Abstract
This study examines the emerging fragmentation of the international system into six major geopolitical dominions: the United States, Germany-led Europe, Russia, China, India, and Iran. Each dominion leverages its unique geography-enabled advantages, combined with strategic tools such as military power, economic statecraft, and soft power to assert regional influence and compete globally.
The United States maintains primacy through a selective global presence, while Germany guides the EU with economic and normative power. Russia employs hybrid warfare and energy diplomacy to maintain its Eurasian influence. China pursues maritime expansion and connectivity through the Belt and Road Initiative. India emphasises strategic autonomy and multi-alignment in the Indo-Pacific. Iran uses asymmetric tactics and proxy networks to shape the dynamics of the Middle East.
This paper highlights two key competition zones: Africa, rich in resources and strategic locations, and the Arctic, which is emerging as a resource-rich, strategically vital region due to climate change. This fragmentation signals a shift from a universal post-war order to a multipolar world marked by regional-power competition.
Key Words: Geopolitical dominions, Great-power competition, Multipolarity, International system fragmentation
Introduction
The last paper (available here) examined the future of the international system through a philosophical lens, tracing its foundations to post-World War II ideals shaped predominantly by Western values and the influence of the United States. It explored the three core pillars underpinning this system: the ancient Greek ideal of ‘kalokagathos’, which integrates moral virtue and aesthetic excellence; the Roman legacy of international law and rule of law, emphasising justice, procedural regularity, and human-centred legal philosophy; and Christian morality, particularly the concepts of human dignity as the basis of human rights and the just war tradition.
This paper argues that contemporary international relations, exemplified by scandals like the Epstein List and conflicts such as the war on Iran, reflect a departure from these foundational principles, favouring power politics over ethical and legal norms. This trend suggests the imminent fragmentation of the international system, marking a shift away from the post-war order grounded in moral and legal universality towards a more fragmented, power-driven global order.
The second part of the paper explores the fragmentation of the international system, whereby a collection of six major powers is likely to rule the world by controlling their regions.
The Great Fragmentation
The globalised international system, along with international institutions and regimes, appears to be undergoing a process of fragmenting. The future international system is likely to be characterised by divisions into distinct regions, each governed by what may be termed geopolitical dominions. This study identifies six such geopolitical dominions and several spheres of competition in which these entities are expected to engage. This competition is anticipated to be violent, as historically observed when major powers delineate their spheres of influence.
– The American Dominion
It appears that there will be two such geopolitical dominions in the Western Hemisphere. First, and most obviously, it is the United States. The United States will most likely be able to command North America, a large part of South America, and possibly parts of Australasia, such as Australia and New Zealand. The US is a Pacific actor that often escapes the attention of European commentators, who conceptualise the US mostly through NATO, thereby treating it as an Atlantic actor.
As a geopolitical actor, the US continues to prioritise its primacy by maximising its offensive power. In line with offensive realism, the U.S. views great power competition as inevitable and seeks to prevent the emergence of peer competitors by dominating key geographic theatres.[1] This logic, combined with a classical geostrategic emphasis on controlling the Eurasian “chessboard”, continues to shape its current multi-regional posture.[2]
Geographically, U.S. operations reflect a rebalanced but still assertive global footprint. In the Western Hemisphere, Washington has intensified direct interventions—most notably the 2026 removal of Venezuela’s leadership — to reassert dominance in its immediate sphere and deny extra-hemispheric rivals access to resources and influence. Such actions embody the realist imperative to secure the near abroad before projecting power further afield. In the Middle East, U.S. military campaigns targeting Iranian infrastructure and enforcing blockades around the Strait of Hormuz aim to safeguard energy chokepoints and forestall any single power’s hegemony over the Persian Gulf and broader Eurasian rimlands, directly echoing Brzezinski’s call to prevent Eurasian consolidation against American interests.
Across the Indo-Pacific, the primary focus remains on deterring a rising China through forward military presence, alliance reinforcement, and technological containment. This theatre exemplifies Mearsheimer’s “tragedy” of great power politics: structural anarchy compels the established hegemon to check the ascending peer before it can dominate its own region and project power globally. By contrast, Europe receives reduced direct commitment, with Washington urging its allies to shoulder more of the conventional burden against Russia while preserving U.S. strategic flexibility elsewhere.
