For several centuries, the international system almost always seemed to have a centre.

It was not necessarily an uncontested centre, nor even a power capable of imposing its will everywhere. But somewhere there was a state, a group of powers or a set of institutions dominant enough to structure trade, establish part of the rules, secure major commercial routes, organise alliances and shape the contours of the international order.

Europe occupied that position for a long time. London stood at the heart of a global commercial and financial system in the nineteenth century. After 1945, Washington built around its military, economic, monetary and technological power an architecture whose foundations remain largely intact.

The world of 2026 has not completely left that order behind.

But it no longer quite lives within it either.

American power remains formidable. China has become indispensable. Europe retains exceptional economic weight. India is rising. Russia continues to exercise strategic influence disproportionate to the size of its economy. Middle powers, from Türkiye to Saudi Arabia and from Brazil to Indonesia, increasingly seek to define their own interests.

Yet none of these forces appears capable, on its own, of organising the system now emerging.

The twenty-first century may therefore become neither Chinese, American, European nor Asian.

It may simply become a world without a centre.

The Long Interlude of Order

International history has never been as orderly as retrospective narratives sometimes suggest. Wars, imperial rivalries and economic disruptions constantly ran through successive international systems.

Yet certain periods produced an exceptional concentration of power.

In the nineteenth century, the British Empire possessed a remarkable combination of naval power, finance, industry, commerce, territorial empire and control over maritime routes. London obviously did not govern the world, but a significant part of the global economy passed through London.

After 1945, the United States built something broader still.

The dollar became the central currency of the international system. The Bretton Woods institutions structured much of the global economy. American alliances organised the security of Europe and much of developed Asia. US multinational corporations occupied central positions across numerous industries, before technology companies extended that dominance into the digital economy.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, this concentration reached a level rarely seen in modern history.

For a few years, the question was no longer really which power dominated the international system.

The question was how far that dominance could extend.

That period was brief.

America Remains at the Centre of a World Moving Away From It

Predicting the decline of the United States has become an intellectual exercise almost as old as American power itself.

Those predictions have often been premature.

The United States still possesses advantages that no other country holds simultaneously: an enormous economy, the world's deepest financial markets, the dominant international currency, exceptional technological capabilities, powerful universities, a global military apparatus and an unrivalled network of alliances.

In 2025, despite an annual decline in its expenditure, the United States still accounted for roughly one-third of global military spending, at $954 billion according to SIPRI. China, in second place, spent around $336 billion.

America has therefore not disappeared from the centre.

What has changed is something else: being the leading power no longer necessarily means being able to organise the system alone.

Washington must now arbitrate between several strategic theatres, negotiate more extensively with its allies, protect selected supply chains, respond to China's rise and deal with states willing to cooperate with the United States without necessarily accepting alignment.

The problem is not simply the amount of power available.

It is the rising cost of converting that power into order.

China Can Challenge the Centre Without Necessarily Occupying It

China represents the major geopolitical transformation of recent decades.

Its economic rise has altered commercial, industrial and technological balances. Beijing has become an essential trading partner for much of the planet. Its infrastructure, investments, manufacturing capabilities and financial weight provide instruments of influence that would have been difficult to imagine only a few decades ago.

Its military power is also expanding. According to SIPRI, Chinese military expenditure increased for the thirty-first consecutive year in 2025.

But replacing the United States requires more than competing with it.

A central power must be capable not only of accumulating resources, but also of producing a system around itself in which others see an advantage in participating.

This is where the transition becomes less straightforward.

China can be economically indispensable without becoming the preferred strategic ally of its trading partners. It can finance infrastructure without necessarily exporting a universal institutional model. It can challenge certain Western norms without yet possessing an alternative architecture broad enough to replace them.

Beijing could therefore become something different from a new hegemon: a pole powerful enough to prevent the continuation of a unipolar world, without being dominant enough to construct another one around itself.

That distinction is essential.

Europe: Power Without a Political Centre

Europe represents a different paradox.

It possesses the market, human capital, infrastructure, institutions and a considerable industrial base. It remains capable of imposing regulatory standards far beyond its borders.

But its power remains fragmented.

The European Union is neither a completed federal state nor a conventional international organisation. It exercises a form of shared sovereignty whose effectiveness varies considerably depending on the field.

In trade or competition policy, this construction can generate remarkable power.

In war, diplomacy and certain dimensions of industrial policy, national interests re-emerge much more strongly.

The war in Ukraine and growing strategic uncertainty have nevertheless accelerated a transformation. European military expenditure increased by 14% in 2025 to approximately $864 billion, according to SIPRI, marking the strongest annual increase in Central and Western Europe since the early years of the Cold War.

Europe is rediscovering an old reality: economic power is not always sufficient to guarantee strategic autonomy.

It may become one of the great poles of the emerging world.

But a pole is not necessarily a centre.

The Rise of Powers That Do Not Want to Choose

The deepest transformation may be taking place elsewhere.

During the Cold War, much of international politics was interpreted through the confrontation between two blocs. Even non-aligned countries partly defined their position in relation to that bipolarity.

Today's landscape is different.

India can cooperate with the United States in the Indo-Pacific while maintaining relations with Russia. Gulf monarchies can preserve Western security partnerships while deepening their economic relationships with Asia. Türkiye belongs to NATO while pursuing a largely autonomous foreign policy. Brazil can defend Western, South American and emerging-world interests without regarding these identities as contradictory.

This behaviour is sometimes described as a new form of non-alignment.

It may be more accurately understood as multi-alignment.

States are no longer necessarily trying to remain outside systems of power.

