Trump, Spheres of Influence, and the Prospects for His New Strategy…

Finley is a Slugger reader from Belfast

China’s growing economic, diplomatic, and military capabilities make it likely to challenge U.S. dominance not only in East Asia but also in the Americas and beyond.

As Mike Tyson famously remarked, “Everyone has a plan.” The United States now finds itself in precisely such a moment. After three decades of unchallenged post-Cold War dominance, the costs of maintaining global influence are rising, relative power is shifting, and emerging competitors—above all China—are eroding America’s ability to act decisively across multiple theatres. The cumulative burden of sustaining the liberal international order has stretched U.S. resources thin and revealed the limits of an expansive, universalist foreign policy.

Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy is grounded in this perception of overreach. It signals a deliberate turn toward a more realist, sphere-of-influence-based framework: consolidating U.S. power in regions of vital importance, retrenching from peripheral commitments, and preventing the emergence of rival regional hegemons—particularly in East Asia. This approach suggests a recalibration of American strategy away from global primacy and toward a more selective, interest-driven posture.

To evaluate this shift, we can examine the historical origins of spheres of influence, their persistence across millennia, and the strategic logic that makes them attractive to both rising and declining powers. Then can we assess how Trump’s proposed strategy seeks to apply these principles to the contemporary international system—and the prospects for its success.

The Origins and Logic of Regional Spheres

Regional spheres of influence have been a recurrent feature of global politics since the consolidation of early states. Their origins can be traced to the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1500-1200 BCE) in the eastern Mediterranean, when major powers like Egypt, Hatti, Mitanni, Assyria, and Babylonia established the first durable interstate system. These “Great Powers” recognised that direct conquest or universal domination was both costly and fragile. Instead, they managed their competition by cultivating zones of influence made up of smaller states, city-states, or vassal kingdoms that functioned as buffers between them.

The strategic logic of these spheres rested on three principles.

Empire on the cheap: In the Late Bronze Age, great powers recognised that direct control over distant territories was unsustainable with limited resources and administrative systems. Instead, they opted for indirect control through client states, tribute, and alliances. This approach allowed them to secure access to critical trade routes and military support without the enormous costs of full occupation. Egypt maintained its influence in the Levant primarily through a system of vassal kingdoms and city-states, like Canaan, rather than establishing direct territorial control. The Hittites similarly relied on a network of vassals and tributaries to maintain their hold on Anatolia and northern Syria.
Buffer zones that reduce conflict: The strategic placement of vassal states or client kingdoms created “buffer zones” between competing powers, helping to mitigate direct conflict. The Levant served as a buffer zone between Egypt and the Hittites, whose interests frequently clashed in the region. This zone was neither entirely stable nor peaceful—alliances shifted, and there were frequent proxy conflicts—but it nonetheless functioned to reduce the likelihood of direct warfare between the two great powers. The shifting alliances and the use of vassals meant that direct confrontation was often avoided, as these smaller states bore the brunt of conflict, protecting the core territories of the larger powers.
Selective engagement and focus on strategic regions: Great powers in the Late Bronze Age avoided spreading themselves too thin and focused their efforts on regions that had the most significant strategic value, particularly those that were central to trade, military advantage, or political leverage. Egypt concentrated its resources on maintaining dominance in the Levant, where it could control vital trade routes and secure its borders against threats like the Hittites and the Sea Peoples. The Hittites focused their military and diplomatic efforts on maintaining control of key regions in Anatolia and Syria, where their presence could shape the balance of power between themselves, Egypt, and other neighbouring powers.

Spheres of influence have persisted throughout history.

In classical antiquity:

Greek city-states such as Athens and Sparta exercised influence over neighbouring poleis through alliances like the Delian League and the Peloponnesian League—regional spheres that initially aimed to balance power but became instruments for Athens and Sparta to assert dominance over the Greek world. The intense rivalry ultimately culminated in the Peloponnesian War.
The Roman Republic and later the Empire relied extensively on client kingdoms (e.g., Judea, Armenia, Numidia) and “friendly kings” on the imperial periphery. These semi-autonomous states, while nominally independent, were often politically and militarily dependent on Rome. They acted as buffer zones, extending Roman influence without the need for direct, costly administration, and served to secure Rome’s borders by absorbing or deflecting external threats.

