2025: Donald Trump, Realism and the Return of Geopolitics at the International Roundtable (II)

2001-2014: The years of neoliberalism, economic interdependency, and the return of warmongers

In the following pages, I would like to underline the most important changes within the years 2001-2013 when it comes not only to the realm of international relations but also in terms of the political, economic and philosophical landscape.

The international relations and philosophical landscapes of this decade are highlighted by the effects of the September 11th terrorist attack on US soil, by a deepening process of cooperation between the members of the European Union, but also by the concept of economic interdependency. The neoliberal point of view establishes the fact that, based on economic cooperation, we can develop a democratic and peaceful environment among ourselves. And, if we can demonstrate that the democratic system is so powerful that it will destroy any thought of war, we can export it also into authoritarian and totalitarian states.

Regarding the political philosophy of this decade, we can distinguish 5 main lines of thought:

1. Postmodernism/Postmodernity, which is the most influential political and sociological line of thought beginning with the 1990s, continuing throughout the decade 2001-2014, and penetrating also the years 2014-2024. Postmodernism represents this deconstruction of reality, in which ideas and ideologies become fragments of a whole, in which identity takes the place of absolute truth, in which everything can be criticized, contradicted, and revolutionized in place of the pre-existing social order. The universality of cultural values, of metanarratives, proposed by the modernist current is in antithesis with the proposals of postmodernism, which takes into account the principle of difference and that of indetermination or, in other words, of fragmentation, as forces of liberation from the idealized cage of modernism. This theory embraces the Critical Theory and neo-Marxism, adapting them to the idea of modernity. The deconstruction of modernity can be understood as how we arrive at a historical moment and how modernity has contributed to our perspective on things. Postmodernity disputes the fact that the moral or epistemological proposition can be beyond any doubt, always questioning the basis of knowledge and how a society has acquired certain moral principles. Postmodernism is a philosophical, political, and social movement that denies any connection with the past represented by reason used as an instrument to control the nature of things and human beings, redefining traditional notions and values ​​of good and evil in close connection with events taking place on an international level. David Harvey, in his work “The Condition of Postmodernity”, underlines that, while the Enlightenment defined reason as an instrument without considering the divine element, postmodernism is characterized by a rediscovery of man’s relationship with the Divine, taking into account the advantages brought by reason: “the Enlightenment affirmation of ‘self without God’ in the end negated itself because, reason, a means, was left, in the absence of God’s truth, without any spiritual or moral goal […] The postmodern theological project is to reaffirm God’s truth without abandoning the powers of reason”[1]. The keywords proposed by the postmodernist movement are fragmentation, deconstruction, anarchy, chaos, discontinuity, interdependence, and identity, elements that are sometimes also found in the modernist movement, but which postmodernism radicalizes and propels towards the analysis of sociologists, psychoanalysts, and philosophers.
2. As a consequence of postmodernist thought, there will develop in the next years the so-called gender politics, which represents the true aberration of the end of the 20^th century and the beginning of the 21^st century. The main author who began the political movement of gender activism was Judith Butler. In an article she has written called, she questioned the very nature of human being. In her words, gender is not given by our nature as human beings or by God at birth, but it is our choice. Gender becomes a social construct, it does not preexist the gesture of parents to tell him that he is a boy or a girl, but appears later by simply assigning the role, the gender label. It creates the possibility that at least in terms of gender, those in this community will appropriate the gender discourse, a form of revolt against the authority. They start with male and female, she male, transsexual, inventing dozens of genders. Gender is one of the social constructs that has a perfect appearance: when the child is born, it is nothing, it is “it”: “gender is not a radical choice or project that reflects a merely individual choice, but neither is it imposed or inscribed upon the individual, as some post-structuralist displacements of the subject would contend. The body is not passively scripted with cultural codes, as if it were a lifeless recipient of wholly pre-given cultural relations. But neither do embodied selves pre-exist the cultural conventions which essentially signify bodies”[2].
3. Conservatism, promoted by a key figure of these years, Roger Scruton, who opposes, in an elegant manner, the current of postmodernism and the emerging political correctness, which is the child of postmodernist thought. Roger Scruton was a British philosopher and a public intellectual, who was a prominent advocate for tradition, Christian religion and moral responsibility. Having the authority, tradition, and the value of national identity, Roger Scruton was heavily criticizing the fragmentation of postmodernity, which is a current that rejects the objective Truth, transforming it into a multitude of several truths, everyone extracting the truth they desire. When the objective Truth dies, it also dies the tradition that formed it because the Truth has a very solid basis. If the fundament upon which the Truth is built is destroyed, the tradition and the cultural heritage of a nation will dissolve. In his book called “The West and the Rest”, which was published in 2002, he highlights that “While exhorting us to be as “inclusive” as we can, to discriminate neither in thought, word, nor deed against ethnic, sexual, or behavioral minorities, political correctness encourages the denigration of what is felt to be most especially ours”[3]. When it comes to the objective truth, he says: “In place of the Enlightenment emphasis on reason as the path to objective truth has come the “view from outside,” in which our entire tradition of learning is put in question as a preliminary to its rejection”[4]. Regarding the Critical Theory, neo-Marxism and the philosophers that are positioning themselves in favor of postmodernism, Roger Scruton beautifully argues that “Each of them owes his reputation to a kind of religious faith: faith in the relativity of all opinions, including this one. For this is the faith on which a new form of membership is founded—a first-person plural of denial”[5].
4. The tremendous development of the high-tech industry and the beginning of the social media phenomenon. After the Internet arrived on every continent, the rise of the social media industry, websites, and online platforms gained a big momentum. The establishment of Facebook in the year 2004, YouTube in 2005, Twitter in the year 2006, and Instagram in 2010 marked the way in which people could communicate with one another from different continents and repositioned the freedom of expression on another level. More and more people not only have access to the Internet, but they started to feel a sense of ownership of their own list of friends, movies they like, individuals they get in contact with, and the opinions they express publicly and privately. The development of the first iPhone by Steve Jobs represented a revolution in terms of the high-tech industry and opened a new era, the era of smartphones. There was no stopping now. Companies started to produce smartphones for every taste, the marketing for the high-tech was very much in vogue, and the public opinion, the printed press, the magazines moved a lot of their fans and loyal readers to the online area, where they started to publish their own articles and opinions. But this movement, as good as it sounds, opened Pandora’s Box in terms of economic competition and certain views regarding human nature. Digitalization and the new revolution in technology will prove that human beings cannot control well their emotions and, even if a few technological geniuses (Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg) revolutionized the way we interact with each other, this will not be enough. At the same time, not only the people as individual beings were pleased with this revolution in their hands, but also the states. Little by little, the totalitarian and authoritarian states started to take piece by piece in terms of the high-tech industrial market and to take advantage of human curiosity, but also possessiveness. 
5. The Green Movement. Before taking into consideration the most important geopolitical implications of the decade, there is one more problem to address: the Green Movement. Starting in the 1980s but gaining momentum after the year 2000, taking into consideration also the eco-marxism theory, the Green Movement began to find more and more followers. In the 2000s, the main problem with which the planet was facing was “Global Warming”. According to this movement, therefore, humanity, which can be regarded as contributing to the global warming through the use of old industrial technology, should be careful in tolerating the phenomenon of pollution, but also the greenhouse-gas effect. Kyoto Protocols were signed. Thus global warming started to arrive also at the international roundtables until it reached its peak within the next decade. 

