By Lama El Horr – Jul 9, 2025
Amid rising global instability, Washington’s aggressive pursuit of nuclear and geopolitical dominance threatens the foundation of multipolarity—and China knows it.
In a context where China shows no sign of capitulating to the Atlantic bloc’s hybrid warfare, it can be assumed that Beijing has meticulously studied the nervous system of the 21st-century American Empire, and now possesses the means to deprive the American hegemon of the properties of the Phoenix bird.
Three decades have passed since the reformist shift initiated by Deng Xiaoping. The current state of the world reveals that this shift not only guaranteed China’s economic development; it also materialized the vision of an anti-hegemonic world, as articulated by the father of Chinese independence.
Contemporary China’s geopolitical adversaries have been slow to grasp the implications of these transformations. Exhilarated by the opening of the Chinese market to foreign capital, which guaranteed them decades of titanic returns on investment, the imperialist oligarchs, Gilgamesh in search of immortality, had a hangover when they emerged from their Far Eastern opulence to discover that their post-Cold War supremacy was, in fact, founded on the relocation of their productive capacities to China, the deindustrialization of Western countries, and the downgrading of their workforce.
When Washington decides to impose its conditions by force, diplomacy is nothing more than folklore for public opinion
This systemic gluttony is the root cause of most of the world’s crises. Allergic to the idea of a more equitable redistribution of wealth, to the industrialization of developing countries, and to the participation of emerging powers in the management of world affairs, the oligarchs of the Atlantic bloc, obsessed by the memory of their omnipotence, have decided to invest their speculative capital in the industry of destruction – an enterprise facilitated by the geopolitical blindness of the European elite.
Sovereignty is a matter of American exceptionalism
The intransigence of American diplomacy, which plays deaf to the legitimate demands of the global majority, reveals that Washington is currently at an impasse. It goes without saying that China, like the BRICS bloc, will not accept the primacy of Washington’s interests over their rights to sovereignty, development, and security. Under these conditions, the only way out for the American Empire is destruction—of the law, of diplomacy, of the opposing military forces.
Do UN resolutions reached by consensus hinder imperialist wars of conquest in West Asia? It is enough to accuse the UN of condoning terrorism and create a tailor-made law. Do the free trade rules governing the WTO prevent Washington from competing on equal terms with China? It is enough to accuse Beijing of unfair competition and shift toward protectionism. Is using the dollar as a weapon of coercion pushing the BRICS to consider a less iniquitous monetary system? All it takes is accusing the multipolar bloc of revisionism and brandishing the threat of tariffs.
We have also seen that when Washington decides to impose its conditions by force, diplomacy is nothing more than folklore for public opinion. Panama’s bitter experience illustrates the extent to which sovereignty is a relative concept: Trump claims ownership of the Panama Canal and declares he wants to station his troops there; he disputes the country’s participation in the BRI project, and threatens military intervention if the leaders do not comply. How much room for maneuver does a country like Panama have? – And when Washington lacks the means to impose its conditions, as is the case with Iran, “negotiations” are at most a means of misleading the adversary before stabbing it in the back – with the help of its regional hitman: Israel. Tehran’s distrust is so heightened that the country is making the resumption of negotiations conditional on a guarantee that it will not be bombed again during the talks.
Diplomacy and negotiations have thus been rendered meaningless, since everything is permeable, and even signed agreements are ineffective as soon as they are concluded. In its report detailing trade relations between China and the United States, Beijing reveals that Washington not only distorts the statistics in its favor, but has also failed to honor its trade commitments to China. And what about the cessation of hostilities agreement between Israel and Hezbollah, supposedly guaranteed by the United States and France, which has been violated nearly 4,000 times by Israel since it was signed!
In this context of chronic instability, everything suggests that Washington and its satellites are working to govern by fait accompli, by turning the status quo situations (Palestine, Golan Heights, Sinai, Cyprus, South Caucasus, Taiwan, Falkland Islands, etc.) that have prevailed for decades to their advantage. In this race against time, the Atlantic bloc is defying all forms of deterrence, including nuclear deterrence. So much so that Washington, London, Paris, and their Israeli offshoot now appear committed to a project of denuclearizing their geopolitical adversaries, including Beijing and Moscow.
