We all know the world is changing. Change is inevitable, but sometimes, some moments make it clear it is happening right now.

We are living through a time when the post-WW2 American-led empire seems to be crumbling, while a challenger to the US hegemony is rising.

Last week, The Washington Post published a leaked report detailing a prospective plan of “redeveloping Gaza”, where most Gazans themselves would voluntarily leave, while ‘the land’ would be redeveloped by a trust administered by the United States, with other public and private investors in tow. The document was reportedly circulated in Washington. 

The unpredictable US

This plan felt dystopian, like a Black Mirror episode, where killing and displacing millions for real estate projects is seemingly the obvious business strategy. Titled the Gaza Reconstruction, Acceleration and Transformation Trust – or GREAT Trust– the plan seeks to “fundamentally transform Gaza (spatial design, economy, governance)” to increase its ‘value’ while the Gazans, over 2 million of them, settle in secure zones within the country if they choose to stay or leave Gaza during the reconstruction.

The plan suggests that every Palestinian who chooses to leave would be given $5,000 and additional funds to subsidise the next four years of rent and one year of food. But the Gazans who choose to stay would be given newly formed digital tokens. They could exchange the tokens for an apartment built in their homeland that will also house a new Trump Riviera, which will have “world-class resorts along the coastline and on small artificial islands (similar to the Palm Islands in Dubai),” while the Gazans hold on to their digital tokens.

However, this is not the only incident where the US seems to be losing its political and economic hegemony in the world order. In the past few weeks, the US has taken several steps that conflict with long- and short-term strategies, stated goals, and its ideology.

On August 22, the US government took a 10 percent equity stake in Intel. According to CNBC, out of the $8.9 billion acquisition, $5.7 billion would come from the CHIPS grant that had been awarded but not paid, while the other $3.2 billion would come from an unspecified government agency. Furthermore, the government will also take another 5 percent of the company if Intel loses the majority in its foundry business in the next five years. Intel is the only American company capable of making advanced chips on U.S. soil, and is seen to be lagging in the semiconductor technology race.

Another example of this is the Trump administration’s sudden hostility toward India, which has upended decades-old diplomatic and strategic work done by the US administration, where the US and India were seen as natural partners. This does not include the tariffs Trump has arbitrarily levied on the countries that trade with the US, threatening to destabilise their economies.

There is an exhaustive list of things the US has done in the recent past that undermine its own long-term interests, but just to understand the unpredictability of all this, we must look at the US Navy strike on a boat last week in Venezuelan waters. 

According to the POTUS, the US Navy targeted and destroyed a boat that departed from the Venezuelan shore and had 11 people on it. Trump claimed the boat was operated by the Tren de Aragua cartel and was carrying drugs bound for the US. This was a direct violation of international laws, and the strange thing about this strike is that the US is not in any conflict with Venezuela. The implication that Venezuela is a key player in drugs coming to the US has been debunked by the World Drug Report, published by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). This is abrupt, even when you remember that the US and Venezuela have not been on friendly terms for a long time, and that’s putting it mildly.

The Chinese counterweight

The fact that China has been gaining ground in terms of the world economy and security is not a secret. But what is noticeable is the way China has responded to US threats, forcing Trump to back down and reevaluate, along with the way it has reached out to many countries that are alarmed by the cavalier manner in which the US is handling world economic stability.

Another important recent event was the annual Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Tianjin, China, which 24 heads of state attended. A highlight of this event was the photo op between the leaders of Russia, India, and China. PM Modi and President Putin appeared unfazed by the US tariffs in their public interactions, while China spoke in a conciliatory tone, advocating global stability, equity in global governance, and respect for international law.

While the US is weaponising economic dependencies, China is investing in global infrastructure and energy, outpacing US foreign investment according to government reports. According to a US government report, China outpaced the US in investing in other countries.

While the US government has stepped back from long-term strategies to combat climate change, China has cornered the manufacturing of solar and wind energy generation equipment, something the world sorely needs. Along with production, they’ve also gained operational supremacy in planning and setting up large-scale solar or wind energy farms. This, in turn, would increase China’s influence as all this is underlined by the fact that China today is the global manufacturing hub and controls most of the critical supply chains.

This doesn’t mean China doesn’t have its problems. Sitting in India, the problems with the Chinese military and economic might are real.

Another important event was the 80th Victory Day parade in China, where the achievements of the Chinese military industry were on full display. The rise of dominant world orders, or empires, has always been linked with their military might, coupled with economic might. While China is not at a stage to upend the US’s hegemony, the victory parade held this year was a sign that the US sanctions and threats are not enough to deter other nations from acting in their own interest. Also, reinterpreting the victory in the second World War with China and Russia being the true victors is a clear sign of the changing world order.

