In tandem with the retreat of US imperialism and the erosion of its hegemonic capacity, the rivalry among the world’s great powers is intensifying across vast geographies and divergent fronts alike. From Africa to Central Asia, from electric vehicles to artificial intelligence, an acute contest is unfolding—most conspicuously between the United States and China.

History instructs us that wherever great power rivalry takes root, peace remains elusive. Stability cannot endure there. Wars, internal conflicts, coups d’état, and the mass migrations they inevitably trigger dominate the horizon. Nor do great powers desire the cultivation of participatory democracy, human rights, the rule of law, or class consciousness in these lands. Instead, they bolster dictatorships, authoritarian regimes, totalitarian systems, and repressive governance. The imperialist powers harbor no concern for the scarcity of water, drought, or famine in Africa. Their focus is solely fixed on exploitation, plunder, pillaging the resources of the nations upon which they descend, and capturing their domestic markets.

Africa holds singular importance in this context. It commands attention simultaneously by virtue of its sheer expanse, its demographic weight, and its subterranean wealth. In the rivalry across this ancient and impoverished continent, the United States and China lead the vanguard. Russia, too, makes notable maneuvers, though on a less extensive scale. Between the United States and China, the race is particularly fierce regarding the extraction, processing, and conveyance of subterranean resources to world markets.

Africa—endowed with abundant mineral wealth, a population approaching 1.5 billion, and critical strategic importance along global trade routes—whet the appetites of capitalist, advanced, industrialized, imperialist states as a vast, populous, and expanding market. Geopolitically as well, its position cannot be ignored. Africa’s wealth in rare earth elements, precious minerals such as diamonds and gold, and strategic minerals indispensable to advanced technologies—notably copper, cobalt, and lithium—is indisputable.

AFRICA CARRIES NO WEIGHT IN GLOBAL POLITICS

Unlike other continents such as Europe, Asia, or the Americas, Africa possesses no single country that commands prominence in global politics or the world economy. Nor does Africa host an alliance, international organization, or bloc of comparable global stature. In the Americas, there stands a superpower: the United States. In Asia, there are great powers: Russia and China, with India also ascending. In Europe, major, consequential powers endure: the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. Yet on the African continent, no such states exist. What exists in Africa is the rivalry of non-African great powers. Even the 55-member African Union, the institutional body of the continent’s nations, remains far from exerting any real influence—not only in global politics, but even across the African continent itself.

Over the past fifteen to twenty years, Africa has undergone substantial upheavals. Armed conflicts, civil wars, and violence have become pervasive. From Ethiopia to Somalia, Libya to Sudan, armed hostilities have claimed countless lives, destabilized governments, and provoked massive waves of displacement. Terrorist organizations have seized upon these conditions as an opportune opening, and the great powers, in turn, have instrumentalized these terror networks.

In Africa, former nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonial powers such as Britain and France indulge in reveries of bygone eras. They attempt to assert themselves, yet their efforts prove futile. Germany, as Europe’s leading economic, industrial, and technological powerhouse, takes a keen interest in Africa; yet despite this attention, its institutional knowledge and historical experience regarding the continent pale in comparison to those of the British and French. Italy strives to act, but lacks the requisite capacity. The Netherlands and Belgium, once deeply entrenched in Africa, are far removed from their imperial past. Spain and Portugal assert no claim to global primacy. All of these nations languish, to borrow Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s phrase, in “a vague longing for a bygone past.”

China, well aware of Africa’s significance, is investing heavily across the continent. It stands as Africa’s largest trading partner and the primary destination for the continent’s exports. In the provision of loans, credit facilities, and grants to African states, it has outpaced Western institutions. China’s investment and foreign aid capacity, economic leverage, and extensive commercial ties naturally consolidate its political and diplomatic influence across Africa, elevating its visibility and prestige. Under the auspices of the Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing continues to finance large-scale infrastructure investments as well as major communications and transport projects.

THE FEROCITY AND DIMENSIONS OF THE RIVALRY

It is, of course, impossible for Russia to mount massive economic investments, conduct extensive aid operations, or sustain the volume of trade in Africa that China commands. Consequently, it seeks to distinguish itself by guaranteeing the security of local leaders, corporate enterprises, and ruling elites, relying predominantly on private military companies (the operations of the Wagner Group being a case in point). Russia has deployed mercenaries to Mali and the Central African Republic.

The United States, for its part, endeavors to counter China’s expanding influence, economic footprint, visibility, and public diplomacy initiatives in Africa, while simultaneously laboring to reinforce its own economic and political ties with African states. One need only recall that the United States, having intervened in Libya in 2011 through NATO, has directly struck ISIS targets in Somalia. The strategic depth of Washington’s relationship with Cairo is likewise well known.

