Opinion | Welcome to a world where wars don’t end and sanctions don’t work

For much of the modern era, power was easy to recognise. It belonged to the states that could win wars decisively, enforce sanctions effectively and impose political outcomes far beyond their borders. That definition no longer works.

The world is moving towards what scholars have described as a form of “distributed multipolarity”, a landscape in which no single actor – not the United States, not China, not Russia – can fully shape events in the way great powers once expected.

Tools once seen as instruments of dominance produce diminishing returns. The outcomes of recent conflicts and crises suggest that the global order is shifting in quieter, more complicated ways than many anticipated.