Overall, these geographically delineated operations demonstrate continuity in the U.S. grand strategy: primacy is maintained not by universal engagement but by selective, high-impact presence calibrated to geographic realities and power realities.
– The European Dominion (under German Leadership)
As I have written here, Germany is a self-proclaimed leader of the EU in terms of European geopolitical actorness. The European Union, under de facto German leadership, has transitioned into a pragmatic geopolitical actor that blends normative power with selective strategic autonomy, adapting to an era of great-power competition while prioritising its near abroad and economic resilience. This evolution closes the long-noted capability – expectations gap by leveraging collective economic weight and regulatory influence rather than traditional military primacy.[3] German economic hegemony — manifest in leadership on defence spending, energy policy, and enlargement — guides the EU’s geographically focused operations, embedding them in a normative framework that diffuses a rules-based order.[4]
Geographically, the EU’s efforts are centred on the European continent and its immediate rimlands. In Eastern Europe, sustained military-financial support for Ukraine, accelerated enlargement to Ukraine and Moldova, and hybrid countermeasures against Russian sabotage and disinformation are core operations. These moves aim to forestall Russian dominance in the shared neighbourhood and stabilise the eastern flank, reflecting Germany’s post-“Zeitenwende” push for collective European responsibility. Southern operations focus on Mediterranean partnerships and migration governance, although these remain secondary to Eastern priorities amid normalised confrontation.
Beyond the neighbourhood, the EU, under German guidance, pursues de-risking in the Indo-Pacific through trade agreements and technology standards, thereby extending its normative influence to secure supply chains without direct military projections. Transatlantic relations, recalibrated amid U.S. policy shifts, emphasise greater EU defence autonomy and industrial resilience.
The German leadership is not always openly claimed, at least not verbally. Instead, the German National Security Strategy of 2023 mentions Germany’s ‘special responsibility’ for peace, security, prosperity, and stability and the Federal Government’s ‘special responsibility’ for establishing the EU Rapid Deployment Capacity. [5] In the same vein, German leadership posits their country as a leader in European Security, declaring the importance of becoming the ‘best equipped armed force’ in Europe.[6] Former Chancellor Scholz would, however, make it an open claim at times: “As the most populous nation with the greatest economic power and a country in the centre of the continent, our army must become the cornerstone of conventional defence in Europe, the best-equipped force”.[7] On top of that, Germans are pressing for the creation of a unified European army, which would effectively give them access to French nuclear weapons – a bypass of international law that specifically rules out that Germany should ever be allowed to develop its own nuclear weapons.[8]
– The Russian Dominion
Russia’s geopolitical power stems fundamentally from its vast geography and strategic positioning as the world’s largest state, spanning Europe and Asia across 11 time zones. Occupying the Eurasian “Heartland” conceptualised in classical geopolitics, Russia controls an immense territory rich in energy resources, minerals, and Arctic access, enabling influence over key transit routes and buffers against external powers.[9] This geographical reach provides structural advantages: borders with 14 countries, dominance in the post-Soviet “near abroad”, and the capacity to project power across Eurasia, from the Baltic to the Pacific. Such expanse historically fosters security anxieties but also opportunities for regional hegemony, as Russia leverages its territorial depth to resist encirclement and secure resource-based leverage.[10]
To exercise its power, Russia deploys a hybrid toolkit that blends hard, soft, and informational instruments. Militarily, it employs coercive force and security guarantees to reintegrate the post-Soviet space, viewing this not as imperial nostalgia but as prudent geopolitics to counter the fragmentation and maintain strategic depth.[11] Hybrid warfare exemplifies this approach, fusing conventional operations with disinformation, cyber activities, and proxy elements to achieve objectives below the threshold of open conflict, as demonstrated in Crimea and other regions.[12] Energy diplomacy is another core tool: control over oil and gas pipelines enables economic coercion and political influence across Europe and Eurasia, tying neighbours to Moscow’s orbit.