In the medieval period:

China’s tributary system established a hierarchical regional order in East Asia, where states like Korea, Vietnam, and the Ryukyu Kingdom retained internal autonomy but formally acknowledged Chinese supremacy. In exchange, China provided these states with cultural, diplomatic, and strategic benefits, securing a stable sphere of influence while maintaining regional order.
Islamic empires often exercised indirect control over frontier regions through semi-autonomous vassals, such as the Abbasids’ reliance on North African dynasties or the Seljuk Turks’ military protectorate over the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad. This created layered and overlapping spheres of political authority, rather than a centralised, territorial rule.
In the Holy Roman Empire, political authority was fragmented between the emperor, territorial princes, and ecclesiastical lords, each holding influence over their respective territories. Unlike a centralised state, where power is concentrated in a single authority, the Empire’s structure created a web of overlapping jurisdictions, where real power depended on feudal loyalties, dynastic connections, and negotiated privileges.

In early modern Europe:

Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia served as semi-autonomous buffer principalities between the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy, navigating competing spheres of influence and balancing the interests of both powers.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, major powers such as France, Britain, Austria, and Spain sought to establish preferential zones of influence through dynastic alliances, mercantilist monopolies, and confessional blocs (e.g., Bourbon vs. Habsburg networks).
Britain’s informal empire—particularly in China, Latin America, and parts of the Ottoman Empire—embodied the concept of “empire on the cheap,” relying on strategic influence, naval power, and privileged access to markets rather than full colonial annexation.

In the 19th-20th centuries:

The Congress of Vienna (1815) and the Concert of Europe formalised great-power management of the continent by recognising areas of predominant influence for Russia, Austria, Prussia, Britain, and later France, aiming to maintain stability and curb revolution or expansionism.
The Scramble for Africa (1880s-90s) resulted in some of the clearest legal recognitions of spheres of influence, as European powers divided the continent into zones of political and economic control during the Berlin Conference (1884-85).
During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union established global spheres anchored by NATO and the Warsaw Pact, with Western and Eastern Europe serving as buffer regions to prevent direct superpower confrontation. These spheres extended into Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

Spheres persist because they reflect structural realities

Regional spheres have endured across millennia because they address fundamental structural constraints.

Geographic limits: No state can project unlimited power globally without incurring disproportionate costs.
Resource constraints: Military, administrative, and economic capacities are finite, necessitating prioritisation.
Risk management: Spheres help mitigate the risk of direct conflict and enable indirect control through alliances, vassals, or client states.

In short, regional spheres emerge whenever multiple large states coexist in proximity. They are not merely ideological constructs; rather, they are pragmatic solutions to the enduring challenge of managing competition, influence, and security. Their persistence—from the Late Bronze Age to the Cold War—demonstrates their deep strategic logic and underscores their importance as a key lens for understanding contemporary great-power behaviour.

The Modern Context—China as a Rising Regional Hegemon

The historical logic behind regional spheres remains highly relevant in the contemporary global order. As global power balances shift, China has emerged as the foremost challenger to the post-Cold War primacy of United States. Its rapid economic growth, expanding military capacity, and strategic ambitions position it not only as a peer competitor, but as a potential regional hegemon in East Asia—with influence potentially extending well beyond its immediate neighbourhood.

China is rising fast as an economic and military power.

Economic leverage: China now has the largest economy in the world on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis, and its global trade and investment footprint has expanded dramatically through initiatives such as Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Through BRI and related connectivity efforts, China builds infrastructure and economic ties across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe—creating dependencies, restructuring trade networks, and embedding long-term influence in recipient states.
Military modernisation: The People’s Liberation Army has undergone rapid transformation, particularly in naval, missile, and cyber capabilities, aimed at challenging U.S. dominance in the Western Pacific, securing China’s periphery, and establishing a sphere of influence analogous to the U.S.’s historic primacy in the Western Hemisphere. Investments in long-range, expeditionary, and blue-water capabilities suggest that China seeks the ability to project power well beyond its near seas.

