6.6: The World Order is Under Construction

Politics

The previous section left us with a strange political system. Governments cooperate because they need to, prepare for cooperation to fail, build institutions to manage conflict, and then discover that many of those institutions reflect political bargains made decades ago. Underneath all of this is a larger question: Who actually gets to shape world order? For much of the post-Cold War era, the easiest answer appeared to be the United States, its allies, and institutions constructed largely under Western leadership after World War II. That answer is no longer sufficient. The international system of 2026 is neither neatly unipolar nor cleanly bipolar. Military power, financial power, demographic scale, technological capacity, energy, supply chains, regulatory influence, and diplomatic authority are distributed unevenly, and not always among the same actors. The world looks less like one chessboard than several games occurring on the same table. Some players disagree about the rules.

The Order We Inherited Was Built After Catastrophe

The contemporary international system did not emerge from a neutral planning exercise. It emerged from war. After World War II, enormous portions of Europe and Asia were devastated. Fascist regimes had collapsed, European colonial empires still ruled much of the world, the United States emerged with extraordinary economic and military power, and the Soviet Union became the second central pole of the coming Cold War. Institutions created around this moment reflected those conditions. The United Nations was established in 1945. The IMF and World Bank grew from the Bretton Woods system. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade eventually developed into the World Trade Organization. NATO emerged in 1949 as a collective defense alliance. These institutions became key parts of what scholars often call the liberal international order.

The phrase can be misleading. The postwar system was never perfectly liberal, universal, or equal. Western governments supported democracy in some settings and authoritarian regimes in others. Colonialism continued after 1945. The Cold War generated proxy wars, interventions, coups, and tremendous violence across the Global South. Yet the order also embedded important norms and institutions involving sovereignty, multilateral diplomacy, constraints on territorial conquest, expanding trade, human rights, and international cooperation. G. John Ikenberry (2011) argues that one reason this system became durable was that American power was partly embedded within institutions. Rather than relying exclusively on coercion, the United States helped construct an order providing other states with access to markets, institutions, alliances, and predictable rules. The system did not eliminate hierarchy. It institutionalized a particular version of it. Then global power began shifting.

The Unipolar Moment Did Not Last Forever

The Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 left the United States in an extraordinarily dominant position. Charles Krauthammer (1990/1991) famously called this the unipolar moment. For a time, identifying a peer competitor was difficult. The United States combined extraordinary military capacity with the world’s largest economy, powerful alliances, international institutional influence, technological leadership, and cultural reach. This was the world in which arguments about liberal convergence appeared plausible. But a moment is not a permanent condition. China’s economic transformation changed global balances. India’s scale and economic growth increased its influence. Russia reasserted military power. Regional powers gained confidence. The European Union developed substantial regulatory and economic authority despite not becoming a traditional sovereign superstate. The United States did not stop being powerful. Power became more distributed. Those claims are not the same.

China Changed the Conversation

No country has altered twenty-first-century debates about world order more dramatically than China. Beginning with market reforms in the late 1970s, China experienced extraordinary economic growth, became central to global manufacturing and trade, expanded technological capacity, invested internationally, and increased its diplomatic and military reach. China’s rise challenges simple accounts of political change because it benefited enormously from the existing international system. China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, attracted foreign investment, expanded exports, and participated in global institutions. China did not rise outside globalizatio, it rose through it. Chinese leaders have nevertheless criticized aspects of an order they regard as disproportionately shaped by Western preferences. Beijing has supported institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, promoted the Belt and Road Initiative, expanded diplomatic relations across the Global South, and emphasized sovereignty and noninterference. This does not mean China simply wants to destroy every existing institution. It often seeks greater influence within existing structures while constructing alternatives or parallel arrangements in other areas. The useful question is therefore not whether China is “for” or “against” the existing order. It is which parts China wants to preserve, revise, bypass, or reshape.

The United States Is Still Extremely Powerful and More Constrained

Predictions of American decline appear often enough to constitute their own intellectual genre. Many have been premature. The United States retains enormous structural advantages. It possesses a global alliance network, major military capabilities, centrality in international finance, influential technology companies and universities, considerable soft power, and institutional influence. The U.S. dollar remains deeply important in global finance, which helps translate financial centrality into political leverage. Farrell and Newman’s (2019) concept of weaponized interdependence helps explain why states controlling central nodes in economic networks can wield coercive power without controlling every sector directly. But structural advantage is not total control. The United States cannot simply dictate Chinese policy, determine every country’s position on Russia or the Middle East, or force all allies to prioritize Washington’s interests equally. Governments today often possess more potential partners for trade, investment, infrastructure, and diplomacy than they did during the early post-Cold War era. American influence remains enormous but the ability to assume compliance has declined.

Power Is Multidimensional

Russia demonstrates why GDP alone cannot measure power. Its economy is smaller than those of several other major actors, yet Russia possesses a massive nuclear arsenal, substantial military capabilities, enormous natural resources, a permanent UN Security Council veto, strategic geography, and the willingness to use coercive force. The European Union demonstrates something different. It is not a sovereign state, yet its enormous market allows it to exercise significant regulatory influence. Anu Bradford (2020) calls this the Brussels Effect: global corporations may adopt EU standards beyond Europe because maintaining one high-standard system can be easier than creating entirely separate systems for different markets. Nobody invaded anyone. The rules traveled because access to the market mattered. India adds another model. With enormous demographic scale, a major economy, nuclear weapons, growing technological capacity, and increasing diplomatic reach, India has become central to world-order debates while resisting a simple bloc alignment. It participates in the Quad with the United States, Japan, and Australia, belongs to BRICS, maintains longstanding ties with Russia, competes with China, and presents itself as a major voice of the Global South. From a binary geopolitical perspective, this can look inconsistent. From India’s perspective, it can look like foreign policy.