The United States, China, and Russia also stand out prominently in arms sales to African nations. As the great power rivalry on the continent grows ever sharper, the spectrum of contestation widens accordingly. Cultural rivalry is superimposed upon economic, political, and military dimensions. Because every great power seeking to expand its sphere of influence and reach is determined to block the advance of its competitors, Africa serves both as the stage for and the witness to this unsparing contest. Some experts explain this rivalry through the lens of a new strain of colonialism; others account for it by pointing to the inherent nature, complexity, and multifaceted character of competition between imperialist metropoles.

BUSAN, South Korea — On the day Japan marks the 81st anniversary of its surrender in World War Two, a conference room in Busan’s city council building has become the latest front in a battle over memory.

Allan Wilson, Journalist

Last month, on 23 July, academics, activists and lawmakers gathered here for a symposium on one of the war’s most painful legacies: the estimated tens of thousands of women — euphemistically labelled “comfort women” — forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army. The event was co-hosted by the Carter Human Rights Center’s Asia division and the Korean Women’s Forum.

“The records of the Japanese military’s comfort women are historical assets that the international community must preserve together,” Nam Myung-sook, the Busan city councillor who co-organised the symposium, told the gathering. “Social consensus must be broadened.”

Her words were aimed at more than the audience in the room.

For three decades, survivors and their advocates have pressed Japan for a full and unequivocal accounting. They have met a familiar pattern: moments of apparent progress — the 1993 Kono statement acknowledging military involvement, the 2015 bilateral agreement with South Korea — followed by retreat. Japanese officials continue to dispute the term “sexual slavery.” Textbooks soften the language. Senior politicians visit Yasukuni Shrine, where convicted war criminals are honoured alongside the dead.

The symposium came as UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee convened in Busan, and the timing was deliberate. One of the gathering’s stated goals was to revive the push to have comfort women records inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World register — an effort Japan has repeatedly blocked.

“Our aim is to reaffirm the historical facts of comfort women (受害) to the international community and explore directions that contribute to peace and human rights,” said Yu Ying-mo, senior adviser to the Carter Human Rights Center’s Asia region, in remarks prepared for the event.

A statue, a warning

The symposium also addressed an incident that has become a diplomatic flashpoint: the recent removal of a comfort women memorial statue in Taiwan.

The statue, one of dozens erected across East Asia and beyond, was taken down in recent months. Organisers in Busan described the removal as “an erroneous approach that erases historical wounds and weakens collective memory,” according to the symposium’s programme.

For advocates, the Taiwan case illustrates what happens when political pressure is allowed to dictate historical memory. “Statues, memorial halls, and archives related to comfort women are important spaces of memory that testify to the victims’ suffering and history,” the Carter Human Rights Center said in its written address. “They must be respected.”

Dozens of comfort women memorials now stand in cities from Seoul to San Francisco to Berlin. Each has become a site of diplomatic friction: Japan’s government has consistently objected to them, arguing they perpetuate what it calls an inaccurate narrative.

The shrinking window

Time is running out. Of the few hundred women who came forward in the 1990s, the number of surviving registered victims in South Korea has dwindled to single digits.

This demographic reality has injected new urgency into the preservation effort. Shim Ok-ju, a research professor at George Mason University Korea, told the symposium that the focus must now shift from oral testimony — soon to be lost — to documentation and education.

Seo Kyung-soon, a professor at Pukyong National University, presented findings from the so-called “Gwanbu Trial” records — a series of postwar legal proceedings in which comfort women sought compensation through Japanese courts. The documents, she argued, contain incontrovertible evidence of state orchestration.

A designated discussant panel followed, bringing together Kim Tae-wan, a political science professor at Dong-eui University; Kim Kyung-hee, an independent researcher; and Ahn Jun-young, a journalist from the Busan Ilbo newspaper. The format was designed to bridge academia and public consciousness — to test whether scholarly findings could survive the scrutiny of working journalists and political scientists.

The international dimension

The comfort women issue has never been purely bilateral. In 1996, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women concluded that the system constituted “military sexual slavery.” In 2022, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women urged Japan to “ensure that the issue is accurately reflected in school curricula.”

Yet the gap between international consensus and Japanese government policy remains wide. Prime ministerial statements offer “apologies and remorse” but stop short of accepting legal responsibility. Reparations have come from private funds, not the state.

