A common thread through this book is that of an international system in transformation. It comprises a declining hegemonic power, new actors, and new configurations of alliances and rivalries, as well as new agendas and challenges.

The more precise characterization of this system elicits a variety of responses among the authors. Some suggest that we are in a multiplex world in the sense of Acharya: “defined by not having a single line of control, nor a meta-narrative about the global order” (Tussie), a “multi-theater cinema”(Heine), “a world without hegemon, culturally and politically diverse, although economically connected, whose security challenges are increasingly transnational, but in which the power to break and build order is dispersed and fragmented” (Roncagliolo and Campodónico). For others, there is an “entropic bipolarism” in which “to the increasingly disorderly and chaotic ‘diffusion of power,’ we must add a ‘transition of power,’ in which a rising power threatens the primacy of an established power” (Actis and Creus) or that of a situation of growing multipolarity—“or more precisely of bipolarity-multipolarity in the global systemic structure” (Armijo).

Yet, there seems to be a coincidence that, in the words of Serbin

Here, Serbin indicates the complexity of the new world by drawing attention to an emerging actor, Eurasia. This overlaps with the analysis of Stuenkel, who proposes the notion of a “Post-Western World” in the making, in which the conventional wisdom about the established international relations patterns in the last centuries is questioned.

It is in this scenario of uncertainty that the ANA proposal arises as a foreign policy doctrine based on certain key principles and not simply contingent interests. The ANA option should not be confused with a certain type of pragmatism that invariably ends in opportunism, doing nothing but eroding the credibility and standing of those who apply it.