A Geopolitical Essay

PART VI – TOMORROW

Scenarios for a long transition

The shift away from the unipolar order and the rise of security globalization have restored the dominance of politics over technology, and strategy over simple efficiency. The earlier parts of this essay have demonstrated how power has shifted between both physical and intangible nodes — including maritime chokepoints, submarine cables, semiconductors, financial platforms, and technological standards — and how interdependence has been leveraged for strategic advantage. “Ordoland” and “Chaosland” are no longer fixed maps: their borders shift, ripple, and fragment. This forms the basis for imagining possible futures. These are not predictions but frameworks of possibility: paths that result from the interaction of geography, interests, demographic and energy limits, innovation, and political legitimacy. Each scenario serves as a lens that views the same factors through different outcomes; none is exclusive, and many can coexist simultaneously in separate areas or unfold over time.

Cooperative multipolarism: the politics of smart balancing

In this initial scenario, no single power can transform its influence into global dominance. The United States and China remain the two main poles of the spectrum, but the resulting shape is not a rigid ellipse; it is an irregular polygon where Russia, India, Japan, the European Union, and a group of middle powers from the “Global South” — Brazil, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, Mexico, Vietnam, Nigeria — gain autonomy and influence over agendas. It is a loose form of multipolarity, characterized by cooperation rather than dominance, and featuring more flexible arrangements than fixed blocs. Alliances persist but become modular; commitments are not permanent but depend on the issue and each actor’s domestic political cycle.

The center of gravity acts like a universal joint. The United States still leads the military structure of the Atlantic-Pacific region and maintains technological dominance in intangible assets; China remains the productive, infrastructural, and credit engine for large areas; India expands its options by shifting between an expanded QUAD and BRICS, buying Russian weapons systems while integrating with Western supply chains, courted by all precisely because it resembles no one. The European Union, if it can manage its internal disagreements and turn strategic autonomy from a slogan into a tangible capability, could become the standard-setting platform for industrial democracies, establishing norms on digital issues, climate change, and economic security. Japan would continue its cautious rearmament, strengthening its role as a bridge between the Pacific and key technologies.

Cooperation does not stem from value harmony but from the sporadic alignment of interests. Regarding global health, climate, food security, AI, and biotech regulation, coalitions become “issue-based”: platforms open to systemic rivals when convenient and close when convergence is impossible. Governance manifests as functional partnerships, including consortia for vaccine and essential drug production, multilateral pacts for chip resilience, flexible geopolitical agreements for energy storage, green corridors, hydrogen, and supranational power grids, as well as trust architectures for auditing high-impact AI models. This represents tactical cooperation, but not temporary: it endures beyond electoral cycles because it reduces risks and insurance costs, measuring politics with industrial accounting.

The foundation of cooperative multipolarism is the “like-minded not aligned”: states that share parts of the Western agenda without fully submitting to it, or seek advantages in the Chinese sphere without accepting subordination. Their approach is local optimization: economic multi-alignment, military non-alignment, and maximizing positional rents. An urbanizing Africa, an industrializing ASEAN, a Latin America adjusting its energy mix, and a Middle East monetizing the transition, each negotiates assets, technologies, and security guarantees with every available power. It is the return of the 19th-century “concert,” but without aristocratic secrecy, with public opinion rewarding those who deliver infrastructure, jobs, electricity, and connectivity.

The risks of this version reflect its advantages. Without an arbiter, global public goods are underprovided; climate commitments follow trajectories of “compatible decarbonization,” which are slower than physics demands; Chaoslandia regions lack adequate protection and become persistent craters of instability. However, the likelihood of systemic war decreases because no actor has a strong incentive to push the system beyond the threshold. Conflict stays fragmented, nuclear and conventional deterrence serve as brakes, and diplomacy maintains channels to manage crises and incidents. It is a world of negotiated compromises, ongoing de-risking, and multiple centers of calculation that observe and co-contain each other.

Indicators of convergence toward this outcome would include increased South-South trade, the use of multiple currencies in energy transactions without the collapse of the dollar as a systemic anchor, trans-bloc technology consortia on critical standards (e.g., AI for health, cybersecurity protocols for infrastructure), gradual reforms of Bretton Woods institutions to give the Global South more voice and voting power, stable deconfliction mechanisms in the Pacific and Black Sea, a European Union with genuinely deployable additional defense capacity, and an India more integrated into advanced production. In short, cooperative multipolarism requires careful maintenance, including investments in redundancy, robust diplomatic channels, and shared technical standards among rivals.

