A comparison between global governance at the beginning of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. A new imperialist dispute?

Abstract

The past ten years have witnessed a growing rivalry in various orders between East Asia, led by China and Russia and the West, led by the United States and its allies. This phenomenon of contemporary geopolitics refers us to the phenomenon of the replacement of British hegemony in the late nineteenth century and the conflicts that followed in the early twentieth century until the end of WWII when the United States became the hegemonic power of the capitalist world and a system of governance based on the Bretton Woods Agreements. The text uses historical and documentary bibliographic information to compare the historical framework, similarities and differences between these two historical moments. The main conclusion is that there is a rivalry for institutionality and future governance, something that was absent in the early nineteenth century, in which liberal theses and territorial imperialism predominated. The constitution of the BRICS+ (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and the newly incorporated countries) constitutes a challenge in the consolidation of a new multipolar governance, a new phenomenon, and therefore, a geopolitical challenge for the construction of a new global order that replaces a single hegemonic power like the one that occurred at the end of WWII.