These twin trends—economic entanglement and military modernisation—give China substantial tools for shaping a modern sphere of influence.

China’s recent policies and actions exhibit patterns that align with classical models of regional hegemonic behaviour.

Securing the periphery: Through expansive maritime claims, notably in the South China Sea, and the access to or construction of strategic ports, China seeks to dominate neighbouring seas and littoral states—an essential step toward controlling its immediate strategic environment, deterring potential adversaries, and ensuring that vital trade routes fall under its control.
Economic integration as influence: By investing in infrastructure, offering loans, and building connectivity, China uses economic ties to bind other states—a contemporary form of “empire on the cheap.” Through trade dependencies, debt exposure, and infrastructure lock-in, Beijing gains strategic influence without formal political control.
Creating buffer zones and limiting external interference: By deepening its influence in neighbouring states, China reduces the risk of encirclement by rival powers—particularly the U.S. and its allies—and strengthens its own strategic depth. Its web of partnerships, port access agreements, and economic dependencies functions as a buffer zone.

This mirrors the structural patterns that have produced spheres of influence since the Bronze Age: a rising power consolidates control in its near abroad, exercises indirect influence where possible, and seeks to prevent rival powers from establishing local primacy.

Implications for the United States

China’s ascent as a regional hegemon challenges U.S. influence—particularly in the Indo-Pacific—and creates structural imperatives for U.S. grand strategy.

Structural limits: The United States cannot project unlimited power globally without risking overextension. It must prioritise regions where its interests are most decisive—above all the Indo-Pacific—to maintain influence and prevent the emergence of a rival regional hegemon.
Risk of vacuums: Unless the U.S. and its allies consolidate a coherent sphere of influence in East Asia—through alliances, security partnerships, and economic integration—China is well positioned to fill any regional vacuum, establishing a durable political and strategic hierarchy aligned with its interests.
Historical precedent: From the Late Bronze Age to the Cold War, rising powers that secure regional spheres tend to entrench their dominance over long periods. The strategic logic of spheres—control of one’s near abroad, exclusion of rivals, and leverage over buffers—remains fully relevant today.

Even if China secures regional primacy, its strategic ambitions do not end there. Through infrastructure investment, resource diplomacy, technology exports, and military access agreements, Beijing is increasingly projecting influence into South America, Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Europe. These extra-regional footholds provide alternative supply chains, political influence in the U.S.-adjacent region, and enhanced leverage in international institutions. If left uncontested, these secondary spheres could complement China’s Indo-Pacific dominance and significantly reshape the global balance of power.

In short, China’s rise illustrates the enduring relevance of spheres of influence. Just as ancient and modern powers structured their politics around managing regional dominance, the United States and China are now competing to define the boundaries and architecture of their respective spheres—with the Americas and the Indo-Pacific functioning as the central arenas of this evolving contest.

Trump’s Strategic Policy and the Logic of Spheres

Trump’s new National Security Strategy marks a decisive shift toward a realist, sphere-of-influence approach, departing from the universalist liberal internationalism that defined much of the post-Cold War era. The document emphasises consolidating U.S. power in core regions, prioritising key theatres, and preventing the emergence of rival hegemons—above all in the Indo-Pacific. In doing so, it aligns closely with the historical logic of spheres outlined earlier.

1. Consolidating U.S. Regional Primacy

Reasserting hemispheric dominance: The strategy explicitly reinforces the Western Hemisphere as the United States’ primary sphere of influence. Latin America is framed as a region where external powers—especially China—must be kept in check.
Defining the Pacific as a co-primary sphere: Alongside the Americas, the Indo-Pacific is identified as a region central to U.S. security. The strategy seeks to maintain strategic superiority along the first island chain through strengthened partnerships with Japan, Australia, Taiwan, and the Philippines.
A revived Monroe-plus framework: Implicitly, the U.S. is returning to a Monroe-era logic: uncontested influence in the hemisphere, coupled with forward defence in the Pacific.

