The world order that states have long operated within, the so-called rules-based order or Pax Americana, the liberal international order built by the US in the aftermath of WW II and led by it in the post-Cold War period, appears to either have already eroded or to be in visible decline. Recent developments, including the ongoing US-Israel conflict with Iran have only reinforced the perception that the stabilising capacity of this order is weakening. Whether the United States itself is willing to acknowledge this shift remains an open question.
This raises a more fundamental issue: what kind of world order is emerging in its place? Much of the debate has been framed in familiar terms, either a return to bipolarity, defined by competition between the United States and China, or a transition to multipolarity, where power is distributed among several major states. Neither framework, however, fully captures the present moment. In the new global landscape which lacks a clear redistribution of power and is becoming more and more fragmented, is better understood as a ‘multiplex’ world.
Multiplex World Order
This shift is not defined by the decline of one power or the rise of another alone. Rather, power is increasingly disaggregated across domains. While the United States remains the most capable actor across military and institutional domains, the steady expansion of China’s economic and technological influence has ensured that no single state can dominate across all issue areas. States have now begun to compete selectively rather than universally.
More significantly, the structure of alignment itself is changing. Alliances are no longer rigid or ideological in the way they were during the Cold War. Instead, they are increasingly transactional, formed around specific issues and dissolved just as quickly. States are willing to cooperate in one domain while competing in another, often with the same set of actors. The result is not balance, but overlap, a system in which alignments are fluid, and strategic certainty is in short supply.
Even long-standing alliances are no longer immune to this shift. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), arguably the most durable security alliance of the post-war period, has come under visible strain, with the United States itself signalling a willingness to reconsider its commitments. That such uncertainty now extends to NATO underscores a broader point: alliance guarantees, once treated as relatively stable, are increasingly contingent.
Recent geopolitical events underscores as to how this fragmentation has already begun to reflect upon the world stage. The ongoing conflict involving the United States/Israel and Iran, marked by large-scale strikes, regional spill over, and disruption of critical energy routes, illustrates how quickly crises can escalate in the absence of stabilising power structures, while still stopping short of systemic war.
Taken together, these features point towards a structural shift rather than a temporary transition. The question, then, is not whether the system is unipolar or multipolar, but how states adapt to a world where neither description holds.
What does this means for South Asian security?
Historically, South Asia, much like the rest of the world, has long served as one among several regional theatres through which broader great power competition has been mediated. During the Cold War, this was most visible in the alignment patterns that emerged, the United States backing Pakistan, and the Soviet Union aligning more closely with India. These external associations intersected directly with regional conflicts, including those that culminated in the 1971 war and the creation of Bangladesh.
While the form of external involvement has shifted, from security based alliances to economic and technological engagement, the underlying pattern of external entanglement persists. What distinguishes the present moment, however, is the fragmentation of that influence. In a multiplex world, South Asia is no longer simply a passive arena for great power rivalry. It is increasingly a space where multiple, overlapping alignments – economic, strategic, and technological, operate simultaneously.
Multiplexity does not reduce external influence in the region; it makes it less predictable. This, in turn, shifts the burden of security. The question is no longer whom to align with, but how to retain strategic flexibility in a system where alignment itself has become unstable.
The first implication of this shift is the need to reassess patterns of external dependence. China’s expanding presence in South Asia illustrates both the opportunities and risks inherent in the current moment. Its economic engagement, particularly through infrastructure investment, has deepened connectivity across the region. At the same time, cases such as the transfer of the Hambantota port in Sri Lanka, following Colombo’s inability to service its debt obligations to China, highlight how economic relationships can acquire strategic consequences. While shaped in part by domestic fiscal mismanagement, such outcomes underline the risks of dependence that constrains long-term strategic choice.
For South Asian states, the lesson is not to disengage from China, but to avoid forms of dependence that limit policy autonomy. In a multiplex system, over-reliance on any single external actor introduces structural vulnerability. Economic engagement can no longer be treated as separate from security; it is increasingly embedded within it.
A second implication lies in the growing importance of regional security cooperation. As external guarantees become less reliable, the management of shared risks shifts inward. South Asia has historically struggled to develop formal regional security frameworks, and institutions such as South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) have remained limited in their effectiveness. However, this does not imply the absence of cooperation. As existing research shows, the region already exhibits a fragmented but functional pattern of bilateral security engagement, often centred around India’s relations with its neighbours .
In a multiplex context, such forms of cooperation become more necessary, even if they remain limited in scope. Functional, issue-based collaboration on maritime security, counterterrorism, and border management, offers a more realistic pathway than comprehensive institutional integration. At the same time, such cooperation remains constrained by entrenched political rivalries, particularly between India and Pakistan, which continue to limit even marginal progress.
India’s evolving strategic approach reflects an attempt to navigate these constraints. Its simultaneous engagement with multiple external partners, alongside efforts to deepen regional security cooperation, suggests a move towards balancing external alignment with regional stabilisation. This flexibility is visible even in moments of heightened geopolitical tension. During the ongoing conflict involving Iran and Israel, India has maintained functional relations with both, continuing engagement with Tehran while sustaining its strategic partnership with Tel Aviv and Washington. Such positioning underscores an important feature of multiplexity: alignment is no longer singular, but layered and situational. However, this approach is not without limits. Structural asymmetries, political mistrust, and unresolved conflicts continue to constrain the development of a coherent regional security framework.
Ultimately, a multiplex world does not expand strategic space without cost. It increases both flexibility and exposure. For South Asian states, this means that security can no longer be outsourced to external alignments. It must be actively managed through diversification of partnerships, careful calibration of external engagement, and incremental strengthening of regional cooperation.
Multiplexity does not eliminate risk; it redistributes it. And in such a system, stability will depend less on the presence of external guarantees, and more on the region’s capacity to manage its own vulnerabilities.