Let’s get back now to the geopolitical aspects of this decade. Based on the 11th September 2001 terrorist attacks, the United States came up with a worldview that would change the phenomenon of terrorism at international levels no one has seen before. Within the National Security Strategy of the United States of 2002, terrorism meant: “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against innocents”[6]. Therefore, in 2001, NATO activated Article 5 of the NATO Treaty against the terrorist threat. All of the NATO members agreed in October 2001 that Article 5 of the treaty to be activated. The consequences of this were the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq. This action was also taken by the United with the scope of exporting democratic values within the authoritarian and totalitarian states, an action which was doomed to fail.

The second action taken by the United States in an attempt to democratize the Middle East was to capitalize on the Arab Spring during the Obama administration, which was a series of protests within the Middle East against the dictatorships of mostly fanatical leaders. From the Arab Spring, a chain of consequences followed, including the Syrian civil war which ended in 2024, the Yemen War, and the rise of the Islamic State.

On the one hand, when it comes to the relationship between the United States and China, the former made a major mistake also in the year 2001: China was formally accepted as a full member of the World Trade Organization (11^th December 2001), with a strong lobby made by the former Clinton administration, obtaining also the title of “The Most Favored Nation”. The Most Favored Nation means that a country enjoys the same trade advantages (lower tariffs and fewer trade barriers) as the “most favored” trading partner of another country. The Legal Information Institute gives a broad definition of this international principle: “Most favored nation refers to a status conferred by a clause in which a country promises that it will treat another country as well as it treats any other country that receives preferential treatment”[7]. Although China agreed to respect the terms and conditions, it has a mixed record within the international economic organization: even if China became deeply integrated within the supply chain international management, becoming the world’s largest exporter in 2009, China pursued its own national interest because more and more developed and rich countries within the European Union were more and more dependent on what China had to offer to the world. Developing thus its economic hydra, China also began to be involved in international economic relations, starting to slowly build its own economic empire across its borders and to its neighbors. The opening of its markets to foreign trade, goods and services, was fully advantageous for China because, while China became the world’s manufacturer, from small and low-quality goods and services to high-tech big and very high-quality products, the Western economy (i.e. the Western companies) became more and more dependent on the economic advantages they extracted out of China.

Because the Chinese population is so massive, the Chinese Communist Party did not think of working conditions or international labor rules and regulations. For the CCP, the most important part was the economic zero-sum game. While my country is very quickly developing from the money the richest states are pouring into my country, they become more and more dependent in the years to come. On top of that, China gained know-how, exploiting (using a Marxist word) all the help it could get from the West. Moreover, despite the rules of the WTO regarding the unfair subsidies, the CCP provided significant support for the state-owned enterprises which will play a crucial role in the years to come. The CCP will use the strategy of “hide its capabilities, bind its time” to develop into a warmonger approximately 10 years later. Soon it will become the biggest enemy of the free world, democracy, and freedom of speech since 1991.

On the other hand, Russia was not cured of the totalitarian scourge from the past. Therefore, a former KGB agent, Vladimir Putin became the authoritarian ruler of the Russian Federation from 1999 until the present times and still counting. The Russian Federation will be the first major warmonger if we take into consideration nation-states. Masking his true desires to make Russia minimum a regional superpower once more, Vladimir Putin told the free world his intention to fight international terrorism after 9/11. Establishing closer and closer economic ties with the European Union, he started to make Russia the biggest supplier of oil and gas in Europe, making Europe completely dependent on the Russian energy supply. This massive energy project arrived at its peak with the construction of Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, the two pipelines that made Germany completely linked to Russia for cheap resources. Russia did not liberalize itself. On the contrary, Vladimir Putin began to eliminate his political opponents (Anna Politkovskaia, Alexandr Litvinenko), and the Western powers, including the United States, did absolutely nothing to stop Russia from its acts.

At the NATO Summit in Bucharest, when the accession of Ukraine was put on the table, Angela Germany, represented by the former Chancellor Angela Merkel, opposed accepting Ukraine into the NATO alliance. Because the West thought to penetrate the Russian sphere of influence, it was faced with a test: the Georgian War of the same year, 2008. The Russian-Georgian War of 2008 between the Russian forces and the military forces of Georgia coordinated under the surveillance of Mikhail Sakaasvili established the most powerful political crisis between Russia and the Western world since the end of the Cold War and represented the critical point which attracted the attention of the Western countries and organizations, namely the European Union or NATO. A good description of the impact of the war on the Western countries is made by Ronald D. Asmus: “It shocked a West that had become complacent in its belief that war in Europe had become a thing of the past and thus ignored the warning signs that conflict was brewing between Moscow and Tbilisi […] this little war shook the belief that a democratic and cooperative peace had triumphed in Europe twenty years after the Iron Curtain fell and that the kind of geopolitical competition and spheres of influence […] had been banished.”[8]. Unfortunately, the war did not open the eyes of the international arena, which was not psychologically prepared to face the outbreak of a new war that was seen as a shock for the Western world.

The second crisis that Russia orchestrated was the annexation of Crimea in 2014. This triggered a reaction of the West, too blind to see what was happening, and too eager to maintain further economic relations with the monster created with Western money. Even though the West did impose a set of little sanctions against this aggression act made by Russia, the Russian gas and oil will still flow to the European Union as if nothing happened.

2015-2024: The phenomenon of Donald Trump, the return of radical ideologies, the return of war, an invisible enemy, and a former invisible enemy

The decade 2014-2024 is marked by many geopolitical and geoeconomic challenges. For the first time in a long time, we have war in Europe. The war returned to Europe, backed up by a new Axis of Evil, formed by the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, Iran, and North Korea. Another war broke out in the Middle East, involving Israel, the terrorist organization Hamas and Iran. These crises, which were triggered one after another, called desperately for a realist solution to the table. And when I say realist, I refer to the elements of national power that I described at the beginning of my article. Unfortunately, neither the United States, which was led by the Barack Obama administration, nor the European Union were ready to adopt a realist answer to the issues at hand. What did they do? They continued their agenda in terms of sustainability, green transition, wokeism, and gender politics. Until it was too late to return to reality. The war in had Ukraine already started. The war in Israel was about to begin.

