his great disentangling may never become a complete divorce. Relocating the Chinese manufacturing operations of a company like Taiwan’s Foxconn, supplier extraordinaire to Apple, is extremely difficult, as the firm’s bungled factory project in Wisconsin showed. There’s no reason to believe Starbucks coffee shops in China will close anytime soon, if ever. The world has been “flattened” so successfully over the past 40 years that unraveling what’s been done may be close to impossible. Unlike the Cold War, when the U.S. and Soviet blocs were clearly delineated, the two segments of the coming world will likely remain somewhat connected.

Yet the outlines of these two spheres are becoming more distinct nonetheless. The fact that the war in Ukraine has alerted the U.S. and Europe to the new threats they face from aggressive authoritarian powers is also contributing to the emerging split by reinvigorating the transatlantic democratic alliance. As NATO solidifies in Europe, in Asia the Quad, a partnership that includes Australia, India, Japan, and the U.S., is coalescing into a China-containment club. Simultaneously, Beijing’s continued support for Moscow is forming the axis of an anti-West coalition, which already includes other destabilizers such as Belarus and North Korea.

Economically, too, Beijing and Moscow are looking to each other to decrease their reliance on the West and its allies: China has long sought to wean itself off the dollar, an exercise Russia is undertaking in real time. Technologically, the lines are being drawn more starkly. China has already separated itself from the global internet with the Great Firewall and is investing heavily in its own chip, AI, and electric-vehicle industries to overtake the technological leadership of the U.S. and its friends in Europe and Asia. Meanwhile, many countries have grown wary of (or been persuaded by Washington against) using Chinese technology, as shown by some governments banning telecom equipment from China’s Huawei Technologies.