Europe—Home Alone? 

The new U.S. National Security Strategy leaves no doubt: The Trump administration considers the Americas—that is to say, the Western Hemisphere—to be part of the U.S. sphere of influence. The explicit reference to the Monroe Doctrine, with a “Trump Corollary,” underlines that assertion. Since the beginning of this year, Europeans have learnt how determined Washington is to exercise its hegemony over this hemisphere. The kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro demonstrated that the Trump administration is determined to exercise control in the region, even if it means disregarding national sovereignty and flouting established global rules.  

Far more frightening to Europeans, this claim has been reinforced by President Donald Trump’s insistence that integrating Greenland into U.S. territory is indispensable to U.S. security, thus legitimizing the violation of an ally’s sovereign rights. That reasoning is reminiscent of the rationale alleged by Russian President Vladimir Putin when he annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, and when he attempted to justify his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. 

However, the implications of the Trump administration’s spheres-of-influence thinking for Europe extend far beyond the case of Greenland. It certainly encourages Putin’s ambition to exert hegemonic control over Europe. Europeans need to ask themselves whether Washington considers Europe to be part of Russia’s sphere of influence, or whether it applies the balance-of-power approach mentioned in the NSS to the continent.  

The fact that this is an open question reflects how little faith Europeans have in the United States’ reliability and trustworthiness. Consequently, Europe needs to prepare for the worst-case scenario: being forced to contain Russia’s hegemonic ambitions without U.S. support and, conceivably, competing with Moscow for control over Europe and influence in its immediate vicinity.  

Most European states’ comprehensive investments in defense within the next five to ten years will ultimately enable Europe to contain Russia militarily—at least with regard to conventional forces. The challenge for Europe is twofold: how to contain Russian aggression until defense investment can pay off, and how to deal with Russia’s nuclear threat.  

Ensuring credible nuclear deterrence without the United States is certainly one of the most pressing questions for European decision-makers. By contrast, Europe’s ability to exert influence in its immediate area is far greater than that of Russia. It does not only have to rely on military means, but it can also draw on a broad range of instruments, such as association agreements, climate and energy partnerships, trade and investment, and development aid. The issue here is more a question of a willingness by European leaders to engage than a lack of capabilities. 

Realignment in Latin America 

 Trump’s recent foreign policy actions have fueled speculation about the emergence of a world structured around spheres of influence, in which the United States would seek to assert predominance in the Western Hemisphere, Russia in eastern Europe, and China in East Asia, with each sphere operating largely without interference from other major powers. Under that scenario, the liberal order that has prevailed since the end of the Cold War would be replaced by one more realist in nature and focused on security and access to strategic resources.  

But several major questions remain unanswered, including whether that approach is the new grand strategy of the United States or merely the preference of the Trump administration. Until that distinction becomes clearer, it will be difficult for other countries to accept or adapt to new rules of the game. Whether the United States will effectively renounce its long-standing strategy of balancing China’s rise as a potential regional hegemon also remains unclear. Implementing a world of spheres of influence would, in practice, allow Beijing to consolidate its dominance in its immediate neighborhood, much as Washington would seek to do in its own. 

Regarding the Western Hemisphere, and Latin America in particular, it would be a mistake to assume that all countries face identical circumstances. Those geographically closer to the United States confront greater challenges. They tend to be viewed primarily through a security lens in Washington, given concerns related to migration, drug trafficking, and border stability. Additionally, their higher levels of economic dependence make them more vulnerable to shifts in U.S. policy.  

By contrast, countries in the Southern Cone benefit from being perceived as posing virtually no direct security threat to the United States, and from having more diversified trade and investment partners than their northern neighbors. From this context, an alternative strategy has begun to emerge. Distinct from Brazil’s strategy, which under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has prioritized the pursuit of autonomy, the Argentine government led by President Javier Milei has benefited from a strategic alignment with the Trump administration. That is primarily a result of the financial assistance the country received from the United States.  

Thus far, Argentina’s alignment has not entailed significant security costs. For instance, the country’s geographical distance from Venezuela has allowed it to adopt a rhetorically supportive stance toward the White House without facing immediate regional repercussions. At the same time, Argentina has preserved its trade relations with China. Several other leaders—such as Chilean President-elect José Kast—are closely observing this approach. 

Most countries in the Western Hemisphere are likely to accommodate U.S. security concerns and avoid actions that could provoke Washington. They will also seek to preserve economic relations with other major partners, particularly China—now the principal trading partner of countries such as Brazil and Chile—and Europe, as evidenced by the recently concluded strategic agreement between the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) and the European Union. Managing that balance will be an essential strategic necessity. 