The sociological, anthropological, and philosophical landscapes were also marked by extremely problematic ideologies, which will not disappear so soon. Wokeism and the cancel culture movement, on the one hand, and populism and pseudo-conservatism, on the other hand, have polarized a large part of society. The penetration of these ideologies (especially wokeism and cancel culture) within the public sphere, the Hollywood industry, the army, schools, and universities completely changed how human beings look at the world. The gender ideology will attract new allies in terms of intellectuals, and public figures, and it will go so far as laws, rules, and regulations at the international roundtable. These radical left Marxist movements will spark not only a true Christian conservative movement formed by academia, but it will trigger also a pseudo-conservative populist movement that will be hard to control, simply because society started to feel saturated with the complete nonsense propagated by more and more parties, political movements and international institutions.

This pseudo-conservative movement was born out of saturation but also represented the perfect mechanism that the hostile powers would use to shift public opinion towards them. The Russian Federation would start an enormous propaganda and disinformation campaigns that would feed from these pseudo-conservative and populist movements and would start a massive anti-campaign about the “decadent capitalism”, which is putting the economic interests of the elites above the will of the people. All disinformation campaigns start with a particle of truth because, if nothing were somewhat true, there would not be such a powerful trigger for the general population. The big problem represented that the West did absolutely nothing to counter this disinformation campaign, rather than trying to say: “It comes from Russia, which is the aggressor”. The people needed more, they needed their voices to be heard. But nothing happened. Universities, non-governmental organizations, influencers, and the entertainment industry were promoting their industries more and more aggressively, without even taking into consideration the bigger and bigger countermovement, which was developing as a powerful reaction in the whole Western society. This was the moment when the anti-system populist parties were born, including the Alternative for Germany, a party formed to counterattack the massive illegal migration coming from the Middle East, but also a party which came with the best trap that could satisfy the public opinion: traditional values. So a large number of opposition parties were formed inside the European Union as a reaction to the woke and gender identity politics which invaded massively the public opinion. No one was careful anymore as to who these people really were as long as they told the society what the society needed to hear. It did not matter to the society that these parties promoted an extremely peculiar and very strange message regarding the foreign policy of the European states: the need to be near the Russian Federation and China in terms of our economies. They constructed perfectly their campaigns, years after years until they gained momentum within the Ukraine war. They blamed the European Union for the massive inflation and for the fact that the member states were sanctioning Russia with draconic measures, but they would not consider the “damage” this does within the EU, one of the many lies they were ready to launch within the member states. This was the triggering point for the general population to start protesting with their vote. Now, we see a lot of EU countries controlled by these radical pseudo-conservative parties in Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, and Croatia. I hope Romania and Germany will not be next, but, when I look at the numbers, in both countries, these radical parties are occupying the second place in the national polls.

Now let’s see what was the main spark of this pseudo-conservative and populist movement. As a result of postmodernism, one of the phenomena that derive from the radicalization of knowledge and distrust in institutions, favored by the philosophy of the late 20th century, is the phenomenon of ‘Cancel Culture’. The second phenomenon is “Wokeism”, According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “cancel culture” is defined as follows: ‘the practice or tendency of engaging in mass canceling as a way of expressing disapproval and exerting social pressure’[9].

According to critical theory and postmodernism, everything must be destructured, deconstructed, demystified, and desacralized, a mentality of revolt, of revolution is created, in which opposition and contestation of the reality surrounding the human being, from political regimes to history, from philosophical concepts to language. In my opinion, this phenomenon represents a continuous criticism of economic or political leaders, authors, composers, philosophy, and culture, but which has no stable foundation, no solution to change the mentality of society, but only proposes, in a radical way, to challenge History itself or, in other words, to redefine normality. Concepts such as good and bad, true or false, valid or invalid no longer highlight values ​​and principles in themselves, but must be deconstructed, and redefined following this mentality, which can generate revolt and revolution. From Marx’s exhortation “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” in the name of the cause of socialism, continuing with the Frankfurt School that urged students and youth to continuously challenge and demonize the capitalist regime and rediscover the terms of Marxism, to the contemporary neo-Marxist ideologies of political correctness and positive discrimination, everything led, subtly and gradually, to a reality that many of us do not want to accept as it has become.

History has become a continuous struggle between exploiters and exploited, between oppressors and oppressed, between colonialists and slaves, everything seems to urge a denial of the human condition in the context in which History has spoken, to judge the past with the mentality of the 21st century, to prohibit certain expressions, words, languages, names, under the conditions of a non-oppressive, neutral, non-discriminatory, anti-xenophobic, anti-fascist language. The revolt continues against central authority, against the body. The modern world with the idea of ​​progress has an orientation, a center, a form of ideal, liberation, and reason. In postmodernism, which is also based on deconstructivism, there is no center or structure. Any reference system can be taken, and its structure can be destructured, redefined, changed, and alienated, thus eliminating the principle, of the father.

In modernity, God the Father continues to govern a goal towards which we are moving, while in postmodernity, where there is intertextuality, everything is related to fragments of text from another era. There is no center, you can play with the structure, and you are free to destroy society, the author of things: society will not be destructured at the symbolic level, it must be done starting with ourselves, the only way we understand our own psychology. If we translate this metaphor from a political and social point of view, the authority of the state should be eliminated, and anarchy should take over the reins or, in other words, the attributions of the state which is seen as evil in itself. If the state no longer represents the central authority, which maintains order, everything becomes disordered, mixed, and intertextualized, there is only the edge and the center. The edge becomes the center, and the center becomes the edge. Social pressure must be exerted against the existing social order and its replacement with a world in which there are no longer rules, authors, canons, faith, or knowledge, but disorder, revolution, a “body without organs”, an expression used by psychoanalysts Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari[10].

Technological development will peak within this decade because the tech industry has developed at levels no one has seen possible. The establishment of Virtual Reality, the momentum of Artificial Intelligence with the invention of ChatGPT, the production of humanoid robots, and the plans for landing on the Moon represent extremely few achievements that I thought I could mention. Image recognition and natural language processing are certainly tremendous achievements in what AI really can do at this moment. And AI can do so much more. ChatGPT revolutionized the way humans interact with machines, the application of this technology going so far as to affect the psychic of many people. In terms of the household environment, there were developed tools of the Internet of Things (IoT). Smart Homes (with devices like smart speakers, i.e. Alexa or Siri) and the industrial IoT which fostered communication between smart devices all over the world are equally important to the establishment and multiplication of blockchain technology, in which cryptocurrencies play an important role. Quantum computing, autonomous electrical cars, and renewable energy technology are playing a crucial role both in public institutions and international organizations in terms of national strategies on how to deal with those advancements but they also constitute risks in terms of the national and economic security of a state.

