The Earth circles the sun, Galileo maintained, despite what churchmen claimed. Today the globe’s economic and political systems spin around or hedge against the United States. The Strange Triumph of a Broken America, by Michael Beckley in Foreign Affairs, argues that despite its many problems, the world is as unipolar as it was in the 1990s, and will probably remain so unless Americans destroy themselves.  

No other country or political system rivals the US in soft power and the ability to persuade others to follow its lead. It produces just over a quarter of world GDP and its dollar is key to most transactions. The US is still the hub of technological innovation and, thanks to immigration, it benefits from the world’s scientific and engineering talent.  

Yet, while the US spends far more on defense in cash terms than any other country, its military has become relatively weaker following the (imagined) end of Cold War. Since then, it has been ready to fight insurgents in Afghanistan but not for war against one or two major powers.  

China now has more warships than the US and regularly flaunts its raw power by threatening Taiwan. Russia produces more artillery shells and drones than the West, and uses them daily in Ukraine. 

Moscow’s strategic nuclear weaponry is also roughly equivalent to America’s, and China is catching up. Russia’s flagging war effort is now assisted by North Korea and Iran, but their contributions are trivial compared to those of US allies in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.  

Given this global balance of wealth and power, why hasn’t the US done more to resist aggression? Wishful thinking, complacency, and naivete all play a role. American leaders had hoped to draw post-Soviet Russia and post-Mao China into a rules-based international order founded on global prosperity, but the attempt failed. Washington’s caution also reflects a deep fear of risking nuclear war.  

In 1932, Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson declared that the US would never recognize territorial changes made by force. After the Soviet breakup, however, Washington spoke a great deal but did little change Russia’s occupation of Transnistria, the Yeltsin-Putin wars on Chechnya, the detaching of two provinces from Georgia, or Putin’s occupation of Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk in 2014. 

As Putin’s forces annexed parts of Ukraine, the US failed to enforce the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which the US, UK and Russia pledged to guarantee Ukraine’s independence after Kyiv surrendered its nuclear arsenal. In 2014, Moscow refused to discuss the memorandum, asserting that its security guarantee did not apply to the government in Kyiv at the time.  

Bob Woodward’s book War tells how the Biden administration gave in to Kremlin blackmail in September and October 2022. Alarmed by Putin’s threats to employ tactical nuclear weapons, Biden got Ukraine to stand down as 30,000 Russian troops retreated across the River Dnieper from Kherson with their weaponry intact. 

Fear of escalation also led Biden to hold back delivering tanks, F-16s, and medium-range missiles to Ukraine. Only in late 2024 did Washington permit Kyiv to launch US missiles against military targets inside Russia.  

Abuse of dissidents and ethnic minorities in China and Russia should also have elicited a stronger response from the United States and its allies — all of whom in 2005 committed to the United Nations Responsibility to Protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. China’s treatment of Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongolians, and other minorities certainly amounted to genocide.  

Beijing’s claim to the South China Sea violates the rights of other littoral states and has no historical or legal foundation, according to a 2016 ruling by the International Court of Arbitration at The Hague. The US and some Europeans have asserted freedom of navigation there, by sending warships through the area, but they have done little to stop China from building bases on man-made islands and threatening the Philippines and Vietnam with “coastguard” ships.  

Even if none of the above qualifies as a concern, the fate of Ukraine is surely key for the West. As Elena Davlikanova writes, Putin has long sought to resolve his war of aggression through direct talks with Washington that imply US recognition of Russia’s global status and an acknowledgment that Ukraine is not a “real” country.  

If President Donald Trump talks with Putin about ending the Ukraine war, this will be a major concession and a message to European NATO that it too must wait outside the chamber for news of a meeting critically important to the continent. 

Let us hope that Trump’s more Russia-skeptical tone of recent weeks holds good, and that the West recognizes its own strength. We can bend but must not break in the current storm.

Walter Clemens is Associate, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University, and Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Boston University. He wrote Blood Debts: What Putin and Xi Owe Their Victims (2023).