The history of international relations can also be understood as a long succession of cycles of power, hegemony and counterpower. Great powers do not dominate the international system indefinitely. They build institutions, commercial networks, alliances, financial instruments, military capabilities and cultural models through which they exercise influence. Yet, precisely when a power reaches a dominant position, it also creates the conditions for other actors to attempt to limit, contain or eventually replace it.
The concept of power and counterpower should not be interpreted as a mechanical law according to which every hegemonic power is inevitably destined to be defeated by a single rival. History is far more complex. Some hegemonic transitions are relatively peaceful, others are accompanied by wars, while in other cases the existing center of power survives for a long period and adapts to changing circumstances. Contemporary scholarship on power transitions emphasizes precisely this variety of historical processes.
However, one recurring dynamic can be identified. When a power reaches a dominant position, the international system tends to generate balancing forces. Other states develop sufficient economic, military, technological and diplomatic resources to reduce the hegemon’s relative superiority. A counterpower therefore emerges.
This perspective can also be applied to the transformation of the contemporary international order.
Hegemony as a System, Not Merely Military Dominance
To understand the meaning of hegemony, it is necessary to move beyond a purely military conception of power. A country can be militarily powerful without being hegemonic. Hegemony implies something broader: the ability to influence the rules of the international system, organize alliances, shape major commercial and financial flows, establish technological standards, exercise cultural influence and, above all, influence the international agenda.
During the nineteenth century, Britain constructed a global power system based on a combination of naval power, international trade, finance, industrial capacity, colonial possessions and control of major maritime routes. London did not directly control every part of the world, but it possessed a global network through which it could project influence far beyond its territorial size.
During the twentieth century, this system was increasingly challenged by the United States. The Anglo-American transition represents one of the most important examples in modern history of a transformation of global hegemony. Historical research on competition between London and Washington identifies growing economic and strategic rivalry between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in areas including transportation, communications, oil and international commerce.
This transition is particularly important because it demonstrates that a counterpower does not necessarily emerge when the old hegemon has already collapsed. On the contrary, a counterpower can develop while the hegemon still appears overwhelmingly dominant.
Rome, Great Powers and the Logic of Counterpower
The dynamic can also be observed, in different forms, in the ancient world. Rome progressively built one of the most important power structures in the Mediterranean through the combination of military strength, administrative organization, infrastructure, trade, taxation and political integration.
Before the full establishment of Roman hegemony, however, the Mediterranean was characterized by competition among different centers of power. Rome had to confront Carthage, the Hellenistic kingdoms and subsequently other regional powers.
The fundamental lesson does not simply consist in saying that Rome “defeated” its rivals. More interesting is the way Rome transformed a series of military victories into a broader political, economic and institutional order.
This is the decisive transition: power becomes hegemony when superiority no longer depends exclusively on the ability to win wars, but on the ability to organize the system within which other actors must operate.
A counterpower, therefore, has to accomplish something similar. It must build alternatives.
From British Supremacy to the Rise of American Power
The transition from British to American power represents one of the most significant examples.
During the nineteenth century, London remained the world’s leading financial, commercial and maritime center. The United States, however, possessed characteristics that would gradually transform the balance of power: enormous territory, a growing population, abundant natural resources, expanding industrial capacity and a rapidly developing domestic market.
The decisive factor was that American counterpower did not remain confined to the economic sphere. Industrial strength was transformed into financial, technological, naval and geopolitical power.
The two world wars accelerated this process. Britain emerged from the Second World War victorious but deeply weakened, while the United States emerged as the leading economic, military and financial power in the international system.
The transition, however, was not simply a war between the United States and the United Kingdom. It was a long process involving the shift of the global center of gravity.
This is an essential point for understanding the present: the loss of hegemony does not necessarily mean the destruction of the former power.
The American Century and the Emergence of Soviet Counterpower
After 1945, the United States constructed an international system unprecedented in its geographical reach. The dollar became the central currency of the international monetary system, the Bretton Woods institutions consolidated a multilateral economic order, while NATO and bilateral alliances created a security structure linking North America, Europe and the Pacific.
At the same time, however, a powerful counterpower emerged: the Soviet Union.
The Cold War represented a massive competition between two systems. It was not merely a military confrontation. It involved industrial production, technological development, space exploration, energy, diplomacy and ideological competition.
The Soviet Union possessed formidable military and nuclear capabilities, but it failed to transform those capabilities into an economic system capable of sustaining long-term competition with the United States.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 therefore appeared to confirm the idea of a definitive victory for the American-led international order.
The United States entered the 1990s in a period of unipolarity, during which no other state appeared capable of simultaneously challenging its military, financial, technological and diplomatic superiority.