Bipolar Cold War: the politics of orderly separation

In this second scenario, rivalry intensifies into two opposing blocs. The United States and China cease viewing competition as risk management and instead see it as mutual containment. The outcome is a asymmetric bipolarity: on one side, an expanded West, including NATO, the EU, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, and select ASEAN and Latin American partners; on the other, a Sino-centric axis where Russia supplies raw materials, security, and sabotage, surrounded by a group of anti-Western and opportunistic states. This is not a mirror image of the Cold War because interdependence remains, and the geography of data and supply chains is far more complex; however, the idea of two parallel worlds begins to take shape.

On the technological and economic fronts, separation is progressing: chip, cloud, software, platform, and payment ecosystems are becoming increasingly less interoperable; value chains are duplicated and “sanitized” with rules of origin, licenses, and blacklists of components. The internet becomes a federation of networks with hinges and filters aligned to bloc boundaries; critical protocols diverge; data sovereignty translates into distinct physical topologies. Trade does not collapse, but rather reorients: strong volumes within blocs, friction and controls across blocs, and triangulations through buffer states. International organizations lose their universality and become spaces of influence; coordination on climate, health, and finance shrinks to the lowest common denominator.

Militarily, the Pacific and Europe once again become theaters of traditional deterrence. In the Pacific, the QUAD/AUKUS framework consolidates into something resembling an operational alliance; in Europe, NATO maintains stable, time-limited postures and defense plans on its eastern flank. Taiwan becomes a symbolic stand-in for Berlin and Korea, serving as a credibility point for Washington and a sovereignty symbol for Beijing. The conflict threshold is managed through mirror exercises, silent “no-go” zones, established rules of engagement, and reactivated hotlines. Proxy wars reappear as safety valves: the Middle East, the Sahel, and the Indo-Pacific experience clashes of different intensities, where blocs test weapons, doctrines, and resolve without crossing the line.

Internal stability within blocs improves: the perception of external threats consolidates elites and public opinion, legitimizes military spending and industrial policies, and reduces dependency pluralism. However, systemic tension remains constant. Secondary allies gain security through alignment, losing flexibility for multi-alignment; the Global South faces conflicting pressures and often chooses ambiguity at rising costs. Finance becomes more segmented: the dollar stays a safe haven, but parallel channels, local-currency clearing, and alternative payment systems multiply. It is easier to understand this order, but more costly to manage.

The appeal of this scenario lies in the “clarity” it provides to industrial democracies: clear priorities, synchronized agendas, shared standards. The risks are well known: arms races, self-reinforcing security dilemmas, low-threshold incidents that can escalate, depletion of global public goods due to lack of minimal cooperation. Nuclear deterrence still holds, but horizontal proliferation is once again a concern: regional actors see nuclear weapons as insurance against regime change or bloc coercion. Signs of moving toward bipolarity include a series of “points of no return”: decisive technological decoupling in chips and AI, differing standards for the industrial internet, systemic and irreversible exclusions from key financial infrastructures, and the formal expansion of security agreements in Asia with explicit collective defense clauses.

Global chaos: the politics of the void

The third scenario is the worst, not because it is the most violent, but because it is the most entropic: a prolonged G-Zero in which no one wants or is able to pay the fixed cost of providing order. There is no hegemon, no concert, no cohesive bloc: only islands of stability surrounded by oceans of insecurity, with backwash waves that beach crises everywhere. Multilateral institutions lose authority and operational capacity; treaties are suspended, reinterpreted, or disregarded; deconfliction mechanisms stall; and economic forums become mere rituals without enforcement. Every shock — health, climate, financial, cyber — spreads without barriers because there is no coordinated response capacity.

In Chaoslandia, state collapse spreads and becomes systemic: ongoing civil wars, de-statized territories, illicit trafficking financing criminal governance, migrations with no formal channels. Strategic port cities fall prey to militias, major dams and water infrastructure become military targets, and power grids are prime targets. The horizontal spread of nuclear weapons and medium-range missiles increases among regional powers feeling vulnerable. Digital repression tools spread as “ready-made solutions” offered by tech companies unbound by liberal safeguards. Local currencies face repeated confidence crises, parallel payment systems operate without interoperability, and global trade fragments into sporadic corridors driven by high insurance costs.

In this void, conflicts “in pieces” connect. A water crisis links to a famine and a currency collapse, which fuel a coup, opening the door for a regional power, which then closes a strait, driving up global energy prices and destabilizing fragile societies elsewhere. Digital platforms, although still infrastructures of connectivity, turn into echo chambers for psychological operations and disinformation, lowering the cohesion thresholds of democracies. The response becomes localized: cities, regions, and industrial consortia attempt micro-adaptations, building infrastructural autonomy, stockpiles, and fenced security “gardens.” The systemic risk, however, remains: a single miscalculation in a peripheral theater could ignite a global blaze because there is no longer any credible firefighter.

