A bipolar standoff between a U.S.-led democratic bloc and a China-led autocratic one now represents the most optimistic realistic outcome for the next decade of international politics. The two darker alternatives - a fractured world of competing empires or outright global anarchy - carry far greater risks of war, conquest, and civilizational regression.

That is the central argument of a sweeping analysis by Hal Brands, a professor at Johns Hopkins and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, published in Foreign Policy's Spring 2026 print issue, "Hvylya" reports.

Brands frames the present moment as an interregnum between the dying U.S.-built liberal order and whatever replaces it. The old system, he writes, delivered "decades of great-power peace" and made the violent destruction of sovereign states "shocking and rare." But that order is now under assault from China and Russia on the outside - and from a disillusioned America on the inside.

A two-worlds scenario, while perilous, would at least preserve what former Secretary of State Dean Acheson once called "half a world" - enough democratic cooperation to maintain a workable balance of power. Brands notes that strong structural forces already push in this direction: Russia's war in Ukraine has accelerated alignment among autocracies, while Beijing and Moscow understand they can only prevail by "fighting back-to-back" against democracies.

The critical variable, Brands argues, is whether Washington can still rally the free world. Trump's demands for higher allied military spending and his pressure on weaker autocracies like Iran and Venezuela could strengthen the democratic position. But his coercive dealmaking and territorial claims on Greenland and Canada risk doing the opposite - convincing European allies they are trapped among three predatory powers rather than sheltered by one benign hegemon.

A decade ago, Brands concludes, another cold war seemed like a worst-case outcome. Today, it may be the best realistic hope - because every other path leads somewhere considerably darker.

Also read: Friedman explained why Europe is doomed to lose its standoff with the US.