Yet precisely while American unipolarity was reaching its maximum extension, the foundations of a new transformation were already emerging.
The Emergence of a New Eurasian Counterpower
The fundamental difference from the Cold War is that the contemporary counterpower is not represented by a single state.
Russia possesses energy resources, strategic minerals, military capabilities, nuclear weapons and enormous territorial depth. China possesses a massive industrial base, a huge domestic market, expanding technological capabilities, global manufacturing capacity and increasing financial influence.
Separately, Russia and China possess very different strategic characteristics.
Together, however, they can generate a form of Eurasian counterpower that is significantly different from the Soviet model.
China represents primarily the industrial, commercial and technological component. Russia represents primarily the energy, mineral, military and geographical component. Their potential complementarity is therefore one of the most important aspects of their relationship.
In May 2025, Beijing and Moscow reaffirmed their comprehensive strategic partnership and emphasized the importance of a more multipolar international system and a central role for the United Nations.
This does not mean that China and Russia constitute a new eastern version of NATO. Their interests do not automatically coincide in every region, and there is no political merger between the two countries. However, their strategic cooperation is sufficiently broad to represent a structural element in the transformation of the international order.
The Real Battlefield: Eurasia
If the nineteenth century and part of the twentieth century were dominated by oceanic routes, the twenty-first century may be characterized by a more complex competition in which land, sea, energy, infrastructure, technology and data become interconnected instruments of geopolitical power.
This is where the great tradition of classical geopolitics becomes relevant again.
Halford Mackinder identified Eurasia as the principal strategic space of the planet. Nicholas Spykman subsequently placed particular emphasis on the Eurasian peripheral zone, the Rimland.
Regardless of the absolute validity of these theories, they help explain why contemporary strategic competition involves Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, the Arctic, the Indo-Pacific, the Red Sea and the Western Pacific simultaneously.
China is developing commercial and logistical infrastructure across Asia, while Russia maintains a geographical position connecting Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Arctic and the Far East.
The geopolitical consequence is significant: the more Eurasia develops economic connections independent of the Atlantic system, the more difficult it becomes for a single center of power to control the entire continent.
The United States and the United Kingdom: One Power?
A clarification is necessary at this point.
Defining the United States and the United Kingdom simply as a single “hegemonic power” would be historically and analytically inaccurate. Contemporary hegemony is primarily American, while the United Kingdom represents one of Washington’s most important strategic allies.
The Anglo-American relationship remains particularly close in the areas of defense, intelligence, technology and security. Britain continues to describe the United States as its most important ally for defense and security, with extensive cooperation through NATO, intelligence-sharing arrangements and nuclear security structures.
Washington and London have also continued to deepen cooperation in trade, technology and security, including collaboration in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and nuclear energy.
It is therefore more accurate to speak of an Anglo-American or Atlantic system, with the United States at its center and the United Kingdom as a major strategic partner.
This distinction is important because it prevents an oversimplification. The contemporary confrontation is not literally “the United States and Britain against Russia and China.” It is better understood as a competition between a US-led international order, in which Britain plays an important role, and increasingly influential powers seeking greater strategic autonomy and a larger role in shaping the international system, particularly Russia and China.
China as the Economic Core of Counterpower
The Chinese component of this counterpower is primarily economic and industrial.
China has become one of the central pillars of the global economy, while its industrial capacity, technological development and integration into global supply chains have made it a structural competitor to the United States.
At the same time, tensions between Washington and Beijing have intensified across trade, technology, investment and strategic supply chains.
The geopolitical issue, however, goes far beyond trade.
It concerns semiconductors, artificial intelligence, batteries, electric vehicles, telecommunications, robotics, critical minerals, infrastructure, energy and financial systems.
Chinese counterpower is therefore not simply an attempt to challenge American military power. It is also an effort to increase strategic autonomy in sectors that are essential to the functioning of the twenty-first-century economy.
Russia as Strategic Depth
Russia plays a different role.
Its power does not derive from an economic scale comparable to that of the United States or China. Instead, it comes from the combination of territory, natural resources, energy, military capabilities, nuclear deterrence and geographical position.
Russia is therefore particularly important to the development of a Eurasian counterpower because it possesses something China does not have on a comparable scale: enormous strategic depth and extraordinary reserves of energy and mineral resources.
Cooperation with Beijing also allows Russia to orient a growing share of its economic relations toward Asia.
In this sense, the Russia-China relationship should not be interpreted solely as a political alliance against Washington. It can also be understood as a geographical reorientation of Eurasian economic flows.
