First of four parts

OUR Pax Silica series offered a glimpse of the new world. America is no longer merely policing an international order it largely created. It is assembling alliances, securing supply chains, protecting technologies and recruiting strategic partners against China.

The policeman has not disappeared. He is recruiting a neighborhood watch. And the Philippines, sitting beside some of the world’s most contested waters, has suddenly discovered that geography, an inconvenience for centuries, may now be negotiable currency.

History seldom announces its turning points. We remember Pearl Harbor, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. But consequential changes also occur without ceremony. The flags still fly. Aircraft carriers still sail. Presidents still speak confidently. Yet the strategic arithmetic has changed.

The Iran war may prove one of those moments. Not because America became weak. The United States again demonstrated its astonishing ability to project power thousands of miles from home. But it revealed something important: Even overwhelming military power cannot guarantee global order.

The unipolar moment

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the United States emerged unrivaled. Its economy dominated. Its military was unmatched. Its navy ranged across the oceans. The dollar anchored global finance. American technology appeared unassailable.

The world entered what Charles Krauthammer called the “unipolar moment.” When crises erupted, Washington intervened. When aggressors threatened order, America organized coalitions. When shipping lanes were endangered, the US Navy appeared. For a remarkable period, America possessed sufficient economic, military and political power to underwrite international order.

The global policeman

Globalization flourished beneath this security umbrella. Trade expanded. Energy crossed oceans. Supply chains stretched across continents. Countries with modest militaries prospered while the global commons were protected largely by somebody else.

America maintained troops in Europe, bases across Asia and enormous Middle Eastern commitments. Carrier groups patrolled distant oceans while alliances deterred adversaries. But success disguised a weakness. The policeman had accumulated an enormous beat.

Europe had to be defended. The Persian Gulf kept open. War around Taiwan deterred. South Korea protected. Terrorism contained. Cyber networks and satellites defended. Eventually geography began imposing limits even upon the nation that had mastered it. America bit more than it could chew.

The cracks appear

Iraq and Afghanistan provided the first warning. America could destroy governments quickly. Building stable ones afterward proved much harder. Meanwhile, its rivals adapted. China expanded its economic, technological and military power. Russia developed asymmetric warfare. Iran invested in missiles, drones and proxies.

War also became cheaper for the attacker and costlier for the defender. A cheap drone might require a multimillion-dollar missile to destroy it. An inexpensive weapon could threaten a sophisticated warship. Cyberattacks needed no armies at all.

Then came Iran.

Hormuz and the new reality

The Iran war exposed the contradiction at the heart of American power: The world’s mightiest military can destroy almost anything yet cannot necessarily control what follows.

Seven months into the war, Hormuz — normally carrying about a fifth of global oil and LNG trade — remains contested. Trump claims control. Tehran disagrees. Commercial shipping apparently believes neither.

Before the war, about 125 large commercial vessels crossed Hormuz daily. On Sept. 21, tracked commodity traffic fell to only two vessels, although some ships may have sailed with tracking systems switched off.

Oil still moves but slowly, dangerously and expensively. Apparently this now qualifies as an open sea lane. America can batter Iranian installations and strike targets hundreds of kilometers inland. Yet keeping one narrow waterway reliably open to ordinary commerce imposes enormous military and economic costs.

That is not American impotence. It is something more consequential: the rising cost of supremacy.

The arithmetic of power

Every great power eventually confronts arithmetic. Not ideology. Not speeches. How many ships, aircraft, missiles and bases? How many crises can it manage simultaneously?

America must calculate across Europe, the Middle East and Indo-Pacific while defending cyber infrastructure, satellites, supply chains and its homeland.

Every missile fired in one theater is unavailable somewhere else. A carrier deployed to one ocean leaves another. Money spent defending yesterday’s order cannot build tomorrow’s security. America’s problem is not too little power. It is too many obligations.

Power without omnipotence

Then Xi Jinping arrived in Washington.

The spectacle itself was revealing. America’s principal strategic competitor was welcomed at the White House while Trump spoke warmly of friendship. Beneath the ceremony, however, the two governments were bargaining over tariffs, trade, critical minerals, artificial intelligence and strategic stability.

No grand reconciliation occurred. China remains America’s principal long-term competitor. Washington continues constructing supply chains and partnerships intended to reduce dependence upon Beijing. Yet Washington is also negotiating with Beijing to keep rare earths flowing and prevent competition from becoming confrontation.

That is the new arithmetic of power.

Great powers negotiate not because they have stopped competing, but because neither can simply impose its will upon the other. The fashionable prediction that America is simply “declining” is therefore too crude. It remains the world’s most formidable military power. The dollar, technological ecosystem, capital markets, universities and alliance network provide advantages no rival easily reproduces.

China has not replaced America. Nobody has. We are entering something messier, a world in which several powers can prevent others from getting what they want, while fewer can impose durable outcomes themselves.

America can intervene almost anywhere. But it may no longer be able to settle everything everywhere. That is the difference between primacy and omnipotence.

What this means for PH

For the Philippines, this is not academic. For generations our strategic thinking rested upon an assumption: Whatever happened in Asia, American power ultimately stood behind the regional order. Our US alliance remains indispensable. Abandoning it would be strategic foolishness.

But confusing alliance with dependency would be equally foolish.

The Trump-Xi bromance provides another warning. The West Philippine Sea may be existential to us; to Washington and Beijing it is one item in a much larger strategic ledger containing Taiwan, trade, technology, Iran, critical minerals and global influence.

That does not mean America will abandon its commitments. It means America, like every great power, will pursue its own interests.

So must we. The Philippines therefore requires something too often postponed: strategic adulthood — credible defense, resilient infrastructure, energy security, stronger institutions, diversified economic relationships and alliances that complement rather than substitute for our own capacity.

An ally should multiply Philippine strength. It cannot permanently replace it.

The end of the global policeman

The lesson of Iran and now Washington is larger than either event.

America has not disappeared. It remains the central military power in the international system. But it increasingly must bargain where it once expected to lead, recruit where it once acted, and negotiate with powers it cannot simply command.

The policeman has not surrendered his badge. He has discovered the neighborhood is larger, more heavily armed and considerably less obedient.

The unipolar moment is ending not with American surrender, but with an accumulating recognition of limits. Which leaves a more dangerous question.

If America can no longer police the world alone, who guards the sea lanes upon which the world depends?

To be continued