Importantly, the Summit featured at least four nuclear powers (China, Russia, India and Pakistan) and two nuclear superpowers and permanent five UNSC members (China and Russia) whilst emphasising a collaborative approach to international cooperation and security, as contradistinguished from one underpinned by doctrinaire, force projection and muscularity.

The Summit also emphasised security collaboration amongst members relative to AI, counter-terrorism, maritime trade and security through joint patrols on pivotal navigational routes straddling the Indian Ocean, South China Sea et al.

Other far-reaching outcomes include Chinese proposals for the establishment of a novel Shanghai Cooperation Bank. The explicit strategic objectives of the bank would be to finance significant infrastructure objectives and enhance broader and deeper collaboration and connectivity amongst members.

Whereas the implicit objectives are to reduce over-reliance on U.S. and Western-controlled and dominated institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, which give disproportionate voting powers to the USA. The U.S. for instance, has a de facto veto on key decisions and holds 16.5 per cent voting shares at the IMF, just as other G7 economies like Japan, Germany, France and UK exercise considerable sway. The power exercised by the U.S. and these countries at the IMF implies that pivotal decisions are made in accordance with the strategic economic priorities of those countries rather than the entire world.

Realpolitik? Yes! However, will Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the rest of the world accept that status quo going forward? No, in the absence of root and branch reform in the leadership and governance of those institutions! And even with vanishingly slim prospects of root and branch reform at those institutions, it appears that the galloping advance of multipolarity is here to stay if the evidence of Chinese influence in the SCO, BRICS, via the Belts and Roads Initiative (with investments circa $1.175 trillion) is the evaluation criterion.

For example, China has pledged $1.7 billion in new funding, including $2 billion in grants and $10 billion in low-interest loans, to support SCO projects; as well as a range of initiatives to boost trade, port finance, shipping and supply chain logistics regionally and globally.

The SCO Summit highlighted energy cooperation, including renewable energy, oil, and gas, with a focus on the SCO Energy Club, which by its very definition is a direct competitor to the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The SCO Energy Club, established at Russia’s instance almost two decades ago, is a subset of the SCO, which seeks to harmonise energy strategies by coordinating long-term energy development programmes and policies among member states to ensure energy security.

It aspires to develop energy infrastructure by establishing a network of transport energy communications, including pipelines, to facilitate the exchange of energy resources. It also aspires to impact the global energy market, like OPEC, by developing framing a common economic mechanism to promote the energy interests of member countries in the global market.

The SCO Energy Club operates at global, regional (Eurasian), subregional (Central Asian), and local levels, addressing diverse energy needs and challenges. It comprises a divergent membership with major energy producers like Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, as well as energy consumers like China and India. The Club is non-binding, unlike OPEC, and serves as a consultative forum for analysing and shaping energy strategies, sharing best practices, and fostering cooperation.

The Club has the potential to metamorphose into a global player in the international energy market and shape important policies on energy security, security of supplies and energy infrastructure on the High Seas and beyond, enhance research policies on sustainable and alternative energy development.

This is important from a geopolitical standpoint too. It means that Russia’s energy supplies and markets are relatively secure and therefore resilient against the backdrop of western sanctions given the country’s ongoing war with Ukraine. If any evidence of the reality of a multipolar global order is required, the SCO Energy Club plainly provides the answer.

Regarding India, its participation at the SCO 2025 Summit reinforces its strategic autonomy, a recalibration of its geopolitical calculus with the United States and Western countries vis-à-vis SCO member states and a renewed emphasis on non-binary SCO economic collaboration.

The Indian population of approximately 1.463 billion people or 17.78 per cent of the world’s population (8.231 billion) is an important competitive advantage because circa 68 per cent of that demographic (15-64 years) is of working age, which can enhance economic growth given the right investments in education, healthcare, skills and technology development.

Taken together, the SCO Summit heralded the emergence of a Global South coalition, with SCO member states representing about 43 per cent of the world’s population and nearly a quarter (or approximately $27.83 trillion) of global GDP (approximately $111.32 trillion) applying 2024 figures.

The third area where America First is radically impacting lives, and how the country is viewed by allies and rivals alike pertains to migration policy including immigration control, deportation, visa policies etc. Of course, immigration policy is entirely within the domain of domestic jurisdiction and sovereign autonomy.

