The West’s Last Chance: How to Build a New Global Order Before It’s Too Late

[SS from essay by Alexander Stubb, President of Finland and the author of the forthcoming book The Triangle of Power: Rebalancing the New World Order.]

The world has changed more in the past four years than in the previous 30. Our news feeds brim with strife and tragedy. Russia bombards Ukraine, the Middle East seethes, and wars rage in Africa. As conflicts are on the rise, democracies, it seems, are in demise. The post–Cold War era is over. Despite the hopes that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall, the globe did not unite in embracing democracy and market capitalism. Indeed, the forces that were supposed to bring the world together—trade, energy, technology, and information—are now pulling it apart.

We live in a new world of disorder. The liberal, rules-based order that arose after the end of World War II is now dying. Multilateral cooperation is giving way to multipolar competition. Opportunistic transactions seem to matter more than defending international rules. Great-power competition is back, as the rivalry between China and the United States sets the frame of geopolitics. But it is not the only force shaping global order. Emerging middle powers, including Brazil, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Turkey, have become game-changers. Together, they have the economic means and geopolitical heft to tilt the global order toward stability or greater turmoil. They also have a reason to demand change: the post–World War II multilateral system did not adapt to adequately reflect their position in the world and afford them the role that they deserve. A triangular contest among what I call the global West, the global East, and the global South is taking shape. In choosing either to strengthen the multilateral system or seek multipolarity, the global South will decide whether geopolitics in the next era leans toward cooperation, fragmentation, or domination.