Recent developments, such as the successful U.S.-backed pressure on Venezuela and a series of electoral victories by conservative candidates more closely aligned with the Trump administration, suggest that a new regional consensus could be taking shape. Specifically, that of respecting the strategic red lines of the White House while preserving the region’s ability to maintain and even increase economic links with other powers—mainly China. Avoiding the conflicts that will inevitably emerge from implementing this strategy—due to misperceptions and misinterpretations, for instance—represents a major challenge for Latin American governments. 

New Spheres of Conflicting Orders: A Lack of Consensus Promises Confusion and Competition 

The international order is often described today as returning to a world of spheres of influence. Yet that formulation is misleading. The current change is not a simple reversion to nineteenth-century geopolitics or great power concert, but rather the emergence of a far more unstable hybrid order, in which different organizing principles coexist and collide. Nowhere is that more evident than in the recent recalibration of U.S. grand strategy outlined by the Trump administration. 

The 2025 National Security Strategy treats the Western Hemisphere as a sphere of influence, where the United States asserts its right to shape political and security outcomes. In contrast, the strategy defines the Indo-Pacific not as a U.S. sphere but a zone requiring strategic adjustment. In that zone, the United States seeks to deter China from becoming the dominant regional hegemon rather than to exercise direct regional primacy. This conflicting logic—recognizing a U.S. sphere in the Americas while not recognizing China’s potential sphere in the Indo-Pacific—already reveals a fundamental tension in U.S. grand strategy. 

In classical international politics, stable spheres of influence could only exist when the strongest powers reached a form of great power concert—an implicit or explicit consensus among major states pertaining to the limits of their authority and restraint. A concert made spheres predictable and, in a limited sense, manageable. Today, however, such an understanding existing among the United States, China, and Russia is unlikely. Strategic distrust runs deep, ideological differences are vast, and technological rivalry has turned even economic interdependence into a security liability. Under those conditions, spheres of influence and their irrelevant applications are more likely to generate friction, miscalculation, and regional coercion. 

The U.S. intervention in Venezuela highlights that dilemma. By asserting its hemispheric prerogatives through force, Washington undermines the principles it uses to oppose similar claims by powers elsewhere. In Asia, the danger is not simply China seeking a sphere of influence but also competing great powers normalizing incompatible regional orders with different rules, expectations, and hierarchies. 

For South Korea and other Asian middle powers, that fragmentation of the global order poses a greater threat than any single sphere. Rather than adapting to rival zones of dominance, Korea’s long-term interest lies in reshaping the liberal, rules-based, and inclusive order that allows smaller states to have strategic autonomy, economic openness, and political choices. In a world drifting into regionalized power systems, South Korea should work with like-minded partners to prevent the Indo-Pacific from becoming a closed arena of great power entitlement—and to maintain an open space for cooperation, law, inclusiveness, and sovereign equality. 

Middle Powers Need to Find Their Footing 

U.S. action in Venezuela and the Trump administration’s threats against Greenland have pushed NATO and the broader international system to the brink of oblivion. The familiar old world order is disappearing. But no cohesive new global operating system has emerged to replace it. 

Nations now exist in an interregnum as they attempt to navigate the roiling and dangerous seas of a post–Pax Americana world. No one can guarantee that this will be a peaceful period, nor can one predict how long this time of global uncertainty could last. 

Some experts already predict that the other side of this period will feature a return to spheres of influence. The model most frequently touted is a “Big Three” framework, where the United States, China, and Russia divide the world into regions of domination.  

However, the Big Three model has some problems. For example, Europe poses a significant challenge to the establishment of a Russian sphere of influence. At the same time, countries such as Brazil, India, Japan, Nigeria, and South Korea are middle powers that wield significant global influence. Their agency needs to be accounted for. One could imagine more than three global spheres of influence if those countries break away and form their own power centers.  

Australia, with its large economy and geographic isolation, has options for surviving and thriving in such an uncertain world. Simply aligning with one of the Big Three powers could no longer be the right strategy. However, operating outside of that structure would necessitate Australia to increase its spending on defense, intelligence, and other elements of national security—it could even need to secure its own nuclear deterrent.  

If Australia has the will, it could establish its own mini-sphere of influence in Oceania, while working with other prominent states on mini-spheres of influence in Africa and South America. 

That all presupposes that the other side of the interregnum is indeed ruled by spheres of influence. Two other models are also possible. One is that the United States rises back to preeminence. A more probable, albeit far from certain, prospect is that China emerges as the preeminent world economic, technological, and military power. 

