capable of standing up for itself against other large powers like the US, China, and Russia.

To do that, it needs to consolidate power in some way, a way to compile all resources of united/allied countries and leverage them against other powers. IE: they would need to be hegemonic in the exercises of power necessary to maintain control.

People are repulsed by the word "hegemony" because it's scary and often used to describe authoritarians, but we literally need to get to a single-world-government as soon as possible to secure our survival as a species. The problem is right now if we set that up, the cretins of the world would vote the very worst people to lead that world-government because the very worst people keep shoving propaganda up the asses of our most stupid people and we keep letting them.