foundation incorporates such Chinese ideals as the ancient world’s outlook of “harmony under heaven,” all nations living in harmony and the recent international proposal of building a community with a shared future for mankind.
It is worth noting that the three visions per se are not mutually exclusive. Since Donald Trump assumed office, we have witnessed a fierce struggle between unilateral confrontation and multilateral confrontation. The most active preachers during Trump’s first term about the emergence of a “new cold war” — Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — have been abandoned in Trump 2.0.
At the level of international relations theory, this indicates that Trump has become even more clear-cut and resolute. This is also the political-philosophical cause of estrangement in the transatlantic relationship, which has pressed the majority of European nations to attempt to sustain multilateral confrontation through collective action and to get through the next four difficult years.
For China, whether or not a country accepts its values, worldview and philosophy of international relations has never been a necessary precondition for partnership. So long as a country agrees to respect others’ core concerns and accepts the outcomes of win-win cooperation, it can become a partner in international cooperation. The same principle applies to China-U.S. relations, which have seen constant friction over the past few years.
As one Western scholar put it, interest-based conflicts, while aggressive, are often more manageable than ideological ones because they are rooted in tangible, negotiable issues rather than abstract, deeply entrenched beliefs. This could lead to more transactional diplomacy, where agreements are made on a case-by-case basis.
Officials gather at the BRICS Summit in Russia on Oct. 24, 2024. It is estimated that by 2040-2050, the gross domestic product of the Group of Seven countries will be surpassed by that of emerging economies, raising questions as to whether the U.S. is prepared for this shift.
It is too early to tell whether China-U.S. relations will stabilize during Trump 2.0. But China’s government and people are fully prepared psychologically for potential conflicts with the U.S. over the next few years.
This is because Trump’s foreign policy team is full of “China hawks, and unlike the Biden team, few of them are anti-China for ideological reasons. According to Rubio, “China wants to be the most powerful country in the world and they want to do so at our expense; and that’s not in our national interest, and we’re going to address it.”
Obviously China won’t be capable of undoing such strategic misjudgment because for many years it has repeatedly proclaimed that its goal is building a strong modern socialist country with Chinese characteristics and achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. A rising China will break the historical assumption that “a strong country will inevitably seek hegemony” — which has been the case since the inception of globalization. China, on its own initiative, won’t seek confrontation with any country, the U.S. has concluded. But of course nobody should retain the fantasy that China with just swallow the bitter fruit when its national interests are being harmed.
Plenty of people hold on to their Rubio-style strategic misjudgment of China. This is because these people are unable to jettison the ideological stereotype of international confrontation or drop their obsession with preserving U.S. global hegemony. In fact, former president Biden had already raised the question of who, other than the United States, would be capable of global leadership. At that moment, he seemed to have forgotten that we already have a multipolar world.
In contrast, Trump is only seeking to reduce undesirable spending to sustain America’s global hegemony and strengthen the U.S. position — following the principle of “America first” — and ultimately preserve America’s global leadership by means of sheer power. As for China-U.S. relations, it is up to U.S. decision-makers to decide whether they want to shoulder the tremendous cost of conflict and confrontation or share the dividends of mutually beneficial cooperation. The choice will be very important for a multipolar world.
