and the 3 Fault Lines Now Running Through Them

• What happens when an empire’s power rests on three pillars and each pillar starts to develop hairline cracks at the same time?
   
• What if “dominance” was never just about military might, but about invoicing power, payment rails, patents, and supply chains?
   
• When challengers don’t attack the king’s army first, but the king’s currency, procurement networks, and medicine cabinet, how does a superpower even respond?
   
• And if the challengers are not one unified rival but a “messy coalition” of Russia, India, and China, does that make the threat weaker… or harder to contain?
   
• Finally, when the world builds ‘parallel systems’ instead of ‘overthrowing’ the old one, is that collapse or a slow, quiet bypass?

For decades, the U.S. has enjoyed something rare in civilizational history: a triple advantage that reinforced itself. The U.S. dollar lubricated global trade and debt markets; U.S.-led defense ecosystems set the security architecture (and the standards); and U.S.-centric pharma innovation and IP regimes shaped what the world consumes when it is sick, aging, or afraid.

Now the challenge is not a single “new Rome.” It is a triangulation. Russia is improvising around sanctions; China is scaling parallel financial and technology rails; India is expanding industrial capability and becoming strategically indispensable. The combined effect is not the dramatic fall of a throne in one night. It looks more like the Mahabharata’s slow unthreading of the Kuru court, where arrogance, overreach, and complacency don’t lose the kingdom instantly, but steadily reduce its room to maneuver.

Let’s dissect the three pillars — dollar, defense manufacturing, and pharma — one by one, with concrete examples, and then stitch them back into a single geopolitical picture.

The first pillar was never “the dollar” alone. It was the dollar plus the plumbing.

The dollar’s dominance has two layers: the currency itself and the global financial architecture that routes messages, clears payments, and anchors reserves. Even critics who dislike U.S. power often still hold dollars because the U.S. Treasury market is deep, liquid, and trusted, especially in crises.

The dollar is still the largest reserve currency by a wide margin. IMF COFER data for 2025 shows the dollar at roughly the mid-50s percent share of allocated reserves (with quarter-to-quarter moves often driven largely by FX valuation effects), while the renminbi remains under 2% (about 1.93% in 2025 Q3). 

So, what is actually happening?

What’s happening is not a cliff. It’s a bypass.

Instead of trying to “replace” the dollar overnight, major powers are building alternative channels: local-currency settlement, CBDC-enabled corridors, regional payment networks, and selective “de-dollarization” in specific trade lanes (energy, commodities, sanctioned flows).

Examples matter here:

• China’s parallel rails are scaling. CIPS (Cross-Border Inter-Bank Payments System), China’s cross-border RMB payment and settlement infrastructure, processed enormous volumes in 2024 — reported around RMB 175.49 trillion with growth in both transaction count and value. 
  
  And beyond CIPS, mBridge (a cross-border multi-CBDC platform involving central banks including China and Gulf partners) reportedly surged to over $55 billion in transactions, with the digital yuan dominating the volume. Reuters explicitly frames it as parallel infrastructure that can gradually erode dollar reliance in some corridors, even if it won’t “displace the dollar outright.” 
   
• Russia is innovating under constraint. Sanctions pushed Russia into alternatives and workarounds — some formal [SPFS-style (System for Transfer of Financial Messages) messaging] and some improvised. Even the Financial Times has reported on sanction-bypass ecosystems emerging around new entities and instruments. 
    
• India is experimenting with local settlement, but carefully. India’s approach is less “anti-dollar crusade” and more “risk management + optionality.” Reuters has reported RBI encouragement for direct rupee-dirham settlement and the broader intent to reduce dollar usage for some trade legs, including routes linked to Russian oil flows. 

And BRICS Currency?

Treat it as a political signal, not a finished product. Even BRICS’ own official declarations and statements (2025) speak more about continued technical discussions (e.g., finance ministries/central banks workstreams, “platform” concepts) than an imminent, unified reserve currency that is ready to replace the dollar. 

