There is a growing chorus about a “new world order,” but much of the language surrounding it is vague and recycled, attempting to impose clarity on a moment defined by fragmentation.
The truth is harder: we are not entering a new order so much as watching the old one unravel. The post-1945 framework—and especially the assumptions forged after 1991—are breaking down. Alliances are shakier, norms increasingly hollow, and power is moving in directions the old system can’t contain. This isn’t a transition; it’s a structural upheaval with no agreed-upon successor.
Trump’s trade policy exemplifies this rupture. It marks a blunt rejection of the U.S. role as global underwriter—militarily, economically, financially. Allies are being pushed to choose sides or risk losing access to American energy, security guarantees, and the dollar. To some, this feels like a sudden break. To others, it’s just the next chapter in a story that started with the 2008 crash, ran through COVID-19, and deepened with the war in Ukraine. What critics call reckless may, in historical context, look more like a reversion to pre-WWII realpolitik: harder borders, transactional alliances, and every state for itself.
This is how geopolitical revolutions unfold—not with declarations, but with drift, denial, and deep structural movement. Often, the defenders of the old system are the last to recognize that it’s already gone. The common narrative is that we are moving from a stable, U.S.-led system to something far more fragmented. The old order was anchored by American military dominance, the dollar’s centrality, open trade, and multilateral institutions. It brought relative peace, economic integration, and a framework for cooperation—at least in theory.
That framework is now dissolving. The U.S. is pulling back or making sharper demands. China is building its own institutional architecture. Russia has openly defied the post-Cold War consensus. Global trade is splintering, and institutions like the WTO and UN are sidelined or gridlocked. Successive shocks—financial, epidemiological, military—have exposed the system’s vulnerabilities. Many see a drift toward a multipolar world where rules matter less, and power, geography, and resource control matter more.
But the truth is more nuanced. What we call the “old order” was not a single unified system, but at least four distinct phases (Figure 1). The first spanned from the end of WWII to the early 1970s, defined by Cold War containment, Bretton Woods monetary stability, U.S. oil dominance, and postwar reconstruction. The second, from 1972 to 1991, featured the collapse of Bretton Woods, the rise of petrodollar diplomacy, oil shocks, and the beginning of global capital mobility. The third phase, from 1992 to 2008, was defined by U.S. unipolarity, NATO expansion, hyper-globalization, and the illusion of liberal inevitability. The fourth phase—from 2009 to the present—has been defined by fragmentation, rising multipolarity, and the return of strategic rivalry.
Figure 1. Phases of the old order. Source: Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc.
Click on the image to enlarge.
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The 2008 financial crisis was the inflection point. It shattered confidence in Western institutions and marked the beginning of U.S. retrenchment. It was followed by the shale revolution, a spike in commodity prices, and a rising China. As the old frameworks eroded, countries like Russia, China, and Iran began building parallel systems—alternative currencies, supply chains, and security blocs.
This transition is visible not just in events but in structure. Real prices for oil, food, and materials were at historic lows in the late 1990s, reflecting cheap inputs and uncontested U.S. dominance. By the late 2000s, those same prices had surged to generational highs. This wasn’t just a commodity cycle; it was a structural signal. Energy constraints tightened, demand from China exploded, and leverage built up in the global financial system. The shift in prices mirrored the shift in power.
That’s a lot to take in—and it gets even more complex when you look beyond the broad strokes. One of the clearest ways to make sense of it is through the Geopolitical Risk Index. Built from keyword tracking in major newspapers, it measures global tensions by capturing both the threat and reality of wars, terrorism, and diplomatic crises.
It’s a way to quantify uncertainty. When the index rises, it reflects growing instability—often followed by falling investment, slower growth, and increased financial risk. It turns geopolitical noise into something you can actually track.
Figure 2 shows Geopolitical Risk Index data from 1947. I modeled risk from the last GPR data point in March 2025 through 2029 using AI, and the result is sobering. Risk is projected to rise over the next 12 months and then plateau at levels higher than at any point since the first Gulf War (Figure 2). This suggests a world not in temporary crisis, but in a new era of structural volatility. The implications are profound: more fragmented trade, higher financial risk, contested supply chains, and social stress. Geopolitics is no longer a tail risk. It’s the backdrop.
Figure 2. Projected geopolitical risk is higher for the next 5 years than during any sustained period since the first Gulf War in 1990-1991.
Source: GPR & Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc. Click on the image to enlarge.
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The data aligns with history, yet looks noisy—almost random. But maybe there’s a deeper structure at work, something hidden beneath the surface that could help us better understand how geopolitical change actually unfolds.
Physicist David Bohm spoke of this kind of pattern in nature—a tension between what he called order and measure. What we observe often looks fragmented or chaotic only because it’s just a surface-level projection of a deeper, unfolding movement—what he called the implicate order. That lens helps when thinking about geopolitics too. What looks like disorder may actually be the visible tip of a larger transformation we haven’t yet decoded.
To investigate, I took the monthly GPR data, averaged it by year, then applied a five-year centered smoothing. A pattern emerged: geopolitical risk declined steadily from World War II until 2008, then sharply reversed (Figure 3). March 2025 hit levels not seen since the Korean War. That inflection marks something important—not a sudden break, but the culmination of a long buildup. Geopolitical revolutions rarely explode out of nowhere. They build—until the world we thought we understood no longer matches the ground we’re standing on.
Figure 3. The structure of world geopolical risk reached a post-World War II low and inflection point in 2008. The last unprojected data point (March 2025) is at Korean War levels. Source: GPR & Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc. Click on the image to enlarge.
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This isn’t what I expected from the GPR data. I’m not saying war is imminent—though that risk is real. What it shows is something deeper: a world tipping into a phase where instability isn’t the anomaly, it’s the baseline. It’s less about specific conflicts and more about a steady erosion of predictability—where old assumptions no longer hold and uncertainty becomes the default setting.
Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions makes it clear: paradigms don’t shift through orderly progress—they erupt, usually in defiance of the very institutions meant to nurture them. Scientific communities defend the dominant paradigm, ignoring inconvenient data and sidelining dissent. When the old model stops working, crisis sets in. A new paradigm takes over—not because it’s embraced, but because the old one collapses. The shift is messy. Yesterday’s experts become today’s relics, and the cycle begins again under a new orthodoxy.
To understand what’s unfolding, we need to shift not just our focus, but our way of seeing. Science isn’t about piling up facts—it’s about making sense of the world. Explanation shows how things work; understanding ties it all to context, meaning, and human experience. We need both, but understanding cuts deeper.
Too many experts today are stuck blaming the obvious—politicians, social decay, nostalgia. That’s understandable, but it doesn’t help. The geopolitical order is being reshaped by deeper forces we rarely talk about. Energy is one of the most critical, yet it barely registers in mainstream analysis.
This isn’t a clean transition to a new order. It’s a slow unraveling. And what’s emerging is more unstable, more contested, harder to decipher. Eventually, we’ll have to move past denial and start facing what’s really happening—with clarity, not just judgment and commentary.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Art Berman is Director of Labyrinth Consulting Services, Sugar Land, Texas, and a world-renowned energy consultant with expertise based on over 40 years of experience working as a petroleum geologist. Visit his website, Shattering Energy Myths: One Fact at a Time, and learn more about Art here.
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