G2 or not G2? Why 2025 isn’t 1945

Today’s G2 is fundamentally unstable and lacks the power to truly influence the whole world

- R JAGANNATHAN

In his recent summit with President Xi Jinping of China, Donald Trump raised the possibility of a new world order headed by the two superpowers — a new “G2.” By implication, he meant that they could, together, rule the world and decide what is good for everyone.

However, the 2025 G2 may partly be an illusion, not least because of the diametrically opposite positions the United States and China have on issues like trade, climate change, and Taiwan, or anything involving global security. What is clear is that both G1 and G2 know that their field of geographical dominance cannot increase any more than it already has. The US threat to Venezuela suggests that it is more concerned about dominance in the Americas, and China knows that beyond a point it cannot bully India or Japan, the other Asian powers. And who knows how much leverage it will have with Russia after the Ukraine war ends?

This is quite unlike the G2 situation that emerged in the postwar era. Even then, it was effectively G1 (with the US being the sole military and economic superpower) for nearly a decade. It was only after the Soviet Union itself became a nuclear power in 1949 that it could claim the second G spot, as it rapidly built its military and economic power based on socialist ideology and numerical support from the newly decolonised and poorer countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Even so, the Soviet Union was never a full economic superpower, and we can call that situation at best G1.5, not G2, though for all practical purposes the Soviet Union was the US’ primary rival till the early 1990s. It was the weakness of the rest of the world, more than the reality of economic power that made the Soviet Union the other node to the US.