Op-Ed - Geopolitics can no longer be reduced to rivalry
By Dr. Charles Salvaudon, former diplomat, professor, and geopolitical expert*
With Forum, Transitions opens a space for external voices to shed light on the major structural shifts of the contemporary world. I have chosen to launch this new section with an op-ed by Dr. Charles Salvaudon, who questions the limits of a strictly conflictual reading of international relations and invites us to rethink interdependencies, systemic vulnerabilities, and the renewed forms of power in the 21st century.
Thinking about the world solely through the lens of competition between powers has become an analytical mistake. In an era of global interdependence and systemic crises, it is urgent to rethink geopolitics. Geopolitics has once again become a dominant framework for understanding the world. The war in Ukraine, tensions in the Middle East, and the U.S.-China rivalry all seem to confirm the return of a world structured by power confrontation. Yet this apparent clarity is misleading. It rests on an intellectual framework inherited from the twentieth century, built on a simple assumption: that the world is a space of rivalry between states, each seeking to maximize its power at the expense of others. This model continues to shape much of today’s analysis, political discourse, and strategic decision-making. But it no longer reflects the reality of the twenty-first century.
A framework that has become blind
The contemporary world is not only conflictual—it is profoundly interdependent. And this interdependence changes everything. Climate change, supply chains, digital infrastructures, migration flows, and health crises all reveal a system where vulnerabilities are shared, and cascading effects are the norm. No state, however powerful, can escape them. To analyze this world with yesterday’s tools is to look at a new reality through outdated categories. The issue is not that rivalry has disappeared. It is very much present—visible, brutal, sometimes military. But it is no longer the sole structuring logic. It coexists with forms of interdependence that make any purely conflict-based reading insufficient—and at times dangerous.
Interdependence under tension
The twenty-first century is not the end of conflict. It is the age of interdependence under tension. States oppose one another while remaining deeply interconnected. They compete while depending on each other. They seek protection while remaining exposed to global dynamics they cannot control. This creates a central contradiction: the power logics inherited from the past are colliding with the systemic realities of the present. And it is precisely here that classical geopolitics reaches its limits.
A geopolitics that runs through societies
The most profound transformation lies elsewhere: geopolitics is no longer confined to relations between states. It now runs through societies. Energy markets, digital platforms, global value chains, and financial networks have become arenas of power as decisive as borders. Technology companies shape power relations. Cities and regions develop international strategies. NGOs and transnational movements influence political agendas. In other words, geopolitics has become transversal. It flows through individuals, companies, infrastructures, and collective imaginaries. It is embedded in everyday life: energy prices, access to technology, the effects of climate change, and the circulation of information are all concrete expressions of geopolitical tensions. Geopolitics is no longer a distant theater. It has become a lived experience.
Power reconsidered
In this context, power itself is changing in nature. It can no longer be measured solely in military divisions or GDP figures. It also depends on control over technologies, networks, innovation capacity, normative influence, and the ability to structure flows. Non-state actors—multinational corporations, financial institutions, local governments, civil society—are no longer peripheral. They are directly involved in the production of power. Yet despite these transformations, much analysis remains trapped in a binary vision of the world: rivalry or domination. This simplification prevents us from understanding the real stakes.
The limits of the conflict paradigm
The major challenges of the twenty-first century are not zero-sum. Climate change, food security, energy transition, ocean governance, and digital regulation cannot be resolved through confrontation alone. They require forms of coordination, sometimes minimal, but essential. A geopolitics reduced to rivalry leads to a dead end: it fuels tensions without offering solutions. Worse, it risks aggravating the very crises it seeks to analyze.
Toward a humanist geopolitics
It is time to change paradigms. Not by denying power relations, but by placing them within a broader framework. In an interdependent world, power is no longer limited to the capacity for domination. It also includes the ability to manage complexity, stabilize fragile systems, and enable sustainable coexistence. This is the meaning of a humanist geopolitics—one that places societies at its core. One that considers social transformations, economic behaviours, technological environments, and collective imaginaries. One that analyzes not only states, but also the individuals and structures that connect them. This shift is decisive. It implies moving from a logic of domination to one of responsibility, from control to coordination, from rivalry to coexistence.
Rethinking the purpose of geopolitics
The issue is not only analytical. It is political. If geopolitics remains a mere reading of conflicts, it becomes incapable of addressing the conditions for stability in the contemporary world. It describes tensions but does not allow us to move beyond them. By contrast, a renewed geopolitics can once again become a tool for understanding and action—provided it integrates what now defines the world: interdependence, complexity, and the necessity of organized coexistence.
A choice for the twenty-first century
The twenty-first century will not be determined solely by competition between powers. It will be shaped by the ability of societies to organize their interdependence without descending into chaos. This is where the real stakes lie. To continue thinking of the world as a simple confrontation of powers is to refuse to see what is already unfolding. It is to remain trapped in an outdated framework and to risk making inadequate decisions. Rethinking geopolitics is therefore not an intellectual luxury. It is an urgency.
*About the Author – Charles Salvaudon holds a PhD in Political Science and is a geopolitical expert at ESSEC’s European Center for Law and Economics, directed by Viviane de Beaufort. He is also a professor at Albert School–Mines Paris, where he teaches and coordinates a team of ten geopolitics professors across the school's European campuses. A contributor to the Jacques Delors Institute, he has authored several books, including Géopolitique, cette force qui bouleverse tout (Baudelaire), Géopolitique pour l’Entreprise (L’Harmattan), and The New Geopolitics of Sustainability (Springer).