As the conflict in the Middle East intensifies, pressure on the White House also grows to demonstrate strength and deliver concrete results on the international stage. In contexts of war or prolonged instability, governments tend to seek political, military, or diplomatic victories that reinforce their domestic position and external credibility.

The escalation in the Middle East reveals not only a regional conflict, but a structural crisis of the international system, marked by internal fractures in the United States, strategic divergences in Europe, economic contradictions, and the weakening of International Law, demonstrating that power and interests prevail over norms and traditional alliances.

For several decades, the global development imaginary has been consolidated into a rigid dichotomy: Asia as the engine of world growth and Africa as a marginal continent within the international economic system. This narrative, widely reproduced in political, media, and academic discourse, fails to capture the complexity and heterogeneity of African trajectories.

The invitation extended by U.S. President Donald Trump to the leaders of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to attend the 2026 G20 carries a well-crafted geopolitical rationale. The rise of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan on the international stage reflects a central aspiration for Central Asia to be more than merely a chess piece in the game of great powers—particularly as both countries present themselves as a “bridge” between Russia and the West, and as an energy and logistics hub lin