International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies (IFIMES[1]) from Ljubljana, Slovenia, regularly analyses developments in the Middle East, Balkans and around the world. Dr. Masahiro Matsumura, Professor of International Politics and National Security, Faculty of Law, St. Andrew's University (Momoyama Gakuin Daigaku) and member of IFIMES Council, prepared an article entitled “Peeping into the evolving world order after hegemony: A Copernican Revolution”. In the article Dr. Matsumura explores the key characteristics of the emerging global order and analyzes their far-reaching implications for international politics. The article is published in its entirety.
With global international relations in great flux for the last decade, the emerging world order is finally taking nebulous yet substantive shape through the ongoing U.S.-Russia truce talks on the War in Ukraine and through the related international diplomacy. Modern international history shows that a marked shift in international distribution of power often causes a hegemonic war or a great war, resetting a world order according to which countries win or lose a war or according to their relative military superiority and inferiority at the time of truce talks. This applies well to the current U.S.-Russia global confrontation that includes the protracted warfare in Ukraine, while politically dividing the rest of the world between the two, now in favor of Russia.
This essay will discuss major important features of the evolving world order and their central implications to world politics.
On February 18, U.S. and Russian negotiation teams had the initial formal truce talks in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. The U.S. team included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser Micheal Waltz, and Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steven Witkoff. The Russian counterparts consisted of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Foreign Policy Adviser to the President, Yuri Ushakov. This begs a series of intriguing questions, such as why Special Envoy to Ukraine and Russia, General Keith Kellog (retired), was not included in the team, why the talks were held in Riyadh, and why there was neither even a Ukrainian nor a European observer at the negotiation table, which helps peep into the evolving a post-conflict global and regional order.
Revealingly, the framework of the U.S.-Russia truce talks has made it obvious that the armed conflict in Ukraine has been a proxy war between the two negotiating countries, with Ukraine as the pawn of the U.S.-led West[2]. Also, it is evident that major U.S. allies in Western Europe, especially the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, played little role in the talks as they were excluded even as an observer. Moreover, as the talks were not held in a Western-style open and free city but Riyadh, the Ukraine and other European governments were left out of the loop because they were neither easily able to conduct intelligence activities there nor exercise good influence through direct and public diplomacy.
More importantly, resetting the world order, which includes the regional order centered on Ukraine as only a part of it, is a primary objective of the truce talks. This is demonstrated by who consisted of the initial the U.S. negotiation team that included Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steven Witkoff, not Special Envoy to Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellog. To be noted, Saudi Arabia is a major regional power and an influential stake-holder and player. As the host of the talks, therefore, the Saudi government played an important facilitating role[3], plausibly with some good informal opportunities and occasions to communicate with U.S. and Russian negotiators about the interplay of conflict-ridden Ukrainian and Middle Eastern affairs and the postwar world order. In fact, the country as a prime oil exporter is able to significantly influence international oil prices through which to condition the postwar viability of the Russian political economy that considerably depends on oil exports.
This power-political approach to the truce talks underscores international stability and security, while depriving Ukraine of a crucial opportunity to participate in the talks. To strike a bargain between the United States and Russia, the approach will likely sacrifice Ukraine’s vital national interests, particularly its territorial integrity and political independence. This is inconsistent with the established politico-legal principles and norms under the U.N. Chater and the general political practice under the U.S.-led liberal international order. A central question is whether the approach taken constitutes a temporary deviant outlier or a decisive departure from the existing world order.
Trump’s catchphrase, “Make America Great Again (MAGA)”, is highly instrumental to capture the essence of his perspective on the evolving world order in which to pursue his international strategy. Obviously, MAGA puts the emphasis on “America” while its exact meaning is probably intentionally kept ambiguous. It may simply denote the country itself or include Canada as he said that it could be a 51st state of the United States or connote all the Western Hemisphere as he referred to the need of sovereign or effective control over the Panama Canal and Greenland. In any case, MAGA emphasizes the central importance of a geographically limited “America”, either a regional or at most a mega-regional power, and definitely not a global power. Naturally, such an America is juxtaposed with other great powers in world politics while it ranks as a first-among-equal.