One of the main risks of this development in technology is the industry of disinformation, misinformation, and fake news, which are more easily fabricated and distributed by many actors who are seeking to destabilize the Western bedrock institutions. Countries such as the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China, North Korea, and Iran and massively establishing large disinformation campaigns which are largely affecting the trust of the public opinion in the founding institutions of the democratic process. Moreover, these state actors started to interfere into the electoral process of the EU member states through the use of algorithms to increase the audience for certain political parties which I mentioned before. Most recently, the involvement of massive Russian propaganda, disinformation campaigns, and perfect use of algorithms within the TikTok application (an app which, in my opinion, should be banned because it is a threat to the national security of the states due to its collection of personal information which then is analyzed by the Chinese Communist Party), led to the cancellation of the entire presidential elections in Romania.

When it comes to the actual important events that shifted public opinion towards a more radical stance, the first was the refugee crisis, which was the direct consequence of the war in Syria, the rise of the Islamic State, and the other major wars in the Middle East. At that time, the European Union saw this crisis as an opportunity for the EU not only to provide humanitarian aid for those in need but also to accept a record number of refugees that would help the EU member states in terms of demographic decline and to remake the EU a global actor. However, there was an unequal distribution of refugees because not all member states were ready to accept tens and hundreds of thousands of refugees within their national borders. Therefore Germany, ruled by Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was the most powerful supporter of the refugees, accepted 890000 thousands asylum seekers in 2015[11], followed by 280000 refugees in 2016[12], having a total result of more than 1,7 million asylum seekers and registered migrants. This number only went up and up in the coming years.

However, a new phenomenon was detected on the international arena. The United States election of 2016 was not won by Hillary Clinton of the Democratic Party, the candidate who promised to continue the Obama legacy and was backed by the support of the European Union, but by a billionaire investor and a lifetime businessman and showman, Donald J. Trump, supported by the Republican Party. This came as a complete shock because of the issues with which Trump won the 2016 elections, namely the construction of a wall at the border of Mexico because of the illegal immigration that was threatening the US; the apparent quasi-isolationist policies concerning the role that the US would play in the international organizations and the international treaties and a critical stance not to the NATO alliance itself, but to the European member states who were not contributing nearly enough to the expenses of the alliance. The election of Donald Trump was officially treated as an ‘accident of history’, as the forbidden fruit, as something that will pass and will not affect the West post-Cold War architecture. All of his opponents would say that if Donald Trump went to the White House, he would start many wars on the international arena and he would bury many years of EU negotiations. They were never more false because Donald Trump represented the only president after the Cold War that never started a war on foreign soil. On the contrary, he will negotiate the end of the Afghanistan War which lasted for more than 15 years (in 2016) and he will strengthen the NATO alliance.

When one analyzes the international relations theory that guides the decisions of Trump, we will recognize what I described before: the realist theory, which translates into the elements of national power that the Trump administration takes into consideration to solve the problems of the United States. He modifies a little the realist vision, in the sense of the mobilization of all these elements of power: the power of a state consists in the mobilization of these elements or, in other words, the state’s ability to mobilize and deliver resources, the state’s ability to be present in or create international alliances, how the citizen relates to the institutions of power and the trust that the individual grants to these institutions.

Although the Trump administration also demonstrated a quasi-isolationist vision, specific to defensive realism, through statements during the election campaign and by withdrawing from a series of treaties and international organizations (the World Health Organization, the Paris Climate Agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the Iran Nuclear Deal), it concluded a trilateral agreement between the United States, Mexico, and Canada (USMCA), moderated the Abraham Accords in the Middle East between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, to which Bahrain, Oman, Morocco, and Jordan were added, intensified bilateral relations with Saudi Arabia, intensified its presence in Asia, and strengthened relations with Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific region, political actions that demonstrate continuity with its predecessor, Barack Obama, regarding his security vision for Asia.

In the European space, the Trump administration’s actions aimed at strengthening NATO’s Eastern Flank by conducting constant military exercises, increasing the American military presence in Europe, and delivering defensive weapons to Ukraine, in the context of Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula. In addition to allocating funds through the European Deterrence Initiative, a program to intensify the US presence on the European continent through the deployment of troops and state-of-the-art military weapons in Central and Eastern Europe due to the growing threat posed by the Russian Federation, which emerged after the annexation of Crimea, another action was Trump’s decision to withdraw 12,000 soldiers out of the 36,000 on German territory due to its lack of a minimum contribution of 2% of GDP for defense[13]. It was also agreed that half of these forces would be redeployed to NATO’s Eastern Flank and used for the alliance’s joint military exercises. At the same time, an action aimed at discouraging energy trade between the European Union and Russia was the imposition of sanctions against any company that would help Gazprom build the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany: “Reliance on a single foreign supplier can leave nations vulnerable to extortion and intimidation and that is why we congratulate European states such as Poland for leading construction of a Baltic pipeline so that nations are not dependent on Russia to meet their energy needs […] Germany will become dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course”[14].

Regarding the steps he took to secure the international landscape, he made another innovation in international politics: seeing the growing influence of the Chinese threat on the international chessboard, he decided to start an economic war with China, which translated into a tariff war between the 2 countries. He also challenged the worldview proposed by China in terms of extending its sphere of influence not only in Asia and Indo-Pacific (the South China Sea, the East China Sea, Taiwan, and the Philippines), but also in Africa, Latin America, Europe, and even the United States. After the appeasement of the Western countries towards China, the PRC started to follow its own interest, establishing maybe the most impressive and grand geoeconomic project the world has ever seen since the end of the Second World War, namely the Belt and Road Initiative, founded by Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping to solve both internal and external economic issues and crises. “One Belt, One Road” or “Belt and Road Initiative” or “The New Silk Road” or, from 2022 onwards, “Belt and Road Cooperation” represents the perfect masked instrument of economic warfare, mastered by the PRC in order not only to extend its sphere of influence but to impoverish the poor nations through the so-called debt-trap diplomacy. represents one of the most gigantic infrastructural plans in the history of the world. Statistically, as of October 2023, BRI covers 151 partner countries that have a 5.1 billion combined population and 41 trillion dollars combined GDP. The total value of investment and construction projects in the BRI partner countries is 1 trillion dollars. The most problematic issue with the BRI is not, paradoxically, the economic ingredient, but the military one, China acquiring access to many strategic economic ports which cannot turn into a good turnover. So one could ask: what could be their main purpose?

The answer is: the ‘String of Pearls’ theory as a response to the ‘Malacca Dilemma’. The ‘Malacca Dilemma’ states the fact that, because the US is controlling the Malacca Strain, China has to find alternative transportation roots for its massive exports around the world. In the case of a potential conflict, China fears that the United States could block the route. The answer is the ‘String of Pears’ theory. This theory underlines the fact that China is trying to control all the strategic ports of the continents circumventing the Indian Ocean in order not only to avoid the Malacca Dilemma but also to have as much control as possible over the South China Sea trade routes, to diminish the US influence in the South China Sea and to project its military power with the help of a chain of artificial islands which can serve as military bases.