They are trying to participate in several of them simultaneously.

The objective is not always to choose a camp, but to prevent a single choice from reducing their freedom of action.

This logic profoundly alters the international hierarchy.

The more options middle powers possess, the less great powers can take their alignment for granted.

Globalisation Is Not Disappearing

It would be tempting to interpret this fragmentation as the end of globalisation.

The numbers tell a more complicated story.

Global trade in goods and services exceeded $35 trillion in 2025, an all-time record. During the first half of 2026, the value of world trade continued to rise strongly, even though part of that increase reflected higher prices.

The world is therefore not simply disconnecting.

It is reorganising its connections.

Value chains are shifting. Governments are placing greater emphasis on economic security. Some strategic production is being reshored or diversified. Trade restrictions are multiplying across several sensitive industries.

At the same time, South-South trade is expanding. In 2025, it grew faster than global trade as a whole.

UN Trade and Development increasingly describes an international trading system in which fragmentation, regionalisation and uneven integration are becoming structural characteristics.

Globalisation may therefore survive the political order that accompanied it.

This may prove to be one of the century's great paradoxes.

We could end up with a deeply interconnected economy operating within an increasingly fragmented political system.

Several Worlds Within the Same World

This evolution is producing a strange international geography.

The United States can remain at the centre of the financial system.

China can remain at the centre of many industrial supply chains.

Europe can remain at the centre of regulatory power.

The Gulf can become increasingly important in energy and financial flows.

India can emerge as one of the principal demographic, digital and industrial centres.

None of these functional centres necessarily corresponds to the political centre of the international system.

That may be where the real novelty lies.

The world may no longer possess a single hierarchy.

It may possess several.

A country can depend on the United States for its security, China for its trade, Europe for access to markets, the Gulf for energy and digital infrastructure controlled by private companies whose power sometimes exceeds that of many states.

The map of power therefore changes according to the question being asked.

Who controls the currency?

Who manufactures semiconductors?

Who secures maritime routes?

Who controls the data?

Who produces the batteries?

Who controls critical minerals?

Who can impose sanctions?

Who can circumvent them?

There is no longer necessarily a single answer.

The Return of Sovereignty

This dispersion partly explains the spectacular return of the language of sovereignty.

Energy sovereignty. Industrial sovereignty. Food sovereignty. Digital sovereignty. Strategic autonomy.

Such expressions would have sounded almost anachronistic at the height of liberal globalisation.

They now sit at the heart of public policy.

Because when a system has a stable centre, part of security can be outsourced.

When that centre becomes uncertain, states begin rebuilding reserves.

They want to produce more domestically, diversify suppliers, control certain technologies, secure infrastructure, rebuild defence industries and reduce their most dangerous dependencies.

The increase in global military expenditure is one of the clearest manifestations of this shift. According to SIPRI, military spending reached approximately $2.887 trillion in 2025, its highest level on record, after eleven consecutive years of growth.

Rearmament is not merely a consequence of today's wars.

It also reflects changing expectations.

States are preparing for a world in which collective guarantees appear less certain.

A Freer World — and Perhaps a More Dangerous One

The disappearance of a single centre is not necessarily a catastrophe.

It can provide greater autonomy to middle powers and emerging countries. It can reduce the ability of any one actor to impose its preferences. It can encourage more flexible coalitions and allow new economic centres to emerge.

For much of the world, multipolarity also means the ability to negotiate.

But the dispersion of power has another side.

An international order does not rest solely on domination. It also depends on the ability to establish rules, arbitrate disputes and provide certain collective goods.

When several powers can block a decision but none can impose a durable solution, crises become harder to resolve.

Multipolarity can therefore produce greater strategic freedom.

It can also produce greater uncertainty.

History offers no guarantee that an equilibrium among several powers will naturally be stable.

If anything, it suggests the opposite.

Perhaps No One Will Succeed Anyone

We often try to understand the twenty-first century through a question inherited from previous centuries:

Who will replace the United States?

China?

India?

An Asian coalition?

A world organised around several blocs?

Yet the question assumes that history must necessarily appoint a successor.

That is far from certain.

The international system could evolve towards a configuration in which the United States remains the leading power without recovering its former dominance, China continues to rise without becoming a new hegemon, Europe remains an economic giant with incomplete strategic power, India gradually expands its influence, and dozens of middle powers use this competition to increase their own autonomy.

No one would truly replace anyone.

The centre would simply have fragmented.

Power After Hegemony

For a long time, power consisted partly in drawing the world towards oneself.

Controlling territories, trade routes, capital, resources, technologies or institutions allowed states to convert material superiority into political influence.

In the world now emerging, power may take another form.

It may become less about organising the entire system and more about preserving enough autonomy not to be entirely subjected to the system others construct.

The most powerful states may therefore not necessarily be those capable of dominating everything.

They may be those capable of navigating several systems simultaneously, limiting their critical dependencies, preserving alliances without becoming prisoners of them and maintaining enough options to change course when circumstances require it.

A world without a centre will not be a world without power.

On the contrary, it may be a world in which power is pursued everywhere precisely because it is no longer concentrated anywhere.

For centuries, states sought to reach the centre of the world.

The twenty-first century may impose a much harder task:

learning to live in a world where there is no centre anymore.

Atlas Limits — 102nd article

Main Sources

International Monetary Fund — research and analysis on the world economy and geoeconomic fragmentation.

World Bank — research on global economic prospects, international trade and emerging economies.

UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) — Key Statistics and Trends in International Trade 2025 and Global Trade Update 2026.

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) — SIPRI Yearbook 2026 and Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2025.