The US Is Losing the Contest to Divide the World

[Zorro]

Splitting the globe into spheres of influence with China and Russia is more likely to lead to war than peace.

It was a “naughty document,” Winston Churchill admitted. In October 1944, the British prime minister proposed that he and Soviet ruler Joseph Stalin avert postwar conflict by splitting the Balkan Peninsula into separate spheres. Russia would reign supreme in Romania and Bulgaria; Britain in Greece; Hungary and Yugoslavia would be divided 50-50.

The proposal was scandalous enough that Churchill suggested burning the document that he and Stalin had just agreed on. It “might be thought rather cynical” to settle the fates of millions “in such an offhand manner,” he worried. “No, you keep it,” Stalin replied.

Churchill never showed that document to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was proclaiming America’s opposition to a peace based on spheres of influence. Yet the continent was soon divided, albeit along slightly different lines than Churchill had imagined. During the Cold War, Western Europe became an American sphere of influence; Eastern Europe was dominated by Moscow. Only when the Cold War ended, in a decisive Western triumph, was Eastern Europe freed.

In the heady, unipolar era that followed, the world seemed to have left such unseemly geopolitical arrangements behind. Today, however, it’s fair to wonder if the great powers might divide the world among them again.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/features/2025-03-31/us-is-losing-the-contest-to-divide-the-world-to-russia-china?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc0MzQ2MDMzOCwiZXhwIjoxNzQ0MDY1MTM4LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJTVFpGUzREV1gyUFMwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDNjgyQTUwQzJCRDM0MTFCQTgwQjEwQjZEQjczQzM1MSJ9.IH6hCpf0PEh6NpIMVD7ii36HyUrvNn1xByaeuKM6aDs