Here is a very interesting article that shifts the frame of reference from a Euro-centered hegemonic (single dominant power) model to a “mandala” or multiplex order based on the history of 1500 years of China - Southeast Asia - India trade (until the invasion of Europeans into the area).
https://aeon.co/essays/what-southeast-asian-histor…
The world without hegemony
As Pax Americana ends, a multipolar order is emerging. The history of Southeast Asia holds lessons for what’s to come
by Manjeet S Pardesi, Aeon
The liberal international order or Pax Americana, the world order built by the United States after the Second World War, is coming to an end. Not surprisingly, this has led to fears of disorder and chaos and, even worse, impending Chinese hegemony or Pax Sinica. Importantly, this mode of thinking that envisages the necessity of a dominant or hegemonic power underwriting global stability was developed by 20th-century US scholars of international relations, and is known as the hegemonic stability theory (HST)…
History shows us that there are other pathways to international order, and that stability does not require hegemony. Maritime Asia’s long history indicates that, contrary to this American theory about international orders, a hegemon is not required for a functioning world order…
By the beginning of the Common Era, the oceanic corridor between the manufacturing powers of China and India was the most dynamic part of the world economy. Some leading global historians even claim that Asia enjoyed ‘an economic edge’ over Western Europe until as late as the Industrial Revolution (c1800). According to the British historian Angus Maddison, China and India may have accounted for half of the world’s GDP during these 18 centuries. Southeast Asia – the space between China and India – was central to the maritime world connecting these two economic powerhouses…
Southeast Asian polities vigorously competed for maritime trade. However, unlike the Roman Mediterranean, the eastern Indian Ocean lacked a hegemonic naval power that dominated entire trade routes. While Southeast Asian mandala kingdoms – a decentralised system of government, named after the Hindu and Buddhist designs featuring a circle within a square – engaged in commercial rivalries and warfare, no Southeast Asian polity was able to control the entire maritime route stretching from the South China Sea into the Bay of Bengal. There was no naval hegemon in this maritime world. This was at least partly related to the nature of the mandala political organisation and the associated practices of warfare in Southeast Asia. The ‘mandala polity’, a term theorised by the British historian O W Wolters, refers to the realm of authority of a king whose power radiated from a centre and included other similar rulers lower in the hierarchy. The power of a mandala ruler diminished with distance and/or overlapped with the edges of the authority of other mandala kingdoms.
Throughout the classical period, Southeast Asia was the realm of hundreds of mandalas, some larger than others. The mandala system not only asserted autonomy from larger regional powers, such as those in China and India, it also created a stable international order until the mid-2nd millennium CE, when it was disrupted by the advent of European colonisation of the region. The mandala kingdoms rose and fell as they competed for maritime trade, but defeated polities were not bureaucratically or territorially incorporated into the realm of the winner. Instead, the losing monarch was materially and ritually subordinated to the victorious monarch as a lower ruler. As a result, Southeast Asian rulers aimed only to control their local waters, as opposed to dominating the entire long-distance maritime trade routes between China and India. In this interactive and interconnected world, if one local mandala disappeared, another assumed its nodal position…
The passing of the US-led liberal international order is not to be feared, and a multiplex order is already taking shape today. The classical eastern Indian Ocean world has things to teach us about the 21st century. So too do other histories, which can assist us in overcoming the biases that arose in thinking about international relations and world orders from universalising propositions that were developed during the Cold War. The global and historical approach to international relations also avoids the impulse to counter 20th-century US-centric theories with Sinocentrism or Indocentrism. The historical eastern Indian Ocean enables us to think about the present and the future in novel ways that might help us make better decisions and build a stable and prosperous world order. [end quote]
The world order in the Pacific has existential as well as Macroeconomic impact.
A war between China and the U.S. to defend Taiwan would be disastrous. It would make the Israeli-Gaza conflict look like a tempest in a teacup.
China has a very long history. The Communist revolution disrupted the traditional Chinese culture. They have been in the process of reconstituting their culture for several decades post-Mao Tse-tung with amazing success. It’s hard to know whether China’s government, as it exists now, would exercise an Asian-style “mandala” type domination/ cooperation or whether it would attempt a hard single-hegemon European-style model.
I just finished reading the book, “India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent,” by Professor Audrey Truschke. This interesting book shows how the subcontinent (which includes modern India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, parts of Afghanistan, plus the Himalayan areas) did not have a cohesive identity as “India.” Nor did it have a single unifying religion since it combined polytheism (which we now call “Hindu” though practitioners worshipped separate gods), Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Jainism, Sikhism and eventually Islam. The multicultural society lived together without religious conflicts until the British dominated society and forced a hard boundary between Hindus and Muslims (ignoring everyone else). That led to the strife and division of India from Pakistan with hundreds of thousands of deaths.
This shows that European hard-dominant concepts can be adopted by Asians with disastrous results.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/china-trade-deal-donal…
Lessons From Trump’s China Trade War
Beijing fought back, and it’s hard to see what tariffs achieved for the U.S.
By The Editorial Board, The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 30, 2025
President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping struck their third trade truce in a year on Thursday, and the best we can say is that the deal averted more economic damage. Mr. Trump called the deal a “12 out of 10,” but markets were nearer to the truth when they yawned. The deal mostly restores the status quo that prevailed in May…
One lesson here is that trade wars aren’t easy to win, especially against a peer competitor. China chose to fight back, and Mr. Trump underestimated the leverage China has with its control of global rare-earths minerals. China’s economy may be less resilient overall than America’s, but Mr. Trump and Republicans have to face voters and Mr. Xi doesn’t.
Another lesson is that fighting a trade war without allies is a mistake. America’s potential friends in an economic confrontation with China include Japan, India, South Korea, the Philippines—and Canada, Britain and the European Union. Mr. Trump has tariffed all of them. …[end quote]
Unlike the U.S., China makes long-term plans. Given China’s assertive actions in the South China Sea and their large, powerful navy it’s hard to know whether they intend to eventually project dominance in their region (a mandala-type approach) or the entire world (a hegemonic approach).
Wendy