In this game, Europe is the swing vote. The Leviathan, a maritime power of Europe, the U.K., North America and Australia + Japan currently holds. Xi tried forging a Behemoth, a land power, in which Eurasia dominates Africa and the Americas. Behemoths, the thinking goes, will be army-driven and centralised; Leviathans, naval and decentralised.
The problem with the Behemoth is Eurasia is too culturally diverse to put under the sort of centralisation land powers (e.g. Rome, the Ottomans, Napoleon’s France + the USSR) require to stay stable. Maritime powers, historically trading powers (e.g. Carthage, the Dutch, the British and the United States), accommodate more diversity. Maritime alliances are inherently reliant on networks of local governments versus a central power dictating policy to the periphery. Put simply, the deck looks stacked against a Beijing-Moscow-Berlin alliance barring major right-wing shifts in Western Europe and social liberalisation in much of Asia.
> Germany and France wanted to build the Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok with help from Russia
The Arctic Sea is becoming navigable. Push for an independent Siberia, et cetera that exports via Arctic ports, not pipelines, and they get what they’re looking for without requiring a global reälignment. (Not advocating this. Just saying it’s a better play under that geopolitical model than trashing Ukraine.)