In recent years, geopolitics has regained a central place in academic and political debate, reaffirming itself as a key field of study for understanding the transformations of the world system. The idea that we are undergoing a phase of hegemonic transition, marked by the relative decline of US and Western power in the face of the rise of new powers—particularly Asian ones—and the emergence of an increasingly multipolar international order, is increasingly shared within international academia. This process, characterized by economic, technological, energy, and military disputes, is reshaping the patterns of global domination and the modes of integration of peripheral regions.

The current stage is characterized by the intensification of North-South geopolitical tensions, within the context of the accelerated decline of US hegemony and the growing empowerment of emerging powers in the world order, particularly China. This situation is having profound repercussions in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Our region, historically incorporated in a subordinate manner into the world-system (Wallerstein, 2016; Arrighi, 2014) and considered by the US as its "exclusive strategic sphere of influence" or "backyard," now faces one of its greatest historical challenges in the face of increasing US aggression to expel China from the region. It has become clear that the declining US is unable to compete with or match the economic and technological development of China, which has become South America's largest trading partner and the second most important for Central and North America. In this context, the US power establishment, particularly under the current Trump administration, has no option but to pressure the region through the application of military force and direct interference, as demonstrated by the current escalation against Venezuela through the deployment of the US fleet in the Caribbean Sea. This was also demonstrated by the 2019 civilian-military coup in Bolivia against the government of Evo Morales.

In this context, regional integration is an urgent imperative as the only way to protect its increasingly threatened sovereignty and ensure lasting geopolitical autonomy. In this regard, strengthening relations with the Global South is crucial, given its emergence as a political space for resistance, cooperation, and the development of alternatives. Initiatives such as BRICS+, the revitalization of the Non-Aligned Movement, and the push for new financial and technological architectures reflect efforts to democratize global governance and challenge the centrality of the Global North. Latin America and the Caribbean's participation in these processes presents a historic opportunity to redefine the region's international engagement, strengthen its sovereignty, and consolidate integration projects based on cooperation, complementarity, and social justice.

However, these processes coexist with an offensive by right-wing and far-right groups that, in clear alignment with the geopolitical interests of US domination, have managed to reposition themselves in various countries through strategies of disinformation, judicial manipulation, and subordination to the interests of the center. Recent experiences in Bolivia, Peru, El Salvador, Ecuador, and Argentina show that the global geopolitical dispute is increasingly manifesting itself domestically through mechanisms of lawfare, information warfare, and the criminalization of migration (Romano, 2025; Lajtman et al., 2025), among other aspects. These actions reflect a clear objective of eroding the democratic processes of recent decades, with the intention of installing authoritarian and regressive far-right governments.

The increasing militarization of inter-American relations, the expansion of the US military presence in strategic areas (the Amazon, the Caribbean, the South Pacific, the South Atlantic), and the resurgence of discourses that echo the logic of the Cold War are expressions of the persistence of a view that conceives of the region as a theater of operations for great power competition (Tellería, 2025). In parallel, the instrumentalization of the “war on drugs,” the securitization of migration, and the expansion of military assistance programs reinforce the technological and doctrinal dependence of Latin American armed forces on Washington, weakening the margins of sovereignty and autonomous cooperation.

From a critical perspective of the Global South (Amin, 2010), understanding these transformations involves analyzing the structural continuities of dependency (Dos Santos, 1999; Marini, 1973) and the new forms of subordination in the era of hegemonic competition. Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries, with their wealth of common goods—water, minerals, biodiversity, oil, and food—and their strategic location on the global energy and maritime map, have become highly contested territories (Marini & Pérez, 2024). Powerful nations seek to control these resources not only for their economic value but also for their geopolitical significance in the ongoing energy and technological transition (Bruckmann, 2014; Ceceña, 2023).

At the same time, the region faces a multifaceted crisis—social, environmental, economic, and political—exacerbated by the aftermath of the pandemic and the acceleration of climate change. This reinforces the need to rethink regional integration from a perspective that links sovereignty, sustainable development, and social justice, and that places the people at the heart of building a new, more equitable and pluralistic order.

The Working Group on Geopolitics, Regional Integration, and the World System aims to continue and deepen the work begun in the previous period, emphasizing regional integration and South-South cooperation in this new cycle. To this end, it seeks to consolidate a network for critical reflection and collaborative research with scholars from the region, as well as from Asia and Africa, particularly focusing on contemporary geopolitical reconfigurations and their implications for Latin America and the Caribbean. From an interdisciplinary and situated perspective, the Working Group will continue to articulate the analysis of global dynamics with the region's own historical, political, and social experiences, contributing to the development of an independent understanding of international affairs.