Countries such as Australia have no time to waste in rethinking their options and strategies for engaging with the world after this period between global systems. This period has dispossessed nations of their long-held, cherished assumptions about how the world works. Reframing their view of the world is now imperative. 

Spheres of Influence: Not a Model for the Future 

The Trump administration’s military attack on Venezuela illustrates again that the world order based on international laws is at the rupture. However, it does not prove the spheres-of-influence model is the proper path or that the model is destined to become the primary world order. International laws, institutions, and norms persist—the question is whether the majority of the world will work together to insist on their saliency. 

The Spheres of Interest: Not a Model Option

The spheres-of-influence model is favored by some powerful countries, but it is not preferred by smaller, weaker countries, which make up the majority of the world. The reason is simple: in a spheres-of-influence model, those countries would lose their equal status in world affairs and their interests would likely be infringed on or ignored. Those countries will not accept this new global architecture. 

In the post–World War II world order, medium and smaller countries have the knowledge, leverage, and platforms to influence world affairs, and sovereignty equality has been a widely accepted principle. If those countries would like to keep a more egalitarian system, they will need to overcome the constraints of ideology, culture, and identity and jointly achieve an agenda of the world affairs, so that the spheres-of-influence model can be balanced.  

China Opposes Spheres of Influence

China opposes the so-called spheres-of-influence system, which only reflects the hegemonic logic of power politics, and thinks that it is still possible to extend the world order based on sovereign equality, international rule of law, and multilateral cooperation. The U.S. military attack on Venezuela will not change China’s intention to maintain peace, stability, and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific and, if possible, around the world. What concerns China is the possibility that the United States will not stop its military adventurism after Venezuela. Such a destabilized world will impede China’s continued development and modernization, and is a reality for which the country needs to prepare.  

The Mirage of Spheres of Influence: Rhetoric, Retrenchment, and the Limits of Geopolitical Zoning  

The debate over the future of the global order is increasingly framed in binary terms: a return to spheres of influence or a drift toward disordered multipolarity. The 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy has fueled this discussion by signaling the United States’ move toward strategic retrenchment, geographic prioritization, and a more transactional view of partnerships, particularly in the Western Hemisphere.  

The NSS language evinces a spheres-of-influence worldview. However, the more consequential question is whether such an approach can deliver security and stability for the United States in a world defined by globalized competition and deep interdependence. 

From the perspective of Mexico, a close ally and treaty partner, the gap between rhetoric and practice is consequential. The NSS frames Mexico largely through the lens of risk on issues such as migration, organized crime, fentanyl, and institutional weakness. Those challenges are real and serious, and forceful U.S. engagement is necessary to mitigate them. Yet engagement framed primarily around pressure and coercion, rather than shared responsibility and joint problem-solving, risks weakening precisely the cooperation required to address them effectively. 

The U.S. intervention in Venezuela on January 3, however, has altered regional security calculations. Although the likelihood of unilateral U.S. military action in Mexico remains low, it is no longer unthinkable. That episode has intensified pressure on Mexico to deliver results against organized crime and revived U.S. calls for deeper security cooperation, including forms of joint operations that raise significant political and sovereignty sensitivities. 

At the same time, U.S. behavior does not reflect a disciplined spheres-of-influence strategy. Despite rhetorical emphasis on hemispheric prioritization, the United States remains deeply engaged in the Middle East, Ukraine, and the Indo-Pacific, an orientation that could reflect the realities of global power rather than an incoherent approach, but it underscores a central problem: spheres of influence require clear boundaries, credible enforcement, and predictable commitments. Those conditions remain largely absent in U.S. foreign policy today. 

Structurally, a spheres-of-influence approach is ill-suited to U.S. interests. China is a global competitor operating across economic, technological, and political domains, including Latin America. Geographic retrenchment cannot insulate the United States from that challenge. Effective competition depends not on exclusionary zones, but on alliances capable of projecting influence across regions and sectors. 

In this context, Mexico is not peripheral but central to U.S. interests. North American integration, resilient supply chains, migration governance, and security cooperation are strategic assets. Treating Mexico primarily as a problem weakens alignment and erodes trust. But partnership is not automatic. Mexico needs to confront its security challenges more effectively, revive economic dynamism through long-needed reforms, and embrace a fuller vision of bilateral cooperation. Those efforts would be bolstered by a willing and credible partner in Washington. 

The risk, then, is not the imminent triumph of spheres of influence, but the cumulative damage inflicted by strategic ambiguity. When the United States inevitably seeks to recalibrate its global role, it could find that the trust, confidence, and institutional capacity required to do so have already eroded.