For more than four decades, the Cold War imposed on the world a binary logic marked by the confrontation of the West with the Soviet bloc. Attempts to break this geopolitical logic failed to be dented by the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) or by the emergence of the Third World, later renamed as the Global South. After the implosion of the United Socialist Soviet Republic (USSR) and the end of the Cold War, the configuration of a unipolar world under the hegemonic dominance of the United States and its Western allies imposed a liberal international order and the apparent end of geopolitical confrontations on a global scale.

However, the world is currently experiencing a series of tectonic changes that mark the emergence of a new world order and, consequently, rising geopolitical tensions. In fact, we live in a world in transition, in which the dilution of traditional power relations is associated both with the emergence of new poles of power and new ways of concep-tualizing the complex links between economic, technological, political, and military power. New visions about regional orders and the global order emerge and compete, and a new world geopolitical map is emerging. Multiple narratives emerge to interpret this transition—generally anchored in national interests or regional approaches—that compete to legitimize interests and strategies of the states not only in regions but also within the global order.

While the international economy presents a fragile global outlook in which developed economies are recovering more slowly than expected and global trade has slowed down, it is clear that, since the 2008 crisis, the main developed countries of the Atlantic Basin—the European Union (EU) and the United States—have had limited growth, while emerging economies including China and India have had higher economic growth, even in the context of the global pandemic. In the last decade, the economic dynamism in the world has tended to move from the Atlantic Basin to the Asia-Pacific, driven by the accelerated growth of China, which will become the world’s leading economy by the end of the current decade according to most projections.

After several centuries of Western hegemony, reflected in its ability to formulate international norms and rules and control the global agenda, we now witness the emergence of new powers and a multipolar world.