Which system is better able to turn diplomatic relationships into voluntary, usable, coordinated, and durable action: a U.S.-anchored coalition with participating partners or a PRC-centered coalition with participating partners?
Measure conversion, not ceremony.
Diplomatic presence, meetings, membership, signatures, and votes matter—but they become capability evidence only when the relevant downstream conversion is observed.
One capability position at a time, with regional and issue slices where a global label hides meaningful variation.
Five comparative positions, a separate unscored state, and separate fact and comparative confidence.
Relationship-to-durable-effect chain
Eleven observable stages.
Only stages relevant to an instrument’s declared purpose are required. Expressive or constitutive commitments are not penalized for lacking material output they never promised.
- 01Relationship established
- 02Coalition formed
- 03Commitment documented
- 04Authorized
- 05Resourced
- 06Access made usable
- 07Exercised or tested
- 08Activated
- 09Delivered
- 10Bargaining outcome
- 11Durable effect
Comparison rules
Guardrails against false advantage.
The rules are applied before the evidence is synthesized into an arrow.
A mission, contact, summit, vote, signature, pledge, or facility is an input until a defined conversion is observed.
Formal and informal diplomacy remain separate because their sponsors, observability, risks, and conversion mechanisms differ.
Partner action is credited only when authorization, relevance, timing, and the contributing actor are observed.
A failure or missing record on one side never establishes an advantage for the other.
Contested requires positive evidence for both systems; otherwise the category remains explicitly unscored.
Military output, sanctions effects, finance, and information influence remain enabling or rival mechanisms from adjacent domains.
No weighted overall diplomatic-power composite is calculated.
Channel discipline
Formal and informal reach stay separate.
They have different sponsors, legal character, observability, risks, and mechanisms of conversion.
Official reach & expertise
Missions, consulates, staffing, language and area expertise, continuity, recurring official access, warning, and crisis channels.
Counts are inputs.A post matters when its staffing and relationships produce access, warning, coordination, or problem-solving.
Networks & backchannels
Party ties, Track 1.5/2 exchanges, education and alumni networks, business, civil society, professional ties, and private channels.
Contact is not control.Sponsorship, reciprocity, partner agency, attrition, and observed policy conversion must be preserved.
Institutional leadership
Three baskets before synthesis.
U.S. leadership of the liberal order is tested rather than inherited as an assumption. PRC-centered alternatives are treated as real institutions rather than dismissed as summitry.
U.S.-anchored institutions
NATO, G7, OECD, and World Bank institutions: agenda setting, authorization, implementation, monitoring, peer review, evaluation, adaptation, and partner agency.
Universal institutions
UN, WTO, and related bodies: voting, budgets, compliance, appointments, dispute settlement, public-goods provision, stewardship, repair, inclusion, and legitimacy.
PRC-centered institutions
BRICS, SCO, AIIB, FOCAC, and related forums: attraction, additionality, member agency, authorization, implementation, oversight, repair, and durability.
Evidence standard
Facts do not automatically compare.
High confidence that one system failed can coexist with low confidence about which system performs better.
Fact confidence
Rates source quality, recency, agreement, directness, and whether the factual claim is observed.
Comparative confidence
Rates matched units, common denominators, opposing-side visibility, attribution, and whether the mechanism establishes relative performance.
Insufficient basis
Used when positive, comparable evidence for both systems is absent. It is a completed analytical judgment—not missing work disguised as neutrality.
No composite
Reach, credibility, access, activation, delivery, leadership, bargaining, and durability remain independent. No weighted diplomatic-power score is calculated.
35 metric contracts govern 112 applied observations.
The public dataset exposes definitions, cases, records, source references, and review tests for reuse and verification.