In practice, however, MAGA’s ideational clarity is significantly blurred by the concurrent power struggle against China as the only potentially co-equal competitor, and by the transition from U.S. hegemony to a global balance-of-power system. It remains to be seen if the struggle dominates world politics with the strong inertia of serious US hegemonic decline or if the transition swiftly materializes into such a new system. Thus, these two perceptions on the circumstances lead to either a protracted or a swift transition toward the new system, involving an uncertain timeline of it, and complicating the current debates on where the world stands now.
In the increasingly multi-polarizing world, a global balance-of-power system is inevitable at least with the United States, China, Russia, and, perhaps, India. They are strategically independent in world politics in that they possess a full spectrum of military, economic, political, and other relevant power, including strategic nuclear deterrents, which renders them to be genuinely sovereign state actors. A federalized European Union, Japan, and other regional powers have the good potential if they are free from strategic dependency on the United States with a full spectrum of national power. Such a world is very similar to Samuel Huntington’s vision on world politics after hegemony as the clash of civilizations[4] in which each of them has a great power with its own de facto sphere of influence. This suggests that the international legal definition of sovereignty, particularly as applied to small and middle powers, is irrelevant in understanding the realities of such world politics.
In other words, such a global balance-of-power system works in accordance with a multipolar check-and-balance mechanism between several great powers, each of which controls its own civilizational region as its sphere of influence, usually consisting of small and middle powers. Despite constant friction on the fault lines between civilizations, the system sustains itself as long as great powers mutually respect their spheres of influence that are considered essential for their respective ways of life. Conversely, a major challenge against the vital civilizational interests by one great power against another, particularly a move to eliminate it as constitutive player in the multipolar system, will cause a great war, perhaps destabilize and, at worst, disintegrate the system.
Also, this system is insufficiently comparable, as a political-institutional expression, to the U.N. Security Council in which the five permanent members (P5) – the United States, the Soviet Union (now, Russia), the United Kingdom, France, and China － possess veto power. The effective functioning of the Council assumes mutual respect by P5 for their vital national interests, especially their respective spheres of influence that were set in accordance with the then-existing international distribution of power during the formative years of the Charter, which was consequent on their victory over WWII. Thus, it is imperative to not directly challenge the fundamental bargain struck among P5.
Never had such a challenge been made between the United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War, with the United Kingdom and France strategically dependent on the United States. But the Council’s functioning had considerably been hollowed out since they exercised a continual exchange of veto power. Also, the functioning had been weakened as the United Kingdom and France, two great colonial powers, underwent serious relative decline through the postwar full global decolonization. For the last decade, this has been complicated by the marked rise of China, particularly when it aligns with Russia.
Importantly, the U.S.-led West committed a direct challenge to Russia’s vital national interests through attempted NATO expansion toward Ukraine, an integral part of Russia’s sphere of influence. This means that the tacitly prohibited move has decisively destabilized the usually latent modus operandi of the post-WWII world order, especially the seemingly ironclad principles, norms and rules on the territorial integrity and political independence of states. In addition, the move was made when the United States and the U.S.-led West suffered marked relative decline in world politics, more specifically, in face of the significant rises of the BRICS and the Global South. Naturally, Russia has found a good opportunity to make a tit-for-tat countermove.
Hence, the ongoing U.S.-Russia truce talks are proceeding in the nascent global balance-of-power system, under the lingering shadow of the dysfunctional U.N. Security Council and the ineffective and perhaps fading liberal international order that the United States once led but has now been leaving.
The evolving Riyadh regime for global balance of power will hollow out the extant liberal international order that had flourished for eight decades since the establishment of the Yalta regime. An international rule of law, especially during the acme of U.S. hegemony, seemed to have operated for itself, but behind there existed U.S. preponderance and predominance that buttressed the order, in cooperation with the significant power and influence of the collective West. As French’s philosopher Blaise Pascal once said, justice without force is powerless, while force without justice is tyrannical. It is natural that a world order rises and falls in response to major changes in international distribution of power.
