The Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s most recent summit was not merely an exercise in regional diplomacy. It was a performance designed to convey a message: the world stage is no longer the preserve of a single actor. China’s orchestration of military display, its carefully managed optics, and its posture of leadership were calculated not simply for its immediate partners but for a broader global audience.
For much of the last three decades, international politics has been conducted under the shadow of American preeminence. With the end of the Cold War, the United States found itself in a position unparalleled in history. Its alliances, its economic vitality, its cultural reach, and its unmatched military power created a unipolar moment in which Washington became the pivot of the global system.
But history rarely permits permanence. Power, while measurable in armies, fleets, and currencies, is also intangible. It rests on perception, legitimacy, and the willingness of other nations to accept a particular hierarchy of order. On these less tangible fronts, the U.S. monopoly is showing signs of erosion.
The SCO and the Multipolar Optic
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is often dismissed in Washington as a loose forum with divergent interests. Yet this year’s summit demonstrated something more consequential: the emergence of an alternative optic of power. Russia, despite its economic fragility and entanglement in Ukraine, presented itself as a state unwilling to submit to isolation. India asserted its sovereignty with a deliberate equidistance from blocs. China, meanwhile, sought to transform these disparate positions into the appearance of an organized alternative to Western-led institutions.
Individually, these powers do not equal the United States. Collectively, however, they articulate a shared impatience with singular leadership. The SCO may not yet be the nucleus of a new order, but it has become a stage where discontent with American monopoly is performed, rehearsed, and increasingly legitimized.
Lessons from History
The current moment has echoes in earlier epochs. After the Napoleonic Wars, the Concert of Europe sought stability not by the domination of one power but by a balance among several—Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and later France. That system endured for nearly a century, restraining conflict through equilibrium rather than monopoly.
Similarly, the decline of Rome illustrates the limits of singularity. At its height, Rome commanded unmatched resources and legions, but its vastness bred overextension. As peripheral powers grew more assertive, Rome faced the paradox of supremacy: the stronger it became, the more fragile its commitments. In the modern world, the United States does not face literal collapse, but it does face the risks of strategic overreach and the diffusion of legitimacy.
Britain, too, offers a parallel. The 19th century was marked by Pax Britannica—an era of naval supremacy, global trade networks, and imperial confidence. Yet even as London remained formidable, the rise of Germany, the United States, and Japan foreshadowed a world in which no single power could indefinitely prescribe the rules. Britain’s decline was not a sudden eclipse but a gradual adjustment, as new centers of gravity emerged.
The Cold War presents a more immediate lesson. The United States and the Soviet Union commanded rival blocs. What sustained the system was not hegemony but balance. When the Soviet Union dissolved, America briefly found itself unchallenged. But history teaches that such singularity is rare, and seldom enduring. The SCO summit is one more marker that the equilibrium of the future may resemble earlier multipolar arrangements more than the unique unipolarity of the 1990s.
The Structural Realities
To suggest that the United States has been eclipsed would be premature. By every structural measure, Washington retains decisive advantages. Its military expenditure exceeds that of the next several countries combined. The dollar remains the anchor of the global financial system, underpinning reserves, trade, and investment. Its alliances—NATO in Europe, security partnerships in the Indo-Pacific—are deeper and more resilient than anything its rivals can assemble. Its technological frontier, from artificial intelligence to biotechnology, remains formidable.
By contrast, China faces slowing growth, demographic decline, and fragile alliances. Russia, while capable of disruption, is constrained by sanctions and economic isolation. India, despite its dynamism, is cautious about binding itself to any bloc. The SCO itself is a patchwork of diverging interests, united less by vision than by convenience.
And yet, perception matters. Power that is seen as absolute invites challenge. Coalitions often begin as sentiments before they crystallize into systems. The SCO summit may not yet be a new order, but it dramatized a shifting psychology: the sense that America’s uncontested singularity belongs more to memory than to the present.
America’s Choice
The challenge for the United States is therefore not imminent replacement but adaptation. If Washington seeks to preserve leadership in a world of many voices, it must resist the temptation to defend monopoly as an end in itself. Leadership in the 21st century cannot rest solely on unilateral assertion; it must rest on the ability to harmonize competing ambitions into a framework of stability.
In this sense, American statecraft must combine strength with restraint. It must preserve its alliances, sustain its technological edge, and project confidence. But it must also recognize that legitimacy today depends less on command and more on consensus. A strategy clinging to singularity risks estrangement; a strategy that acknowledges plurality while shaping its direction can preserve centrality.
The Path Forward
The SCO summit was not a decisive turning point. But history often accumulates in gestures, in perceptions, in moments that reveal the restlessness of the system. Just as Rome’s imperium, Britain’s empire, and America’s own Cold War supremacy eventually confronted adjustment, so too must today’s United States.
The question is not whether America will disappear from the center of world affairs—it will not. The question is whether it can redefine its role: not as a solitary hegemon, but as the indispensable power in a world of many centers. Such a role requires clarity, patience, and the wisdom to balance firmness with compromise.
If the United States adapts, it can remain the pivotal architect of a more plural order. If it resists adaptation, it risks the fate of earlier great powers—overextended, isolated, and overtaken not by a single rival, but by the cumulative weight of many.
A Moment of Transition
The SCO summit did not announce a new order. But it did mark the restlessness of the old. In international politics, perceptions often precede realities. The spectacle in Beijing was one such perception—an early reminder that history has begun to pose its question.
The United States retains the means to answer that question in its favor. The choice lies not in defending nostalgia for singularity, but in designing leadership equal to a world of plurality. Great powers endure not by clinging to the past, but by shaping the future.
