Geopolitical systems do not operate as collections of autonomous actors pursuing predefined goals. They operate as relational fields that maintain coherence by distributing difference, constraint, and tension across durable structures. In this frame, the long-standing adversarial relation between the United States and Russia functioned as a stabilising element of the global field. The persistence of unresolved opposition provided a predictable geometry within which escalation could be bounded, expectations calibrated, and coordination sustained across distant systems. Power, identity, and legitimacy did not organise this arrangement; they emerged from it as secondary effects of a stable relational structure.
Field logic clarifies why abrupt change here is dangerous. When a load-bearing relation weakens faster than the field can adapt, the system does not converge on a new equilibrium. The tension historically carried by that relation is redistributed across the network. Constraints loosen unevenly. Signals lose contrast. Secondary rivalries intensify as actors attempt to recover orientation without a shared frame. This is not a failure of leadership or diplomacy. It is a structural consequence of removing a primary organising difference from a complex system optimised for the reproduction of differemrial relations rather than the resolution of conflict, or even of any notional victory and triumphant eradication of an adversary. What follows is not security through simplification, but heightened volatility, as the global field struggles to reconstitute a geometry capable of carrying the tension it once held in balance.
(Expect more volatility.)
Daedelus Kite 