In a world becoming ever more characterized by multipolar rivalries and realignments of alliances, recent events between the United States, Russia, and China deserve critical analysis from a conflict and international relations perspective. While China and Russia forge a strategic counterbalance against Western primacy, the United States’ pivot in Gaza from UN-led relief mechanisms towards contractor-based delivery represents a further divergence from the classical liberal system. Both shifts reflect a worsening governance crisis in the world, one in which power is increasingly contested along with legitimacy and humanitarian ideals.
The visit of China’s President Xi Jinping to Moscow this week, his 11th as president, wasn’t a ceremonial visit. It was a calculated reassertion of solidarity with a troubled but resilient Russia by Beijing. Collectively, the two powers released a sharp condemnation of what they refer to as “Western hegemony” and “unilateral containment” signaling their intentions towards rewriting the rules of international engagement. The deepening of economic links, military coordination, and diplomatic unity is all part of a wider counter-Western narrative aimed at reframing the practice of sovereignty and power in international relations.
In conflict analysis terms, this convergence is expressing Johan Galtung’s idea of “structural confrontation.” The U.S.-led vs. an emerging Eurasian bloc binary is creating strategic fault lines evocative of Cold War bipolarity but with more multipolar fluidity. Notably, the BRICS’ integration with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the weaponization of local currencies reflect an aspiration for challenging Western tools of power such as SWIFT and the dollar-denominated economy. Essentially, the Russia-China bloc is not simply responding to containment but is in the process of creating an alternative order.
Concurrently, throughout the Middle East, the U.S. choice of support for a private contractor-driven humanitarian mission in Gaza upsets long-standing models of international humanitarian law and operational impartiality. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), composed of former military professionals and contractors, seeks to avoid dealing with Hamas and supply relief directly by way of U.S.-sponsored hubs. While the action is cast as a way of providing accountability and safeguarding civilians, it presents fundamental issues regarding the politicization and militarization of humanitarian space.
In a conflict resolution perspective, the model risks compromising the neutrality of the delivery of assistance, the erosion of humanitarian institution confidence, and raising tensions on the ground. The retreat of multilateralism towards privatized assistance is in fact challenging the core tenets of the Geneva Conventions. In addition, such programs risk creating a bad precedent that prioritizes military interests over humanitarian needs and potentially legalizing shadow aid economies within war zones.
Critically, these twin evolutions strategic consolidation in the East and humanitarian divergence in the West capture the two sides of a split world-order. China and Russia are building a discourse of sovereign resistance as the U.S. reframes humanitarianism in securitizing terms. The stakes are high: the course of world peace, humanitarian integrity, and the practice of multilateralism might be determined not by consensus but by rivalry among competing visions of world-order.
For conflict professionals, the challenge is both to read these changes with analytical acuity and to promote systems that maintain neutrality, respect international law, and value human dignity in the midst of power politics.