In this new phase, the Working Group will delve deeper into the dilemmas of regional integration within the context of the tensions arising from the transition to a multipolar world order. In this regard, we will expand our analyses of the region's role in the reconfiguration of the global economy, natural resources, and technological cycles, as well as those related to militarization, financial architecture, and ongoing cognitive warfare. Simultaneously, we will focus on institutionalizing frameworks for analysis, exchange, and debate, strengthening the links between research, training, and public engagement, and fostering ongoing dialogue between academic knowledge, social movements, and state and regional actors committed to sovereignty and democratic transformation.

With this, the Working Group reaffirms its commitment to contributing to Latin American critical thought, to the defense of the sovereignty of peoples, and to the construction of civilizational alternatives in the face of the multiple crises that the contemporary world-system is experiencing. It also reaffirms its defense of a Critical Geopolitics that is not just a name: within CLACSO, we have been developing perspectives from which we believe geopolitics should be practiced as a situated, historical, and profoundly political field of problematization.

The theoretical relevance of the topic proposed by this Working Group lies in the fact that we are on the cusp of the last half of the third decade of this 21st century. It is evident, for scholars of power relations in the world order, that we are going through the final stage of the decline of the hegemony of the United States and its liberal international order - increasingly challenged by the empowerment of the so-called emerging powers, where China appears as the main actor, followed by the other members of BRICS plus.

Thus, we are transitioning from a unipolar order to a multipolar one. This is a process still underway, where the new order has not yet been consolidated. In this sense, we are going through a historical stage defined as a hegemonic interregnum, understood as a period of time within the world order characterized by the "absence of hegemony" (Morales 2018). This concept is based on Antonio Gramsci's theoretical proposition that in crises of hegemony, the old and declining order does not fully perish, and the new or ascendant order does not fully emerge: "the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear" (as cited in Møller 2019, 337). Hence, the hegemonic interregnum is a relatively long, chaotic, and confusing period of time in which there is not a total lack of order in the international system, but rather a semi-ordered system. During this interregnum, there is significant tension between the declining hegemonic order and the new powers that challenge it, although a hegemonic system has not yet emerged to replace the declining one (Morales, 2018; Sanahuja, 2022; Estenssoro, 2023).

Therefore, we are in a highly tense and conflictive historical period in terms of power relations in the world order. As Wallerstein rightly points out, history has shown that whenever a hegemonic power declines, others attempt to replace it. In other words, it is a period of transition, characterized by major wars and uncertainty (Wallerstein, 2010). And all recent events in world politics indicate that he is not wrong.

The declining hegemon, the United States, refuses to step down from its pedestal of power and agree to share it with the powers that demand it (those calling for the creation of a multipolar order). Its growing aggressiveness demonstrates its willingness to use military force to maintain its hegemony, a situation that is extremely dangerous and challenging for humanity in general, and particularly for our Latin American region, given that since the Monroe Doctrine (1823), the United States has considered us its exclusive area of ​​security and influence, or "backyard." This phenomenon has made the issue of the region's sovereignty and integrity an urgent and pressing matter.

In this sense, political science highlights a current with a profound historical and structural perspective on state studies, which conceives of the state as a space—perhaps the most densely populated—ultimately determined by the power relations of the specific historical moment (Jessop, 2019; García A., 2016). The historiographical studies of E.P. Thompson (2012) are a fundamental contribution to understanding the historical and mutable nature of the state.

These approaches allow us to analyze the reproduction of economic and political dependence in Latin American states as a moment in history, and therefore, one that is capable of transformation. The possibilities of achieving greater political sovereignty are determined by that "relational machinery" that is the State (García, A., 2010), from which it is possible to implement projects and models of well-being that benefit the social majorities.

The contrasting dynamic between a hegemonic center that reinforces control mechanisms and another that proposes less hierarchical models of articulation opens a space of strategic tension for Latin American states; the relevance of their dispute lies in this space (Peralta, 2025). This demands an analysis that transcends simplistic dichotomies and positions the region as an actor with agency and negotiation capabilities, but also one that recognizes its structural vulnerabilities and the possibilities for building political sovereignty based on the strategic recovery of key resources, public institutions, and social legitimacy.