Bound by intricate economic ties, shared technological ecosystems, and overlapping interests in preserving the current international order, these three powers represent not a fractured geopolitical landscape, but a unified civilizational core determined to uphold its dominance across the globe. Their cohesion is not ideological but structural, based on a shared interest in controlling the narrative, institutions, and flows of global power.
This configuration finds a compelling historical parallel in the First Triumvirate of the late Roman Republic—Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar. Although divided by personal ambition, these three men worked in coordination to suppress the republican institutions that had once defined Rome. The fatal blow to this fragile alliance came not from within but from without: the death of Crassus at the hands of the Parthians in 53 BCE, during the ill-fated campaign at Carrhae.
Crassus's defeat shattered the balance, ushering in a civil war between Pompey and Caesar. Pompey was eliminated by Caesar’s forces, and Caesar himself was later assassinated by senators who feared his imperial ambitions.
Today’s triumvirate—America, Europe, and China—similarly dreads not one another, but the rise of a fourth force: an external actor that rejects their norms, resists absorption into their system, and potentially reorders global power. This "fourth force" could manifest as a resurgent Russia, an emerging Middle Eastern coalition, or even an unpredictable coalition of developing states—any configuration that escapes the gravitational pull of the current order. What unites the triumvirate is not mutual affection, but a collective imperative to prevent such a force from gaining traction.
In this context, Israel plays a pivotal, if often misunderstood, role. Far from being a solitary actor engaged in regional conflicts for its own survival, Israel has become an indispensable strategic tool in the hands of the triumvirate. It serves as a frontline buffer to contain any fourth force that may rise from the Middle East—a region historically resistant to imperial integration and deeply skeptical of Western frameworks.
Israel's wars, therefore, are not merely its own; they are waged for the preservation of the triumvirate’s global hegemony. Whether confronting non-state actors or hostile regimes, Israel acts as a surrogate enforcer, a bulwark ensuring that the Middle East does not become a staging ground for a new, unaligned pole of power.
The triumvirate’s true fear, then, is not disorder but independence—not violence, but non-compliance. It is the rise of a geopolitical actor that cannot be co-opted through trade, intimidated through sanctions, or deterred through military posturing. Like the Parthians of antiquity, this actor may emerge suddenly, from beyond the boundaries of acceptable discourse and diplomatic predictability. It may deal a blow to one member of the triumvirate—not necessarily by conquest, but through systemic disruption—and set in motion a collapse that no summit or sanctions regime can reverse.
What we are witnessing today is not the peaceful transition to multipolarity, but a frantic effort to defend an aging world order. The so-called rivalries between America, Europe, and China are less significant than the machinery of collaboration that undergirds them—through supply chains, financial markets, intelligence sharing, and diplomatic alignment. Like the Roman triumvirs, they may clash for precedence, but they remain united in one key objective: to prevent a rupture in the architecture of global control.
The lesson from Rome is clear. Power shared among elites is vulnerable to the shock of the outsider. And just as the Parthians exposed the limits of Roman imperialism, so too might today’s fourth force—wherever it emerges—reveal the fragility of the modern triumvirate.
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