For a decade, the focus of the United States has shown a high degree of continuity, starting with George W. Bush and followed by Barack Obama, Donald Trump and now Joe Biden. But America is now paying greater attention to detail and adding new features to its geostrategic approach.

Rhetoric at NATO’s recent summit intensified the U.S.-China rivalry in global affairs. Now that the U.S. is in competition with China, will NATO member states follow suit?

In their latest communiqué, NATO leaders declared that China presents “systemic challenges to the rules-based international order.” The response from China’s mission to the European Union was clear: “We will not present a ‘systemic challenge’ to anyone, but if someone wants to pose a ‘systemic challenge’ to us, we will not remain indifferent.” Such a tit-for-tat rhetoric is unnecessary, and most of the world’s population probably does not want it to escalate. Yet escalation is becoming more likely every day.

Southeast Asia’s coalition of small-to-medium sized nations have hosted superpower conflicts, yet they are overshadowed by larger regional powers on the global stage time and time again. American leadership will struggle to find welcoming allies there without a drastic upgrade in its dealings with ASEAN member nations.

Efforts to placate both the United States and the PRC are proving ever more challenging, as the recent Group of Seven and NATO summits have shown.

Both countries know that confrontation only leads to a dead end in the long run. A mix of cooperation and competition remains the norm that has worked for both countries in the past. But it’s difficult to strike a balance, and competition is likely to overwhelm cooperation, as it always has.

The Quad, a revitalized clique of democratic nations surrounding China, has been criticized by Chinese as a thinly-veiled ploy to contain its growth. It could prove to be a formidable obstacle, if the U.S. maneuvers correctly.

The U.S. has placed the other members of the group in a disadvantageous position, expecting each of them to confront China. Instead, what they will discover is that they are missing out on the benefits China offers.

With only four countries in the bloc — the United States, Japan, Australia and India — and with dissension in the ranks, it’s unlikely that a NATO-style alliance will ever emerge in the Eastern Hemisphere. It cannot work without consensus.

Since the late 1990s, China and Russia coordinated their diplomatic efforts to serve mutual interests and simultaneously oppose US global hegemony. A ‘Eurasian’ worldview began to concretize after the NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War. In response to NATO and US unilateralism, China and Russia became more concerned with protecting concepts of sovereignty and territorial integrity within the rules-based international order.