Putin’s rejection of the US’s terms of peace in Ukraine and disregard for US tariffs when it comes to selling crude oil to India is nothing short of publicly thumbing his nose at Trump.

In his first international visit, Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, along with the leaders and dignitaries of more than 20 countries on stage, was emblematic of the shifting centres of power in the world. The stage was designed to show China’s narrative of history, how the Chinese view themselves, how much they’ve achieved, and, more importantly, their display of the reality that they are indispensable.

It was the perfect storm created by Trump's actions, which also helped them project that they’re more dependable, too. 

It’s all about the money

The 80th victory parade in China was an important moment for Xi Jinping and the CCP. We saw photographs of the podium where Putin, Xi, and Kim were waving at the cameras. That was a message, all photo-ops are.

We all want the most important moments in our lives to be captured in a certain way. Try interfering with a bride’s plan for her wedding photographs, and you may end up losing a couple of limbs along with your pride. Now, try and remember Trump’s big moment, his second oath-taking ceremony, probably the biggest moment of his life.

The photographs of the first row of guests that went infamously viral had the big billionaires standing in line. That was no coincidence either. These are the people whom Trump and the US administration represent. While the earlier administrations hid behind the patina of public interest but took money from corporations and protected their interests, Trump has abandoned all pretense to only serve himself, exposing the corporate-funded rot within. Nvidia and AMD have also agreed to pay 15 percent of their sales revenue to the US government. These are substantial stakes in an industry that is expected to usher in the new future, i.e., AI. Let’s not mention China’s advancements in AI, because the rest of the world has another and more immediate problem to contend with.

Given how the US administration has behaved with its partners around the globe by weaponising its economic and security leverage, even if that meant violating co-signed treaties, will it now encompass the tech independence of nations? If the US government is one of the major shareholders of Intel, would rejecting Intel architecture by a government or a large project result in retaliation from the US government?

There’s also the question of the US's new priorities when it comes to building long-term partnerships with other sovereign nations.

For example, every geopolitical analyst would tell you that the US-India relationship is, or at least used to be, one of the most important relationships for the US and India, with immense potential for the future. But today, the US has squandered the hard-earned trust between the two countries for a $45 billion trade deficit. That’s not a small amount; for context, the same administration allocated $170 billion for expanding its deportation operations, which are mostly targeting immigrants from friendly nations.

Or, this US administration values its efforts to create military and social conflicts domestically and in other parts of the world more than its relationship with India, in fact, more than the health of its children, because the same bill has put an end to pediatric brain cancer research. The National Cancer Institute in the US is phasing out the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium, a prominent clinical trial network that the agency supported for 26 years.

Trump is just a symptom of a system that prioritises profit and cost-cutting over everything, in the unbridled pursuit of ever-increasing profit margins. A system that has always espoused and pretended to value individual agency, democracy, equity, equality of opportunity, while only a handful have become rich at the expense of everyone else.

The centralisation of power and capital, which began in July 1944 at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, when the US and its allies decided how to run the post-war financial system of the world, has never made any substantive effort to change in terms of equality. Be it in our homes or our workplaces.

Moreover, when those who didn’t reap the rewards of this unbridled capitalism, of this undemocratic financial system, began asking for their share, it retaliated with a fury that is dismantling the very system that ensures its political legitimacy and economic hegemony. The current economic and social system has left most of humanity behind – be it in terms of democracy, equity in our households, dignity at the workplace, equality at work, demands by socially marginalised groups on gender, on race, on religion, or on economic opportunities. And today they are trying to manufacture applause for their efforts to plunge the world into chaos for a few more billions, while the very air we breathe is being turned into poison, while the real estate developer heading the US hegemony wants to build a riviera on the rubble of Gaza.

Sadly, the new alternative is proposing not only a different centre of power, but also a diametrically opposing value system. China has always been transparent about its disdain for the values the current system derives its political hegemony from, even if it doesn’t value them – free speech, freedom to criticise, individual agency, restrictions and checks on the government, transparency, and accountability of the government to the public.

China has long argued that democracy and the pursuit of individual happiness are overrated; democracies can’t get anything done.

As an Indian, a citizen of the world who doesn’t feel comfortable being conjoined with any of these systems, the world looks bleak.

It’s a haunting image: The United States, with its partners, is drawing up plans to flatten and build on the graves of thousands of innocents, the graves where the melancholy of loss still hangs heavy in the air, where flowers left on the graves of children haven’t dried yet.

It’s unclear how the world order will change and what shape it may take. But there is one incontrovertible truth: The old empire is dying.

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