The year 2020 came with a big surprise: another crisis, but this was caused by an invisible enemy, the COVID-19 virus, which came from an unknown source in Wuhan. Deliberately or not, China unleashed one of the most serious sanitary crises the world ever faced since the First World War. The economies of the West were on standby because of the sanitary actions taken by the authorities, which caused a serious of economic problems within the EU member states, but also in the United States. If COVID-19 represents the invisible enemy, the PRC suddenly transformed from the geopolitical and geoeconomic invisible enemy into the most visible enemy of the free world.

The big problem is that the Western world did nothing significant to counteract it. With the Joe Biden administration winning the White House, the strategy of the Trump administration continued, but not in such a visible way against the more and more aggressive influence within the free market and the free world. The Green Movement advanced its climate change policies, a massive plan to replace the traditional economic and industrial mechanisms with a brand-new idea of sustainability. The Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations were established in 2012, becoming prominently present in all areas of the economy. Who was the big winner of this mechanism? CHINA. Because China had all the capacity in terms of its industry to support this plan, with the help of the state-owned enterprises, who successfully bypassed the eyes of the democratic nations, blinded by their economic interests. For example, according to a 2022 report from the International Energy Agency, China is the main manufacturer at the international level when it comes to solar photovoltaic panels: “Global solar PV manufacturing capacity has increasingly moved from Europe, Japan, and the United States to China over the last decade. China has invested over USD 50 billion in new PV supply capacity – ten times more than Europe − and created more than 300,000 manufacturing jobs across the solar PV value chain since 2011. Today, China’s share in all the manufacturing stages of solar panels (such as polysilicon, ingots, wafers, cells, and modules) exceeds 80%”[15].

The response of the free world to this massive economic plan was the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, a response which came too late to matter decisively. On 26^th June 2022, Joe Biden delivered some remarks concerning the newly instituted Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) at the G7 Summit, underlining that the total sum to be invested globally in the infrastructure sector will be around 600 billion dollars by 2027[16]: 200 billion provided by the US, 65 billion from Japan, 40 billion pounds from the UK (British International Investment), and 300 billion euros provided by the EU within the Global Gateway Strategy. This project had the aim to counteract the already mighty economic warfare started by the administration of Hu Jintao. Some of the main projects which are under the radar of the Global Gateway Initiative are the MEDUSA Submarine Optical Fibre Cable, the Greek-Egyptian GREGY Interconnector, the ELMED project, and the “Far North Fiber”, a submarine cable system of 17000 km, which links Europe, Asia, and the United States.

2025: The Return of Donald Trump, a Prepared China and Russia almost ready to provoke a Global War

In November 2024, Donald Trump succeeded in something that very few politicians could do: he returned to the White House, in spite of an aggressive electoral campaign done by the Democratic Party. After 4 years in which Trump was demonized, he returned to the White House with a victory that shocked the world because he had also won the popular vote of the people. This achievement cannot be ignored, his main slogan on how to solve problems in international politics is “Peace through Strength”, a slogan used by many former US presidents. The movement “Make America Great Again” gained more and more sympathizers, some of which are with common sense and know the thin line between what is respectful to say and do in terms of expressing opinions, some which are more radicalized in their beliefs.

The big question is: what will he do when he arrives at the White House? Is there a grand strategy or will Donald Trump be influenced by some of the most bizarre people, who will be in his future administration? How will he respond to the war in Ukraine and to an extremely aggressive China on the international arena in terms of economic and political behaviors? Some of the hints of what is his future plans are already shaped by his declarations but also by some other individuals who are part of his administration:

