An Incoherent West in an Increasingly Assertive World

A troubling paradox defines the current geopolitical landscape. As China expands its global influence with strategic clarity and unwavering ambition, the Western alliance once the undeniable architect of the international order appears fractured, hesitant, and alarmingly incoherent. The United States speaks the language of confrontation, its rhetoric hardened by trade tariffs and technology restrictions. Yet across the Atlantic, European powers like Germany and France continue to prioritize economic pragmatism, deeply enmeshed in a web of supply chains and market dependencies that bind them to Beijing.

This is not a unified strategy; it is a recipe for strategic irrelevance. The recent G7 summit produced the usual tough talk but failed to mask the deepening cracks within the alliance. While the U.S. imposes steep tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and solar panels, the European Union refuses to follow en masse, exposing a fundamental misalignment of interests and political will. Even on security issues, the transatlantic partnership shows signs of strain. Numerous NATO members continue to engage with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, attempting to balance economic opportunity with existential anxiety about Beijing’s long-term ambitions.

This dissonance is not merely diplomatic it is dangerous. It reveals a West struggling to reconcile its values with its vulnerabilities, its principles with its profits. Western leaders rightly condemn China’s human rights record and its aggressive territorial claims in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait. Yet these criticisms ring hollow when their own nations remain economically tethered to the very system they claim to oppose.

Meanwhile, China operates with patience and precision. It observes a West distracted by the war in Ukraine and crisis in the Middle East, and it seizes the opportunity to deepen its influence across the Global South from Africa to Latin America to Southeast Asia. While the West debates, China builds. While the West hesitates, China advances.

The world is watching. And what it sees is a coalition in decline, hampered by internal disagreements and strategic indecision. The era of Western unipolarity is over. What remains uncertain is whether the West can adapt to a world of multipolar competition or whether it will continue to speak in multiple voices, compromising its power and ceding the future to those with a clearer vision and a stronger will.

The time for coherent action is now. Without it, the West may find itself not only divided but defeated not by force, but by its own failure of resolve.