The Global South Is Not One Actor

The phrase Global South can identify shared historical experiences involving colonialism, unequal development, limited representation, debt, and frustration with international institutions. It can also become analytically lazy if used as though dozens of very different societies share one foreign policy. India and Pakistan do not have identical interests. Saudi Arabia and Iran do not. Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Türkiye, Mexico, Nigeria, Vietnam, and the United Arab Emirates occupy different geopolitical and economic positions. Contemporary world politics increasingly demonstrates agency among states that do not want to become extensions of one great-power camp. Strategic flexibility, hedging, and multi-alignment may allow governments to cooperate with different partners on different issues. Choosing neither side exclusively does not necessarily mean sitting on the fence. Sometimes the state is building the fence where it wants it.

BRICS+ Is Important. It Is Not the Avengers.

BRICS originally brought together Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa and has since expanded. The grouping matters because its members represent significant populations, resources, economic activity, and political influence and because its growth reflects dissatisfaction with the distribution of authority in existing global institutions. But BRICS+ is not one coherent anti-Western alliance. Its members have different political systems, security relationships, economic structures, and geopolitical priorities. China and India have an unresolved border dispute. Some members maintain deep economic or security ties with the United States and Europe. Its importance lies partly in what its existence tells us: influential governments increasingly believe the current distribution of authority is insufficient and see value in alternative forums. It may not be the new center of the world. It may be evidence that there is no longer one center.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Meeting of the BRICS+ Outreach group . (CC BY; via Wikimedia Commons)

Multipolarity Sounds Cleaner Than It Is

A multipolar system distributes significant power among several major actors instead of concentrating it in one hegemon or two rival blocs. The label sounds appropriate. The United States remains extremely powerful, China has become a major competitor, India’s influence is rising, Russia retains strategic power, and the EU possesses enormous economic and regulatory reach. Other states exercise significant regional or issue-specific influence. The problem is that power is not distributed uniformly. An actor may be influential in finance but not security, regulation but not military power, energy but not technology, manufacturing but not currency. This is why contemporary scholars increasingly use terms such as multiplex, polycentric, fragmented, contested, or post-hegemonic. Acharya (2018, 2023) uses the idea of a multiplex world to emphasize multiple actors, institutions, and political scripts existing simultaneously rather than one hegemon simply replacing another. Wijaya and Jayasuriya (2024) complicate the picture further by arguing that the emerging order also reflects changes within states, including new business classes, industrial strategies, and relationships between markets and political authority. The audience is not watching one film. Neither is the world.

Middle Powers Have Discovered the Middle Can Be Useful

A more fragmented order creates opportunities for middle powers that may lack the ability to dominate globally but exercise significant influence through diplomacy, regional leadership, specialized resources, investment, or coalition-building. States such as Brazil, Indonesia, Türkiye, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates can cooperate with different major powers on different issues rather than permanently joining one bloc. This is sometimes called hedging, strategic autonomy, or multi-alignment. The behavior may look indecisive from a great-power perspective. It may actually preserve bargaining power. If two powerful states both want your cooperation, giving neither a permanent monopoly on it can be rational.

The Institutions Have a Representation Problem

As global power changes, international institutions increasingly reveal political arrangements inherited from earlier eras. The UN Security Council’s permanent veto-holding members remain China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. There is no permanent African or Latin American member. India is not permanent. Japan and Germany are not permanent. The system reflects 1945 more clearly than 2026.

Reform is difficult because institutional legitimacy and institutional effectiveness do not automatically point in the same direction. Equal votes may frustrate governments contributing large resources. Weighting authority by wealth privileges wealthy countries. Weighting by population produces another hierarchy. Regional representation raises the question of who speaks for a region. Global governance repeatedly encounters the same problem: How do institutions become both effective and legitimate when power is unequal? Nobody has solved this. If they had, Chapter 6 would be shorter.

Globalization Is Becoming Suspicious

Growing U.S.-China competition has produced comparisons with the Cold War. Strategic rivalry is intensifying, technology is increasingly politicized, military alliances are strengthening, and governments restrict access to semiconductors, investment, telecommunications, and other strategically sensitive sectors. But the analogy has limits. The United States and China remain much more economically interdependent than the United States and Soviet Union ever were. Supply chains connect rivals. Many governments resist choosing one camp. Climate change requires cooperation among competitors whether they enjoy each other’s company or not. Governments increasingly seek to reduce strategic dependence without eliminating international connection entirely. They want safer supply chains, not necessarily no supply chains. Trusted technology, not no international technology. Strategic autonomy, not complete isolation. Globalization is not necessarily ending it is becoming suspicious.

Maybe “World Order” Is the Wrong Mental Image

The phrase world order suggests structure, predictability, and perhaps somebody who labeled the folders. Contemporary global politics may look more like overlapping orders: a security order shaped by alliances, a financial order centered heavily on the dollar, a trade order combining WTO rules and regional agreements, a digital order governed by both states and corporations, a climate order organized through multilateral negotiations, and multiple regional systems. The better Global Studies question may therefore be not “Who runs the world?” but who possesses power over which system? Who controls finance? Military alliances? Technology standards? Infrastructure? Culture? Energy? Strategic minerals? Data? Shipping routes? Rules? Who has enough power to ignore those rules? The answer changes depending on the issue. That may be the defining feature of the emerging order: not leaderless, not equal, not perfectly multipolar, but increasingly distributed and contested. The best way to see that system may be to stop staring exclusively at Washington, Beijing, Moscow, or Brussels. Sometimes the so-called periphery provides the better view.