The Age of Fluid Alliances

Why realist foreign policy is here to stay and what the future of the international system may hold

This is a guest essay from a new page called “The World of Geopolitics.” If you are interested in geopolitics and international relations, please consider subscribing.

Once the dust settled in Europe and Japan after the Second World War, a new world order began to emerge, in which the United States and the Soviet Union stood as the only two global superpowers. The bipolarity between the Soviet Union and the United States was dangerous but peaceful. For the most part, middle powers sided with either pole, on the basis of morals and shared ideology (at least theoretically). But when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, the United States stood as the unipolar power in the international system. This new development ushered in a world in which great powers faced few international threats compared to those faced by the behemoths of the prior century.

Today, the world order is experiencing another transition. China, Europe, Russia, and others hold great power, rivalling that of the United States. But even after years of this transition, the uncertainty of this new order remains vast. The new international system is complicated, and not yet defined. But to understand what it might look like - and the role of middle powers within it - the contemporary Middle East and Napoleon-era Europe are perfect places to examine

This essay presents three different, yet connected theses about our new world order:

1) The perception of a grave threat guarantees a fluid and transactional system of alliances.

2) Pragmatic (or realist) foreign policy exists as a reaction to geopolitical threats, hence it is less prominent in times of peace, like the post-Cold War era.

3) Recent geopolitical tensions and actions can be easily understood through the lens of points 1 and 2, using historical (Napoleon-era Europe) and contemporary (the contemporary Middle East) examples.

The first and most prevalent pattern, which seems to repeat throughout all multipolar systems, is that alliances are transactional, fluid, and pragmatic rather than ideological and constraining. In the early 19th century, the European balance of power consisted of a multipolar system in which Napoleon’s power was countered by a large rival alliance which was made up of Russia, the United Kingdom, and Austria, while the French alliance included Bavaria, and to some extent, Spain. The point of this information is not to educate you about 1805, but rather to show that in this multipolar system, Russia was not aligned with Austria and the United Kingdom because they supported the same football club or political philosopher; But because France posed such a grave threat that a pragmatic transactional alliance was much more strategically sound than an ideological one. Bavaria, similarly, was not aligned with France because it fancied the same style of croissant as Napoleon, but rather because they sought common strategic national interests that worked hand in hand. Compare this form of international relations with that of the ‘rules based international order’, a unipolar system in which ideology was fundamental to the ways in which foreign affairs were conducted. The United Kingdom and France, for example, were aligned with the United States for many reasons, but especially because they were ideologically compatible, all placing an emphasis on enlightenment ideas such as liberty and democracy.

The contemporary Middle East, another multipolar system (albeit a regional one), is the latest example of what alliances might look like in the future of the international system. States in the Middle East have lived under a multipolar regional system for decades, and they understand what that means better than most other states. For example, in September of 2025, Saudi Arabia signed a mutual defense deal with Pakistan, indirectly abandoning the United States as its indispensable defense partner - not because the Saudis shared similar styles of governance with Pakistan, but because Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS), the Saudi Arabian ruler, saw in Pakistan a better opportunity for security in a time of rising regional threats. This was a strategic transactional shift based on a rising threat, rather than an ideological shift. Similarly, the UAE has covertly been funding and arming the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan. But is Mohammad bin-Zayed (the Emirati ruler) doing this because he likes the colors of the RSF flag? Or because he sees a strategic national interest in countering Saudi influence in the Horn of Africa, during a time when regional influence in the Horn is highly prioritized? In a multipolar order, states feel that their international counterparts could grow into powerful and malevolent competitors, if not existential threats. This fear causes states to act as powerfully and as pragmatically as possible.

