Two international political processes are simultaneously underway: the competition for global supremacy between China and America; and the efforts of America, China and Russia (ACR) to establish and control spheres of influence.
Harvard Professor Graham Allison has written seminal works on both phenomena. His book, ‘Destined for War’, discussed the infamous ‘Thucydides Trap’, which, echoing Greek historian Thucydides, raises the question whether a rising power such as China, and a power being challenged for supremacy such as America, are destined to fight, as rising Sparta had fought established Athens.
Some commentators think that China and America are destined to clash, most likely over Taiwan or over the South China Sea. Henry Kissinger, in his book ‘On China’, thought that this could be avoided with wise policies.
In an article on ‘The New Spheres of Influence’, published in Foreign Affairs in March/April 2020, Graham Allisson argued that, given the distribution of power between America, China and Russia, no one power would be able to impose its political philosophy, or its will, on the rest of the world and that in the new geopolitical realities of today’s world, “spheres of influence” are a fact of life. Spheres of influence, in his presentation, may be regional, functional, or technological. China, for example, is asserting a regional sphere of influence in East Asia while seeking a functional sphere of influence through the countries in Asia and Africa participating in its Belt and Road Initiative. It is also vigorously challenging American technological and IT ascendancy.
Allison thought that the Asian balance of power is now in China’s favour. While US military commitments are distributed across the world, China is concentrating its military obligations in the South China Sea, seeking to ensure its superiority over the United States if the two enter into a clash over Taiwan, or over issues of the South China Sea.
As for Russia, Allison noted that it was seeking to impose its influence in its ‘near-abroad’ and that it has been seeking to create a sphere of influence in the Baltic, Ukraine, Crimea, and Georgia. Under the Assad regimes, it had also sought to establish a sphere of influence in the Middle East, but this has been superseded after the fall of Bashar al-Assad.
Following his conversation with President Putin in mid-February, 2025, President Trump made comments seeming to suggest that he accepts Russia’s claim to a sphere of influence in its ‘near-abroad’, accepting, among other things, that Ukraine should not be part of NATO.
As for the USA, following its accumulation of power after the First and Second World Wars, it competed with the USSR for global supremacy during the first Cold War (1945-1990), attained global supremacy after the fall of the USSR, was recognized as the global hegemon until the global financial crisis of 2008, now faces an array of major powers such as some in the BRICS grouping, and is in a live struggle for global ascendancy with China.
Historically, America’s primary regional sphere of influence has been in the Western hemisphere, notably Latin America/the Caribbean – ever since the Monroe Doctrine. As we shall see below, the Trump Administration is in the process of dramatically asserting its control over the western hemisphere.
Although, under the second Trump Administration, there has so far not been an American policy statement on US plans for the American regional sphere of influence, namely the western hemisphere, one can already discern distinctive elements in the comments of leading commentators associated with Project 2025, as we shall see below.
It bears recalling that a regional sphere of influence is defined in the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics as “a determinate region within which a single external power exercises a predominant influence, limiting the political independence of weaker states or entities within it.” In light of recent developments under second Trump Administration, one would need to delete the reference to an ‘external’ power, for the USA is very much at the heart of the region that it seeks to control.
On 6 February, 2025, Global News of Canada published an article based on an interview by Ashleigh Stewart with Steve Bannon, an intellectual architect of Project 2025 and a strategic adviser to President Donald Trump at the start of his first term. The article carried the title, “Trump’s plan for ‘hemispheric control’: Steve Bannon on why tariffs may only be the start.” The article is quite revelatory about the strategic thinking behind America’s current push for control in the western hemisphere.
Global News asked Steve Bannon: “How seriously should we be taking the President’s insistence that Canada should become the 51st state?” Bannon replied that Trump’s interest in Canada was strategic and geopolitical, explaining: “The world is now coming to Canada, and it’s coming in a big way… You were isolated before. You’re not isolated now.”
Bannon explained that the Arctic is going to be the “Great Game of the 21st century” and highlighted a military weakness that he called Canada’s “soft underbelly”: Melting polar ice caps, he explained, were making the Arctic far north more accessible to countries like Russia and China, which meant that Canada had to do more to protect its vulnerable northern frontier — and, in turn, protect the U.S. And if Canada refuses, Bannon said, “Trump will force us to.”
Global News commented that by annexing Greenland, retaking the Panama Canal and securing Canada’s northern border, Trump was apparently trying to establish a north-south economic and military corridor – throughout the western hemisphere, from the far Arctic north to the southern tip of South America.
It’s all about “hemispheric control,” Bannon underlined. He added: “Let me be brutally frank. Geo-strategically, you don’t really have an option but to join us if you want your sovereignty because from the north, from the Arctic, it’s going to get encroached in a great power competition that you don’t have the ability to win.” “This is a major geostrategic job … Look at your northern border. You’re totally, completely exposed … it used to be your greatest defence. Now it’s your biggest vulnerability”.
Global News noted that Canada had itself long recognized the problem and that Canadian leaders had been calling for beefing up security in the Arctic.
During the interview with Bannon, the following issues touching on the phenomenon of American hemispheric control were highlighted:
Having American control over the Panama Canal means shipping routes are secured from the south.
Building an “Iron Dome” — the U.S.-funded air defence system in Israel, secures the skies.
Annexing Greenland means a U.S. submarine base could be built to block the Russian navy from its bases in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk.
The Northwest Passage — a network of waterways that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago — “changes the economics of trade with Asia, with Japan and East Asia and with that part of Russia.”
Renegotiating the regional trading pact CUSMA, could make Mexico, the United States and Canada “one super economic entity.” “And … that’s a game changer for Canada. President Trump gets a partnership with Greenland, secures the Panama Canal, and makes sure that they’re robust democracies like Bolsonaro in Brazil and Milei in Argentina. Then we’ve almost completed hemispheric defence.”
Bannon drove home the point: “We are not going to be invaded by Russia. You might be,” he said, referring to Canada. “So how is it possible that you spend a smaller amount in the region?
He continued: “Before, strategically, you didn’t need the United States. They were nice to be an ally of — now you need us. It’s the only way to stop the great power competition, which you’re going to lose. Tell me how that’s going to play when Russia and China start making physical incursions into northern Canada … how are you guys going to respond? Are you going to lose northern Canada?
“Well, if you’re partners and/or part of the United States, you don’t have to worry about that because we’re not going to let that happen.” A US official interviewed by Global News commented: “This foreign policy is very, very different. It’s much broader and more sophisticated. There’s been substantial planning by his people and many think tanks, including ours.”
In reflecting on the weight of these views, we may bear in mind the assessment of Gideon Rachman, the Financial Times’ international security expert – and one of the leading security commentators in the world. Writing in the FT edition of Tuesday 11 February, 2025, Rachman assessed the contemporary international security situation thus: “With the USA, Russia and China led by men with expansionist ambitions, the implications are bleak for the current international system. The world may be moving from an era where smaller countries claim the protection of international law to one in which, as Thucydides put it, ‘the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must’”
Such a world, Rachman added, might be compatible with an uneasy peace between the great powers, based around spheres of influence – with the US concentrating on the western hemisphere, Russia on eastern Europe and China on East Asia.
This, then, is the new world order. And the American regional sphere of influence in the Arctic, North and South America, the Caribbean, and Antarctica.
