Comandante Antonio García
For decades, the so-called “rules-based international order” was presented as the civilizational horizon that emerged after the end of World War II in 1945, a framework of multilateral institutions, treaties, and consensuses that promised to replace the “law of the strongest” with the primacy of law.
This foundational narrative legitimized the postwar architecture and sustained the expansion of economic and political liberalism as a universal model. However, the most recent deliberations of the Munich Security Conference and the World Economic Forum (2026) reveal a profound mutation, a transition to an order governed by military, technological, and financial supremacy.
This shift is not merely rhetorical; it expresses the realization that the rules have been operating in an increasingly selective manner, where economic sanctions function as coercive devices, comparable to weapons of war, and that security, understood in strategic rather than human terms, has become the organizing principle of contemporary capitalism. The economy is militarized and foreign policy is corporatized, shaping—or rather, imposing—a new order where systemic competition replaces regulated cooperation.
Munich: Security as Dogma
The Munich Security Conference (2026) consolidated itself as a privileged space for strategic coordination among Western powers. The repeated emphasis on “deterrence,” “great power competition,” and the strengthening of military alliances reveals a significant shift, where classical diplomacy, based on negotiation, is discarded or used as part of a strategy of deception, while the next military coup is being prepared.
In this scenario, security ceases to be a means of guaranteeing stability and becomes an organizing dogma of the system. Now, technological and military supremacy redefines the limits of legitimacy, where international law fades or is conditioned by who holds the power.
Davos: Economy and War Under the Same Paradigm
In parallel with the security debates in Europe, the World Economic Forum (2026) has insisted that the energy transition, digitalization, and artificial intelligence constitute the pillars of the new global growth cycle. Its strategic reports underscore the need to strengthen supply chains, secure critical minerals, and accelerate technological innovation as conditions for the “resilience” of the global economic system.
However, these processes cannot be analyzed outside the context of geopolitics. The competition for advanced semiconductors, rare earth elements, and control of digital infrastructures is part of a systemic struggle for technological and productive primacy. Economic security has become national security. The corporate language of Davos—resilience, sustainability, innovation—thus converges with the strategic lexicon that dominates the Munich Security Conference: deterrence, hybrid threats, strategic competition. Both forums express the same concern: the reconfiguration of global power in a context where multipolarity has become highly conflictive, and where perhaps the very concept of “multi” is being questioned.
It has long been clear that historical hegemonic transitions combine financial expansion and military reorganization in cycles where economic supremacy is sustained by global coercive structures. Today, financialization coexists with accelerated remilitarization, evidenced by increased defense spending and the integration of industrial policy and security strategy. The global economy is not reorganizing itself apart from security; it is becoming securitized.
The Hemispheric Discourse: Latin America as a “Strategic Zone”
In this scenario, the interventions of Marco Rubio and other US leaders reaffirm a vision in which Latin America and the Caribbean are conceived as a geopolitical space under dispute. Under the narrative of countering “adversarial” influences and protecting strategic supply chains, the old doctrine of hemispheric alignment is presented as renewed and legitimized.
Furthermore, contemporary global capitalism has long operated through a transnational apparatus of control and security that connects states, corporations, and military complexes beyond formal borders. The expansion of mechanisms for military interoperability and regional security cooperation can be interpreted within this structural logic, a doctrine already in place.
The recent call for military leadership (2026) from more than thirty countries in the hemisphere by the United States suggests an attempt to institutionalize common standards of doctrine, training, and equipment that, in their strategic rationale, are reminiscent of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), perhaps adopting a more suggestive name.
This “doctrinal” update is more dangerous because it goes beyond military risks. The expanded definition of “threats” incorporates social conflicts, disputes over natural resources, and sovereign political projects that challenge the dominant economic architecture.
From Consensus to Coercion
To date, all hegemony has combined consensus and coercion. After the Cold War, the liberal order was sustained by the promise of economic integration under common rules; today, faced with the fragmentation of the system and the rise of new powers, coercion is gaining centrality.
Crises in the world order become evident when its mechanisms of legitimation are exhausted, as is happening today with the proliferation of regional wars, sanctions, and technological disputes; where the transition is being attempted by prioritizing hard power, if not solely military power.
In this context, for the Global South, this means greater plunder, more financial and technological dependence, where the application of international rules is becoming increasingly diffuse or nonexistent.
Contemporary Barbarism and Challenges of the South
Current barbarism is not expressed as total collapse, but as the normalization of permanent war, prolonged conflicts, blockades, sanctions, and hybrid operations, which make peace a fragile condition, entirely subordinate to the balance of power.
As we can see, the ongoing transition can lead to a conflictive multipolarity, but it also opens avenues for redefining rules from non-subordinate perspectives. In this sense, both the World Economic Forum and the Munich Security Conference express an attempt to reorganize hegemony in a world where consensus is meaningless unless accompanied by force.
From the Global South, understanding this shift is a strategic imperative, because when force redefines the norm, sovereignty and self-determination become conditions for survival.
ADDENDUM 1: The ELN’s unilateral ceasefire on this election day is entirely true and will continue until tomorrow, March 10th, at midnight. The truth prevails, and the liars are exposed for what they are, so that we may all remember.
Source: https://eln-voces.net/2026/03/09/la-erosion-del-orden-internacional/