2. Containing China as a Rising Hegemon

Primary competitor framing: China is described as the long-term systemic rival whose regional ambitions must be constrained.
Indirect control through allies: The strategy mirrors the classic logic of spheres: rather than attempting to control East Asia directly, the U.S. aims to empower allies and buffer states as force multipliers.
A multi-vector containment effort: Measures include enhancing military readiness, tightening supply-chain and technological cooperation, and strengthening regional deterrence architectures.

3. Strategic Retrenchment Elsewhere

Selective prioritisation: Europe and the Middle East receive narrower attention, signalling a willingness to accept reduced influence in peripheral theatres to concentrate resources where they matter most.
Burden-sharing: The document emphasises that allies must assume more responsibility for local security, reflecting the structural reality that the U.S. can no longer sustain full-spectrum dominance.
Pragmatic Russia policy: Rather than pursuing maximalist containment, the strategy treats Russia as a secondary challenge requiring stability rather than escalation—primarily to free bandwidth for China-focused competition.

Spheres in Practice

Trump’s approach operationalises the enduring mechanics of spheres of influence identified in earlier sections.

Empire on the cheap: The U.S. increasingly depends on allies, partners, and local forces to extend its influence, rather than relying on costly direct intervention or large-scale deployments.
Buffers and deterrence: Key allies in East Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Latin America serve as buffers between U.S. interests and potential challengers, reducing the likelihood of direct confrontation with China or other external actors.
Selective intervention and disciplined focus: Resources are concentrated in theatres where the balance of power is decisive—most notably the Indo-Pacific—while peripheral commitments are scaled back.

In essence, Trump’s strategy acknowledges a structural reality: the U.S. can no longer sustain global primacy in the expansive, universalist form it adopted after 1991. But by adopting a disciplined, sphere-based approach—prioritising core regions, leveraging allies, and constraining rival hegemons—it might still be able to preserve dominance where it matters most.

The Prospects for Success of the New U.S. Strategy

Trump’s strategic emphasis on regional spheres and selective primacy is grounded in a historically coherent logic. Yet its practical success faces significant structural, geopolitical, and historical constraints that limit how far any U.S. administration can shape the global balance of power.

1. Structural Constraints

Finite resources: U.S. military, economic, and diplomatic resources are stretched. This limits both global strategic flexibility and the capacity to effectively counter China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific and Latin America.
Deep interdependence: Globalised trade, technology, and finance limit Washington’s ability to exclude China or to isolate regions without incurring substantial economic costs.
Domestic volatility: A sphere-based strategy requires sustained, bipartisan commitment. U.S. political polarisation and abrupt shifts in foreign policy threaten the continuity needed to maintain long-term influence.

2. Geopolitical Realities

China as a genuine peer competitor: China’s expanding military reach, economic weight, and BRI-linked networks enable it to contest U.S. influence not only in the Indo-Pacific but also in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.
Russia-China alignment: Although Trump seeks pragmatic engagement with Russia, Moscow’s strategic partnership with Beijing limits U.S. leverage and makes great-power “triangular diplomacy” more difficult.
Autonomy of rising regional powers: States such as India, Brazil, Indonesia, and Turkey increasingly pursue independent strategies. Their refusal to fully align with the U.S. or China complicates the formation of clearly bounded spheres.

3. Historical Analogies and Lessons

Bronze Age and classical systems: Spheres stabilised competition yet frequently failed when rising powers challenged the status quo or buffer zones became flashpoints—suggesting that spheres can limit conflict for a time but cannot eliminate rivalry.
Britain in the early 20th century: Britain also attempted selective engagement and hemispheric prioritisation but ultimately could not prevent the rise of Germany and Japan, and eventually the U.S. and USSR—illustrating the limits of managing decline through spheres.
Cold War containment: The U.S. successfully maintained spheres in Europe and East Asia, but this was enabled by favourable economic conditions, cohesive alliances, and asymmetric technological advantages—conditions not present today.

Key factors will affect the success of the strategy.