For organisers of the Busan symposium, the path forward runs through multilateral institutions. UNESCO recognition, they argue, would make historical revisionism harder to sustain. But Japan has made clear it will oppose any such move, as it did when Chinese documents related to the 1937 Nanjing Massacre were inscribed in 2015.

“Facing history squarely and respecting it is a fundamental value that the international community should share,” the symposium’s organisers concluded.

This 15 August, as Japan observes its National Memorial Service for the War Dead, the women who survived — and those who did not — will be remembered in rooms like the one in Busan. Their numbers are dwindling. The question is whether their story will outlast them.

Although the U.S. President Trump has repeatedly told his counterparts and the rest of the world to “trade with the United States” and “invest in the United States,” he has so far failed to get the results he hoped for. There are several reasons for this.

First, the United States is no longer as attractive as it once was. Second, China, America’s biggest rival, stands out as a more attractive country for production and investment not only for the rest of the world but also for major U.S. companies themselves. This is because the United States simply cannot compete with China when it comes to production costs. China produces far more, at much lower cost. Moreover, it produces high-quality goods and is rapidly building global brands. For this reason, President Trump’s call on U.S. companies to dismantle their factories in China and relocate them to the United States has also failed to generate the response he expected.

Trump has repeatedly called on European entrepreneurs, investors, and business leaders to invest in the United States as well. “Build your factories in the United States. We will offer you the most favorable and lowest tax rates in the world. Otherwise, you will continue to pay high tariffs. In fact, we will raise those tariffs even further,” he said. It was virtually a threat. Yet despite this, he failed to attract the level of interest he expected from Europeans either.

It is impossible for this picture regarding the economy, trade, and tariffs not to have repercussions for politics and foreign policy. Therefore, when the United States fails to receive the response it expects to its economic invitations and trade proposals, it increasingly resorts to political pressure and foreign-policy threats. On NATO, Trump scolds his European allies. He pressures Europeans to contribute more to NATO. At times, he goes even further, virtually threatening them by saying that the United States could withdraw from NATO. Europe’s leaders, each more miserable and ignorant than the next, sit beside the U.S. president and swallow his insults. Sometimes they even applaud him.

WOULD THE UNITED STATES LEAVE NATO?

The United States will not leave NATO. Having used NATO very effectively, invested so heavily in the alliance, and gained enormous influence through NATO over its allies’ domestic and foreign policies—from their economies to their defense and security policies—the United States will not give it up. If the United States were to leave NATO, the alliance would lose its current meaning, effectiveness, and deterrent power. No NATO member could fill the vacuum left by the United States. Alongside America’s political, economic, military, industrial, and technological weight, it should also be remembered that the United States covers 14.9 percent of NATO’s common budget and accounts for 57 percent of total defense spending within the alliance.

We know that NATO’s European members have neither the strength, courage, political will, nor money to stand up to the United States in pursuit of a “more European NATO.” Nor is there any consensus among them in this regard. The idea of a European defense and security identity that is at least somewhat distinct and autonomous from NATO, occasionally championed by Germany and France, should not be taken too seriously either. Berlin and Paris have failed to persuade NATO’s other European members on this issue. Groups such as the European Political Community, which was brought to the agenda after the Ukraine-Russia war in an effort to also bring in countries such as Turkey and Britain, which are NATO members but not EU members, likewise have little function, influence, or weight.

A few years ago, President Trump demanded that NATO members raise defense spending from 2 percent to 5 percent of GDP by 2035. There was no serious objection to this demand. This alone is one indication that NATO is important to the United States not only politically and militarily but economically as well. America’s influence within NATO also benefits the U.S. arms industry, the largest in the world.

Because Trump wants to turn the United States once again into the world’s foremost manufacturing hub, increase exports, and attract more investment into the country, the defense industry is also of great importance within this broader agenda. Since lowering energy costs is essential to achieving this, Trump both sidelines environmentalist energy projects at home and, as in the case of Venezuela, abducts the leader of an energy-rich country and virtually seizes control of its energy resources. Trump knows that otherwise the United States will struggle to compete with China, and that it is impossible for America to produce more, produce more cheaply, and sell more than China, which is far ahead of the United States in global manufacturing.

That is why, as was once again evident at the NATO summit held in Turkey, discussions within NATO about strategic threats and deterrence, regional security and energy corridors, partnerships and global networks all ultimately serve U.S. priorities and interests. Whether this is explained in terms of geopolitical balances, economic interests, regional dynamics, security needs, diplomatic pressure, or all of these factors combined, NATO is an instrument of aggression and occupation serving U.S. imperialism.