Anuradha Chenoy | May 21, 2026
- The US seeks to retain global primacy, but its strategic weaknesses are evident in 3 events: (i) Iran’s ability to retain its state structure and leadership; leverage oil and the Straits of Hormuz despite US-Israeli aggression and attempts for de-stabilization. Resistance groups in Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen remain. (ii) US inability to sustain funding and arms support to the Russia-Ukraine war (iii) China’s rise as ‘near peer’. The Trump-Xi meeting (May 15-16, 2026) established the two as equal powers- something the US has not experienced for decades since unipolar hegemony. Trump calls this ‘G2’, Rubio acknowledges this as “strategic stability point”. Chinese see this as a period of ‘strategic stalemate’. So, the Indo-Pacific (Asia Pacific) will remain a theatre of intense but ‘managed’ competition. This is a paradigm shift in international politics. The US seeks domination as usual while China seeks parity. This competition has global impacts.
2. The US is re-structuring its foreign policies accordingly. For the US the main security theatre has shifted from Europe to Asia-Pacific. The differences within NATO are based on (i) US wants burden-sharing with EU on defense budgets, labor and outsourcing the Ukraine war as Euro-politics. (ii) Wants Europe to back US interventions- like Iran war and control of Hormuz. (iii) Re-cast supply chains for US energy and defense for US industries (iv) No rules for US Tec companies. (v) Method of confrontation with China. But NATO’s common strategic goal of US led Western primacy remains intact. Europe has choice to remain vassalized or adopt strategic autonomy. But within strategic autonomy- Europe has the choice for regional integration- including Russia with common security or greater militarization. Here the social movements can make a case for a new Euro regionalism.
3. For other allies: The structural shift involves diversifying from the earlier hub-spoke alliance approach while transiting to a denser, more networked architecture. US power will be dispersed to overlapping networks in NATO to NATO favored partners like Japan, South Korea, Australia. US’s strategic partners like Argentina, UAE, India, Philippines will receive US rhetoric of the Chinese threat to keep US arms sales and deeper economic integration, with asymmetrical benefits in favor of the US.
4. US has shifted to economic nationalism for itself but retains the NATO security threat rhetoric from Russia and China, a narrative that keeps allies together. But it is evident from Iran-Gulf experience that the US failed to provide security to its most protected partners in the region. So, NATO will be the primary instrument for neoliberal, militarized finance capital and US led mercantilism.
5. The ani-Nato United Front has the tasks to organize and change the common sense with an inter-sectional narrative, that rupture from dominant militarist narrative to one of the links between peace. social gender justice. To common security instead of deterrence, the essential human condition of diversity, plurality, freedoms for all. Human security above militarization. Move from war economy to economy of peace.