In a period of general upheaval, a country that maintains domestic authority is in a position to exploit chaos in neighboring states for larger international objectives.
This quote is from Henry Kissinger's 2014 book World Order, referring to France during Catholic-Protestant struggles in Europe in the seventeenth century. The Thirty Years' War was a conflict that started as a Catholic-Protestant religious war and tore through the Holy Roman Empire. Catholic France, under Cardinal Richelieu, was relatively stable and unified during this time. Richelieu, then, funded and allied with Protestant armies in the German states in order to weaken the Catholic Habsburgs in Austria. By feeding the chaos to its east, France secured its dominance in Europe, which evidently was more important than some greater Catholic cause.
In this post I make the claim that such a period of general upheaval is unfolding right now. Be it deglobalization, the crumbling of international law, or the unleashing of wars all across the world. This time, however, it is not clear to me whether any country, or union of countries will be in a position to exploit the chaos in the world, and I will make the case for the three most likely contenders.
The quote at the beginning of this post was by Henry Kissinger, the Secretary of State under Nixon and Ford. It is no coincidence, then, that the USA has been a master at exploiting (and creating) chaos across the world for its larger international objectives. Think of the 2003 Iraq War, its war in Afghanistan, all of Latin America, and many, many more.
Most of these operations and wars were either performed without the public's knowledge, or with its blessing through the use of clever state propaganda. In recent years, however, the American population has been losing faith in its government due to deteriorating economic conditions, blatant congressional corruption and the revelation of something akin to the deep state (spoiler: it's both parties!). With this loss of domestic cohesion and authority, combined with Trump's acceleration of deglobalization, I am not convinced the US will have the means, or the political will to keep following the path of feeding chaos, that it has been following for the past 70 years.
China, like the United States (and much of the world, really), has been struggling with a worsening economy, which is actively being felt by its population. Despite this, it seems unlikely to me that China will lose domestic authority. It is tightening its grip on its minorities and domestic surveillance has reached a point where organizing opposition or protests has become virtually impossible.
Furthermore, Beijing has little historical precedent for sowing chaos abroad. In fact, one of China's major foreign policies is its apprehension of meddling in other countries' internal affairs. Though China is not afraid of harassing dissidents abroad, these actions are fundamentally anchored in their focus on China, and I do not see strong evidence of China exploiting and creating chaos around the world like the USA or Russia do, for example.
The European Union has remained largely dormant for the past several decades when it comes to global meddling, perhaps due to a lingering trauma from the two world wars and decolonisation. When active abroad, it typically joined in on whatever the US decides to do around the world (only recently is Europe starting to grow a spine). This is not to say that they will not, of course. If Europe can bridge its political divide (which is heavily funded and supported by Russia and right-wing organizations in the US) and demographic crisis, it might be among the few stable great powers in the coming decades, capable of taking the position of leveraging international chaos to its advantage.
That is, if it can ever agree on anything (that is not more regulation).