In fact, modern international history shows some precedents of major basic changes in world order as related to war and peace, that were brought about by U.S. preponderance and predominance, first in the making and later in the full.
In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson presented the Fourteen Points, including national self-determination, as the terms for peace after WWI. They put an end to the Concert of Europe, a classical balance-of-power system, because they led to dissolutions of the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman Empires that constituted essential plays in the system.
Also, U.S. Presidents Franklin D. Roosvelt and Harry S. Truman led to transform traditional customary international law on war by introducing the unconditional acceptance of severe conditions for surrender (or, “unconditional surrender”). The truce agreement with Japan contained unprecedented preliminary terms for the peace treaty, especially thorough political, economic, and social democratization of Japan. This is a decisive departure from traditional post-armistice negotiation for peace treaty about war reparation and cession of territory. Similarly, the wartime U.S. government played a central role to realize retroactive application of the crime of aggression and the crimes against humanity to individual German and Japanese political and military leaders at the Nuremberg and Tokyo war tribunals, which had not been considered legitimate until then under traditional customary international law.
Moreover, during the Cold War, the Soviet Union practiced the Brezhnev Doctrine with opinio juris sive necessitatis, effectively modifying the principle of territorial integrity and political independence of states. It is based on the concept of restricted sovereignty of the socialist bloc countries that made it legitimate for the Soviets to make armed intervention in a socialist country for preservation of the socialist bloc, such as the case of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The doctrine was not invalidated due to Soviet veto power in the U.N. Security Council and the cumulative practice through de facto acquiescence of it by the United States and other great powers, and among many, if not all, states.
Hence, the liberal international order is neither natural nor permanent, and now being reset toward a global balance-of-power system amid the shifting international distribution of power, particularly by the United States and Russia, a debilitating hegemon and a great power that are able together to dictate the general situation in world politics. This transformation will be unstoppable unless the U.S. government under President Trump reverses the current course of its world policy toward holding on to the liberal international order, which will most unlikely happen in the foreseeable future, given the current state of U.S. domestic politics[5].
Notably, the Munich Agreement of 1938 is similar to but different from a possible truce agreement on the war in Ukraine. Both cases sacrifice middle powers, but in different contexts. The former was concluded by Britain, France, and Italy as an appeasement for their temporary security against unsatiated Nazi Germany that was plausibly bent on further aggression and expansion. But the latter aims to strike an arrangement for durable stability and security through resetting mutually acceptable spheres of influence and strategic buffers in accordance with balance-of-power logic.
European democracies and Japan have long flourished and prospered under the U.S.-led liberal international order built on U.S. hegemony. Both had taken such circumstances for granted, while cocooned by the U.S. security umbrella and enjoying extensive access to large U.S. domestic markets for growth and development. On the other hand, the United States had willingly shouldered large security and economic burdens as long as the benefits of maintaining global hegemony exceeded the costs.
This used to be a win-win relationship in which Europeans had lived in a Kantian world, while Americans in a Hobbesian one[6]. The Europeans indulged themselves to enjoy freedom, democracy and an international rule of law with minimal security burdens. Also, the Japanese had had similar experience, but with a significantly less sense of indulgence due to the remaining Cold War structure in East Asia. On the other hand, the Americans had rather successfully pursued global predominance at the price of growing security, economic, and domestic-social burdens.
Yet, with the total cost performance of global hegemony increasingly unfavorable, U.S. domestic political strife had considerably intensified, leading to the birth of the second-term Trump presidency with basic policy lines against global hegemony. Consequently, the President has now been making a decisive U.S. exit from the liberal international order to a global balance-of-power system.
