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During the Malaysian prime minister's inaugural visit to China in April 2023, Anwar Ibrahim proposed the idea of establishing an Asian Monetary Fund (AMF), an idea that had previously been proposed at the height of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. The proposal in 1997 was due to frustration with the performance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Today, it is identified, together with de-dollarization, as part of efforts to reshape the global order. This paper explores the factors driving countries towards initiatives like the AMF and de-dollarization, and their prospects of successfully transforming the existing global order. This paper finds that initiatives such as the AMF and de-dollarization are driven by multiple factors, which include achieving monetary autonomy, and for a few, geostrategic objectives. This study argues that instead of replacing the liberal international order, the objective of the countries seeking change through the AMF or de-dollarization is to strengthen their voices in the international system by reducing those of the US. Nevertheless, these initiatives are hampered because they lack the qualities that give shape to and maintain the architecture of the international order: power and legitimacy. This study concludes that both initiatives are unlikely to significantly reshape the global order. De-dollarization still has a long way to go before it can displace the dollar in the global economy. Likewise, the establishment of the AMF may not in the end reshape the global order but could instead complement the existing one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Xi Jinping's Global Civilization Initiative, introduced in 2023 as part of China's broader foreign policy vision. It analyzes the key principles and components of the initiative, including its emphasis on mutual respect between civilizations, cultural exchange, common development, and multilateralism. The article contextualizes the initiative within China's approach to global governance and modernization, comparing it to previous frameworks like the "clash of civilizations" thesis. It explores the potential implications of the Global Civilization Initiative for China's role on the world stage and its relations with other nations. The article argues that this initiative represents a significant development in China's diplomatic strategy, reflecting its growing global influence and desire to promote an alternative vision of world order based on Chinese values and modernization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of this paper is to characterise the German term Zeitenwende as a “turning point in history”, which culminated with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the first German national security strategy. The paper examines if and how the global Zeitenwende changed German security and defence policy through four variables: a strategic environment, the character of security policy, perceived threats, and responses. This change is examined through the use of the concept of change in international relations and methods of historical and content analysis, as well as comparative methods. The structured interview is also used for the collection of relevant data. The paper concludes that, on the one hand, the Zeitenwende proves German transatlantic and multilateral security policy identity and interests, such as a greater and more accepted influence within NATO, holding the European division line and Russian geopolitical interests away from German borders, and spreading the European security order as wide as possible. On the other side, it contributes to the further evolution of German security policy by releasing it from residual Second World War constraints. Finally, the Zeitenwende involves Germany more strongly in a global systemic rivalry, making it less dependent on other “poles” of world order and with a priority given to competing with challengers rather than changing them from within.

The article is based on the author’s most recent book Powershift: India-China Relations in a Multipolar World (2020). It retraces the most salient moments and episodes in the India China border issue ever since the crisis broke out in 1959. What we learn from history is Chinese leaders have often shaped their policy on India as part of a wider geopolitical calculus, typically linked to the degree of pressure Chinese perceive on other geopolitical fronts. For India too, the nature of great powers relations impacts how it formulates China policy. This basic framework has remained relevant until the present day.Over the past decade, as the world order began shifting to a multipolar balance of power, India and China have confronted challenges in their relationship. The relationship is at a crossroad, and both Delhi and Beijing are struggling to find an equilibrium that allows both sides to pursue their interests and visions. Nevertheless, as Asia is returning to what it was for 1,800 years of the last two millennia, and, it is that big picture trend that Indian and Chinese leaders must pay attention to. Ultimately, this means stabilising India China relations

The aim of this article is to describe direction of Sino-Russian relations toward a new epoch - as the decision-making centers of both countries define them - indicating the commitment to building the future international order. It includes the synthesis of evolution of relations, descriptions of cooperation building of mutual confidence by both sides in variety of institutions; analyses of geo-economic relations emphasizing their geostrategic dimension and finally dynamics showing how two great powers want to achieve new areas of cooperation focused on building multipolar world order which is the essence of "new epoch". The argument goes towards recognizing the relationship as a "hhybrid alliance". This hybridity is a structural factor that can constrain the use of new dimensions of asymmetric interdependence as political leverage especially by United States against the two non-western powers but also facilitate to use it against West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the present order, called neoliberal globalization. It serves American corporations from the arms, mining, financial and ICT sectors to accumulate the capital. They made Wall Street the financial center of the world where the surplus of Europe, Japan and Latin American is transformed into the American bonds. This order is embedded in the institutions created and steered by the American state. The competitive advantage in this phase of the evolution of capitalism is given not only by control over so-called intellectual property but also by conquering a possibly large market. That is the reason for the competition between huge mega-corporations such as American GAFA or Chinese BATX. Capitalism is affected by the planetary crisis. A decline of the economic growth rate will take place as a result of natural limits from 3% to the anticipated 1%, including a decreased productivity of the computer revolution. Mechanisms of the functioning of the world economy will change: reconstruction of energy industry and transport, pressure on recycling of minerals, transformation of the labour market together with the use of robotics and artificial intelligence, the end of consumptionism. The daily issues include the problem of supplementing economic globalization with a political control mechanism and including a new civilizational power, which China is becoming. The latter opt for a multipolar order, where local civilizations will preserve their separate character and where they will be able to create a system of supplying their economies with deficit raw material and outlets but without military bases and without following the USA in recognizing certain areas to be the "zones of vested interests". The world will be different but will it be worse? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the period of the 21st century leading up to the Corona Virus pandemic, there was increasing consensus that the global order that had existed since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union where the unipolar hegemony of the United States was in relative decline, weakening and transforming. It was transforming from a unipolar to multipolar order, of course, the US was not going to leave the transformation uncontested in order to retain its privileged global position. The Corona Virus outbreak was a black swan event, it is also being used by various international actors to leverage opportunities caused by the weaknesses exposed in this extraordinary time. The US has been acting in an aggressive manner during the pandemic in an effort to try and weaken opponents and coerce friends in order to ‘cancel’ the pre-Corona Virus global transformations and retain its global hegemony.