Ideational instruments complement these. The “Russian World” (‘Russkii Mir’) framework projects soft power by cultivating cultural, linguistic, and conservative ideological ties among Russian-speaking diasporas and sympathetic elites abroad, extending influence beyond formal borders into the Global South and Europe.[13] This aligns with a consistent foreign policy rooted in national identity, prioritising great power status, sovereignty, and multipolarity over Western dominance.[14]
In sum, Russia’s geopolitical heft arises from geography-enabled resource and positional advantages operationalised through hybrid military-economic tools, soft-power narratives, and assertive regional policies. While constrained by economic vulnerabilities, these instruments sustain their role as revisionist powers, challenging the post-Cold War order. Its strategy underscores enduring continuity: geography dictates vulnerabilities and ambitions, and tools adapt to contemporary constraints.
– The Chinese Dominion
As the world’s third-largest country by territory and the largest by population, China shares land borders with 14 states and commands access to critical sea lines of communication through the South and East China Seas, the Taiwan Strait, and emerging Arctic routes. This geography provides both defensive depth and offensive potential: secure continental borders allow a focus on maritime expansion, while control of key chokepoints enables influence over global trade flows totalling more than $5 trillion annually.[15] Classical geopolitics frames China as a quintessential Rimland power capable of bridging Eurasian Heartland dynamics with Pacific projection, thereby challenging U.S. primacy in Asia and beyond.[16]
Beijing operationalises this reach through a sophisticated toolkit emphasising economic statecraft, military modernisation and narrative power. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched in 2013, serves as the cornerstone of geo-economic influence, channelling infrastructure investment across over 140 countries to create dependencies, secure energy routes, and extend political leverage—particularly in the Global South and Southeast Asia—without overt military coercion.[17] Complementing this is rapid military transformation: anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities, blue-water naval expansion, and precision-strike systems aim to deter intervention near China’s shores while projecting power farther afield, consistent with offensive realist imperatives to dominate the region.[18]
Territorial consolidation further underpins strategy; China has largely resolved land-border disputes to stabilise its periphery, freeing up resources for maritime assertiveness.[19] Ideational tools reinforce these efforts: narratives of “peaceful development”, multipolarity, and civilizational rejuvenation cultivate soft power via cultural diplomacy and South-South solidarity, while techno-economic dominance (e.g. the digital Silk Road, standards-setting) embeds influence in global governance.
In essence, China’s power rests on geography-enabled scale and positional advantages, deployed via hybrid economic-military instruments and an adaptive grand strategy. This positions Beijing as a systemic challenger, incrementally displacing the U.S.-led order through connectivity, capability building, and selective assertiveness rather than direct confrontation, although structural tensions with Washington remain acute. Constraints persist, including regional backlash and domestic economic headwinds; however, the fusion of geography and tools sustains China’s trajectory as a peer competitor.
– The Indian Dominion
India’s geopolitical power rests on its commanding geographical position as the preeminent state of South Asia and a maritime pivot in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). The world’s seventh-largest country by area, India controls a subcontinental landmass flanked by the Himalayas to the north, creating defensive depth yet contested borders with China, and shares frontiers with seven neighbours, including nuclear Pakistan. Its 7,500-kilometre coastline and island chains (Andaman and Nicobar, Lakshadweep) oversee critical sea lanes through which half the world’s seaborne trade and energy transit, linking the Persian Gulf, East Africa, and Southeast Asia. This geography confers both vulnerabilities (border disputes, encirclement fears) and structural advantages, positioning India as a natural balancer capable of projecting influence across the Indo-Pacific while securing continental buffers.[20]
New Delhi advances this reach through a flexible grand-strategic toolkit that prioritises strategic autonomy, multi-alignment, and capability accretion over formal alliances. Diplomatically, India pursues “multi-alignment”: deepening the Quad with the United States, Japan, and Australia for maritime domain awareness and to counter Chinese assertiveness, while sustaining defence ties with Russia, engaging with BRICS, and cultivating Global South partnerships—avoiding binary blocs in a multipolar order.[21] Militarily, a credible nuclear triad, naval modernisation (aircraft carriers, submarines, forward bases), and border infrastructure projects deter two-front threats and enable power projection into the IOR, consistent with realist imperatives to maximise relative power amid great power competition.[22]
Economically, initiatives such as “Act East”, supply chain resilience, infrastructure diplomacy, and trade agreements extend influence without overt coercion. Soft power—rooted in democratic credentials, cultural exports (Bollywood, yoga), and a 30-million-strong diaspora—amplifies India’s normative appeal across the Global South and advanced economies alike. This hybrid approach reflects a long-standing strategic culture that combines historical caution and pragmatic action.[23]
In summary, India’s geopolitical heft arises from its geography-enabled centrality in a vital region, deployed through adaptive diplomatic, military, and economic instruments and a grand strategy of resilient autonomy. While economic asymmetries and neighbourhood challenges impose constraints, these tools increasingly position India as an emerging pole shaping the Indo-Pacific balance and multipolar governance—neither a revisionist disruptor nor a passive status-quo actor.