Early warning signs of this drift include the increase of failed states, the functional paralysis of the Security Council and Bretton Woods institutions even during moderate crises, cascading defaults in emerging economies without credible restructuring plans, the irreversible spread of medium-range weapons into unreliable hands, repeated maritime incidents in straits with extended route interruptions, and persistent attacks on submarine cables and civilian satellite networks without coordinated responses. It depicts a world where order doesn’t vanish everywhere, but fails in enough places to pull everyone down.

Sino-centric new order: the politics of specific weight

The fourth scenario envisions the rise of a new global leader, crediting China with the strength and persistence required for such an endeavor. It is not simply about replacing a flag on an unchanged system, but about reconstructing the system around core principles important to Beijing: sovereignty without interference, development as the primary measure of legitimacy, regime security as the top priority, and regional hierarchies that recognize the center’s right of precedence on key issues. The tools are already in use: alternative multilateral banks, infrastructure networks, technical standards, platform diplomacy, conditional loans, and an expanding role in the UN system. However, hegemony is not officially declared; it is exercised. The essential test is the ability to provide global public goods.

A credible Pax Sinica would need to guarantee the security of sea lanes, stabilize energy prices, offer countercyclical loans without political usury, deliver technology at competitive costs with sufficient performance, arbitrate trade disputes fairly, and establish an investment framework aligned with partners’ development goals. It would also have to deter regional rivals and convince potential allies that Chinese protection is more reliable and less intrusive than that of the United States. Achieving this requires not only resources but also the willingness to bear the fixed costs of hegemony, including bases, missions, supply lines, rescues, and losses. This is a burden China has so far carefully avoided fully embracing, preferring to benefit from the order provided by others while developing its own capabilities.

The obstacles are structural. China’s demographics are aging before the country becomes wealthy; frontier productivity must be rebuilt through internal innovation amid limited access to the most advanced technologies; the financial burden of the real estate sector must be absorbed without major shocks; and the Party’s legitimacy depends on prosperity and control, two fragile factors during a slowdown. Regionally, neighbors will not quietly accept an expanded “Middle Kingdom”: India, Japan, Vietnam, Australia, South Korea, and Indonesia all have memories, ambitions, and fears that lead them to seek counterbalances. The more China acts as an exclusive regional power, the more it unites its opponents. Globally, many democracies are reluctant to delegate standards on privacy, labor, rights, and competition to an actor that does not share their understanding of constraints.

Nevertheless, a China-centric order could gradually emerge, particularly in Asia, parts of Eurasia, and Africa, if the United States undergoes a prolonged phase of introversion or internal fragmentation, and if the EU fails to convert its normative power into actual influence. In such a scenario, “Chinese umbrellas” would cover key maritime chokepoints; land routes would connect into a unified continental logistics system; renminbi clearing would expand to substantial volumes; Chinese digital platforms would form the foundation for public and financial services in many countries; and dispute-resolution mechanisms at bilateral or regional levels would weaken Western forums. The emerging order wouldn’t necessarily be oppressive for partners: it might even seem more predictable to governments focused on genuine growth over political conditions. But for liberal-constitutional democracies, it would be a challenging horizon of adaptation as the symbolic center of gravity of the global system shifts.

Mixed scenarios and plausible trajectories: how futures hybridize

Scenarios are not rigid walls. Reality often blends them. A world might shift between regional chaos and global cooperative multipolarity; it could experience technological bipolarity within diplomatic multipolarism; it might see a Chinese regional hegemony alongside an American hegemony over intangible assets. Therefore, it is helpful to think in terms of “bundles” of trends that combine.

One plausible path for the next decade is that of flexible multipolarity with selective bipolarity at key technological chokepoints. This means: adaptable cooperation on climate, health, and food security; intense but limited competition on chips, cloud computing, AI, and biotech; shared—though often contentious—management of major physical infrastructures; a chaotic land contained but not resolved at the edges; and a more assertive Global South in rule-making, especially in development finance and the energy transition. Another, less desirable but possible, path is the sequence “G-Zero → hot bipolarity → multipolarity”: a phase of disorder that causes enough shocks to push actors into blocs; once the security squeeze ends, the system reenters a more structured concert. The most favorable outcome for stability and prosperity is not necessarily the most likely; it depends on political will, effective leadership, and resilient institutions.

