As the West wanes we are witnessing major changes in geopolitics
Jelena Vidojević is a political scientist and the co-founder of the New South Institute
Miloš Hrnjaz is a political scientist at the University of Belgrade and the Faculty of Political Scince at the New South Institute
“Worldmaking as we know it always starts from worlds already at hand; the making is a re-making”
(Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking, 1978).
During the first week of September, China was at the centre of international media attention as Beijing hosted two major events: the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit and a massive Victory Day Parade marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the “Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression” (1937 – 1945). Both events, meticulously planned, were intended to reposition China not only as a military power, but as a central visionary of a multipolar world, offering an alternative narrative to the West’s liberal international order. Beyond this, Beijing is seeking to emphasise its leadership role within the Global South, while articulating its vision for the norms and institutions that shape the international system. The South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa, was not present at the Victory Day parade, nor were other senior South African officials. This is surprising for two reasons. South Africa’s relationship with the United States is in serious crisis, and there is much talk in policy circles of the country needing to pivot East.
Over the last two decades, we have witnessed profound geopolitical shifts, marked by changing power dynamics and the emergence (in some instances the re-emergence) of new actors. Power has become more widely distributed and is, at least for now, less structured. Numerous attempts have been made to describe the current moment. Terms such as “confused international order”, “state between orders”, “asymmetric bipolarity”, and “neither unipolar nor yet a multipolar order”. All signal the uncertainty of our time as well as the limitations of the existing frameworks that seem too narrow to capture the depth of transformation underway. The shape of the future has perhaps become the most prominent concept in contemporary political imagination.
There is broad agreement that the liberal international order is in crisis. Some authors even argue that the current state is “beyond crisis” and that the liberal international order is dead. Less clear, however, are the underlying causes of this crisis and what the early warning signs were that the Western model was beginning to fracture. Much of the diagnosis (and prognosis) depends on the vantage point from which the world is observed. For example, for Sergey Karaganov, former Presidential Advisor to both Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, the West’s crisis began with World War I, which undermined its social and political foundations. The Soviet Union’s rise, especially in its nuclear capability, eroded the West’s 500-year military advantage and coincided with decolonisation and Western defeats in Asia. Although the collapse of the USSR gave the West renewed dominance, structural contradictions persisted. By the 2000s, Russia sought to restore its strength, exposing the moral and systemic decline of Western capitalism, driven by unchecked consumption. According to him, therefore, the liberal international order has been in crisis for over a century, with its current phase intensifying since the late 20th century.
On the other hand, for Ayşe Zarakol, Professor of International relations at Cambridge University, the unilateralism of the USA during the ‘War on Terror’ and its violations of international law eroded the legitimacy of the liberal international order early on, while the 2008 financial crisis discredited the economic principles of liberal globalisation, especially in the West. The Trump presidencies and Brexit further weakened confidence in multilateral institutions, and the COVID-19 pandemic both exposed the fragility of global supply chains and undermined the notion of Western superiority, accelerating trends toward deglobalisation.
Predictions about the future tend to be pessimistic. The new global order is often portrayed as chaotic, disorienting, and dangerous. Many assume that Western involvement, if not outright dominance, is essential to prevent collapse. It is therefore unsurprising that some feel nostalgic for the days of Western leadership, even though a return to that model is unlikely. In some parts of the world, anxiety stems not only from the possible loss of global privilege, but also from fears that familiar and deeply cherished values are under existential threat.
At the same time, in some other parts of the world, one can detect a sense of hope, or even joy, fuelled by the prospect that the systemic injustices and widespread inequalities associated with the liberal international order might give way to a more equitable and just alternative, even if its contours are currently incomplete.
Between these two extremes lies a fragile space for gradual change, one that must be navigated carefully. While it is important to highlight the injustices of the current order, we must also remember that worse worlds are possible, and that historically, radical transformations of global orders have often emerged in the aftermath of unimaginable tragedies.
Amidst the many uncertainties regarding the future order, it remains unclear whether the shifts will culminate in the long-promised and long-anticipated multipolarity, accompanied by more inclusive and less hypocritical institutional design. Historically, multipolarity has rarely emerged organically, it has usually been facilitated and its rules negotiated. Non-Western actors, residing on the margins of a Western-centred system were often stigmatised as insufficiently ‘civilised’, ‘modern’, developed, industrialised, secular or democratic, are now asserting themselves more forcefully. However, we should not be naive in assuming that their previously disadvantaged and peripheral position will guarantee fairness. Some of the key policy documents, such as those from Russia and India, reveal that these countries tend to be highly pragmatic in engaging with the rest of the world.
A fundamental tension is likely to persist between the multipolar aspirations of the emerging great powers and the principle of equality among all states, particularly smaller ones. This may require states to rethink regional engagement as the primary scope of their activity. If we accept the coexistence of multiple worlds, it seems that there will be a need to rethink international law so that it facilitates their interaction. This involves identifying areas where regional norm-making is most appropriate and allowing those norms to reflect regional specificities and differences. The near future is therefore more likely to be shaped by flexible regional arrangements than universal ones.
But this raises a central question. How will diverse regional systems relate to one another, and what kind of framework can hold these worlds together? One possibility lies in hybrid solutions, where a limited set of binding, general norms operates at the universal level, while more detailed rules evolve regionally. One the one hand, the more abstract and general such universal norms become, the more likely they are to generate contestation over their meaning and scope. On the other, if they are concrete and detailed, who or what will enforce them? The absence of a unified global framework, however, also opens opportunities for pragmatic, case-by-case agreements or a new age of ‘might is right’ power politics.
Within this rapidly shifting landscape, where old certainties are giving way to new realities, Africa’s place remains uncertain. Although the continent features prominently (and favourably) in BRICS as well as the SCO rhetoric, the reality offers little reason for optimism. Africa continues to occupy the periphery of strategic decision-making, raising doubts about whether emerging powers will truly break from, or merely reproduce, established patterns of marginalisation.
For African countries, the central challenge is not choosing between Beijing and Washington. Rather, the key question is how, and on what terms, they can contribute to reimagining a world in which they don’t get reduced to their natural resources, human capital or (easy) votes in multilateral forums, but are recognised as partners with genuine strategic autonomy (understood not as passive neutrality, but as active non-alignment).
The effectiveness and impact of their actions will also depend largely on the quality of their strategic thinking, their ability and willingness to clearly identify national interests, grounded in both historical experience and a forward-looking vision, and to translate these into a sharp, pragmatic, and non-messianic foreign policy strategy. It is important that they bear in mind that the purpose of foreign policy is to create an external environment that is conducive to domestic (economic) development. At the moment, it seems that thinking is not happening, not even in the regional powers like South Africa. South Africa’s relations with the West are deteriorating, while the country’s place in the emerging order, shaped largely by Asian powers, remains uncertain.
Symbolically, South Africa’s absence from China’s Victory Day Parade in Beijing on 3 September, raises a question of geopolitics. If South Africa is not in the West and not in the East, then where is it? If it wants to be in Africa or in the space of the non-aligned, then these places need to be more than a location on a map. They need institutions, economies and armies – maybe even a massive parade. An African response must be grounded in deeper continental cooperation across areas such as trade, migration, and beyond. Building a stronger foundation requires that all 54 countries on the African continent work to reduce barriers, harmonise policies, and actively support one another’s development. Only through such collective effort can the continent strengthen its resilience and amplify its voice on the global stage.
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