Game, Set, War: When Geopolitics Descends Into A Competition Between Individuals

-Analysis-

ROME — The agenda of global politics is starting to look like a tennis tournament’s seeding brackets. There’s a continuous procession of meetings between players of different calibers, each one seemingly a step closer to the highly anticipated “finals”: the long-awaited face-off between the two heavyweights, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.

That in-person meeting would be the culmination of a build-up after a series of phone calls and public declarations that have appeared more like cautious sizing-up than serious negotiation.

Until the moment that brings those two together, it seems the season of leader-to-leader talks is far from over. After the U.S. president’s whirlwind tour of Gulf countries, the traveling geopolitical tournament made stops in Tirana, Brussels, and the Vatican, sketching the outlines of a new global playing field.

None of these encounters may be decisive on their own, but each one is being followed closely, with a mix of hope and anxiety, by a world in turmoil.

And yet in this tense climate, the search for balance increasingly plays out through individuals in search of mutual recognition. Indeed, this frenzy of face-to-face diplomacy is itself a symptom of a deeper shift: geopolitics has once again become a matter of individual personalities rather than stable institutions.

Even the phone call earlier this month between Trump and Putin was framed as a product of their long-standing personal bond, not the result of any behind-the-scenes work by their diplomatic corps. A conversation between old acquaintances, if not actual friends.

When form mattered

In the globalized world of the recent past, summits were the final act in a long and complex process, rooted in established institutional structures. Politics and diplomacy translated choices into collective action, filtered through international law, power balances, compromises, and alliances.

Heads of state came in at the end, to pose for the cameras while signing agreements already hammered out by others. Institutions, states, supranational bodies, multilateral alliances, were the real players in decision-making, carrying authority built over time and grounded in trust between their parts and the whole.

The common language of diplomacy can feel outdated or even unintelligible

That trust came from their ability to understand the present and turn it into a shared vision for the future. Form mattered too: these structures offered a common language, reduced ambiguity, and clearly outlined the framework within which talks took place.

Power is everything

That world now feels very far away. Institutions are operating with less and less authority, in a climate where power often outweighs the law, and the common language of diplomacy can feel outdated or even unintelligible.

Countries have gone back to reading maps with unease, weighing the intentions and moods of their neighbors — and above all, their leaders. Relying on strong, visible decision-makers is reassuring. It helps people simplify a chaotic world and feel, at least for a moment, that someone is in control where institutions have faltered.

When those in charge answer only to themselves, they can follow the full range of human impulses

But this kind of focus on leaders only adds to the instability. When those in charge answer only to themselves, they can follow the full range of human impulses, from inconsistency to sudden reversals based on emotion or belief.

That is why it is hard to imagine any kind of lasting new order emerging from this current “tour” of summits. Institutions earned trust partly because their values outlasted the people who led them.

New language

Today, agreements seem to last only as long as the warmth between two leaders, or at best, until one of them leaves office. In this kind of world, it is natural to question the future of politics itself, at least as a collective process of decision-making. If everything depends on the will of individuals, then democracy starts to break down, and paradoxically, autocracies, at least in their apparent efficiency, seem better equipped to handle the burden of choice.

If we want to avoid simply falling into step with this new reality, the first thing we need to do is acknowledge that the model we have relied on no longer works. That does not mean giving up, but recognizing that the old machinery of stability has become hollow.

What we need now is a new language, new rules, and institutions that are fit for today’s world. That may sound like a fantasy right now, but history reminds us that even in moments of collapse, there were always those who managed to imagine something better and lay the groundwork for what came after.

This time, we need to act before the lights go out entirely, and resist the idea of a world reduced to a competition where our collective fate is in the hands of just one or two players.