The images real or imagined are arresting, a superpower reaching deep into a resource rich state, neutralizing an entrenched strongman and reminding the world that hard power still matters. The USA referenced the Monroe Doctrine dating back to 1823 for capture of Venezuela’s strongman Nicolas Maduro. In recent months, speculation and heated debate about Washington’s leverage over Venezuela’s embattled leadership have resurfaced a larger truth about the international system. The era of American dominance is not ending because power has vanished. It is ending because power is fragmenting.
Almost ten years from now, the world of 2035 will not be defined by a single hegemon, nor by the comforting illusion that globalization has made geopolitics obsolete. It will be shaped instead by rivalry over energy, minerals, data, artificial intelligence demographics, climate resilience and even rivalries in space. The transition away from a unipolar order is already underway, and history suggests that such moments are rarely smooth. Since the end of the Cold War, the USA has stood at the centre of a unipolar world. Its military reach, financial system, technological leadership and alliance networks were unparalleled. From the Gulf War to the global financial system anchored by the dollar, US primacy structured international life.
Yet history is unforgiving to permanence. The British Empire once seemed invincible, its navy policing global trade routes, its currency anchoring markets. Within decades, war, debt and demographic decline reshaped its role. The Roman Empire, too, discovered that dominance can erode slowly through overextension, internal division and the rise of capable rivals before seemingly collapsing suddenly.
The USA today is not Rome in decay, but it is a power confronting limits. Its ability to project force remains formidable, but legitimacy, cohesion and uncontested influence have weakened. Allies hedge. Rivals test boundaries. And the costs of sustaining global order increasingly fall on a polarized domestic polity.
Energy has always been central to world order. Control of oil shaped the 20th century, from Churchill’s decision to convert the British navy to oil, to America’s postwar security architecture in the Middle East. Today, energy leverage remains potent whether through sanctions, supply manipulation or strategic access. Venezuela, with the world’s largest proven oil reserves, sits at the intersection of energy scarcity and political instability. Any credible demonstration of external power over such resources whether real or rumored signals something deeper, that as energy transitions accelerate unevenly, fossil fuels will still be fought over, not abandoned at least for now.
At the same time, the new energy economy is birthing new chokepoints. Lithium in Chile and Bolivia, cobalt in the Congo, rare earths in China; these are the oil fields of the future. As in the past, states will compete to secure supply chains critical to their economic and military futures.
The world of 2035 is being shaped now, by choices made in Washington, Beijing, Brussels and beyond. Whether it becomes an age of managed competition or cascading conflict will depend less on technology than on wisdom. History is watching.
No discussion of 2035 is complete without China. Its rise is not merely economic, it is civilizational. With a population four times that of the USA, a long historical memory and a state capable of strategic planning, China is reshaping global balances.
Beijing’s ambitions in technology, infrastructure, space and military power signal not just a challenge to US dominance, but an alternative model of governance and development. The Belt and Road Initiative, investments in artificial intelligence, and advances in hypersonic weapons and space capabilities all point to a future where power is more distributed and more contested.
History offers a cautionary tale. Thucydides, the Athenian general and author of History of the Peloponnesian War, famously argued that war becomes likely when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling one. Avoiding that fate will require restraint and imagination on both sides, qualities not always abundant in great powers.
If oil shaped the 20th century, data and algorithms will define the 21st. Artificial intelligence is already transforming warfare, surveillance and economic competition. Autonomous weapons, cyber operations and information warfare blur the line between peace and conflict. Space, once the domain of scientific cooperation, is becoming militarized. Satellites underpin communications, navigation and financial systems. Their vulnerability creates incentives for preemptive strikes in orbit, a scenario that strategists increasingly consider plausible. Wars in the coming decade may not resemble the trenches of World War I or even the shock and awe campaigns of the 1990s. They may unfold invisibly, through disrupted supply chains, crippled power grids or contested orbits above the Earth.
Climate change is not just an environmental crisis, it is a geopolitical accelerant. Rising temperatures, water scarcity and extreme weather will displace millions and strain fragile states. History shows that resource scarcity often precedes conflict, from ancient Mesopotamia’s water disputes to modern tensions over the Nile and Indus rivers.
Demographics add another layer of instability. Aging societies in Europe, Japan and China will struggle to sustain growth and social cohesion. Meanwhile, youthful populations in parts of Africa and South Asia will demand jobs, dignity and political voice. Where those demands are unmet, unrest will follow. By 2035, migration pressures, food insecurity and climate shocks may matter as much to global stability as tanks and missiles.
Taken together, these forces point toward a more volatile world. The decline of unipolarity does not automatically yield peace. Multipolar systems, as Europe learned before 1914, can be unstable when rules are unclear and trust is thin. Conflicts over energy, minerals, water and technological dominance are not hypothetical; they are already emerging. The risk may not just be one catastrophic global war, but a series of overlapping crises that erode norms and institutions.
Yet history also offers hope. The post-World War II order, however flawed, demonstrated that visionary leadership can tame anarchy. Institutions like the United Nations, imperfect as they are, prevented great power war for decades. Avoiding a descent into chaos will require leaders with maturity and sanity, qualities that transcend ideology. It will require renewed commitment to arms control in space and cyberspace, cooperation on climate adaptation, and rules governing AI and emerging technologies. Most of all, it will require humility from great powers, an acceptance that dominance is temporary, but responsibility endures.
The world of 2035 is being shaped now, by choices made in Washington, Beijing, Brussels and beyond. Whether it becomes an age of managed competition or cascading conflict will depend less on technology than on wisdom. History is watching.
