At the beginning of September 2025, the ripple effect in the global power balance had reached across the corners of the globe, reverberating with crack and crinkle from the North China Sea’s coastal city, the industrial hub of Tianjin. Two rising powers, China and India, and one Cold War period American rival, Russia, met at a ten-member Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit held on August 31 – September 1, 2025, in Tianjin, China.
The three leaders not only shook hands but shared their feelings with a pleased facial expression, passing a message to the observers that they are comfortable with bonding with each other. This has come at a time when the United States is playing with tariff cards as a punitive measure on non-compliance with American interests and orders, and trying to bend to its terms. Thanks to its mammoth economic leverage, China resisted US demands and sustained the trade conflict on its own terms. The story of India is different, although trying hard to sustain the undue tariff pressure at the cost of diminishing bilateral relations and deteriorating level of confidence that India had cultivated over the decades. America’s relations with Russia are multidimensional- supportive, competitive, antagonistic, and contending- known to all, which often take twists and turns in major international issues confronting each other as a hegemonic character, both representing for spread of their sphere of influence regionally and internationally.
The Ukraine war has drawn global attention and major concerns for world peace and order. In the name of a special military operation, Russia has waged war against its small neighbor, Ukraine, since February 2022. It's now been three years since Russia has not been successful in achieving its declared objective to bring Ukraine under its umbrella, prohibiting Ukraine from joining NATO. On the other hand, the NATO members and the USA have been providing artillery, other software, and hardware defense support to Ukraine to fight against Russia. The economic sanctions by the United States and its NATO alliance on Russia to put pressure and force Russia to abandon the war and come to the negotiation table for peace are not becoming effective. When all the tactical methods of the NATO alliance against Russia are becoming ineffective, and Russia is tactfully avoiding them through cultivating alliances with the emerging powers China, India, North Korea, and Iran, it has become a headache for the United States to contain it.
When these three leaders shook hands in Tianjin, a frequency of strong messages of diplomatic convergence has circulated with the suspension of cooking something within and creating a cooperative alliance between these three global powers. It is nowhere than in Asia a geopolitical shift and strategic manoeuvring is visible, competing between China and the USA, with strategic alliances like Indo-Pacific, QUAD, ANZUS, AUKUS, etc., as a geopolitical hotspot. Similarly, China has also devised and is determined to run with strategic moves like the Global Security Initiative (GSI), Global Development Initiative (GDI), and Global Civilizational Initiative (GCI), and most importantly, its major program of BRI. The space of a unipolar world led by the USA has faded away with the emergence of multiple powerhouses in the domain of international politics, emerging with economic, financial, military, and technological powers gaining supremacy in multiple fields of human ingenuity.
When all the tactical methods of the NATO alliance against Russia are becoming ineffective, and Russia is tactfully avoiding them through cultivating alliances with the emerging powers China, India, North Korea, and Iran, it has become a headache for the United States to contain it.
Meanwhile, China has been condemning the presence of the US and its interference in the East and South China Seas. The region includes the contentious Taiwan Strait and several islands that China claims as its own, but countries like South Korea and Japan challenge it. Since South Korea and Japan host US military bases and are strategic allies, confrontation, not competition, between China and the USA might escalate further.
Much has happened after the SCO summit. In Nepal, the Zen Z protest has ousted the communist government from power and installed an independent interim government to look after the country's affairs and hold elections for the new government in six months. South Asia is experiencing its hard time with an unstable and turbulent phase. Following Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, Nepal has also experienced a web of mass, violent demonstrations that led to the ouster of its government. The three countries of South Asia -- Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka -- which were widely viewed to be lenient toward communist China, are no more in power. In such a scenario, to get hold of and consolidate further to expand the sphere of influence, the role of regional and global power cannot be ignored or minimized.
China’s given economic and military prowess has strengthened its outreach through the Belt and Road Initiative, and the USA’s containment policy has failed many times in many places, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region, thereby alarming America. With Trump’s second term in office, the much-hyped India-America strategic partnership seems to be loosening its grip due to strategic miscalibration of India’s defence capabilities and overstepping India’s major foreign policy concern, Kashmir, as a red line in Indian diplomacy.
With the punitive tariff measures against India and China, and consolidating relations with Pakistan, India, being suspicious of the American attitude toward South Asia, India is opening up the new possibilities of forming a Russia, India, and China trilateral strategic alliance (RICH), yet to be formalized, to counter the United States' hegemonic overtures in the Indo-Pacific region.
Because of a unilateral decision on major issues, including the war finance for Ukraine and pressure for increasing the defence budget of the NATO alliance, sharing the defence financial burden, levying higher tariff rates on European products has irritated the NATO members. Despite the displeasure of the United States, France, Great Britain, Belgium, Canada, Turkiye, Spain, and Luxembourg have recognized Palestine as an independent state. This seems to be the symptoms of the decay and decline of the global superpower status of the United States.
Trump’s tariffs have triggered a trade war with most of the US allies, friends, and competitors. War in different fronts has complicated and worsened the volatility of international peace. Watching carefully the international political developments breaking, shifting, and making geopolitical positions with new alliances is apparent. Since understanding diplomacy is often difficult, it's a matter of time to see the unfolding events. Trapped between the two giants and emerging global powers, Nepal needs to tactfully handle its foreign relations, maintaining a balanced and harmonious approach without antagonizing either.
(Mr. Bartaula is a former Diplomatic Officer of the Government of Nepal.)
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