Does anyone in power anywhere actually think China has finally overtaken the US hegemony? Or are we pretending someone else might somehow hold that position?
Nobody appointed the US leader of the world, what are you talking about? It's just a matter of "whoever is most powerful and influential". There's no war needed, and the US never conquered the planet.
I'm not doubting that China is the likely eventual successor, I'm doubting that they can succeed anything at this particular point in time. Nobody wants China in charge. It would make any issues experienced with the US in charge like a joke. Maybe once their dictator dies?
China is making trade deals and integration left and right and even Canada and Mexico are looking in other directions and cooperate more closely with china and eu. Maybe not a single power has to hold power
China has historically been the most powerful nation in the world multiple times, but always remained relatively inward looking, while acting as more of a merchant towards the rest of the world. I don't see any reason to think that will substantially change. So the most likely scenario is we end up, and arguably are already in, a truly multipolar world where no individual nation is the hegemon.
China is currently trying to take control of the whole South China Sea. They’re in a cold war with the Philippines and Vietnam.
Next it will go for Taiwan.
Then either Siberian or Indian territory with the same “these used to be ours” justifications.
At the same time I think will use shadow fleets to take as much fish stocks from around the world as it can.
Not acting yet is not the same as not being expansionist. With all that “we’ll smash your head on the concrete” rhetoric China’s wolf warriors are very clear on where they’re headed.
Everyone is just gonna stop trying to acquire influence for some reason...? Or do you just think that, for some reason, this would now magically balance itself out any time any world leader thinks "wow that's a huge vacuum that needs filling!"
Empires expand when the benefit exceeds the cost. The US is currently doing quite poorly against Iran. The US military is not incompetent, nor is the Iranian army supercompetent, so why? It's technology. The traditional way the US invaded countries was by assassinating the leadership, gaining air superiority, and then basically playing shoot fish in a barrel.
Iran, and likely all major US adversaries now, were/are fully prepared for the US assassinations. And gaining full air superiority is no longer possible in the era of drones, because you're no longer shooting down a small number of high value targets (like planes), but instead a practically infinite amount of low value targets that can be readily replenished.
Spending interceptors that cost millions of dollars to shoot down drones that cost thousands of dollars just doesn't work. We might be able to obtain air superiority in terms of e.g. Iran being unable to fly fighter jets over their own country, but that says nothing about their ability to launch endless drones and otherwise inflict a severe toll on any invading army.
So it's likely that modern war has mostly gone back to times long since past where the bottleneck is no longer cost in $$, but cost in lives. And that makes militarism far less attractive for every single country, even moreso in the era of plummeting fertility rates when the people who are going to be killed are precisely those who are supposed to be birthing and raising your next generation.
So there will certainly be wars when nations see the benefit as being especially high, but I think the idea of trying to casually 'project strength' half way around the globe is probably already dead. The cost is too high, and the benefit too low.
It does not, because it imposes extrinsic constraints on what is possible. Iran is imposing a severe cost on the US. It doesn't matter what the US wants to do. When such a relatively minor power is able to extract such a high price, it limits what we can do. Ukraine was probably a big mistake, because it's the first time in modern history that the US got involved in a relatively large scale conflict against a peer level power. That severely damaged the perception of Western weaponry, training, and technology as being superhuman in capability. The US was obviously banking on Iran not counter-attacking out of fear, and that might have indeed been the outcome prior to Ukraine.
What little rational justification for Iran there was, probably rested in some part on trying to undo the perceptual damage to the US military tech by scoring a quick victory over a minor power. But the catastrophe that has unfolded there has essentially nailed the coffin shut on any concept of military superiority, let alone dominance. This doesn't mean that the US will just completely surrender Taiwan or whatever, but rather that it's clear to every single world power that such claims of protection are now just empty rhetoric. And that's almost certainly going to be acknowledged frankly between nations in private discussions going forward.
