Polycrisis, the Rise of the Global South, and the Reconfiguration of the International System, analyzed from a Latin American perspective

Reseña

The objective of this analysis is to identify the central elements of the polycrisis that is currently affecting the global capitalist “world system” and, consequently, the international system as a whole. Among a wide range of variables that contribute to exacerbating this multiple crisis, which we do not hesitate to describe as systemic, we highlight six themes that, in our opinion, are key to identifying the risk factors that most strongly strain this power structure. These themes, which certainly do not exhaust the search for new points of fracture or breakdown, would, in our view, be the following: i) a crumbling world order; ii) accelerated changes and realignments in the context of a rapid reconfiguration of alliances; iii) marked imperial decline and the emergence of strong disruptive trends; iv) the emergence of a diffuse multipolarity that is not without contradictions but is nevertheless expanding strongly; v) the “defeat of the West” on different levels (military, economic, and geostrategic) in a world without rules, where the greatest attacks on multilateralism and globalization come from the managers and beneficiaries of the Bretton Woods system of governance; and vi) the prevalence of a “Non-Hegemonic World Order” where there is no superpower capable of imposing, until now, universal and complete hegemony. Or, failing that, a neo-Westphalian agreement that manages to restore minimal areas of sovereignty and autonomy for countries with fewer resources of power, damaged by the overwhelming advance of the “rampant unilateralism” promoted by Donald Trump.