A new world is dawning
A strange, grand and completely disparate “alliance” is challenging the hegemony of the West and the world system created after World War II. China, Russia, Iran, India, Turkey and some Latin American states are some of the very important countries participating in the “Global South” alliance. Their leaders speak openly and do not hide their will to dismantle the rules imposed by the Americans and their allies after the war. Some, like Russian President Vladimir Putin, do it in practice.
The world is divided in two. We, here in the West, don’t often realize it. We draw our information mainly from the English-speaking press and we continue to think with the “molds” of the post-war era. But talking to leaders like India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi or academics and journalists from that alliance, you realize how differently they see the world. A fact that explains, for example, that a huge percentage of the world’s population disagrees with the consensus found in the West for supporting Ukraine.
However, our era has nothing to do with the Cold War. The anti-Western alliance does not have a common ideology that it is trying to export and impose. Nor do its members necessarily have common goals and interests. That is why it threatens the West but in no way offers another model of governance or values. These countries question Western democracy and liberal values and want to destroy the system imposed on them by the West for about 60 years.
This is the common goal that connects them as well as their willingness to shout to the US: “You are not the only boss anymore. That era is over!” Europe is part of the world order but no one takes it too seriously from a geopolitical point of view, as it cannot be independent from the US and refuses to come of age.
This whole anarchic scene does not lend itself to safe predictions. It has all the elements and indications that foresee a major crisis, one of those that history has in store for us every 50-60 years. Will it be a generalized war, a deep economic crisis, the abrupt collapse of globalization, or the questioning of democracy within the West itself? There are no magicians in this day and age, and geopolitical “gurus” on X (formerly known as Twitter) are hopelessly shallow.
For us who grew up in the era of Western hegemony, it is difficult to think about how the world will change. We know for sure that we prefer to live in a society with Western values, no matter how many inequalities and dysfunctions they hide. But a new world is dawning before us and the question “Who will our children work for?” does not have an easy answer.
