Four extraordinary events happened last week within the span of just 72 hours; a week which may well be remembered as one of the most consequential in the transition from Pax Americana (an era that was admittedly much more “Americana” than “Pax”) to a multipolar world.
These 4 events are each significant in their own right, but when taken together and considering the fact they all happened within an extremely short timeframe – September 17th to 19th – they together point to a profound recalibration of global power dynamics.
What are they? In chronological order:
- September 17: Saudi-Arabia and Pakistan announced that they were forming a NATO-like formal security alliance, fundamentally altering the Middle East’s strategic balance, especially when you consider that Pakistan is a nuclear state that sources 81% of its weapon imports from China
- September 18: the Trump administration publicly revealed that they had – unsuccessfully – been negotiating with the Talibans for 6 months to regain control of Bagram Airbase
- September 19: Xi and Trump held what was likely the most positive call between both countries’ presidents in many years, that both sides characterized in almost celebratory terms afterwards
- September 19: the U.S. announced they were revoking their waiver of sanctions over India’s Chabahar port in Iran, which was India’s crown jewel infrastructure project for trade with Central Asia, and which represent yet another hostile move by the U.S. against India after it recently hit the country with 50% tariffs
You could almost add a 5th event to the list as on September 21, two days after Trump’s call with Xi, a top-level bipartisan delegation from the US Congress – an institution that’s normally been very reliably hawkish on China – arrived in Beijing for the first House visit in over 6 years. A trip described by the delegation as aimed at “breaking the ice” after the Trump-Xi call, and as being the first of many in order to “to strengthen [the] relationship”. Not earth-shattering on its own, but still indicative that a realignment is taking place, especially – as we’ll see – when you pair this with the rest.
So here are the questions: how are those 4 (or 5) events connected? Are they even connected at all? What do they reveal about the changing world order?
My argument, as you’ll have guessed, is that they are connected either directly (for instance it’s obvious that Trump’s public revelation about Bagram can’t be coincidental with either the Saudi-Pakistan alliance or his call with Xi) or connected in that they all reflect the same underlying shift.
More profoundly, I think that the deeper trend that they reveal is that the map is reasserting itself against the narrative. For decades, we’ve lived in a world where stories mattered more than geography – where being a “democracy” or an “ally” or part of the “rules-based order” determined your place in the world more than your location, resources, or neighbors.
But these four events suggest a revenge of the physical world, a return of the law of geopolitical gravity when for decades American power distorted it by acting like a massive electromagnetic field that could make iron filings ignore the magnet next door. But electromagnetic fields require constant energy to maintain, and when the generator winds down, particles realign along older, simpler forces.
This is why I entitled this article “the return of geopolitical gravity”. In it we’ll start by looking at all 4 events individually to understand not just what happened and the immediate implications, but also how each event may have triggered or shaped the others.
We’ll then zoom out to see that what emerges is a story that would have made perfect sense to any human being throughout most of humanity’s history but seems almost alien to those of us raised on the post-1945 order: a world where gravity, in the end, always wins.
Excerpt reprinted with permission from Arnaud Bertrand.
