Call it Borrell's theorem or Borrell's paradox. The more powerful countries in the heavyweight and middleweight categories there are in the world, the less it is governed by the rule of law, according to Josep Borrell, the foreign policy chief of the European Union (EU). To translate that into non-diplomatic terms: The law of the jungle is taking hold, if it ever ceased to exist.

On the sidelines of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly meeting in New York at the end of September, the vice president of the European Commission spoke to law students at New York University. Borrell pointed to this "paradox" of a world that is multipolar but has less "multilateralism." A world with a greater number of powers, but which is freeing itself from existing norms. More wild animals, fewer bars. It's a good description of today's international scene – from the atrocities perpetrated against the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh to Russian aggression against Ukraine.

The Western world is no longer hegemonic. Demographics, economics, technology, nuclear arsenals here and there: All the criteria are in place to establish an increasingly fragmented map of power. From China to Brazil, from India to the Persian Gulf, the spread of the instruments of power is gradually neutralizing Western supremacy.

The West (North America, Europe and bastions of the Asia-Pacific) has lost many of its monopolies. It has to share: wealth, military power, the narrative of history, the ability to dictate what should be the "norm" in a wide variety of areas – mode of government, human rights, the environment, etc. Only Vladimir Putin's Russia and Xi Jinping's China are calling for an end to a Western hegemony that no longer exists. Autocrats always need an enemy.

The 2024 edition of RAMSES, an annual prospective analysis of the state of the planet by researchers at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), speaks of an evolution characterized by "Western disengagement" from the world, meaning the weakening of Western influence.

But multipolarity is not just the result of the emergence of China and Russia as competitors to the United States and Europe. It is the result of the arrival in force, alongside Brazil and India, of a number of middleweight powers that are asserting themselves in their region.

The future of the Middle East is being decided in Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel far more than in Washington, Moscow or Beijing. Multipolarity also means the "relativization" of the strength of the great powers, as a result of the rise of the light-heavyweight or middleweight class in regional leagues, writes RAMSES editor-in-chief Dominique David.

You have 48.7% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.