– The Iranian Dominion?
The Middle East’s geopolitical landscape presents a complex challenge. Notably, amid the ongoing conflict involving Iran, Iran is emerging as a dominant geopolitical force in the region, competing with Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Iran’s geopolitical power stems from its commanding geographical position as a pivotal Eurasian crossroads and energy choke point. The world’s 17th-largest country by area, Iran straddles the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea, sharing land borders with seven states (including nuclear-armed Pakistan and strategic rivals Saudi Arabia and Iraq) while dominating the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one-fifth of global oil trade passes daily. Rugged mountain ranges (Zagros and Alborz) and vast deserts furnish natural defensive depth, enabling internal lines of communication and resilience against invasion. This geography confers both vulnerability (encirclement fears) and leverage: Iran acts as a natural buffer and connector between the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, and the Indian Ocean, positioning it to disrupt or facilitate Eurasian transit corridors.[24]
Tehran operationalises this reach via an asymmetric, expeditionary toolkit that compensates for its conventional military inferiority relative to the that of U.S. and Gulf adversaries. Central is the “axis of resistance”— a network of militant clients and proxies (Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Houthis in Yemen, Shia militias in Iraq and Syria) — deployed to project power, deter attack, and acquire strategic depth without a direct state-on-state war. This “grand strategy of militant clients” fuses ideological affinity, material support, and operational coordination to impose costs on rivals across multiple theatres.[25]
Ballistic and cruise missiles, increasingly supplemented by drones, provide precision standoff capabilities and credible deterrence, while the nuclear program serves as a latent leverage and insurance against regime change.
Energy statecraft and ideological soft power complement these tools. Threats to close the Strait of Hormuz or weaponise oil/gas flows exert economic coercion on global markets. Revolutionary Shia narratives and anti-imperialist discourse cultivate a transnational appeal among non-state actors and Global South audiences, framing Iran as a defender of sovereignty against Western hegemony.[26] Diplomacy with Russia and China adds great power ballast and sanctions relief.
In sum, Iran’s geopolitical influence arises from geography-enabled positional advantages — Hormuz dominance, buffer centrality, and defensive terrain—amplified through hybrid asymmetric tools, proxy networks, missile deterrence, and ideational mobilisation. Although constrained by sanctions, isolation, and conventional limits, this strategy sustains Iran as a resilient revisionist actor that shapes Middle Eastern security dynamics and challenges the U.S.-led order.
The competition zones
The future fragmented international system is likely to be characterised by ongoing competition between some of the abovementioned geopolitical dominions. This completion is likely to focus on two geographically defined areas: Africa and the Arctic region.