The second pattern in the contemporary Middle East that can help predict the role of the middle powers in our emerging global multipolar system is its ‘free market’ of alliances, as opposed to the locked coalitions of the old system. The first and most obvious example is the growing schism between the UAE and Saudi Arabia (for an in-depth analysis of this shift, see my previous essay, here). Until December of 2025, the UAE and Saudi Arabia were aligned as a Sunni counter to the great regional influence of Iran, a Shiite power. But since October 7th, 2023, Iranian regional power has been vastly degraded by U.S. and Israeli military operations, and by internal strife. Without a powerful common enemy, the foreign policies of Saudi Arabia and the UAE began to diverge and, in many cases, to conflict. Without the necessity of an alliance with the UAE, Saudi Arabia swiftly and effectively shifted to other regional counterparts such as Turkey, Pakistan, and Qatar. Simultaneously, the UAE shifted its alignment towards India and Israel. These free-flowing alliances are more potent in the Middle East than anywhere else in the world because Middle Eastern states understand multipolarity. In such a system, they know, the safest and most effective form of alliances are transactional and fluid, rather than ideological and constraining.

These patterns in the Middle East do more than help us predict the future of global multipolarity. They also cast Donald Trump’s foreign policy, with its extreme shifts, in a new light. Trump’s conduct of foreign affairs has often been criticized as hawkishly pragmatic, to the point of amorality. While subject to valid critiques, such as foreign policy is not entirely unexpected. Rather, it is an extreme form of an approach that a leader in a shifting multipolar system would naturally take. For example, compare MBS’s regional shifts with Trump’s: Saudi Arabia partially replaced its reliance on the United States for defense because MBS saw greater benefit to the Kingdom through a Pakistani defense deal than solely an American one. Saudi Arabia did not change its policy because of an ideological divergence from the US; rather, MBS saw an opportunity for greater security in an inherently insecure multipolar system. Trump, similarly, has recently shown great hostility towards America’s NATO allies. But Trump is not rewriting US-NATO relations because the US is no longer ideologically compatible with Europe; rather, his approach reflects the belief that if an alliance isn’t producing enough results, it should face major reform or complete dissolution. Alliances are always questioned for effectiveness, of course, but in a multipolar system of fluid and transactional alliances, leaders like MBS or Trump feel more at liberty to reform their alliances - or even dissolve them altogether.

But European relations are not the only setting in which these parallels are clear. In January, 2026, the United States launched a military operation to capture the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, and remove him from authority. To many, this seemed like an irrational and irresponsible policy on the part of the United States. You do not have to agree with the intervention, but to understand the strategic justification and the broader logic behind such an operation, one must understand the reality of multipolarity, in which all states are in a constant state of fear that an international counterpart will grow into a malevolent behemoth which seeks to destroy them. This great fear causes states to act as powerfully and pragmatically as possible. In other words, pragmatism is a reaction to “the fear of (or the desire for) the shifting of the balances of power.” (Forging the Modern World, James Carter and Richard Warren) Hezbollah, Iran, China, and Russia have all been involved in Venezuela, and the United States has perceived this as a direct threat to American interests. With great fear often comes a great showcase of power. The United States conducted such a showcase on January 3rd, 2026, capturing Maduro and his wife. From the perspective of the previous international system – based on rules and ideological alliances – this military operation was an immoral, unjust, and chaotic show of power. But this outlook disregards a fundamental pattern of multipolar systems: that multipolarity demands a more pragmatic and strategic approach to foreign affairs.

To be sure, a pragmatic foreign policy is not isolated to multipolar systems. For example, the United States armed and funded the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to help counter Soviet aggression (during a famously bipolar international order). The US and the Mujahideen were, by no definition, ideologically aligned. But they shared a common goal of impeding Soviet military control. Pragmatism is a principle based on fear. When fear is isolated to one other great power, as in the Soviet Union to the United States, pragmatism is still present, but mainly isolated to confrontation with the opposing great power. Multipolar systems, on the other hand, guarantee that almost every other state either is an existential threat, or could quickly become one. This forces a sense of pragmatism on the highest scale in which all states feel existentially threatened - and from all directions. The new world order is not yet fully developed, and its alliances are not yet fully shaped, but to better understand how it may look, one must understand the realities of a world with more threats.