.svg?width=1400)
In this analysis
The most revealing image of this week's diplomacy was geographical. Scores of governments gathered in New York for the United Nations General Assembly while Donald Trump and Xi Jinping held a bilateral summit in Washington covering trade, artificial intelligence, Taiwan and security. One forum embodied universal representation. The other concentrated extraordinary practical power in two rooms.
That does not mean the United States and China have created a formal G2, nor that other states have become irrelevant. It does suggest that a two-power layer is emerging above parts of the multilateral system whenever Washington and Beijing possess the leverage needed to determine whether a problem escalates or stabilises.
A G2 is a mechanism, not necessarily an alliance
The phrase can mislead because it sounds like condominium: two powers jointly governing the world. The actual relationship is competitive, mistrustful and frequently adversarial. Yet rivalry itself creates bilateral mechanisms. Tariff truces require two signatures. Frontier-AI guardrails are disproportionately useful if the two leading AI powers participate. Taiwan risk cannot be managed without Washington and Beijing.
This gives bilateral diplomacy an efficiency that universal institutions cannot match. The UN can legitimise norms, coordinate broad coalitions and give smaller states a voice. It cannot compel the two largest powers to settle questions they regard as core national interests.
But concentrated power has limits too
The Middle East, Ukraine, global energy markets and supply chains all demonstrate that even the largest states operate through networks of allies, firms, producers and regional powers. Washington can exert enormous pressure without controlling outcomes. Beijing can offer capital and market access without dictating every partner's strategy.
State & Power's conclusion is therefore narrower than the claim that multilateralism is dying. The international system is becoming layered. Universal institutions remain important for legitimacy and coordination, while bilateral great-power bargaining increasingly determines the boundaries inside which those institutions operate.
The question is who gets excluded
For Europe, India, Japan, Gulf states and middle powers, the strategic problem is not simply choosing between Washington and Beijing. It is preventing bilateral US-China bargains from setting rules in areas where their interests are also material.
Watch which subjects migrate into recurring Trump-Xi mechanisms after the summit. If trade, AI safety and crisis management acquire permanent bilateral channels, the institutional shape of a de facto G2 will matter more than whether either government ever uses the name.