1. Certainly, he will continue his tradition from his first term in office, when he relied massively on the realist international theory and the elements of national power. The slogan “Drill, baby, drill” is one such example that Trump will take into account the national resources and the industrial capacity as elements of national power. Tim Marshall, in his book “Prisoners of Geography,” referred to the power of the national resources within the US soil: “Due to offshore drilling in US coastal waters, and underground fracking across huge regions of the country, America looks destined to become not just self-sufficient in energy, but a net exporter of energy”[17]. Moreover, because he has strong support in public opinion, both by the average people and by most billionaires of the US, the national morale and national character represent other elements of power that Trump will take advantage of. Geography represents a tremendous advantage for the United States because the United States cannot be conquered by land, an advantage the world has seen during the Second World War. The only challenge of the United States when it comes to the elements of national power is the quality of diplomacy. While the majority of the Trump Administration is made up of individuals extremely experienced and with moderate opinions (Marco Rubio, the future Secretary of State; Steve Witkoff, the chief negotiator in the Middle East, or Michael Waltz, the future Trump’s National Security Advisor, and General Keith Kellog, the special envoy of Trump for Ukraine), some of the members are very problematic, due to their radical opinions about how the Ukraine War should end, expressing several health conspiracy theories (Robert Kennedy Jr., the futureSecretary of Health and Human Services) or expressing largely contested opinions in favor of some of the radical pseudo-conservative parties within the European Union, i.e. AfD. For example, Elon Musk, the world’s leader in terms of technological innovation is an individual who has declared his support for the AfD party and who also has certain interests within the Chinese market, where his Tesla electronic cars hit record-high numbers in 2024 (the sales increased by 8.8% in 2024[18]). Moreover, the Tesla Gigafactory in Shanghai, China is a massive automobile factory outside the US. One of the CCP mouthpieces for the international world, ChinaDaily praised his factory, declaring that, in the year 2023, the Gigafactory delivered more than 947000 vehicles: “The company said the figure was a 33 percent increase from the previous year. It added that more than half of the over 1.8 million electric vehicles Tesla globally delivered last year came from the Shanghai plant. Capable of producing a car in less than 40 seconds, Tesla’s localization rate of car components used in the Shanghai factory has exceeded 95 percent. In 2023, Tesla Gigafactory Shanghai delivered more than 600,000 electric vehicles to the Chinese market”[19]. If this is not enough proof, Elon Musk praised the Chinese app WeChat, telling the world that he will try and transform his app X into an app closer to the design of WeChat[20]. There is a direct link between Elon Musk and AfD that can be seen within the electoral program of AfD, where the party clearly advocates for a good neighborhood not only with Russia but also with China: “We want to expand our economic, scientific and cultural contacts with China. China is of outstanding importance as a trading partner for Germany, both as a competitor and as a partner”[21].
2. He stated that he would end gender/transgender politics, declaring that the official policy of his administration would be only the recognition of two genders: male and female.
3. Donald Trump’s Administration’s first achievement happened 5 days before he began his second term: the peace armistice in the conflict between Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas, backed by Iran. His chief negotiator within the Middle East region, Steve Witkoff, did an outstanding work in stopping the conflict between Israel and Hamas before Trump arrived at the White House. Another implication of the end of the conflict was the fierce declaration of Trump approximately one week before the peace armistice was achieved. He stated that “All hell will break loose in the Middle East” if there were to be no deal before he entered the White House[22].    
4. The return of the spheres of influence on the international arena and the establishment of a new Cold War between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. Donald Trump’s statements about Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal were seen as problematic by Western public opinion and by Western leaders. While I do not believe that Trump will intervene militarily in Canada or Greenland, I do believe there could be some economic tensions between the US, Denmark, and Canada.
5. Securing the overseas geopolitical interests of the United States when it comes to the Greenland province represents an essential strategic position in the face of a more and more aggressive China, which controls more and more strategic points all over the world and is interested in finding an alternative economic transportation route to the more and more risky Malacca Strait- Aden Gulf- Suez Canal- Mediterranean Sea- Europe. Since 2013, China is a Permanent Observer of the Arctic Council, which is an intergovernmental organization “promoting cooperation, coordination, and interaction among the Arctic States, Arctic Indigenous Peoples and other Arctic inhabitants on common Arctic issues”[23]. The members of this Council are all the countries surrounding the Arctic Area (meaning the Baltic Sea, the Norwegian Sea, and the North Atlantic Ocean): Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Russian Federation, Iceland, and the United States. Officially, this organization is involved in activities related to climate change, green energy, and resilience[24], but also oversees maritime collaboration and preventing future emergencies related to oil spills, search and rescue, or wildfires[25]. The Arctic Council Strategic Plan for 2021-2030 digs deeper into more practical issues related to strategic cooperation: promoting a healthy arctic marine environment, strengthening “cooperation that improves the health, safety and long-term well-being of Arctic inhabitants in general and of its Indigenous Peoples in particular”[26] and enhancing “cooperation on development and promotion of favorable conditions for sustainable investments and economic activities in the Arctic”[27]. At the same time, in the White Paper, published by China in 2018, titled “China’s Arctic Policy”, China is using its wooden language regarding “climate change”, “regional cooperation” or “regional integration” to gain a strategic foothold in the Arctic region: “China is an important stakeholder in Arctic affairs. Geographically, China is a <<Near-Arctic State>>, one of the continental States that are closest to the Arctic Circle. The natural conditions of the Arctic and their changes have a direct impact on China’s climate system and ecological environment, and, in turn, on its economic interests in agriculture, forestry, fishery, marine industry and other sectors”[28]. China clearly states its ambitions regarding the Arctic region, where it is crucial to play a role in the future, as the CCP says: “China’s capital, technology, market, knowledge and experience is expected to play a major role in expanding the network of shipping routes in the Arctic and facilitating the economic and social progress of the coastal States along the routes. China has shared interests with Arctic States and a shared future with the rest of the world in the Arctic”[29]. Moreover, and this is the most scandalous part of the paper, China wants to integrate the Arctic Region within the economic warfare project, Belt and Road Initiative, a subproject which will be called “Polar Silk Road”: “The Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road (Belt and Road Initiative), an important cooperation initiative of China, will bring opportunities for parties concerned to jointly build a “Polar Silk Road”, and facilitate connectivity and sustainable economic and social development of the Arctic”. If China gets more and more influence in the council, this could provide China with a perfect alternative route, starting from the Philippine Sea- North Pacific Ocean- Bering Sea- Chukchi Sea (going through the canal between Russia and the US, between Russia and the Alaska region)- Kara Sea (Russia)- Greenland Waters. Geography also helps China because of the melting of the Arctic ice: “the melting of Arctic Sea ice allows China to take advantage of new Arctic Sea lanes, such as the Northern Sea Route, which connects Asia to Europe”[30]. The key project that could help China reach its geopolitical goals is called the Yamal project, which represents a joint venture between Novatek, the second-largest natural gas Russian producer, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), Silk Road Fund (also China) and, most surprisingly, FRANCE, through the company TotalEnergies SAaround an LNG plant located in the Yamal Peninsula: “The project owner is a Russian joint venture, JSC Yamal LNG, consisting of NOVATEC (50.1%), Total S.A. (20%), CNPC (20%), and SRF (9.5%).”[31] WHY IS FRANCE PRESENT IN SUCH A DEAL between Russia and China? Apart from strengthening the role of Russia within the LNG market, this will further secure the Chinese economy. Mike Pompeo, one of the best Secretaries of State the US ever had, held a speech in Rovaniemi, Finland, called: “Looking North: <<Sharpening America’s Arctic Focus>>”, where he declared that: “Beijing claims to be a “Near-Arctic State,” yet the shortest distance between China and the Arctic is 900 miles. There are only Arctic States and Non-Arctic States. No third category exists, and claiming otherwise entitles China to exactly nothing […] Between 2012 and 2017, China invested in the Arctic nearly $90 billion. It’s planning to build infrastructure from Canada, to the Northwest Territories, to Siberia […] We’re concerned about Russia’s claim over the international waters of the Northern Sea Route, including its newly announced plans to connect it with China’s Maritime Silk Road”[32]. In a paper published by the Congressional Research Service, there are reported alarming facts: China not only invests in icebreakers but also looks towards Greenland, China increasing the number of research stations: “China’s engagement with Greenland appears related in significant part to Greenland’s deposits of rare earth elements”[33]. The key question is: how far is Trump willing to go to secure the US interests overseas, interests which should be shared also by the EU, which has to gradually de-couple its economy from Communist China? Will Trump use aggressive diplomacy against a NATO ally or will he try to convince them with rational economic arguments?
6. Now referring to the Panama Canal, his statements about the Chinese influence there are true. Article 1 of the “Treaty Concerning the Permanent Neutrality and Operation of the Panama Canal” stipulates that “The Republic of Panama declares that the Canal, as an international transit waterway, shall be permanently neutral in accordance with the regime established in this Treaty”[34]. In 2017, the Panama state shifted its recognition of Taiwan for the recognition of China, representing a major political victory for the authorities in Beijing. Moreover, Panama entered the economic warfare of the CCP against the West, namely the Belt and Road Initiative. While not controlling directly the Panama Canal, China orchestrates a series of investments in ports and logistic systems, acquiring control around the canal. China’s influence in the Panama Canal is driven by its strategic interest in securing its own economic trade routes, strengthening economic ties with Latin America, and representing a direct challenge to the US influence in the region. Panama was praised for its activities in cooperation with China within another CCP mouthpiece, People’s Daily: “Panama is the first country in Latin America and the Caribbean to sign a memorandum of understanding with China on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) cooperation”[35]. Panama has let the Chinese state-owned company COSCO advance its economic interest within the area: “China COSCO Shipping has employed a number of local workers at its office and terminals in Panama city […] The company is an active supporter of the development of Panama’s shipping industry. It has offered different types of vessel console simulators for local maritime colleges, and worked with these colleges and relevant organizations to provide internships for students. On the campus of International Maritime University of Panama, there is a building donated by China COSCO Shipping. The university’s simulator and application technology center is also equipped with devices aided by the company”[36].
7. The war in Ukraine is one of the hardest geopolitical domains where one can clearly see what Donald Trump will do once he takes office. What I can say is that it is in the US interest to end the war as soon as possible in order to concentrate its full economic power on the economic confrontation with China. The new Cold War has officially begun.  General Keith Kellog said that the negotiations in Ukraine will extend up to 100 days after Trump takes office, meaning that it will not be easy to reach an agreement with the Russian Federation. What I can say is this: whatever decision Trump is willing to make, he does not have to put European security at risk and sacrifice it, and the United States must send the message of “Peace through Strength”, meaning that the Russian Federation needs to be discouraged in the future to attack again Ukraine and to possibly attack a NATO country. If Russia would consider that it had a victory within these agreements, Putin would be clearly tempted to reattack Ukraine and a NATO country in the future in order to test NATO’s response. In other words, if he is pleased with the future accords of peace, I think he will be willing to put to the test Article 5 of NATO’s Treaty. A report of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (The ThinkTank of Science and Politics) of Germany stated that Russia will decisively increase its military spending: “Military spending is set to increase sig­nificantly: the defence budget will rise by one quarter to 13.5 trillion rubles, which, at the current exchange rate, is equivalent to 130 billion euros”[37]. 

