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Written by John Rennie Short, professor emeritus of public policy, UMBC

On Sept. 3, 2025, China celebrated the 80th anniversary of its victory over Japan by staging a carefully choreographed event in which 26 world leaders were offered a podium view of Beijing’s impressive military might.

The show of strength was deliberate and reignited a debate in Western media over whether we are on the cusp of a China-centric “new world order” to replace the U.S.-dominated international “rules-based order.”

But as someone who writes about geopolitics, I believe we are already there. It might be in flux, and the U.S. still has a big role in it, but a new world order has begun – and as it develops, it will look increasingly different than what it’s replacing.

A brief history of world orders

Global history can be understood as the rise and fall of different orders, defined as a given era’s dominant power relations and attendant institutions and norms.

From 1815 to 1880, the United Kingdom was the undisputed world superpower, with an empire and navy that spanned the globe. The period from 1880 to 1945 was one of imperial rivalries as other countries – largely European and the U.S. – sought to copy Britain’s success and replace its dominance. Supplanting that was the bipolar world of two competing superpowers, the Soviet Union and the U.S., marking the period from 1945 to 1991.

The fall of the Soviet Union was the beginning of a brief period, from 1991 to 2008, of a unipolar world centered on U.S. global dominance, military power and economic might. With the retreat of global communism, the U.S. increased its influence, and that of the international rules-based order it helped establish after 1945, through institutions such as the World Trade Organization, World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

It did not last long in the face of a long war on terrorism, the fiasco of the invasion of Iraq, the long occupation of Afghanistan and finally the 2008 global financial crisis that undermined U.S. strength and weakened domestic support for Washington’s role as the world’s policeman.

Toward a multipolar world

In recent years, a new multipolar world has emerged with at least four distinct sources of power.

The U.S. remains central to this world order. It is blessed with a huge territory, a dynamic economy and the strategic luxury of large oceans on its east and west and much smaller powers to its north and south. The U.S. had a global military presence in the previous bipolar and unipolar order. But the cost of this imperial overstretch has prompted Washington to shift the cost burden toward its former allies, leading to a new militarization in Europe and East Asia where most countries now aim to increase military spending.

There is also a change in economic arrangements. In the unipolar order, the U.S. promoted a frictionless free trade arrangement and economic globalization. This resulted in the global shift of manufacturing that in turn created a populist backlash in those countries where manufacturing employment was hollowed out.

Now, economic nationalism is becoming a much more common refrain than free trade. Long the promoter of purportedly open markets, the U.S. is now leading the way in resurrecting tariff barriers to levels that haven’t been seen on the global stage in decades.

The military realignments and growing trade barriers will make it increasingly difficult to assemble durable alliances. In the short term the U.S. can leverage its existing power to its advantage, but over the long term other countries will likely pivot away from too much reliance on the U.S. The American Century that publishing magnate Henry Luce famously described in 1941 has to all intents and purposes come to an end.

China is now a peer competitor to the U.S. in both economic and military power. Increasingly, under the powerful leadership of Xi Jinping, China openly seeks a more Sino-centric world order with institutions and a global arrangement to match. To that end, it is assembling an axis of resistance to a U.S.-dominated world order. Russia, suffering from post-imperial syndrome, is an important member but not an equal partner.

Russian power is limited to establishing a Eurasian sphere of influence across its former Soviet republics and disrupting liberal democracies. But in that, Russia is more of a spoiler than an architect of the new order.

And then there is Europe, facing what British Prime Minister Keir Starmer referred to as a “generational challenge” as the U.S. pivots away from Europe toward the Indo-Pacific just as Russia poses a more serious threat to Europe, especially for its easternmost states.

Europe is remilitarizing after decades of demilitarizing. Sweden and Finland joined NATO in 2023 and 2024, respectively. In the coming decades, Europe could emerge as an independent source of both economic and military power with a different agenda from the U.S. – more keen to confront Russia, less willing to support Israel, and perhaps more willing to engage with China.

But all three power centers – the U.S., China and Europe – will struggle with similar and unique internal challenges.

All of them have sluggish economies and aging populations. The U.S. faces growing inequality and political instability as it shifts from a liberal democracy to competitive authoritarianism. China has an untested military, a looming demographic crisis, a faltering economy and a forthcoming succession struggle.

Finally, Europe is beset with a nationalist populism and growing social welfare costs just as military expenditures are set to increase.

The growth of the Global South

This threefold division is strangely reminiscent of the tripartite global division in George Orwell’s “1984,” where Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia fought a permanent war of shifting alliances.

But Orwell was writing at a time when much of what is now called the Global South was either under the informal or formal control of the superpowers. That is no longer the case in the Global South, especially in the case of the larger countries such as Brazil, India and Indonesia.

The Global South is not yet a coherent bloc, more an informal arrangement of independent actors that tend to hedge between the major powers.

A world in flux

Yet none of this new global reality means that things are now fixed. Indeed, the new world order is in a state of disruptive flux that promises years of growing pains. Both the U.S. and China need allies, and countries in the Global South will continue to hedge between the competing powers.

As such, the world is in for a process of constant jostling as the major powers seek alliances while dealing with domestic pressures. In that messy status quo, many questions remain: Who will be most effective in building durable alliances? Will China manage its internal challenges? Will Europe get its act together? Will Russia continue its disruptive ways? Could a post-Trump U.S., post-Putin Russia and post-Xi China move the world in yet a different direction altogether?

And there is one large question above all others: Can the major powers manage their competition through shared global interests, such as combating climate change, environmental pollution and pandemic threats? Or will mounting conflict in the newly contested areas of the Arctic, cyberspace, outer space and the oceanic realm, and in ongoing geopolitical hot spots provide the trigger for outright conflict?

All world orders come to an end. The hope is the old one is doing so with a whimper rather than a bang.

John Rennie Short, Professor Emeritus of Public Policy, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article and see more than 300 UMBC articles available in The Conversation.