As of February 2026, the most significant event in world politics remains the ongoing American strategic revolution under Trump 2.0.
In the 1990s, the United States emerged from the Cold War as what the French termed a "hyperpower", the world police of a planetary order whose utopia was a borderless world of capitalist democracies. But the eclipse of the socialist alternative merely paved the way for a "clash of civilizations", pioneered by the Muslim jihad of Al Qaeda, then joined in the mid-2010s by nationalist leaders in Russia, India, and China. Donald Trump proved to be flagbearer of an American response, whose full form became apparent only in his second term: a new American nationalism, unchallenged in the western hemisphere, and overshadowing even the great powers of the eastern hemisphere, thanks to control of the oceans, skies, and outer space.
This was still a world pursuing economic growth. America led the way, the dollar value of its tech companies ballooning into the trillions, followed by China, transitioning to a high-tech industrial power at the center of the material economy, and India, believing that with time, it could equal and surpass China. The rest of the world pursued whatever comparative advantage they could find.
But war was not forgotten. Europe, the former conqueror of the world and now the junior partner in America's liberal imperium, pursuing its dreams of affluent comfort and social justice, expanded east into Russia's near abroad. Russia having shed its status as the center of world socialism, hung onto its superpower military strength, and saw NATO expansion as simply another attempt at subjugation by the West, in the footsteps of Napoleon and Hitler. Emboldened by the American loss of Afghanistan under Biden in 2021, Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, declaring itself the champion of multipolar resistance to American world hegemony. Ukraine did not fall, but China and India bought Russian oil, and the world outside the West remained neutral, and that was enough for the war to drag on.
Meanwhile Trump returned at the end of 2024, this time with a much more radical intent. Domestically he set about eliminating policies of a liberal or progressive nature: foreign aid packaged with progressivism, diversity policies in employment, laxity regarding illegal immigration. The new government promoted vaccine skeptics (a nod to post-Covid discontent) and cut scientific research. The neoliberal shibboleth of central bank independence was also put on notice.
In addition to the tariff wars, betting on AI as the new industrial revolution became the center of the American economy. The top seven stocks (the "Magnificent Seven") were all involved in AI, either as software or hardware. The automotive and space tycoon Elon Musk, whose thousands of Starlink satellites were central to American control of near-earth space, crafted his own post-liberal AI and social media that worked with the new regime. Trump's AI czar focused on deregulation, Biden's regulators retreating to positions within Anthropic, the company most identified with AI safety. OpenAI and Google DeepMind were the other leading competitors.
Along with the Ukrainian war, the other geopolitical problem that Trump inherited from Biden was Israel's war in Gaza. Since its creation, opposition to Israel was led first by Egypt, then by Iraq, and now by Iran. The 2023 attack by Hamas led swiftly to an Israeli-American counterattack against the Iranian-led coalition. Lebanese Hezbollah was decimated in mid-2024, Baathist rule in Syria fell at the end of 2024, while much of Gaza was levelled in the course of 2024 and 2025, with Israel killing over 70,000 Palestinians in response to the 1,000 Israelis killed in October 2023. In America itself, opposition to Israel was suppressed in media (through new ownership) and on campus (through legal and financial pressure).
In mid-2025 under Trump, there was a "12-day war" during which Israel bombed Iranian missile infrastructure and America bombed Iranian nuclear facilities. In January 2026, Iran bloodily suppressed a national uprising stoked by Israeli and American intelligence, and by month's end America was threatening Iran with war again, unless Iran shut down its missile and nuclear programs. The other powers of the region, notably Turkey and Saudi Arabia, kept their distance while angling for power on the edges of the conflict.
By comparison to America, the Eurasian powers stayed in character and were mostly reactive.
China, America's biggest rival, concentrated on political stability and technological development. They had most of the world's manufacturing, they had their own space station, they were less than a year behind America in AI, and even rivalled Musk in areas like electric cars and humanoid robotics.
China does not have elections, but its ruling party still knows from history that a dynasty can collapse. Since coming to power in 2013, Xi Jinping has bet the party's domestic legitimacy on an anti-corruption campaign, meant to show the people that party officials govern in the interest of the nation, and he has bet its geopolitical legitimacy on keeping Taiwan within the Chinese sphere. Rising China has made territorial claims in all directions, but above all it cares about Taiwan, the westernized island province that maintains a de-facto independence and which manufactures the advanced computer chips central to the AI economy. To this end he has set 2027 as the year by which the Chinese military must be capable of defeating Taiwan (and any support from America or Japan) should the province declare independence. (In early 2026, his old comrade Zhang Youxia, China's most senior general, was retired and placed under investigation; it was widely believed that this was because he resisted keeping pace with the rigorous 2027 deadline.)
China also gave Japan a warning when its new female prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, declared that war over Taiwan might require Japanese involvement, China threatening to cut off Japan's access to technologically crucial rare earth materials. Combined with economic dominance in Indonesia and the other nations of ASEAN, and friendly relations with both North and South Korea, and careful study of the Ukrainian war, China was doing what it could to be ready for a Pacific war with America over Taiwan, should that ever happen.
While managing all these legacy conflicts, Trump 2.0's America began to take new steps in its own hemisphere, by abducting the leader of Venezuela and bringing him to America for trial. Oil-rich Venezuela had cultivated ties with China, Russia, and Iran, but Trump and his secretary of state (foreign minister) Marco Rubio declared that Venezuela now needed to follow American diktats if it hoped to stay out of further trouble.
Meanwhile NATO, previously America's most valuable alliance, was shocked by Trump's insistence on dominance of the entire North American continent. Post-Trudeau Canada was already on guard thanks to Trump's insistence that it should become America's "51st state", and then in January 2026, Trump began to insist that Greenland, a Danish territory next to Canada, must also become American. The European powers supported Denmark's claim while trying to negotiate with America. But on the economic front, the erratic imposition of tariffs led them to build ties with the Asian powers. Australia and Canada had already been to China to make new economic deals; now France, Britain and Germany all followed suit.
The European Union also negotiated an extensive trade deal with India. India had been alienated from America since mid-2025 when Trump took credit for ending a short shooting war between India and Pakistan, to which Trump responded by imposing tariffs until India stopped purchasing Russian oil. India ignored this, and went on to negotiate an economic deal with Russia. After the European deal, Trump quickly made his own deal with India's Modi, bringing down tariffs on India in return for a reduction in Indian purchases of Russian oil, and an increase in Indian purchases of American goods.
