THE New world order – or New Geopolitical World Order – means the international geopolitical plane of the correlations of power and strength between Nation States after the end of the Cold War.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1989, and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, in 1991, the world was faced with a new political configuration. The sovereignty of the United States and capitalism has extended to virtually the entire world and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) has established itself as the largest and most powerful military treaty International. The planet, which was previously in the so-called “Bipolar Order” of the Cold War, started to look for a new term to designate the new political plan.
The first expression that can be designated to define the New World Order is the unipolarity, since, from a military point of view, the USA became sovereign in face of the impossibility of any other country to rival the North Americans in this regard.
The second expression used is the
multipolarity, because after the end of the Cold War, military power was no longer the main criterion to be established to determine the global potential of a National State, but the power economic. In this plan, new fronts emerged to rival the US, namely: Japan and the European Union, at first, and China at a second moment, especially from the end of the decade of 2000.Finally, we have a third, more consensual proposal: the unimultipolarity. This expression is used to designate the dual character of the global power order: "uni" to designate the US military and political supremacy and "multi" to designate the multiple centers of power economic.
Changes in the international hierarchy
Another change brought about by the emergence of the New World Order was the need to reclassify the hierarchy among nation states. Previously, it used to classify countries into 1st world (developed capitalist countries), 2nd world (developed socialist countries) and 3rd world (underdeveloped and emerging countries). With the end of the second world, a new division was drawn up.
From then onwards, the world is divided into countries in the North (developed) and countries in the South (underdeveloped), establishing an imaginary line that does not entirely obey the north-south cartographic division, as we can see in the figure bellow.
Map with the north-south division and the area of influence of the main power centers
It is possible to see, on the map above, that the division between north and south does not correspond to the established division usually by the Equator Line, since the criteria used for this division are economic, and not cartographic. It is noticed that some countries in the northern hemisphere (such as the states of the Middle East, India, Mexico and China) are found in the countries of the South, while the countries of the southern hemisphere (such as Australia and New Zealand), as they are more developed economies, are found in the countries of the North.
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On the map above we can also visualize the areas of political influence of the main world economic actors. It is worth remembering, however, that the US area of influence may extend beyond the established division, since its foreign policy often operates in the most diverse areas of the world, especially in some regions of the Middle East.
The "War on Terror"
As we have seen, after the end of the Cold War, the United States found itself isolated in the military supremacy of the world. Although Russia has inherited most of the Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal, the country has plunged into a deep crisis over the years. 1990s and early 2000s, which did not allow the country to maintain the conservation of its arsenal, as this costs a lot of money.
In light of this, the United States needed a new enemy to justify its massive investments in weapons and weapons technology. In 2001, however, a new enemy emerged with the 9/11 attacks attributed to the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda.
The 9/11 tragedy killed hundreds of people, but motivated the US to spend even more on weapons. ¹
With that, under the command of the then president George W. bush, the United States began a frenzied war on terror, on which hundreds of billions of dollars were spent. Spending was primarily directed at the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan under the allegation that the Taliban regime that ruled the country would support al-Qaeda. Second, with the persecution of the leaders of this terrorist organization, especially Osama Bin Laden, who was found and killed in May 2011 in Pakistan.
What can be observed is that there is, at least for the time being, no nation that dares to wage war against the American power. The “enemy” is now much harder to fight, as weapons of mass destruction do not can be used, as they are groups that attack and hide among the civilian population of countless countries.
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¹image source: Ken Tannenbaum and Shutterstock
By Rodolfo Alves Pena
Graduated in Geography