– Africa
Africa has re-emerged as a pivotal theatre of geopolitical competition among great powers, primarily the United States, China, and Russia, owing to its vast natural resources, strategic geography, expanding markets, and demographic significance. Scholars refer to Africa as the “new scramble” driven by geo-economic and soft-power imperatives rather than outright territorial conquest, with implications for global supply chains, diplomatic influence, and African agency.[27]
Africa’s importance is central to its resource endowments. The continent holds critical minerals (cobalt, rare earths, platinum, and uranium) essential for high-technology industries and the global energy transition, alongside oil and gas reserves that diversify great-power energy security. China’s “resource-for-infrastructure” model directly challenges traditional Western extractive strategies, enabling Beijing to secure long-term access while offering African states tangible development benefits without the political conditionality often attached to U.S. or European aid. This geo-economic rivalry intensifies in resource-rich states such as Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nigeria, where competition for concessions can shape local governance and stability in the region.[28]
Africa’s geopolitical value is further elevated by its strategic location. Control of key maritime chokepoints — the Horn of Africa, Gulf of Guinea, and Mozambique Channel — secures sea lines of communication that are vital for global trade. Military basing and arms exports have proliferated, with powers establishing or expanding their footholds to project influence and counter rivals.[29] Diplomatic leverage is equally critical: Africa’s 54 states deliver substantial voting power in the United Nations and other multilateral forums, making alignment a key objective of great power engagement.
Foreign aid functions as a primary instrument of soft power in this context. Scholars have demonstrated through rigorous empirical analyses that both U.S. and Chinese aid packages are designed to cultivate political support and ideological affinity, with measurable effects on recipient governments’ foreign policy alignment. However, such competition risks undermining African sovereignty, fostering debt dependency, and exacerbating local conflicts when external patrons back competing factions.[30]
In summary, Africa’s demographic boom — projected to comprise a quarter of the global population by 2050 — promises vast consumer markets and labour pools, ensuring that the continent will remain a decisive arena in the evolving multipolar order. Great-power rivalry is therefore not peripheral but constitutive of broader shifts in global influence, resource security and normative order.[31]
– The Arctic
The Arctic has been a pivotal theatre of geopolitical competition among great powers — chiefly Russia, the United States, and China — primarily because rapid climate-driven ice melt is transforming an inaccessible frontier into a resource-rich and strategically accessible region. Scholarly studies frame this “scramble for the poles” as a convergence of geo-economic opportunity, military posturing, and governance contestation with profound implications for global energy security, trade routes, and great power influence.[32]
The Arctic’s rising importance is due to its vast untapped resources. The region is estimated to contain significant portions of the world’s undiscovered oil and natural gas, alongside critical minerals essential for the green energy transition and high-technology supply chains. Dodds and Nuttall (2016) document how receding sea ice has intensified state and corporate interest in extraction rights, with overlapping continental shelf claims under UNCLOS (e.g. the Lomonosov Ridge) becoming flashpoints of legal and diplomatic rivalry. Russia, which possesses the longest Arctic coastline, has aggressively developed the Northern Sea Route (NSR) as a sovereign commercial corridor. China’s self-declared “near-Arctic” status and Polar Silk Road investments seek to secure alternative shipping lanes and access to resources.
Strategic geography amplifies these stakes. The NSR promises to shorten Asia–Europe transit times by up to 40%, reshaping global maritime trade and supply chain resilience. Military modernisation has followed: Russia has expanded its Arctic bases, icebreaker fleet, and missile deployments, prompting NATO and U.S. responses, including renewed forward presence, exercises, and infrastructure upgrades in Alaska and Greenland.[33] These developments risk securitising a region that has long been governed cooperatively through the Arctic Council.
Soft power and scientific engagement are additional vectors of influence. Great powers compete through research stations, search-and-rescue agreements, and economic partnerships with Arctic states and Indigenous communities; yet such rivalry can strain multilateral institutions and heighten tensions when security dilemmas override environmental cooperation.
In essence, the Arctic’s transformation, projected to feature ice-free summers within decades, positions it as a bellwether of multipolar order. Control over its resources and routes will increasingly shape global economic flows, military balances, and climate governance, making great-power competition there constitutive of broader 21st-century geopolitical realignment
Conclusion
This section explores state actors. Much remains to be explored regarding the consequences of the fragmentation of international law and institutions. Attention must be paid to non-state actors, especially transnational companies, and their roles in shaping the international system. Finally, a fundamental question must be addressed regarding the nature of our understanding of the international system and its actors. The “multiplex” (Acharya) hypothesis is worth investigating.
References
