-Analysis-
BUENOS AIRES — In the 1980s, three of history’s great statesmen were in power at the same moment: U.S. President Ronald Reagan, the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and Pope John Paul II.
This was in the closing phase of the Cold War, the global confrontation between the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union that lasted from 1945 to the Soviet Union’s formal demise, on December 25, 1991.
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When Reagan took office in 1981, the initiative begun by an earlier Republican president, Richard Nixon, to contain the Soviets was in full swing and included courting communist China in compensation for the United States’ defeat in Vietnam (against Soviet-backed Vietnamese communists). The crucial Nixon presidency might have successfully pursued its initiative, were it not for the costs and immediate consequences of the Vietnam debacle and the Watergate scandal.
It would take a few more years for Reagan to take the United States to the pinnacle of global power.
But what he needed was a “partner” in the Soviet Union to realize the start of what might be a new era, with far better horizons for the world. That partner appeared in the shape of the reformist Gorbachev, who was elected secretary-general of the Soviet Communist Party in 1985, and Soviet president in 1988. He became the interlocutor the West needed, able to meet the challenges of history.
For some 45 years, the world had lived on edge for the threat of a nuclear war between the superpowers, which engaged meanwhile in dozens of smaller, proxy wars across the five continents. The election of Pope John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla, a Pole and fierce anti-communist whose homeland was effectively under communist Russian control, produced the third actor for this stage. He had no guns or armies, but wielded the Church’s strength as a carrier of peace, enjoying personal charisma and immense spiritual weight among Western Catholics in a world where conflict had become a principally Western affair.
21st-century triangle
An “iron triangle” was thus formed and came to function to great effect. By the early 1990s, Russia had begun a transition to democracy, and the pope was mobilizing vast crowds worldwide, going beyond the Catholic flock to become a Shepherd of Universal Peace.
Fast-forward to the early 21st century, when a new actor emerged, an economically buoyant, communist-run China, which would challenge the world’s preeminent superpower.
This conflict is not inside the West nor even between antithetical economic systems, but between two cultures.
Today the United States’ share of the entire $100 trillion world economy, is $23 trillion. China’s is $19 trillion, with a notable trend toward parity by 2030. The current U.S. president, Donald J. Trump, has thus decided to launch an all-out trade war with the Chinese competitor, whose consequences have yet to emerge.
This time the conflict is not inside the West nor even between antithetical economic systems (capitalism and communism), but between two cultures — Eastern and Western — and clashing political systems, pluralist capitalism and a single-party Communist regime.
The power of the two sides, and the climate of uncertainty that has followed Trump’s so-called Liberation Day on April 4th (when he unveiled his tariffs), have exceeded the impact both of the Russian attack on Ukraine, on February 24, 2022, and the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in spite of their horrific consequences in both places. The late Pope Francis sought to become a third protagonist here alongside presidents Trump and Xi, but was impeded by his ailing health.
Balanced chemistry
Yet he left everything in place, as it were, and between his deftness in preparing his succession and a bit of help from Divine Providence, a member of the Augustine order and U.S.-Peruvian national, Robert Prevost, became pope on May 8.
Let us hope they will work to thwart the spreading darkness of extremism, fanaticism and dogmatism.
Pope Leo XIV shares his predecessor’s concerns for the poor and disaffected, and is imbued with the Social Doctrine forged by an earlier pope, Leo XIII.
We might say the new Triangle of Power — made of Trump, Xi and Leo XIV — is reconstituted, with a balanced chemistry that we might even consider promising in a world that has become unhinged and threatening.
Let us hope they will work to thwart the spreading darkness of extremism, fanaticism and dogmatism, which could lead us to unmitigated destruction. For my part, considering these three men as a new triangle of power, I can look to the future with cautious optimism.