The world is shifting towards a new architecture of power where an archipelago of emerging states is redrawing global hierarchies and putting an end to Western centrality.
From the Mediterranean to the Pacific, the geohistorical revenge of the South
The Transoriental Archipelago is not just a geopolitical idea: it is a tectonic reality. From the coasts of the Levant to those of the South China Sea, via the Gulf of Guinea and the Indian Ocean, stretches a chain of strategic spaces where the Global South is reshaping the map of the world.
First, the Middle East is shifting from a Western protectorate to multipolar diplomacy. Once reduced to a battleground for Western ambitions, the Middle East is now becoming the diplomatic heart of the multipolar world. The Iran-Saudi agreement of March 2023, negotiated in Beijing, marked a historic shift: China replaced Washington as the central mediator. This diplomatic shift ended four decades of rivalry and heralded the end of the Western monopoly on regional security. At the same time, Syria, rejoined the Arab League, consolidated its strategic axis with Moscow and Tehran, while Turkey, oscillating between NATO and Eurasia, illustrates the creeping de-Westernization of the Muslim world. Thus, Saudi Arabia, once a pillar of the petrodollar, joined BRICS+ in 2024, confirming the transition to a post-dollar monetary order. This is how the Middle East ceases to be a periphery and becomes a hub of the multipolar world, a pivot between Eurasia and Africa.
Furthermore, the Gulf of Guinea is becoming a vital issue in relations between Africa and the rest of the world. That is to say, a field of competition and games of influence between the powers of the Levant working for a multipolar world order and the powers of the West maneuvering the reconquest of the African continent. From then on, in Africa, war is no longer just military – it is cognitive and economic. From Mali to Niger, from Burkina Faso to Guinea, from Chad to Madagascar, the same slogan is rising: “never again guardianship.” The political changes or the refocusing of power around a military decision-making pole carried out in some places on the continent from August 2020 to this month of October 2025 were not simple political crises; they constituted, in some cases, the first acts of a civilizational liberation. Under the crossfire of European sanctions and media demonization, African peoples have massively turned their backs on France and its paternalistic elites. Russia, by supporting this strategic shift – notably through the Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi (October 2019) and St. Petersburg (July 2023) – has offered a credible alternative to the economic servitude imposed by the IMF and the European Union. Knowing that sanctions and the media demonization of the Western minority no longer mean anything in the eyes of the multipolar majority, what will be the outcome of the major presidential elections, held under high tension on October 12 in Cameroon, and those scheduled for October 25 and 29 in Côte d’Ivoire and Tanzania, as well as December 28 in Guinea and the Central African Republic?
Meanwhile, the Gulf of Guinea, once a crossroads of the triangular trade, is becoming the energy frontier of the 21st century, rich in hydrocarbons, cobalt, uranium, and lithium. This is where the global battle for sovereignty is being replayed, where Africa no longer begs: it negotiates.
Moreover, the China Seas are becoming a battleground for Western illusions. While the West is ruining itself in the proxy war it itself conceived and unleashed following the Maidan coup in Ukraine, China controls and regulates the sea routes. Tensions in the South and East China Seas – around the Senkaku, Paracel, and Spratly archipelagos – reflect America’s strategic panic: to contain Beijing before it redraws the Pacific order. But Washington’s containment strategy, embodied by the AUKUS (2021) and the QUAD, is running out of steam in the face of reality: Chinese power, like Russian power, is no longer containable. The Chinese economy, backed by Xi Jinping’s New Silk Road, now connects Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America in a South-South trading system independent of Western financial circuits. American incursions into the China Seas, under the pretext of “freedom of navigation,” are only the latest convulsions of a dying maritime empire.
The Western shipwreck and the consolidation of the trans-eastern bloc
The collective West, once the self-proclaimed guardian of civilization, is undergoing an existential crisis. It no longer believes in its values, which it has emptied of substance through lies and interference. Its economy is reeling under the weight of debt, its soft power is crumbling, its weaponry (hard power) is bogged down in Ukrainian fields, and its diplomatic influence (smart power) is fading where the Global South is building bridges.
To this end, far from the mendacious logic of the Euro-American empire, Ukraine (an instrument of Washington’s foreign policy) is nothing more than a mirror of Western decadence. The conflict in Ukraine, which began in 2014 and became total in 2022, exposed NATO’s strategic bankruptcy. Presented as a crusade for freedom, it turned out to be economic suicide for Europe, a prisoner of its allegiance to Washington. Anti-Russian sanctions triggered a boomerang: energy inflation, deindustrialization, the collapse of the German model, and a French recession. Meanwhile, Russia – far from being isolated – has reshaped its sphere of influence from the Caucasus to the Arctic, consolidating its ties with China, Iran, and Africa. The West, blinded by its arrogance, has lost the war of narratives, the one in which media lies no longer fool anyone.
For its part, Latin America is taking its revenge; that of a humiliated continent. On the other side of the world, Venezuela, harassed for two decades by American sanctions, has transformed itself into a symbol of anti-imperialist resilience. Under the leadership of Nicolás Maduro, Caracas has moved closer to Beijing and Moscow, rejoined OPEC+, and found in BRICS+ a political space to breathe free from the American yoke. The same dynamic is running through Brazil, Bolivia, Cuba, and Nicaragua, where the memory of Bolívar, Guevara, and Chavez is resurrected in the face of Western predation. Latin America, once Washington’s preserve, is becoming a key link in the trans-eastern bloc. The Beijing-Moscow-Tehran-Caracas axis illustrates this shift: the geopolitics of the South is now thought of without the West, and often against it.
On top of this, a systemic war of narratives, economics, and sovereignty characterizes the global chessboard. The 21st century is no longer simply a war of tanks, but of narratives and currencies. The dollar, a weapon of domination since 1945, is losing its aura to exchanges in yuan, ruble, and rupee. Western soft power, once hegemonic, has mutated into moralizing propaganda, while the media of the South – from RT to CGTN, from Sputnik to Afrique Média, from TeleSur to Press TV – impose a global counter-narrative. The AST embodies this cognitive war: an archipelago of emerging powers, connected by technology, logistics, and a shared historical consciousness. Where the West exports fear, the South exports stability; where Washington brandishes democracy, Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran speak of mutual respect and non-interference.
In short, the Transoriental Strategic Archipelago is not a geopolitical utopia; it is the continental floor of the 21st century. From the Eastern Mediterranean to the Pacific Ocean, the same breath sweeps through nations: that of strategic disobedience in the face of the old order. The West, exhausted by its lies, its wars, and its imperial nostalgia, watches this shift without understanding it. The Global South, for its part, no longer asks permission: it advances, builds, connects, thinks, and acts. This is no longer the time of satellites, but that of plural sovereigns. The Transoriental Archipelago is becoming the nerve center of a conscious multipolar world, free from tutelage, master of its seas and its roads. And in the silence of Western chancelleries, it is now the noise of African ports, Asian shipyards, and Latin American alliances that are drawing the new map of the world.
Mohamed Lamine KABA, Expert in geopolitics of governance and regional integration, Institute of Governance, Humanities and Social Sciences, Pan-African University
Follow new articles on our Telegram channel
