The Multi-Polar World Order: Rise of Civilisational States in India, China & Russia and the decline of Western Hegemony

Navroop Singh and Himja Parekh

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In geopolitics, history often provides the clearest playbook, but only for those willing to learn. The United States once mastered the art of pragmatic statecraft in the 1970s, when the Cold War seemed locked in stalemate. Rather than doubling down on confrontation with both Moscow and Beijing, Washington, under Richard Nixon and guided by Henry Kissinger, engineered a bold strategic pivot i.e. opening to China. This move reshaped the global balance of power, isolating the Soviet Union and ultimately tilting the Cold War in America’s favour. At its core, Kissinger’s doctrine recognized that stability required engagement, balance, and the willingness to work even with adversaries when interests aligned. Trump’s tariff-heavy strategy, by contrast, ignores these lessons. His “all-or-nothing” approach seeks to punish rivals and pressure partners simultaneously, leaving the United States isolated while others recalibrate. Where Kissinger wielded diplomacy to split adversaries, Trump’s failure to recognize this doctrine risks driving them together.

Henry Kissinger’s doctrine of statecraft was rooted in the cold logic of balance of power realism, where nations act not on sentiment but on interest, and stability emerges not from moral absolutes but from calibrated equilibrium. For Kissinger, the art of diplomacy lay in managing rivalries rather than seeking to eliminate them. His worldview rejected the “all-or-nothing” confrontational approach and instead emphasized triangular diplomacy, leveraging differences between powers to America’s advantage. This philosophy produced the famous U.S.-China opening in the 1970s, which split Beijing from Moscow and reshaped the Cold War’s strategic geometry. Kissinger believed that durable order could not be built on ideology but only through recognition of spheres of influence, acceptance of limits, and pragmatic engagement with adversaries. His statecraft was not about domination but about managing contradictions, keeping adversaries off balance while ensuring the United States always held the decisive weight in the global balance.