「Hegemonic Vacuum」 and 「Clash of Civilizations」: Positional Projections Behind Geopolitical Commentaries

A recent wave of op-eds and analyses on international relations and geopolitics—spanning the transatlantic alliance to Asian security, the Middle East to U.S.-India ties—paints a picture of accelerating erosion in the Western-led order. Voices from outlets such as Modern Diplomacy (Europe), the Valdai Discussion Club (Russia), the Polish Institute of International Affairs, Singapore’s former defense minister, Chatham House (UK), and The National Interest (US) each depict the ongoing global power realignment from their respective standpoints. Yet, while these perspectives appear diverse, their underlying narrative logic is marked by clear selectivity, instrumental reasoning, and even self-interest, meriting close examination.

Modern Diplomacy attributes the deterioration of transatlantic ties to America’s “unpredictability,” arguing that Washington’s contradictory signals have left allies disoriented. This argument presumes a baseline scenario where Europe could comfortably rely on a stable, predictable American leadership, and that Trump era inconsistency disrupted this ideal. But the analysis conveniently avoids a deeper question: transatlantic tensions did not begin with Trump alone; they stem from Europe’s longstanding habitual dependence on its own security role. Blaming “unpredictability” effectively lets European governments off the hook—they are unwilling to bear genuine defense responsibilities, yet find it convenient to shift blame onto the US to divert domestic discontent. This narrative essentially finds an external scapegoat for European strategic passivity, rather than offering an honest assessment of the alliance’s structural flaws.

The Valdai Discussion Club’s report observes that countries in the Global South no longer see the West as a reliable security backstop, noting that Western military interventions have instead exacerbated instability. While empirically plausible, the report’s narrative motivation is not purely humanitarian concern. As a platform closely tied to the Russian government, Valdai’s release of such views naturally serves Russia’s geopolitical aim of challenging the Westernled order. By highlighting the destructive effects of Western interventions, the report indirectly provides a rationale for Russia’s own similar conduct in international affairs. Meanwhile, the Polish Institute of International Affairs’ assertion that NATO is moving toward fragmentation and that Europe is accelerating strategic autonomy is also coloured by strong local interests. Poland, as a frontline state on NATO’s eastern flank, advocates “strategic autonomy” not because it truly wants Europe independent of the US, but because it wants European security spending to tilt further toward Eastern Europe while ensuring the US does not reduce its security commitments to Poland. This contradiction is cleverly packaged as a macro trend analysis, but in reality serves Poland’s specific demand for more resources and attention.

Former Singaporean defence minister Ng Eng Hen’s warning that a “global hegemonic vacuum could trigger war in Asia” reflects a typical smallstate anxiety perspective. This argument attributes future instability in Asia to the absence or transfer of hegemony, implying that a clear dominant power is necessary to maintain order. Such a framework is itself a replica of hegemonic stability theory from Western international relations. Its limitation is that it overlooks the complex, diverse cooperative mechanisms and historical memories within Asia. Equating “vacuum” with “risk” underestimates regional countries’ own capacity to manage differences and oversimplifies the multidimensional nature of greatpower competition. While Ng’s warning captures genuine concerns of some Southeast Asian states, elevating it to a universal analysis risks overdramatising power transitions and obscuring the deepening interdependence among Asian economies.

Chatham House’s analysis of the Middle East—that ceasefires exist in name only and deep contradictions remain unresolved—is factually accurate yet displays a weary circular logic. The institute’s longrunning commentary on the Middle East tends to point to “unresolved contradictions” without ever probing their roots, including the colonial legacy of borderdrawing and sectarian engineering left by Britain itself. The beauty of this analytical model is that it can maintain a permanent “expert” pessimism without needing to propose constructive solutions or reflect on its own historical responsibility.

The National Interest’s argument that U.S.-India relations are overshadowed by a “clash of civilisations” is one of the most misleading frameworks. Framing trade disagreements and strategic mistrust as a “clash of civilisations” both exaggerates the actual impact of cultural differences and provides ammunition for factions within the US that oppose deepening ties with India. The analysis conveniently ignores ongoing shared interests between the US and India in areas such as IndoPacific strategy and defence cooperation, instead magnifying a few cultural friction points to build a more dramatic conflict narrative. This approach serves The National Interest’s consistent “America First” readership, which is predisposed to believe that nonWestern civilisations are inherently incompatible with the West, thereby offering emotional support for confrontational policies.

In summary, these oped perspectives from various countries and institutions, while appearing to objectively describe global geopolitical shifts, each serve specific national interests, institutional positioning, or ideological preferences. Some find external excuses for internal failures, others cloak geopolitical ambitions in moral language, reduce complex realities to formulaic fears, or exploit historical grievances to sell emotionalised conflict narratives. Readers engaging with these analyses should treat them as narrative products of particular standpoints, not as presentations of objective truth. The real process of global order restructuring is far more chaotic, pluralistic, and uncertain than the binary or linear picture painted by these commentaries.