However, it is reasonable to assert that the enforcement of immigration policy or indeed any law for that matter ought to strike the correct balance between robustness on the one hand and reasonableness, fairness and humanity on the other hand.

Some actions which have triggered legal challenges and condemnation have included the use of armed masked agents to snatch people (often non-whites!) off the streets in immigration raids in the U.S.; adopting the Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants.

For instance, in March 2025, the Trump administration used the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, a wartime warrant intended for foreign espionage, as the jurisprudential warrant for deporting over 240 alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to El Salvador. The deportees reportedly had no criminal record, and the Administration did not provide evidence to support its assertions of gang affiliation. The deportations were executed in violation of a court order temporary restraining order on enforcement!

On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order which sought to deny birthright citizenship to children born in the U.S. to non-citizen parents including those on temporary visa, or without legal status. The U.S. Appeals Court ruled that the executive order is unconstitutional upholding the 14th Amendment and ensuring that children, born in the United States to non-citizen parents are still granted citizenship.

The case is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court which is yet to make a definitive pronouncement and even Nostradamus cannot make an accurate prediction, as at the time of writing, as to which way that decision will go, although the ideological leanings of the Justices and the conservative majority may well make a difference!

And in June 2025, 20 U.S. states filed lawsuits asserting that the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) access to state Medicaid and other benefits data was used to facilitate immigration raids. U.S. Civil rights groups contend that this violates the 1974 Privacy Act.  

Deportation of migrants to dangerous third countries is extremely contentious too. Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) illustrates the point. Eswatini, Africa’s last remaining absolute monarchy, ruled by King Mswati III since 1986; received five immigration offenders from the USA in July 2025. The deportees originally from Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Vietnam, Yemen have no ties whatsoever to Eswatini, which, on the facts, is a de facto and de jure “third country.”

According to The Guardian (UK), Eswatini’s largest opposition party called it “human trafficking disguised as a deportation deal.” Eswatini’s decision may well be objectively perceived as cowing to neocolonialism when juxtaposed against the Nigerian government’s decision concerning 300 Venezuelan deportees, when presented with the same dilemma in July 2025 again, at the instance of the USA.

The Nigerian government refused that request, asserting its sovereign autonomy by explicitly affirming that “we already have over 230 million people… it will be unfair for Nigeria to accept 300 Venezuelan deportees.” By deduction, Nigeria asserted that such decisions fell within the jurisdiction of U.S. criminal authorities; not outsourced to “third-countries”!

Following Nigeria’s decision not to accept U.S. deportees under the America First principles, according to Business Insider Africa, the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria has revoked the valid U.S. visa of many Nigerians without a clear explanation, adversely affecting the plans of students, families, business travellers, government officials et al.

Whilst the argument can be advanced that such decisions are entirely within the U.S. prerogative, nevertheless, the optics, timing, coming so soon after Nigeria’s refusal to accept U.S. third-country deportees, tell a completely different story from the lenses of realpolitik.

The foregoing analysis demonstrates that America First principles have shaken whatever orthodoxies pertain to the international order whether it relates to global trade, international law, force projection, unipolarity, extreme immigration enforcement, the sanctity of court orders, the deployment of raw power and others.

Plainly, American First principles have adversely affected international relational relations, which was never perfect anyway. Nevertheless, planning to visit America for business, study and tourism now demands significant strategic calculations even from citizens of U.S. allies across the Global North and South. Nothing is guaranteed!

Given these strained diplomatic complexities, policy uncertainties and vacuum created by the U.S. de facto isolationism, China, has emerged as a champion of global trade, international collaboration, openness, cultural exchange, the rule of law shaped by its culture, history, self-determination, sovereign autonomy, and policy certainty.

Whilst the geopolitical context is certainly different because China, like Brunei, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE etc, makes no pretensions as to democratic leanings, nevertheless, the world is fast learning that democracy, in of itself, does not guarantee transparency, the consistent application of the rule of law, a more equitable global governance, justice and liberty.

And neither will unipolarity remain an unchallenged model. Multipolarity is advancing and Chinese influence in various dimensions globally is clear for all to witness!
Concluded.
Ojumu is the Principal Partner at Balliol Myers LP, a firm of legal practitioners and strategy consultants in Lagos, Nigeria, best-selling author of The Dynamic Intersections of Economics, Foreign Relations, Jurisprudence and National Development (2023).