1) Europe
Such an exit has necessitated European democracies to strive to preserve the order that the United States once led and is now making an exit from. This is because the current mainstream European political leaders and policy elites have strong creedal commitment to and material interests in the order. No wonder, the United Kingdom and France have vainly tried to substitute the previous U.S. security role in military assistance to Ukraine, only to have found that they have inadequate military and economic capacities to do so. In fact, they have ended up a post-truce plan for air and maritime defense with minimal ground forces in Ukraine, perhaps with a total manpower strength of less than 30,000[7]. Even with some participation of ground troops from other European countries[8], such a European “assurance force” would hardly be an effective deterrent against another Russian invasion to Ukraine but degrade itself into a de facto peacetime guarantee occupation of the country while impairing its sovereignty.
Europe’s military capacity is very low due to the serious inadequacy of cumulative defense investment. Naturally, on March 19, the European Commission unveiled details on “ReArm Europe Plan/Readiness 2030” that are designed to drive an investment surge of €800 billions in defense capabilities[9]. However, this mid-term plan is a belated move and can by no means get in time to satisfy post-truce security needs of Ukraine. To make matters worse, it remains to be seen whether the EU is able to sustain necessary political momentum for such a large fiscal spending surge amid the deepening recession across Europe.
Outside the EU and in frequent alignment with it through NATO, the U.K. military is probably most well-armed in the region but still hardly able to operate effectively alone without free access to the U.S. intelligence and military information system, for example, the Global Positioning System (GPS)[10]. In addition, the U.K nuclear deterrents are operationally independent, but depend on the United States for missile technology, the related acquisition and maintenance support[11].
Obviously, Europe alone neither has necessary military and economic power to set a post-truce regional order centered on Ukraine to the status quo ante nor to restore the debilitating liberal international order. Europe could buttress a liberal regional order in wider Europe for a while but exhaust its power capacity before long to keep its strategically independent approach. This is highly plausible because the United States might no longer lead Europe in international military security through NATO, as the Trump administration considers giving up NATO Command[12]. Then, without solid U.S. defense commitment, Europe might have to rely on France’s minimum deterrent power as it considers offering a small and thin nuclear umbrella[13].
2) Japan
Japan has been adrift without clear strategic orientation. She needs free trade under the liberal international order as a global economic power. On the other hand, she relies on the sole U.S. security guarantor to cope with growing security threats from China, North Korea’ s nuclear brinkmanship, and Russia’s strategic alignment with China and/or North Korea. This results from the unique historical legacy of the complete defeat in WWII by U.S.-led Allies, the subsequent U.S.-led Allied occupation, and the continued existence of U.S. armed forces after the formal re-independence in 1952, having forced Japan to depend on U.S. extended nuclear deterrence and the world’s strongest power projection capability. Certainly, Japan’s military power is significant with limited power projection capability, but, as Japanese armed forces are built auxiliary to U.S. forces, the former is most effective when combined with the latter.
Thus, Japan’s choice in strategic orientation is much more constrained by the interplay of its severe security environment and historical legacy than Europe’s. Japan’s being on China’s orbit is impracticable given its communist regime. Her being on U.S. orbit has been practicable under the U.S.-led liberal international order, but now increasingly problematic as the United States itself is making an exit from the order. Japan’s standing alone as one of multipoles makes logical sense but involves great risk and uncertainty without knowing where she is situated on the transition from the liberal international order to a global balance-of-power system.
Consequently, until the start of the second-term Trump administration, Japan had emphasized unity of the collective West against Russia’s invasion in Ukraine and followed valued-based diplomacy in context of the liberal international order, at least seemingly earnestly. Yet, she has been much less entangled with heavy material burden thanks to its distant location in East Asia, making it possible to take a seemingly righteous Ukraine policy. On the other hand, Japan’s China policy generally goes well with that of Trump’s strong balancing policy against China. It remains to be seen how long Japan can retain good room for maneuver to take an ambiguous world-policy line
Evidently, the fundamental trends of the era are heading from the debilitating liberal international order to a global balance-of-power system. Yet, it is uncertain whether the transition will be swift or protracted due to the complicated interplay of structural transformation and intensified power-political process.