In the face of these challenges, the EU will have two options, meaning 2 scenarios of action:

1. If the United States will prove to remain a reasonable and rational actor under the leadership of Donald Trump, I believe that the EU should 100% remain under the economic and security umbrella of the United States and fight, alongside the United States, Russian and Chinese political and economic influence and to align its economic and political interests alongside the United States. There must be a more integrated geopolitical and geoeconomic alliance with the United States, meaning not only a stronger political and economic cooperation between the 2 democratic forces but a more unified response against the Chinese assertiveness, despite some remarks made by the current Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, and despite his administration economic aggressiveness in terms of imposing tariffs on some EU products;
2. If Donald Trump will be very influenced by some bizarre people around him (Elon Musk and others) and will demand ridiculous policies the EU has to adopt, I believe that the EU should 100% remain under the security umbrella of the United States and 100% in the NATO alliance, but it would also have to invest in its own security and to develop its own economic mechanisms to fight Russia and China. In this scenario, the EU will have to balance the ridiculous intentions of Donald Trump and foster innovation in its own industries to economically survive the pressure from both sides.

In both cases, The EU should have a more firm and secure answer to de-risk and de-couple from China, especially in terms of their critical infrastructure, meaning the telecommunication industry, energy industry, raw materials, and cybersecurity, even if this means paying a higher price for the process of diversification, but also in terms of the geopolitical landscape. In order to survive, the EU should concentrate on what the EU can do in the economic competitiveness department, concentrating on domestic production, instead of importing more and more products from the Chinese counterpart. Moreover, when the EU is capable of de-coupling with China, and in partnership with the United States, the EU has to unofficially launch an economic war against the People’s Republic of China and CCP by imposing tariffs not only on electric vehicles (which it already did) but also on all strategic economic goods the EU would produce for itself in the future. In addition, it can buy further strategic goods from the United States. 

One of the opportunities of the East-West economic warfare is for the EU to strengthen its public-private partnerships, which can represent the foundation for cooperation between the government and private companies for building infrastructure (transportation networks or ports), and sharing knowledge between the experts from both public and private spheres. This could also be used as an economic weapon against the economic warfare project, the Belt and Road Initiative. Governments can collaborate with private companies and academic institutions to foster technological innovation in critical areas and modernize existing technology and existing domestic infrastructure to become more competitive on the market and be a small piece of the puzzle within the architecture designed to counter the BRI. The European competitiveness in the market must be taken into consideration for the EU to remain competitive and to attract new markets overseas. In Mario Draghi’s report on European competitiveness, he underlines the need for the EU to act as one actor on the international arena and not as 27 EU member states, a statement with which I completely agree: “Member States are already acting individually and industrial policies are on the rise. But it is evident that Europe is falling short of what we could achieve if we acted as a community. Three barriers are standing in our way”[38]. He underlines the weakness of the European market in the field of digitalization, stating that the EU has lost its competitiveness due to the fact that “Europe largely missed out on the digital revolution led by the internet and the productivity gains it brought”[39]. In terms of financial investments, Draghi believes that “a minimum annual additional investment of EUR 750 to 800 billion”[40] is needed to foster innovation and to redefine its own competitive role within the international market.

NATO should not be seen as a last strategic resource but as the main security guarantee against any military threat coming from the East. In addition, common NATO defense mechanisms should be accelerated, mainly in the realm of technology and quantum computing in order to counteract the economic and technological warfare led by China. For this to happen, the EU must develop its own economic force in terms of innovation and economic preparedness in order to survive the geopolitical and geoeconomic challenges. I am aware that Donald Trump is not trusting very much the EU leadership, and this is very true. Until very recently, in 2022, the EU played on both sides: it spoke about Russian disinformation and it wanted to benefit from the security umbrella of the United States, but it also wanted to establish a ‘strategic autonomy’ under the leadership of Emmanuel Macron, the current President of France, and make economic deals with the Russian Federation and Communist China. In other words ‘We want to be protected by NATO without any contribution, but, at the same time, our economic choice is remaining in the East, meaning Russia and China, and, on top of that, we want a European Army’. This would trigger maybe some taxes when it comes also to the import of goods from the European Union, which will represent the price the EU has to pay for its duplicitary nature. The recent declarations of Mark Rutte, the new Secretary General of NATO, are extremely clear and, in my opinion, all the EU states should urgently increase their military spending up to 4-5% of the GDP to completely reshape their military for a possible confrontation with the Russian Federation in the future. Whatever the costs, Europe has to rearm itself because, if not done in due time, the EU will pay the price in the future.  

In conclusion, on the 20^th of January 2025, Trump arrived at the White House. Let’s see if his administration will be the decisive hammer that will remake “America and Europe Great Again”, or if he will remake only “America Great Again” to the detriment of the Western EU players. In both cases, Europe will have to survive. In both cases, the EU will have to emerge stronger, closer, and more innovative than ever before. Europe will have to stay united, converge its economic interests as one, and face all the geopolitical and geoeconomic challenges that might lie ahead. If this does not happen, the only actors that will emerge more powerful than ever before will be the People’s Republic of China, which remains the most dangerous international actor on the international arena, and Russia, which will do whatever it takes to undermine the European public opinion, the European institutions and its member states in order to officially declare war on NATO and EU soil.