This is where the puranic metaphor fits cleanly: the “king” isn’t toppled by one decisive duel. It is challenged by alliances that deny him tribute routes. Think of Ravana — not defeated because Lanka lacked walls, but because his adversaries cut through confidence, built coalitions, and attacked the assumptions that “no one can cross the ocean.” In geopolitics, the ocean is the ‘financial system’; the bridge is the ‘payment rail.’

The second pillar: defense manufacturing.

Here, the story is not “India will beat the U.S. tomorrow.” The story is “the monopoly over security choices is weakening.”

The U.S. remains a defense superpower with unmatched global basing, alliances, and high-end systems. But the world is also learning a painful lesson: dependence can be weaponized. Sanctions, export controls, end-user restrictions, and political conditionality have made many states value supplier diversification.

This is where Russia, India, and China each play different roles.

Russia: The “Sanctions-Hardened” Arms Ecosystem

Russia’s defense industry has had to adapt under wartime conditions and sanctions. The immediate consequence is not necessarily superior products everywhere but a willingness to sell, customize, and supply in politically constrained environments. Russia also remains central to certain technology lineages that India has historically used (missiles, air defense, propulsion, etc.).

India: The Rising Exporter with Proof Points (Not Just Slogans)

India’s defense exports have risen sharply over the past decade, with official releases stating a record Rs. 23,622 crore in FY 2024–25. 

That number is still small compared to the U.S. export machine, but the direction matters and so do the concrete deals:

• BrahMos to the Philippines is the headline proof-of-execution. The contract (~$375 million) was signed in 2022 and deliveries have proceeded in batches (with reporting/official confirmations around deliveries). 
   
• Akash system exports to Armenia have been widely reported as a marker of India’s entry into credible air-defense exports. 

These are not symbolic trinkets. They show India can deliver systems, training, and support — an entire defense “relationship,” not a one-off sale.

China: The Scale Player & the Regional Coercion Factor

China’s defense rise is less about exporting prestige platforms everywhere and more about the fact that its industrial scale, dual-use tech base, and regional posture force neighbors to rearm. That indirectly expands the market for alternatives, including Indian systems in Southeast Asia, and supplier diversification globally.

So, where does “collaboration with Russia” fit?

The best example is again BrahMos: a joint venture lineage, co-development culture, and export pathways shaped by both partners’ strategic calculations. Reuters has described the JV structure and its India-Russia partnership shares, underlining the collaborative DNA of the program. 

In itihaasa terms, this resembles the Mahabharata’s alliance mechanics: smaller powers don’t defeat the “center” by matching its full force; they create asymmetric combinations — one brings strategy, one brings strength, one brings terrain advantage. Krishna doesn’t fight like a conventional king; he designs outcomes by coalition, timing, and psychological leverage. The point is not brute parity. The point is options.

That is exactly what defense indigenization plus selective partnerships gives India: optionality.

The third pillar: pharma.

Here the U.S. advantage has been less about volume and more about value.

The U.S. (and North America more broadly) dominates pharma revenues and, crucially, high-margin innovation. Industry sources in Europe point out that North America accounted for a majority share of global pharmaceutical sales in 2024, and that a large share of new medicine launches (2019–2023) occurred in the U.S. market. 

That is not just prestige, it is pricing power, IP gravity, clinical trial leadership, and regulatory influence.

India’s strength is different: scale and affordability.

India is widely described as a global pharmacy for generics, supplying around 20% of global generic medicines by volume, and a major share of global vaccine demand in various estimates. Indian government and industry-facing sources repeat these numbers. 

India’s pharma exports have also been officially cited around $30.47 billion (2024–25) with a 9.4% growth year-on-year. 

China’s rise is increasingly about innovation pipelines, not just API scale. China is pushing hard to become a biopharma innovation hub, not merely a manufacturing base. You can see signals in licensing activity and global partnering, and in how large pharma is placing bets on China’s R&D ecosystems. 