The Return of Great-Power Competition
Global military expenditure reached approximately $2.887 trillion in 2025, according to SIPRI. The United States, China and Russia together accounted for roughly half of global military spending.
These figures do not, by themselves, prove the existence of a new Cold War. They do, however, demonstrate that the international system is experiencing a period of intense strategic competition and military rearmament.
The confrontation is also multidimensional.
Competition does not take place only on the battlefield. It involves sanctions, trade, technology, supply chains, currencies, energy, infrastructure, cyberspace, outer space and access to strategic resources.
This is where the concept of counterpower assumes its broader meaning.
A counterpower does not necessarily need to conquer Washington or London. It needs to make it increasingly difficult for Washington and its allies to determine the rules of the international system unilaterally.
Power and Counterpower: The Decisive Phase
If history is viewed through this lens, an important principle emerges.
A hegemonic power becomes genuinely vulnerable not necessarily when it loses a single war, but when its ability to organize the international system declines faster than the ability of its rivals to construct alternative systems.
Britain did not suddenly cease to be a major power in 1945. It continued to possess military forces, a navy, diplomatic networks and considerable global influence. But the economic and financial center of gravity had shifted.
Similarly, the Soviet Union did not lose the Cold War because its military power suddenly disappeared. Its broader political and economic structure proved increasingly unable to sustain long-term systemic competition.
This is probably the central question of the twenty-first century:
Are the United States simply facing a normal cycle of great-power competition, or are they confronting a genuine hegemonic transition?
The answer cannot yet be established historically.
The Great Uncertainty of the Twenty-First Century
The Russian-Chinese counterpower possesses important advantages: territorial depth, energy resources, China’s industrial capacity, Russia’s strategic geography and increasing diplomatic coordination.
The US-led order, however, retains enormous capabilities: American military power, a wide alliance network, the international role of the dollar, advanced technological capabilities, established international institutions and a vast network of partners.
For this reason, declaring the end of American hegemony as an accomplished fact would be premature.
The more relevant question is whether the world is moving from a system in which one center possesses overwhelming overall superiority toward a system in which several centers possess sufficient capabilities to prevent absolute dominance by any single power.
This second possibility corresponds to the emergence of a multipolar international order.
And this is precisely the strategic environment in which today’s great-power competition is unfolding.
From Hegemony to Multipolarity
History therefore teaches that the relationship between power and counterpower does not necessarily produce a single winner.
Sometimes counterpower replaces the hegemon. Sometimes it forces the hegemon to reduce its ambitions. Sometimes both sides enter a prolonged balance of power. In other cases, the existing hegemon adapts and preserves its position.
The British-American transition demonstrates that hegemony can shift through gradual and relatively peaceful processes. The Cold War demonstrates that a counterpower can compete for decades without ultimately replacing its opponent.
The twenty-first century presents a new situation.
The United States remains the principal center of the Western international order, while the United Kingdom continues to be one of Washington’s most important strategic partners. Russia and China, although they do not constitute a perfectly unified bloc, are developing strategic cooperation and contributing to the emergence of an international system in which power is distributed among a growing number of centers.
The historical question is therefore not simply who will win.
The more important question is:
What kind of international system will emerge from this competition?
If the counterpower succeeds in transforming its economic, energy, technological, military and diplomatic capabilities into autonomous institutions and international networks, the US-led order could gradually lose part of its ability to shape the global system.
If, on the other hand, the United States succeeds in adapting its alliances, preserving technological and financial centrality and integrating its partners into a new strategic architecture, the existing order may prove considerably more resilient than theories of hegemonic decline suggest.
In any case, one fundamental point remains clear: history is not static.
Every hegemonic system generates reactions, adaptations and forms of counterpower. When these forces reach a critical mass, the international system enters a period of transition. The transition may be slow, gradual and negotiated, or it may be accompanied by crises, wars and profound economic disruptions.
The contemporary world appears to be entering precisely such a period of transformation.
The competition between the United States and China, the strategic relationship between Russia and China, the role of the United Kingdom, the war in Ukraine, technological competition, energy security, control of trade routes and increasing economic fragmentation are all elements of a much broader geopolitical transformation.
It is not yet possible to determine whether this transformation will lead to the replacement of American hegemony by a new Chinese-centered hegemony, the formation of a new bipolar balance or the emergence of a genuinely multipolar international system.
But one point is increasingly difficult to ignore: the unipolar world of the 1990s is no longer, by itself, a sufficient description of the geopolitical reality of the twenty-first century.
The relationship between power and counterpower has returned to the center of history.
And, as often happens during major geopolitical transitions, the most important moment is not necessarily the moment when an empire falls, but the moment when another center of power demonstrates that it can help construct a different international order.