[1] Harvey, D. (1989). The Condition of Postmodernity. An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. [e-book] Cambridge: Blackwell, accessed on 15.01.2024

[2] Judith BUTLER, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory”, Theatre Journal, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Dec. 1988), p. 526

[3] Roger SCRUTON, “The West and the Rest. Globalization and the Terrorist Threat”, ISI Books, 2002, pp. 72-73

[4] Ibidem, p. 73

[5] Ibidem, p. 75

[6] „The National Security Strategy of the United States”, September 2002, p. 5, accessed at https://2009-2017.state.gov/documents/organization/63562.pdf on 15.01.2025

[7] “most favored nation”, Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, accessed at https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/most_favored_nation on 15.01.2025

[8] Ronald D. ASMUS, “A Little War that Shook the World. Georgia, Russia, and the Future of the West”, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2010, p. 226

[9] “cancel culture”, Merriam-Webster Dictionary, accessed at https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cancel%20culture on 16.01.2025

[10] Gilles DELEUZE & Felix GUATARRI, “Anti-Oedipus. CAPITALISM AND SCHIZOPHRENIA“, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1983, p. 9

[11] “890000 Flüchtlinge im Jahr 2015”, Deutsche Welle, 30.09.2016, accessed at https://www.dw.com/de/2015-kamen-890000-asylsuchende-nach-deutschland/a-35932873 on 16.01.2025

[12] “280.000 Asylsuchende in Deutschland im Jahr 2016”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, accessed at https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/280-000-asylsuchende-in-deutschland-im-jahr-2016-14619307.html on 16.01.2025

[13] Phil STEWART & Idrees ALI, 29 iulie 2020, “US to withdraw about 12000 troops from Germany but nearly half to stay in Europe”, Reuters, accessed at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-germany-military-idUSKCN24U20L la data de 16.01.2025

[14] “At U.N., Trump hails Poland, slams Germany over Russian energy reliance”, Reuters, 25^th September 2018, accessed at https://www.reuters.com/article/world/at-un-trump-hails-poland-slams-germany-over-russian-energy-reliance-idUSKCN1M527V/ on 16.01.2025

[15] Heymi BAHAR et. all, “Special Report on Solar PV Global Supply Chains”, International Energy Agency, August 2022, p. 7, accessed at https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/d2ee601d-6b1a-4cd2-a0e8-db02dc64332c/SpecialReportonSolarPVGlobalSupplyChains.pdf on 16.01.2025

[16] “FACT SHEET: President Biden and G7 leaders formally launch the partnership for global infrastructure and investment”, The White House, 26^th June 2022, accessed at https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/06/26/fact-sheet-president-biden-and-g7-leaders-formally-launch-the-partnership-for-global-infrastructure-and-investment/#:~:text=At%20the%202021%20G7%20Summit,allies%E2%80%99%20economic%20and%20national%20security on 16.10.2025

[17] Tim MARSHALL, “Prisoners of Geography, p. 96, accessed at ”https://www.hostnezt.com/cssfiles/internationalrelations/Prisoners%20of%20Geography%20By%20Tim%20Marshall.pdf on 17.01.2025

[18] “Tesla’s China sales hit record high in 2024, bucking global decline”, Reuters, 3^rd January 2025, accessed at https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/teslas-china-sales-rise-record-high-83000-december-2025-01-03/ on 17.10.2025

[19] “Tesla’s Shanghai plant delivers 947,000 vehicles in 2023”, ChinaDaily, 4^th January 2024, accessed at https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202401/04/WS65964e5da3105f21a507a908.html on 17.01.2025

[20] Dan MILMO & Amy HAWKINS, “’The everything app’: why Elon Musk wants X to be a WeChat for the West”, The Guardian, 29^th July 2023, accessed at https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jul/29/elon-musk-wechat-twitter-rebranding-everything-app-for-west on 17.01.2025

[21] “Leitantrag der Bundesprogrammkommission. Programm der Alternative für Deutschland für die Wahl Zum 21. Deutschen Bundestag“, AfD, 28th November 2024, p. 49, accessed at https://www.afd.de/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Leitantrag-Bundestagswahlprogramm-2025.pdf on 17.01.2025

[22] Jacob MAGID, “Trump: Akk hell will break loose in Mideast if no deal; it won’t be good for anyone”, The Times of Israel, 7^th January 2025, accessed at https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/trump-all-hell-will-break-loose-in-mideast-if-no-deal-it-wont-be-good-for-anyone/ on 17.01.2025

[23] “About the Arctic Council”, accessed at https://arctic-council.org/about/ on 17.01.2024

[24] “The Arctic Council. A Quick Guide”, p. 19, accessed at https://arctic-council.org/about/ on 17.01.2025

[25] Ibidem, p. 25

[26] “Arctic Council Strategic Plan 2021-2030”, Reykjavík, 20^th May 2021, p. 16, accessed at https://oaarchive.arctic-council.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/99c66b04-b82e-4fe7-848c-ffafa111cf3e/content on 17.01.2025

[27] Ibidem, p. 19

[28] “China’s Arctic Policy”, The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, 26^th January 2018, accessed at https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/white_paper/2018/01/26/content_281476026660336.htm on 17.01.2025

[29] Ibidem

[30] Matilde BIAGIONI, “China’s Push-in Strategy in the Arctic and Its Impact on Regional Governance”, Instituto Affari Internazionali, September 2023, p. 1, accessed at https://www.iai.it/sites/default/files/iaicom2341.pdf

[31] “A Challenge of Yamal LNG Project – Russia”, accessed at https://www.chiyodacorp.com/en/about/story/project/challenge-of-yamal.html on 17.01.2025

[32] Michael R. POMPEO, “Looking North: <<Sharpening America’s Arctic Focus>>”, Rovaniemi, Finland, 6^th May 2019, accessed at https://2017-2021.state.gov/looking-north-sharpening-americas-arctic-focus on 17.01.2025

[33] “Changes in the Arctic: Background and Issues for Congress”, Congressional Research Service, 1^st October 2024, accessed at https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R41153.pdf on 17.01.2025

[34] “Treaty Concerning the Permanent Neutrality and Operation of the Panama Canal”, p. 1, accessed at https://pancanal.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/neutrality-treaty.pdf on 17.01.2025

[35] Shi YUANHAO, Song YIRAN, Chen YIMING, “Belt and Road cooperation brings tangible benefits to Panama”, People’s Daily, 19^th August 2024, accessed at http://en.people.cn/n3/2024/0819/c90000-20207451.html on 17.01.2025

[36] Ibidem

[37] Janis KLUGE, “The Russian Economy at a Turning Point”, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, November 2024, accessed at https://www.swp-berlin.org/publications/products/comments/2024C53_RussianEconomy_TurningPoint.pdf on 17.01.2025

[38] Mario DRAGHI, “The future of European competitiveness Part A | A competitiveness strategy for Europe”, September 2024, p. 7, accessed at https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/97e481fd-2dc3-412d-be4c-f152a8232961_en?filename=The%20future%20of%20European%20competitiveness%20_%20A%20competitiveness%20strategy%20for%20Europe.pdf on 17.01.2025

[39] Ibidem, p. 5

[40] Ibidem, p. 63