Not since 1945 has the world seen the antagonism of three great powers without the support of their respective people.

While Russia, the reincarnation of the defunct Soviet Union (USSR), seems bent on changing the regional order, if not the status quo ante of the international system, it is not necessarily the case that all Russians are firmly behind President Vladimir Putin's actions. Be that as it may, the 32-member-state coalition of NATO has managed to grind Moscow down to a complete halt in eastern Ukraine.

In the United States, while president-elect Donald Trump has shown no overt sign of going to war with anyone, he and his team have shown enormous interest in nationalizing Panama, purchasing Greenland (from Denmark), imposing high tariffs on Canada and Mexico, if not China, Japan, South Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam and potentially Thailand.

But in all these efforts, no American was made aware of these brazen initiatives until recently. This makes the American electorate's support of Trump's geopolitical moves all the more evident.

And while the reunification of Taiwan with China does have the full support of the Chinese people, all 1.4 billion of them, there is no telling if the Chinese will unconditionally back the right to the use of force against Taiwan altogether, with some, if not all, believing that barricading Taiwan from global trade would be more than enough to stop the Taiwanese from declaring any kind of independence.

The Taiwan issue, while simple in its nationalist appeal, is fraught with tactical and strategic obfuscation of the best course forward.

Compare this with events in 1945, for instance. When the British agreed that prime minister Winston Churchill had done his part to defend Britain from Nazi Germany, the Labor Party, led by Clement Atlee, received more than two-thirds of the seats in the British parliament.

The United Kingdom, in general, knew what it wanted and showed the fearlessness to change the government of the day even though the European and Pacific theaters of World War II did not wind to a complete end until the end of August 1945.

Despite the toil and sacrifice of the Churchill-led conservative government, the British were not afraid to elect a totally new government into office in February 1945. Meanwhile, if one were to compare the lack of a populist mandate in Russia, the US and China today with the state of full popular support in 1945, it is clear that it is the leadership ranks of the three veto-wielding members of the United Nations Security Council who believe that they know what is the best course for their countries.

The sheer confidence, verging on the unilateral conceit of the power elites in Moscow, Washington DC and Beijing, is nothing if not impressive. Their respective presidents are totally assured that they know how their countries' best interests should be calculated and measured in ways both tangible and otherwise.

After 80 years of freedom from the extirpation of the great power contest, why have the countries failed to command the total loyalty of their people? There are three key reasons.

First and foremost, the people of Russia, the US and China are consumed more by the issue of the cost of living rather than another territorial conquest, no matter how compelling is the reason or explanation.

Russians, for instance, are not all convinced that the grievance against Kyiv must logically lead Putin to resort to an armed invasion.

To many Russians, institutions such as the European Union are not necessarily toothless and dysfunctional. If war is the failure of diplomacy, then diplomacy has not been given the fullest exposure and experimentation.

To Americans, on issues touching on war and peace, the foreign policy elites have not been briefed that their leaders do not have an option at all to sue for peace.

To many more Chinese, while the protection of the motherland is important, especially reunification with Taiwan, one must understand that Taiwan has become a talismanic emblem of modern success. It is shaped by the island's sophisticated Taiwan Semiconductor Multinational Corporation (TSMC).

Should China resort to nothing but hard power to return Taiwan to China, it is not certain that TSMC will pledge total loyalty to Chinese leadership.

Second, wars of conquest will not be as simple as the Syrian loyalists abandoning their posts on Dec. 8, 2024, leading to the fall of the Assad regime. In the case of Syria, 82 to 92 percent of the oil and gas sector has been bleeding badly since 2011-2012. With Moscow and Tehran unwilling to prop the regime up, Syria was a goner.

However, with Ukraine, Putin has proved defiant to the point of drawing on 80,000 special commandos from North Korea. Yet there is no consensus among all Russians that having North Korea on its side is any reason for strategic comfort.

The majority of Russians cannot be oblivious to the fact that North Korea would drag Russia into an even larger and more dangerous war in the future, both conventional and nuclear.

Third, America has not shown a taste for faraway lands since the days of the late President Theodore Roosevelt. What the Trump administration appears to be thirsting for in places like Panama, Greenland and elsewhere seems to be options that are alien to Americans, even Trump supporters.

In summation, as the world enters 2025, the chasm between the rulers and the ruled remains great, if not getting greater, regardless of the mechanism of governance or regime type. Wealth concentrated in the hands of the upper echelons continues to be considerable.

All said, there is room for a more optimistic scenario in 2025 if all three leaders can agree that wars are ruinous all across the board without exception. Hence, one of the cardinal roles of ASEAN leaders is to function as a pressure group or special lobby to steer all countries from the proclivity to see "force" as something that will necessarily augment and strengthen the support of the majority of the people.

Within the context of Malaysia, this is promoting the concept of madani or civilizational process of all instruments of state and civil society.

Thus, as the ASEAN chair, Malaysia is right to want to promote the idea of madani in and across ASEAN in 2025 beyond the ambit of Bali Concords I, II and III, all of which abjure all signatories to use force as an instrument of foreign policy to effect systemic or sub-systemic change.

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The writer is a professor of ASEAN Studies at the International Islamic University of Malaysia.