As the U.S. retreats, Asia and the Global South begin redrawing the Global Order

By Mehmet Enes Beşer

The post-Cold War dream of an American global order—liberal in ideology, capitalist in architecture, and technocratic in tone—was once celebrated as universal. That order, built on the shoulders of international institutions and trading regimes crafted in Washington, New York, and Geneva, held out the prospect of prosperity through union and stability through conformity. That promise is now coming apart at the seams. As the United States looks inward, weaponizes trade, and recedes from multilateral commitments, the stage is more and more set for a remaking of world order—one less Western, less ideological, and more responsive to the developmental imperatives of Asia and the Global South.

This change is not merely the result of U.S. exhaustion or isolationism. It is the accumulating fruit of decades of disillusion among developing nations that had borne the costs of a model of globalization that never quite yielded equitable returns. For most of the Global South, the liberal economic order was one of open markets with no buffers, fiscal retrenchment with no investment, and institutional reform without sovereignty. The COVID-19 pandemic, climate crisis, and financial volatility have heightened these complaints only and laid bare the frailties of a system whose advantages have been both variable and provisional.

Now, Asia’s rising powers—particularly China, India, and the ASEAN economies—are no longer content to subscribe to rules that they did not write. Now they are beginning to define different models of growth, governance, and international engagement. These models emphasize state-driven development, digital sovereignty, industrial policy, and South–South cooperation. And unlike the Washington Consensus, they are premised on pragmatism, multipolar interaction, and pluralism, not political conditionality or homogeneity.

The presence of China is most clearly evidenced in this shift. Under initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and BRICS cluster deepening, Beijing has tried to build alternative—and now more respectable—forums for infrastructure financing, trade, and diplomatic interactions. While critics are justified in demanding to know the strategic and debt sustainability implications of certain Chinese-led projects, it is doubtful that they have filled vital gaps created by Western hesitancy. To most countries in Africa, South Asia, and Latin America, Beijing is no longer considered a revisionist power but a responsive one.

India, in return, is emerging as a strategic counterweight—not by following China’s approach, but by promoting inclusive multilateralism on the basis of the Global South’s development agenda. With its G20 presidency and leadership of clusters like the International Solar Alliance and BIMSTEC, New Delhi has emerged as a flag bearer of climate justice, technology equity, and supply chain resilience. India’s own strategic autonomy and determination not to get drawn into the Cold War alliance blocs equally indicate a greater Global South hope for a different kind of leadership—a mix of national interest and normative novelty.

Where their neighbors are getting sucked into US-China competition, ASEAN states—long peripheral to big power stories—are secretly building the most dynamic vision for regional integration in the world. With visions like the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), ASEAN is envisioning an open regionalism idea focusing on connectivity, digital trade, and regulatory coordination without requiring political convergence. In a way, ASEAN incrementalism gives the post-American order a functioning blueprint: polycentric, nimble, solution-focused, but not ideological-oriented.

This new architecture is not without limitation, however. Coordination across the Global South remains lopsided, and the majority are still lacking the institutional potential or the budget room to be able to contribute significantly to global norms. Moreover, as America recedes, it does so not with flair but with dislocation—leaving vacuums that are quickly filled by zero-sum competitions for influence rather than positive substitutes. Such an environment poses a threat not only of fragmentation, but also of the resurgence of spheres of influence that undermine the very sovereignty and multilateralism the Global South seeks to preserve.

To avert this, Asia’s rising powers are now called upon to do more than bridge gaps, but make frameworks. That is more than bilateral deals and infrastructure loans. It is to co-create new norms of data governance, green finance, labor rights, and debt restructuring. It is to invest in institutions—not just banks and blocs, but knowledge centers, legal institutions, and multilateral forums that embody the values and priorities of the majority world.

High stakes are involved. While Western economies are creaking with political division and strategic exhaustion, the legitimacy of the liberal order is eroding further. Unless Asia and the Global South step into the breach with combined, cooperative approaches, the alternative will not be a superior world—it will be an insecure and disputed one.

Conclusion

The U.S. isn’t disappearing from the world stage, but it is no longer the only writer of its script. Into the vacuum step Asian powers and Global South alliances that have long sat on the margins of world rulemaking but now hope to remake it in their own image. This is not a time of revolution—it is a time of evolution. But evolution requires guidance.

How much the future world order will be more equitable, more plural, and more sustainable will depend on the ability of the emerging powers to turn discontent into design and ambition into architecture. For India, China, and Southeast Asia too, the test is not how to lead, but how to lead differently—through the pursuit of equity, resilience, and pluralism.

The old order is unraveling. What moves in to fill the space will be chosen not by the lack of U.S. presence, but by the presence—and will—of whoever rises in its stead. The world is no longer waiting for permission. It is beginning to act.