Now to the key strategic claim: if India and China collaborate in pharma, can they “beat” the U.S.?

They can certainly compress U.S. leverage in specific segments, but “beat hands down” is too absolute. Here’s the more precise framing:

If India and China align, they can create a “full stack” alternative:

• China: expanding innovation + clinical development scale + manufacturing depth
   
• India: global trust in generics/vaccines + regulatory familiarity with Western markets + cost-efficient high-quality manufacturing 

Together: a credible rival ecosystem for many therapy areas, especially if coupled with non-Western financing and faster cross-border trial infrastructure.

But there are three hard obstacles:

1. Trust & Geopolitics. India-China strategic mistrust is not a footnote; it’s a structural variable. Pharma supply chains are sensitive, strategic, and politically exposed.
    
2. IP Regimes & Market Access. The U.S. advantage is not only scientific. It is legal and commercial: patents, pricing, reimbursement, FDA gravity, and launch markets.
    
3. Innovation Economics. Breakthrough drugs require long-cycle risk capital and predictable returns. The U.S. market remains a unique profit engine for that model. That’s why global launches still heavily prioritize the U.S.

So, what does “challenge” look like in pharma?

It looks like the erosion of a single center of gravity. More trials, more licensing, more manufacturing ecosystems, more launch priorities outside the West. Not one emperor thrown from the throne — more like multiple kingdoms refusing to pay tribute to Hastinapura because the moral authority of the court has decayed.

Put the three pillars together and the pattern becomes obvious: parallelism.

Russia, China, and India are not building one unified replacement empire. They are building parallel systems that reduce the cost of saying “no” to U.S. preferences.

• Parallel Finance: Local settlement, CBDC corridors, payment systems scaling alongside SWIFT-centered networks. 
   
• Parallel Defense: Diversified suppliers, indigenous production, exports with fewer political strings, and regional deterrence ecosystems. 
   
• Parallel Pharma: India dominating volume affordability; China accelerating innovation ambitions; global pharma placing big bets on China; and India seeking to climb from “volume” to “value.” 

This is not “the U.S. collapsing.” This is “the U.S. facing competitors who no longer accept a single choke point.”

That distinction matters. Empires rarely fall because rivals become stronger alone. 

They fall when their own tools of control become incentives for others to build alternatives.

The Mahabharata analogy is blunt: Duryodhana didn’t lose because the Pandavas were always stronger. He lost because arrogance converted neutral actors into opponents, and because the court’s legitimacy corroded from within. When legitimacy weakens, alliances form faster. When alliances form, power becomes harder to monopolize.

Now the real question for India: “what should India do?”:

Will India remain the world’s dependable workshop for generics and selective weapons, or will it become a platform-state that designs standards, rails, and innovation ecosystems?

Because if India wants to be more than a challenger and become a shaper, it must do three things simultaneously:

• In Finance: Expand settlement optionality without destabilizing capital flows; build credible rails and trusted compliance that others want to plug into.
   
• In Defense: Keep indigenizing subsystems, scale production, shorten delivery cycles, and build reliable long-term sustainment.
   
• In Pharma: Move from generics dominance into biosimilars, complex generics, med-tech, and innovation, without losing the trust built by quality and affordability.

If India does that, the “three pillars” story flips. Not “America versus the rest,” but “multiple centers, multiple standards, multiple routes.”

And that is the real end of supremacy: not defeat — irrelevance of monopoly.

So, here are the closing questions that decide the next decade:

When the world quietly builds detours around the dollar, does Washington adapt or double down on financial weaponry and accelerate the bypass?

When India can export missiles but still struggles to scale high-end platforms quickly, will it invest in production velocity as aggressively as it invests in announcements?

When India is already the pharmacy of volume, will it also become the laboratory of value, or let China dominate the innovation story while India does the manufacturing?

And in a world of parallel rails, will the next hegemon be the ‘strongest country,’ or the country whose systems others ‘can’t live without’?