Editor: HARSH V. PANT

Published on Dec 30, 2025

In 2025, the international system reached a critical inflection point, signalling the definitive end of the post-Cold War “unipolar moment”. The era of uncontested US hegemony appears to be rapidly giving way to a reconfigured landscape defined by intense major-power contestations and a burgeoning multipolarity. While the United States (US) still retains formidable material capabilities, its heft in dictating global pathways, and outcomes, is getting increasingly constrained. In its stead is evolving an international system where the imperatives of power politics are re-asserting themselves over the normative aspirations of institutional liberalism.

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Professor Harsh V. Pant is Honorary Member of the Romanian Institute for Europe-Asia Studies – IRSEA.

* Professor Harsh V. Pant is Vice President – Studies and Foreign Policy at Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. He is a Professor of International Relations with King's India Institute at King’s College London. He is also Director (Honorary) of Delhi School of Transnational Affairs at Delhi University. Professor Pant has been a Visiting Professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore; a Visiting Professor at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi; a Visiting Fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania; a Visiting Scholar at the Center for International Peace and Security Studies, McGill University; a Non-Resident Fellow with the Wadhwani Chair in US-India Policy Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC; and an Emerging Leaders Fellow at the Australia-India Institute, University of Melbourne. Professor Pant's current research is focused on Asian security issues. His most recent books include India and Global Governance: A Rising Power and Its Discontents (Routledge), Politics and Geopolitics: Decoding India’s Neighbourhood Challenge (Rupa), America and the Indo-Pacific: Trump and Beyond (Routledge), New Directions in India’s Foreign Policy: Theory and Praxis (Cambridge University Press), India’s Nuclear Policy (Oxford University Press), The US Pivot and Indian Foreign Policy (Palgrave Macmillan), Handbook of Indian Defence Policy (Routledge), and India’s Afghan Muddle (HarperCollins). Professor Pant writes regularly for various Indian and international media outlets including the Japan Times, the Wall Street Journal, the National (UAE), the Hindustan Times, and the Telegraph.

The opinions expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect the official policy, position or view of IRSEA