Decisive divide runs between those capable of recognizing historical change and those who continue to fight it

In recent weeks, some Western leaders have begun to acknowledge — belatedly — what had long been evident: the international order has entered a phase of rupture rather than gradual transition. The remarks made at Davos in Switzerland by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney are emblematic. He spoke of a system breaking under the weight of its own contradictions, including the loss of integration as a source of shared prosperity and collective security. This acknowledgment matters precisely because it comes from the heart of the Western establishment and from Davos itself, long associated with the narrative of globalization as a positive-sum game.

The world from which the West benefited most over recent decades was structurally distorted. Globalization did not merely bring integration and growth; it also deepened inequalities, including within Western societies, driving a long process of deindustrialization that weakened productive capacity, employment and social cohesion.

The Western-dominated global order was also rooted in military force, which played a central role in sustaining it. During the very years when globalization was celebrated as a universal good by the West, NATO interventions and regime-change strategies were repeatedly employed, particularly against countries seeking to reduce dependence on the US dollar and Western finance. At the same time, the institutions designed to govern globalization — the World Trade Organization most visibly, but increasingly also the United Nations — have been progressively hollowed out. This has been the result of deliberate political choices, primarily by the United States and increasingly replicated by a subordinate Europe.

With the rise of the Global South, the West has gradually lost key levers of control on the trend of globalization. Decades of deindustriali-zation in some Western countries eroded innovation capacity and weakened their position in global value chains. Influence over international trade and the ability to steer globalization in its own interest diminished.

Faced with this loss of centrality, the West’s response was not adaptation, but rigidity: defensive closure, economic coercion and repeated attempts to reimpose conditions that no longer exist. The paradox is that the West itself now undermines the very rules and institutions it built after World War II, retreating when it can no longer control the trend of globalization.

The result is a world increasingly resistant to hegemonic ordering and clearly in a phase of systemic shock. Europe, particularly, appears progressively isolated, often showing contradictory moves that reveal deep strategic uncertainty. This strategic impasse is precisely what gives meaning to recent diplomatic shifts. In this context, the recent wave of some Western leaders’ paying visits to China is telling. They reflect a structural reality: China has been playing an indispensable role not only in global economic development, but also in geopolitical stability.

This is recognition that, to some extent, the strategy of isolating China has failed. It did not weaken China, while imposing rising costs on European economies in terms of exports, investment and value chains. At the same time, South-South integration has accelerated across Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. What is unfolding is a shift from a moralized reading of international relations — often used as an umbrella to cover domination policies — to a material and structural assessment of power relations, where the West does not lead anymore.

This explains why the rapprochement is happening now. On the one hand, China has proved irreplaceable both as a market and as an advanced productive hub, while the “alternative” supply chains promoted in recent years have failed the test of scale and efficiency. In the context of European industrial stagnation, closer ties with China can create economic room for maneuver. On the other hand, the international system is already operating in polycentric form. China, under pressure, has strengthened its multilateral frameworks and alternative financial arrangements.

The credibility crisis of the so-called rules-based order reinforces this dynamic. Applied selectively, accompanied by wars framed as defenses of values and by sanctions transformed into routine tools of foreign policy, the order advocated by the US is becoming increasingly difficult to defend even for European governments that once benefited from it. Western leaders’ visits to China should therefore not be read as geopolitical realignment, but as an attempt to recover margins of negotiating autonomy: reactivating economic channels, partially separating economic relations from security logics and avoiding entrapment in rigid bloc dynamics. It is a return to interest-based diplomacy.

The US’ reaction to these signals is revealing. Rather than adapting, it radicalizes. The US rejects multilateral management of the international system, interprets European engagement with China as insubordination, and responds with renewed tariff threats and an increasingly securitized rhetoric toward China. This posture is not merely electoral communication; it reflects a deeper structural contradiction.

The US needs allies but continues to treat them as subordinates. It seeks to contain China but no longer possesses enough economic means to do so without prohibitive costs. The US embodies this contradiction in its purest form: a power that retains coercive capacity but loses an ordering project in the long run. This is why Europe is experimenting with partial disengagement without openly declaring it and why much of the non-Western world increasingly organizes itself autonomously. A US-led order, that can no longer coordinate even the behavior of its own allies, signals a phase shift in the world system.

The options are now clear. Adaptation would mean recognizing the end of unipolar hierarchy, accepting a world of plural powers, and building shared rules based on relations among equals and genuine cooperation. Permanent rupture means retreat, economic coercion, selective partnerships and the use of force as a surrogate for lost influence.

So far, the West seems to have chosen the second path — not because it is inevitable, but because some Western countries remain unwilling to question the premises of an order that guaranteed them disproportionate advantages for decades. In a world no longer orderable through the old architectures of domination, the decisive divide runs between those capable of recognizing historical change and those who continue to fight it through obsolete instruments of power. As often happens in major historical turning points, it is this choice — rather than residual strength — that will determine who can cross the rupture without being overwhelmed.

The author is an associate professor of international studies at Eurispes BRICS Laboratory, Italy, and a visiting scholar at the Research Center on Building a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind at China Foreign Affairs University.

The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

Contact the editor at editor@chinawatch.cn.