The current mainstream European and Japanese political leaders and policy elites have been accustomed and, probably, obsessed to adhere to the liberal international order. Should Europe and Japan dare to restore the status quo ante, they would exhaust their power capacity and fail to become constitutive plays of a next multipolar system. This means that such a system would consist of four great powers--the United States, China, Russia, and perhaps, India. Should Europe and Japan do otherwise, the system would include at least six great powers including these four players, Europe, and Japan. Such a system would have six poles with three liberal democratic great powers out of six, which would make such a world order more stable and liberal-democratic.
About the author:
Prof. Dr. Masahiro Matsumura is Professor of International Politics and National Security at St. Andrew’s University in Osaka, and currently a 2024 ROC-MOFA Taiwan Fellow-in-Residence at NCCU-IIR Taiwan Centre for Security Studies in Taipei. He is Member of IFIMES Council.
This work was originally submitted on April 12, 2025.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect IFIMES official position.
Ljubljana/Osaka, May 22, 2025
[1] IFIMES – International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies, based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, has Special Consultative status at ECOSOC/UN since 2018. and it’s publisher of the international scientific journal “European Perspectives”.
[2] Masahiro Matsumura, “The Russia-Ukraine warfare as the final stage of U.S.-Russia proxy war in Donbas (2014-2022)”, IFIMES Analysis, April 6, 2023, https://www.ifimes.org/en/researches/the-russia-ukraine-warfare-as-the-final-stage-of-us-russia-proxy-war-in-donbas-2014-2022/5156?.
[3] Jon Gambrell, “Saudi Arabia’s crown prince wins points for hosting the Russia-US summit on Ukraine”, Associated Press, February 19, 2025, https://apnews.com/article/saudi-arabia-us-russia-talks-analysis-mohammed-bin-salman-9a42a3f1e09599f423a693262caa179c; “Saudi Arabia Commends Phone Call Between US, Russian Presidents, Welcomes Hosting Summit Attended by Both Presidents”, Saudi Press Agency, February 15, https://www.spa.gov.sa/en/N2261807; and, “Outcomes of the United States and Russia Expert Groups On the Black Sea”, White House, March 25, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2025/03/outcomes-of-the-united-states-and-russia-expert-groups-on-the-black-sea/.
[4] They are the Western, Orthodox, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, African, Latin American, Sinic, and Japanese civilizations. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations, New York: & Schuster, 1996.
[5] Masahiro Matsumura, “Why truce talks now?: the significance of the Trump revolution”, IFIMES Analysis, March 28, 2025, https://www.ifimes.org/en/researches/why-truce-talks-now-the-significance-of-the-trump-revolution/5480.
[6] Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.
[7] Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.
[8] “UK says a 'significant number' of nations ready to provide troops for Ukraine peace”, Reuters, March 17, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/uk-says-significant-number-countries-ready-provide-peacekeeping-troops-ukraine-2025-03-17/.
[9] “Commission unveils the White Paper for European Defence and the ReArm Europe Plan/Readiness 2030”, European Commission, March 19,2025, https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_793.
[10] “Positioning, Navigation and Timing: Overview”, UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, March 26, 2025, https://www.gov.uk/guidance/positioning-navigation-and-timing-overview.
[11] George Allison, “Here’s how Britain’s nukes are ‘operationally independent’”, UK Defense Journal, March 9, 2025, https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/heres-how-britains-nukes-are-operationally-independent/.
[12] Courtney Kube and Gordon Lubold, “Trump admin considers giving up NATO command that has been exclusively American since Eisenhower”, NBC News, March 19, 2025, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-admin-considers-giving-nato-command-exclusively-american-eisenho-rcna196503.
[13] Courtney Kube and Gordon Lubold, “Trump admin considers giving up NATO command that has been exclusively American since Eisenhower”, NBC News, March 19, 2025, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-admin-considers-giving-nato-command-exclusively-american-eisenho-rcna196503.
