Does the Trump Admin Want to Divide the World into US-Russian-Chinese “Spheres of Influence?”

• A recent NYT article claims actions and statements from the Trump administration “suggest” it “might want” to divide the world into US, Russian, and Chinese spheres of influence;

• However, the article mentions US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has outright dismissed this theory, while elsewhere deliberately misrepresenting ongoing US talks with Russia over Ukraine to support this claim;

• Regarding Ukraine, the Trump administration has already made it clear that it wants to create a division of labor between it and Europe to freeze the conflict, allowing the US to pivot to China and return as part of a process called “strategic sequencing;”

• While multiple signed and dated policy papers spanning years have laid out a strategy of Washington’s continued pursuit of primacy worldwide, no policy papers exist suggesting plans for “spheres of influence;”

• To create a foreign policy dividing the world in such a manner would require immense groundwork to be laid by policymakers, groundwork that simply doesn’t exist and isn’t being created;

References:

NYT – Trump’s Vision: One World, Three Powers? (May 26, 2025):
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/26/us…

US DoD – Opening Remarks by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at Ukraine Defense Contact Group (As Delivered) (Feb. 12, 2025):
https://www.defense.gov/News/Speeches…

Stars and Stripes – ‘It needs to be a thousand’: US has 500 military trainers on Taiwan, retired admiral says (May 27, 2025):
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/asia…

Marathon Initiative – Strategic Sequencing, Revisited (Oct. 2024):
https://themarathoninitiative.org/wp-…