In practice, it behaves more like a marketplace with aircraft carriers parked outside.
Back in 2010, many people still spoke with the optimism of the post Cold War era. Globalization looked unstoppable. The internet felt like a force that would naturally open societies. Finance flowed across borders like water finding the lowest point. Then the decade began to argue with itself.
The early 2010s brought political earthquakes that did not stay local. The Arab Spring showed how quickly a street can become a stage for history. At the same time, it exposed a hard truth about the global system: foreign policy is often a romance novel written in public, while the real plot is negotiated behind closed doors. Governments spoke of freedom. They also spoke, more quietly, of stability, energy security, and influence.
By the middle of the decade, the contest over borders and spheres of influence came roaring back. Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014 signaled that the era of “rules alone will protect you” was over. The language of deterrence returned, and so did the logic that military power can rewrite maps faster than diplomacy can protest.
Meanwhile, economics was becoming geopolitical. The Paris Agreement in 2015 reflected a moment when cooperation still felt possible, even necessary. But the same years also revealed how fragile that cooperation could be when domestic politics turned inward. The Brexit vote in 2016 and the surge of populism across multiple countries carried a similar message: global integration would no longer be treated as an unquestioned good. People wanted borders, control, and a story that put them back at the center.
Then came the late 2010s, when the US China relationship shifted from complicated partnership to open rivalry. Trade disputes and tariffs were not only about pricing. They were about technology leadership, industrial capacity, and who gets to set the standards of the future. It was the world order admitting, out loud, that economic advantage is a form of power and that power is rarely shared politely.
And then 2020 arrived like a door kicked in.
COVID 19 did something wars rarely do. It hit nearly everyone at once, and it turned the global economy into a stress test. The World Bank described 2020 as a severe global contraction, forecasting a steep drop in global GDP. The pandemic made supply chains visible to ordinary people. Suddenly, a mask, a chip, or a shipping container was not a boring logistical detail. It was destiny. Countries learned that dependency can feel like vulnerability, and resilience can look like nationalism wearing a lab coat.
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