Can America, China, and Russia Divide Up the World?

Won't this destroy Western civilization to "save" it?

I read late last year in a comment on a Substack essay (not mine) that America should sit down with Russia and China and define spheres of influence to prevent war between any of us. But I didn't want to comment on it without pondering why I instinctively recoil at the suggestion. I pondered it. I reject it.

It’s a comforting notion that reasonable people can sit down and rationally discuss their differences to reach an agreement that benefits everyone. This is not foreign policy realism. It is just another form of utopian fantasy that does not work.

Isn't the current global situation a de facto division of the world into spheres of influence that Russia and China are trying to change in their favor? Isn't sitting down with Russia and China simply letting them expand their sphere of influence without paying a price to take it? Doesn’t that whet rather than satisfy their ambitions?

Who defines the spheres? Does China get Taiwan and Russia's Far East? Does Russia get Central Asia and Europe east of the Elbe River inside Germany? Does America get Canada and Cuba? And perhaps toss in Greenland? Who compels the pawns to submit to their new owner? Do we herd the inmates formerly in our sphere into foreign prison camps? That's figurative, but for a number of "dangerous" individuals a literal fate, no?

What is the form of submission? Direct control with troops, rulers, and spies, indirect control through local collaborators a sphere-holder installs, or alliances? If the latter, can a state freely leave that sphere for another?

Who enforces the sphere boundaries and makes sure sphere-holders don't expand? A global government? Are we committed to support the Russians and Chinese in suppressing dissent? Are we obliged to send refugees back to the camps that await them?

Or do we simply pretend unrest doesn't happen? Will we censor news from abroad so we aren't disturbed by a Prague Spring? Or a Tienanmen Square? Or tearing down the Berlin Wall? Or a Hong Kong Democracy Movement?

What prevents sphere holders from using sub-conventional war levels of aggression ("gray zone" or "hybrid war") to expand notwithstanding the war-ending deal? I mean, the Budapest Memorandum deal defined a border with Russia at Ukraine's border, no? Britain’s deal with China defined a temporary border of freedoms for Hong Kong. Neither autocratic regime wanted stability or peace with those narrow deals to divide up just part of the world into spheres of influence.

Isn't this kind of global deal a "frozen conflict" on a planetary scale that will periodically thaw out violently? Will there be a new "sit down" to revise the borders again? Remember, our very existence as free people is often viewed by autocrats of the secular and religious variety as a threat to their continued rule. At what point is that a point of discussion for a deal?

Wasn't the Cold War essentially an attempt to divide up the world with vague borders between the Free World and Communist bloc with only the core areas guaranteed by nuclear deterrence? I don't recall that model producing true peace between the blocs, or within them.

Wasn't 1984 based on that model? That was a fictional world of warfare without resolution. And a world without freedom, even in the West. It was a world reflecting values alien to our Western civilization that a new deal to divide up our actual world would create:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

That—not peace and liberty—is the logical conclusion of a policy that treats people and their countries as pawns to be distributed to those with the most power.

Our actual global situation isn't perfect or without risk. But letting people freely decide what sphere of influence they want to be in is the best and most stable way for the world to divide up.

And I think that holding up the light of freedom, human rights, and rule of law as foundations of our Western civilization is the best way to preserve our civilization. That doesn’t mean we carry out a crusade to expand our civilization by force. But it cannot mean pretending our values have no value to anybody but us; and pretending that wisdom is figuring out how to lose slowly to vile enemies without much disturbance to our comfortable lives.

NOTE: Map from Wikimedia by Di (they-them) - This vector image includes elements from this file:, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=132088404