As world leaders gathered in Davos for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in January 2026, the prevailing mood was captured by a single stark assessment: the world is “balancing on a precipice” . The annual Global Risks Report, surveying over 1,300 leaders and experts, identified “geoeconomic confrontation” and “state-based armed conflict” as the two most pressing dangers facing humanity . This diagnosis, delivered even before the year’s most dramatic developments, proved prescient. Within weeks, U.S. military intervention in Venezuela escalated dramatically, with the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro representing what peacebuilding organizations condemned as a “flagrant violation of international norms” and a return to openly imperialist foreign policy doctrine .
The Venezuelan operation exemplifies a broader transformation in international relations: the explicit embrace of transactional, military-first diplomacy by major powers. The U.S. National Security Strategy released in late 2025 had already signaled this shift, prioritizing hemispheric control and resource access over traditional commitments to sovereignty and international law . Meanwhile, the Russia-China partnership, declared “no limits” in 2022, continues to deepen through military-technical cooperation, joint exercises, and even Russian training of Chinese paratroopers—accelerating Beijing’s military modernization while complicating U.S. efforts to manage two strategic competitors simultaneously . The global race for critical minerals, essential for both defense and the green transition, has further inflamed competition, with resource-rich nations from Chile to Kazakhstan finding themselves objects of great-power rivalry .
Perhaps most concerning to analysts is the erosion of the multilateral architecture designed to manage such tensions. The United Nations, constrained by Security Council politics, has proven unable to effectively respond to conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, or Sudan—where conflict-related deaths exceeded 240,000 in 2025 . The “UN80” reform process, launched by Secretary-General António Guterres, appears driven more by budget contraction than by visionary redesign, raising questions about whether international institutions can adapt to what Chinese scholars warn could become a “law of the jungle” era reminiscent of pre-World War I great-power competition . As one peacebuilding organization observed, when major powers “flagrantly violate international humanitarian and human rights law when it suits—from Gaza to Venezuela—the message is that the laws no longer apply, or apply only to some” .