The current international order is in transition, driven by the interplay of its main actors: Washington, Moscow, Beijing, and less significantly, the European Union. Other emerging powers are also challenging the present arrangement and if successful, they will eventually create a multipolar global order. The transient international order is currently characterised by chronic instability, regional and global turmoil, and a dramatic decline in its ease of governance. The two decades of the new millennium saw fundamental changes in the power constellation of international actors. Those changes affected Europe and will further determine opportunities to establish a peace and security order for the whole of Europe. The central question is whether the emerging multipolar order can provide security and welfare for the inter- national community. Or, will we see policies based on protracted narrow definitions of national interests, undermining opportunities for trust and confidence-building among the driving forces of the transformation process? Are we bound to reawaken memories of the bipolar, Cold War era, with its proxy wars that instrumentalised domestic and regional conflicts for external purposes?

After more than three decades of bipolar epoch, followed by the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States of America became the unique superpower in international relations. Currently, there is a multipolar era, in which the world power has distributed to many actors in the international arena. The United States of America and the Russian Federation are two of the greatest powers of the new multipolar epoch, whose state-of-the-art geostrategic relationships will influence the way the world order in the 21st century will be configured. Russia's opposition to Washington's actions in the post-Cold War era is one of the causes that gradually resulted in the transition to a multipolar era in the international system. The present paper briefly presents, by the political realism perspective, the dynamic of the USA and the Russian Federation power relations, in the context of the current multipolar world order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dansk udenrigs- og sikkerhedspolitik med dets fokus på at fremme dansk sikkerhed, danske interesser og danske værdier står over for nye betingelser. Det centrale spørgsmål er, hvordan dansk udenrigs- og sikkerhedspolitisk aktivisme skal operere i en stadig mere multipolær verdensorden. I artiklen anvendes en neoklassisk realistisk analyseramme, som muliggør analyse af, hvordan igangværende udviklinger i systemiske og indenrigspolitiske betingelser påvirker dansk udenrigs- og sikkerhedspolitik. Analysen viser, hvordan handlerummet for den danske værdipolitiske udenrigs- og sikkerhedspolitiske aktivisme mindskes særligt som følge af USA's svækkende stormagtsposition og dermed et øget pres på liberale værdier som universelle værdier. Handlerummet mindskes yderligere som følge af øget indenrigspolitisk fokus på varetagelsen af danske økonomiske og kommercielle interesser, som i stigende grad afhænger af stærke og stabile relationer til nye økonomiske og politiske magtcentre, som ikke deler værdier med Danmark. Den ændrede linje i dansk udenrigs- og sikkerhedspolitisk aktivisme viser sig tydeligst i forhold til Danmarks håndtering af den nye stormagt Kina, hvor 1990ernes danske megafondiplomati på det værdipolitiske felt er slut.

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The article focuses on the political and economic relations between Russia and South Africa. Topics discussed include early ties between the two countries dating back to South Africa's colonial period, the state of relations between South African and the Soviet Union after the Second World War until the 1990s and the Treaty of Friendship and Partnership along with agreements on trade and economic cooperation signed in 2006.

America’s diplomacy towards Europe has passed through two broad historic phases. A first, isolationist phase, determined in part by America’s need to maintain its domestic multinational consensus, was replaced, after World War II and under the Soviet threat, by a policy of hegemonic engagement. The Soviet collapse opened a new era forcing a reinterpretation of America’s role in Europe and the world. Four different narratives have emerged: triumphalist, declinist, chaotic or pluralist. If a unipolar American role seems unlikely to persist, American decline is all too possible. A new hegemonic replacement seems unlikely, which makes the pluralist narrative plausible and desirable. This multipolar world will require an adaptation of the Western alliance and a new way of thinking about interstate relations. Confederal Europe, for its experience in bargaining and conciliation, might have much to offer to the new plural world order. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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