The “thresholds” that can change a trajectory are three. The first is technological: if duplication of digital and semiconductor systems becomes irreversible, bipolarity will intensify; if shared technical interfaces remain, cooperative multipolarism stays possible. The second is financial: a potential crisis of confidence in the dollar or the Western payments system, triggered by perceptions of excessive reliance on sanctions, could speed up monetary regionalization and lead to a more segmented order; on the other hand, reforms that genuinely include Global South creditors and debtors would lessen the incentive for disintermediation. The third is political-social: the resilience of industrial democracies, their ability to share the benefits of resilience and industrial policy, will determine whether domestic consensus supports external leadership or pushes it toward introversion.

Politics of possibility: what it would take to avoid the worst outcomes

If the goal is not to predict but to expand the range of options, then scenarios must be turned into actions. For industrial democracies, the key is to balance security and openness: supply chains that are resilient but not self-sufficient; shared standards that prevent barriers; investments in global public goods (health, climate, transboundary waters, pandemic prevention) enough to keep rivals engaged, making the cost of withdrawal higher than the cost of conflict. Basic regimes for digital deconfliction are necessary: joint protection of undersea cables, notification and repair procedures for satellite networks, and cyber norms for civilian infrastructure. Transparent frameworks for high-risk AI are necessary, with cross-auditing and designated “free zones” for collaboration on medical and climate-related applications. Blended finance tools are vital to speed up the energy transition in the Global South; otherwise, the alternative order will prevail through supply, not ideology.

For Global South actors, the challenge is to turn assertiveness into capability. This involves negotiating market access and technology transfer in return for credible standards on governance, procurement, and property rights; it means leveraging multipolarism to secure energy, fertilizers, and logistics at sustainable costs, without locking entire economies into unsustainable debt or single-line technological dependencies. For China, if it wants to avoid a rigid bipolarity that would force it to bear the costs of isolation, the choice is between exercising selective leadership in public goods or relinquishing hegemony in favor of regional dominance. For the United States, to avoid chaos and a cold war, the alternatives are between shared leadership and defensive supremacy: accepting a world of difficult partners, sharing standards and value chains, or hardening blocs at the risk of eroding domestic consensus.

Which way history will turn: a non-conclusive conclusion

Hegemonic transitions are not like movies where the hero undergoes a transformation in the third act. They are collective stories. They unfold over long periods, with chapters of speed-ups and pauses. The outcome depends on three key factors. The first is the relation between power and legitimacy: those who can provide security, prosperity, and hope for the future without demanding total submission will gain credibility. The second is the balance of efficiency and resilience: those who succeed in creating redundancy without sacrificing growth and innovation will set the standard. The third is the tension between competition and cooperation: those who manage to find areas of cooperation — even with rivals —  on existential risks like climate change, pandemics, and financial stability will earn the right to lead without needing to dominate.

There is no fixed fate: there are critical choices. The internal decisions of the United States — rebuilding the social contract, renewing infrastructure, and sharing the benefits of industrial policy — will matter as much as its external stance. China’s behavior — whether assertive or accommodating, a provider of public goods or a builder of dependencies — will shape how others respond. Europe, to avoid becoming irrelevant, must turn strategic autonomy into policy, not just talk, in areas such as energy, defense, critical technologies, and capital markets. India will decide whether to leverage its demographic and technological strengths into a systemic responsibility. Middle powers will have to choose whether to be nodes or reservoirs, platforms or pawns.

On the ethical front — a dimension that geopolitics must overlook but societies cannot ignore — one question remains: which values do we want to protect in this competition? Liberal democracy, rights, and human dignity are not ideals that can be imposed by decree, but they can be upheld through example and action. If democracies succeed in reducing inequality, managing AI with clear limits, and striking a balance between security and freedom, their appeal will remain strong in a multipolar world. If they fail, the rhetoric of values will be viewed as a cover for self-interest, and alternative systems will seem more consistent, if not more just.

We are in a transitional period where the old world is fading, and the new world is struggling to emerge. History offers no guarantees against disaster, but it does provide room for choice. The key skill of this era is the art of blending: balancing deterrence and dialogue, redundancy and innovation, independence and cooperation, sovereignty and shared standards. If we succeed, the future will resemble cooperative multipolarism more than a Cold War or chaos; if we fail, the alternative will not be a gentle Sino-centric order, but a prolonged period of instability. Ultimately, the question isn’t who will rule the world, but how we will manage its interconnectedness together. And, most importantly, whether we will have the patience and discipline to do so before it’s too late.