Where is the world going? Where are international relations going?The current war in Iran and the Middle East offers an uncertain panorama. It is a notably asymmetric war in economic and military terms that has several possible outcomes. In these cases, it would not be superfluous to first analyze the observable trends at the present time, and then see if history gives us clues about probable future scenarios.If it weren't so nefariously tragic, a two-week ceasefire pact in which each of the two parties has a different text and which, moreover, both interpret in a different way results in a rather comical and surreal situation. A script that seems to have come out of a night of drinks between Gila and the Marx brothers. An imagined night that would be well worth sharing. There are elements of the recent context that point to the replacement of a scenario in which there has been an indisputable global power in economic and military terms – the US of the last thirty years after the Cold War – by a scenario in which two global powers coexist (the US and China), along with a third with nuclear military power (Russia) and several regional powers (India, Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia, etc.). These are only trends, but it seems that today there is a basic analytical agreement that an evolution from a unipolar world to a multipolar world is taking place. This is no news, of course. In fact, many historical periods have experienced this type of change... until the appearance of a new hegemonic power that once again tilts international relations towards a de facto unipolarity. When hegemony becomes pluralized, a scenario of balance between powers emerges, which is often convenient for maintaining peace (understood as the absence of war) for a few decades. In optimistic terms, I believe we could be heading towards such a scenario in the coming decades.

The United Nations will turn 80 on October 24th, immersed in its worst crisis. Not only because of the frontal attack staged on Tuesday by the President of the United States, Donald Trump, with a speech at the General Assembly where he accused him of all the evils and where it certified the distancing of the world's leading power from the multilateral system created after the Second World War. The crisis is also financial and one of resources, because Trump's drastic cuts have forced the Secretary General, António Guterres, to propose a 20% reduction in next year's budget, which will entail thousands of layoffs.

In an article published simultaneously by newspapers around the world, 24 heads of government - including Spanish President Pedro Sánchez, French Prime Minister Emanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and German Chancellor Angela Merkel - call for a global anti-pandemic treaty. The leaders insist that covid-19 is the biggest challenge since the Second World War and recall that the question is not "whether there will be another health crisis, but when". They call for "building a stronger international health architecture that protects future generations".