Timing and consistency: Historically, spheres succeed when established early and maintained consistently. Delays, mixed signals, and oscillating policy have already allowed China and other competitors to challenge space that the U.S. is now struggling to reclaim.
Economic leverage: Sustaining influence requires economic predominance, yet China is rapidly developing—already the largest economy by GDP (PPP)—and its deep integration into global markets undermines the effectiveness of economic coercion or decoupling.
Alliances and partnerships: The strategy’s viability hinges on the strength and reliability of U.S. allies, particularly in the Indo-Pacific and Latin America. However, fragmented or hedging partnerships already undermine the architecture of a U.S.-led sphere.

Overall Assessment

Trump’s approach is rooted in a historically robust strategic logic: consolidate core spheres, prioritise decisive regions, leverage allies as buffers, and avoid costly overextension. However, the probability of success is constrained by structural realities.

China’s economic and military rise is accelerating and increasingly global.
Interdependence and emerging multipolarity limit Washington’s ability to impose exclusive spheres.
Regional actors are more autonomous and less willing to accept binary alignment.

In short, Trump’s belated strategy may temporarily succeed in slowing China’s regional ascent, but historical precedent suggests it is unlikely to ultimately prevent the emergence of a rival regional hegemon. The United States can attempt to shape the system, but it cannot unilaterally freeze the global distribution of power. Like all great powers throughout history, its primacy is relative, temporal, and structurally constrained.

Conclusion: Spheres, Strategy, and the Limits of Primacy

For three and a half millennia, since states first began to stabilise political authority and organise regional power, spheres of influence have been the primary mechanism through which great powers have sought to manage competition, secure their peripheries, and project authority. From the Late Bronze Age through classical antiquity, medieval empires, early modern Europe, the age of imperialism, and the Cold War, rising and declining powers alike have relied on spheres to structure their strategic environments and compensate for the inherent limits of military and economic reach.

Today, the United States faces a structural turning point: its post-Cold War capacity for universal primacy is gone, while China’s rapid ascent presents a formidable challenge capable of reshaping the balance of power in East Asia and beyond. Trump’s National Security Strategy represents a deliberate attempt to adapt to these realities. By prioritising core regions, reinforcing alliances, and avoiding peripheral overextension, the strategy seeks to preserve American influence through disciplined, sphere-based management rather than by attempting to sustain global dominance in every theatre. Its logic mirrors patterns observed across history: consolidate the near abroad, cultivate buffers, leverage partners, and prevent the emergence of rival hegemons where it matters most.

Yet history offers a critical lesson. Spheres can slow the redistribution of power, but they rarely halt it entirely. Rising powers often succeed in carving out their own zones of influence despite the resistance of established states. Britain, Rome, the Ottomans, and even the U.S. itself during the Cold War all illustrate this trajectory. China’s military modernisation, technological advancements, and global economic integration place real limits on Washington’s ability to maintain an uncontested Indo-Pacific sphere. At the same time, a more multipolar world and increasingly autonomous regional actors make it harder for any state—including the U.S.—to impose exclusive hierarchies anywhere.

Ultimately, Trump’s strategy may slow China’s ascent and help the U.S. retain influence in parts of its traditional sphere, but it is unlikely to prevent the deeper structural shift in global power. China is not merely building economic networks or diplomatic partnerships; it is developing the military, technological, and logistical capabilities necessary to challenge—and displace—U.S. power in the Asia-Pacific. Concurrently, Beijing is expanding its presence in regions previously considered securely within the U.S. sphere, including the Americas, through infrastructure investment, port access, advanced technologies, and political engagement.

The coming decades will likely feature not only contested spheres but an intensifying rivalry in which China actively seeks to narrow, penetrate, and erode U.S. influence both regionally and globally. In this environment, Trump’s sphere-based strategy may be a pragmatic, if belated, adjustment. However, it offers no guarantee of maintaining U.S. dominance. Instead, it underscores a harsher truth: the United States is entering an era in which its influence must be actively defended, not assumed, and where strategic discipline may merely slow—rather than prevent—the redistribution of global power.