It is worth revisiting certain statements and actions of the Western bloc. In March of this year, the G7 once again urged North Korea to renounce its nuclear weapons, prompting a strong reaction from Pyongyang. That same month, on the sidelines of the “Raisina Dialogue,” European Union representatives expressed concern about Beijing’s possession of nuclear weapons and stressed the need to monitor China’s nuclear arsenal. Two months later, Abdullah Khan, a fellow at Pakistan’s Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, revealed that Israeli drones had attempted to sabotage Pakistan’s nuclear facilities during the recent armed conflict between Islamabad and New Delhi. Finally, it is worth remembering that, ten days before the Israeli-American assault on Iran, Russia suffered a multipronged “Ukrainian” attack on its nuclear bombers.
It would be surprising if Beijing did not feel a sense of paranoia, given Washington’s stubborn desire to impose not only its economic and technological dominance, but also its nuclear hegemony.
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The European Union, a Key Instrument in Washington’s Hands
One can legitimately question the role of European leaders in this headlong rush toward disaster. The last Munich Security Conference was perceived by many as a humiliation of EU leaders by Washington. Yet, this meeting also revealed the Achilles heel of the new American administration.
Without a consensus between European liberal-democratic parties and ultra-conservatives and nationalists, the Trump team would lack the means to implement its geopolitical roadmap: this is, in essence, what the American Vice President expressed in Munich. His lyrical flights about Washington’s commitment to freedom of expression were only intended to facilitate the formation of a transatlantic coalition around Washington’s neo-militarist project, Peace Through Strength, in which the anti-immigration narrative is expected to play a central role. In other words, J.D. Vance’s mission was to guarantee greater political and media space for European far-right parties.
The MAGA team’s goal was to secure European support on three fronts: the (so far verbal) attenuation of hostilities against Moscow, with the aim of breaking the Moscow-Beijing axis; support for Israeli wars of conquest in West Asia to hinder China and the BRI project (which calls for an anti-Muslim narrative); and the formation of an Asia-Pacific Defense Pact, rehabilitating the “Yellow Peril” narrative, in order to isolate China and halt the rise of an anti-hegemonic order.
The Pentagon chief’s blackmail of NATO allies followed the same logic: maintaining the US nuclear umbrella would be conditional on replenishing NATO coffers, that is, the US military-industrial complex—suggesting that the use of military weapons is an absolute priority for Washington. It is notable that the European liberal-democratic parties, modeling their discourse on that of the American Democratic Party, are all in favor of continuing NATO’s covert war against Russia (this is less the case for the extreme right). On the other hand, we observe nuances in their support for Israeli wars: while they almost all acquiesce in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, invoking “Israel’s right to defend itself” against an occupied people, they are more divided on other Israeli aggressions (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Iran), or in the face of American plans to harass the world’s second-largest economic power in its vital space.
Clearly, the Europeans did not exploit the levers of pressure this situation offered them, once again confining themselves to the limits set, from Washington, by the Democratic and Republican camps. Yet, they had the means to cut short the farce of “Strategic Autonomy” and finally develop an “Autonomous Strategy” by rebalancing the EU’s position between the world’s two leading economic powers; by dissociating themselves from illegal and genocidal Israeli expansionism; and by distancing themselves from the American wait-and-see attitude toward Moscow, to propose a European security architecture that takes into account the vital interests of their next-door neighbor.
Instead, the European elite became mired in its own deception. Was Macron’s announcement of an international conference (canceled at the last minute) for the recognition of a Palestinian state intended to give Netanyahu more time to fine-tune the massacre? Was it intended to deceive Iran before the Israeli-American aggression? Or was it a lever of pressure in the face of Washington’s military interventionism before the NATO summit – “Help us continue the war against the Russians, and we will help you against the Arabs, the Iranians, and the Chinese”? Inevitably, this imaginary conference casts doubt on the real reasons that pushed Macron to renew dialogue with Moscow.
And if the announcement of this conference was ever intended to challenge the Pentagon’s budgetary dictates, it was no more successful: the French president and his main EU counterparts have indeed retreated on all fronts, leaving Washington’s Achilles heel intact. – Not everyone can be Paris!
As a result, Washington can continue to rely on its European satellites to perfect its multi-continental industry of destruction – including of EU prosperity – in the hope of curbing China’s rise and the Global South’s escape from poverty. In the hope of being a Phoenix bird, in short.
Lama El Horr
Lama El Horr is the Founding Editor of China Beyond the Wall. She is a geopolitical consultant and analyst specializing in Chinese foreign policy, geopolitics and geoeconomics. She holds a PhD from Paris-Sorbonne University and has also studied at the LSE. Lama El Horr has worked in the government, academic and media sectors in Europe, China, Latin America, and the Middle East, and is fluent in English, French, Spanish, and Arabic.
