When I was a teenager eager to discover the world, I learnt the Morse alphabet for remote communication. In the Morse code, the emergency signal is an unbroken sequence of three dots / three dashes / three dots – the equivalent for the letters “SOS”. Being often associated with the words “save our souls”, SOS indicates an imminent crisis and the immediate need for action. Last week, on the eve of the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, many people had that feeling of impending crisis.
In August 2015, when I first met the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, he told me: “You arrived in New York at a very interesting time, because the tectonic plates of geopolitics are starting to move”. Ten years later and seen from the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, I realize once again how right he was. In “About Democracy and Industrial Revolutions”, published in March 2025, I suggested that a one-to-one relationship seems to exist between successive industrial revolutions and economic elites in power, which may contribute to geopolitical cycles: “…With the Third Industrial Revolution, industrial elites ceded power to financial elites, whose prosperity was based on the development of financial services and the free movement of capital, that flourish in a globalized world. After the Covid-19 crisis, the world entered the Fourth Industrial Revolution, with widespread use of Artificial Intelligence, digital platforms, interconnection, nanotechnology… In such a world, outsourcing of production and long supply chains are no longer necessary, while protecting markets and access to critical resources become vital… The Fourth Industrial Revolution seems to bring again industrial elites to the forefront.”
Historically, structural changes like those we are seeing now only come around once in a century and may be disruptive. It is a time of deep polarization and geopolitical volatility, with multiple crises taking place concurrently, and with competition among major players extended to new areas of confrontation – from the geopolitical race for space, to rivalry in the field of artificial intelligence. The Global Risks Report 2026, published by the World Economic Forum before its annual meeting, captures insights from over 1,300 experts worldwide and identifies geo-economic confrontation, state-based armed conflict, extreme weather events, societal polarization, disinformation and misinformation, as the most pressing risks in 2026. Erosion of human rights and of civic freedoms is only on the 8th position.
In Davos, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz perfectly summed up this new reality: “The old-world order is unraveling at a breathtaking pace. We have entered an era of great power politics. The new world of the great powers is founded upon power, strength and when necessary, force. It is not a cozy place.”, while Finnish President Alexander Stubb called the current moment a generational rupture in the world order, and urged Europe to act with “values-based realism”.
In a message posted on X platform on 21 January, Alain Berset, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, wrote: “This year the mood @WEF annual meeting reflects a world under strain. Global tensions are reshaping priorities. That’s why this year theme – the spirit of dialogue – is central. Europe must prioritize unity: diversity is a strength, but fragmentation is a weakness in face of geopolitical shocks.” He argues that security is no longer only about borders or military budgets: “The frontline is everywhere, in our courts, our parliaments, our information space, and the trust people place in public institutions. At a moment of Cold War-scale rearmament, the Council of Europe plays a central role in ensuring that democratic control gives security its legitimacy.”
An important element on which trust is built is international law – a set of treaties, conventions and rules of international conduct accepted by the political will of states. But international law is a living instrument, and political will cannot be separated from power relations, just as a country’s foreign policy cannot be separated from its geography. For instance, when the United Nations Charter was adopted in 1945, United States President Harry S. Truman was clear, saying: “This Charter . . . will be expanded and improved as time goes on. . . . Changing world conditions will require readjustments.” Since then, the UN Charter has been amended three times and, for instance, any substantive reform of the Security Council will require an amendment to the Charter (in 2017-2018, I had the privilege to co-chair the UN Intergovernmental Negotiations on Security Council Reform).
This is also valid for the Council of Europe conventions. As Portugal’s Foreign Minister Paulo Rangel recently remarked in Strasbourg: “An example is the European Court of Human Rights, which has proved the capacity to adapt and provide innovative responses to new challenges, while preserving its full independence… The legal frameworks, customary practices, and jurisprudence that once served as our reliable guide cannot remain unchanged in an era in which the landscape of communication has been profoundly transformed.”
The Forum in Davos was not supposed to be a chamber of consensus, but an opportunity to stimulate real exchange of views and creativity, to overcome division. The objective was eloquently formulated by the Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney: “For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order… And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection. We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied varying rigor, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim”. He proposed collective investments in resilience, shared standards to reduce fragmentation, and complementarity: “To help solve global problems, we are pursuing variable geometry, in other words, different coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests… It’s building coalitions that work – issue by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together…, creating a dense web of connections across trade, investment, culture, on which we can draw for future challenges and opportunities… We know the old order is not coming back. Nostalgia is not a strategy.”
This reminds me of President Ronald Reagan’s words, on the D-Day 40th Anniversary in France, on 6 June 1984: “We are bound by the same loyalties, traditions, and beliefs. We are bound by reality. The strength of America’s allies is vital to the United States, and the American security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe’s democracies. We were with you then; we are with you now. Your hopes are our hopes, and your destiny is our destiny.”
Today, like 40 years ago, the transatlantic unity is essential to navigate turbulent times defined by geopolitical, economic and social shifts. As the President of Romania, Nicusor Dan, stated on 23 January: “The transatlantic relationship has a history of bringing stability and prosperity, and is of crucial importance to the European Union and its Member States, including Romania. This is one of the key messages from the discussions I had last night in Brussels with European leaders attending the informal meeting of the European Council. For Romania, the United States of America is an essential strategic partner for our security and we act accordingly.” On 21 January 2026, in Davos, President Donald J. Trump highlighted the same imperative of fortifying alliances against global challenges: “The United States cares greatly about the people of Europe… and we believe deeply in the bonds we share… The explosion of prosperity and progress that built the West did not come from our tax codes; it ultimately came from our very special culture. This is the pressure inheritance that America and Europe have in common…”
Post Scriptum:
Here are some lines I wrote 20 years ago in the chapter “Romania’s profile in the European Union”, from my book “The European Union in Search of the Future. European Studies” (C.H. Beck Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008; the volume is included in the European Parliament collection “100 Books on Europe to Remember”):
“…A large country status (“the smallest of the large ones in the EU”) presupposes more than a will based on geographical size and population. It can become a reality only if our interests are enhanced through a “system of alliances with variable geometry”, designed within the “multilateral matrix”, because the advantage of geographical position, size and population can lose its relevance if the assumed role is not supported by other players. We could call this mode of action “multilateralism with variable geometry”.
“Multilateralism”, because it consists of identifying those alliances that allow to achieve our objectives by attracting the support of states which have similar approaches, so that, together, we can obtain the necessary qualified majority in the EU Council. “Variable geometry”, because alliances can be structured differently depending on interests, and these differ from one area to another.
Achieving the objectives involves identifying these common interests and building stable alliances over time, while respecting one of the unwritten rules of the EU, namely that a state cannot repeatedly find itself in the minority. Often, the coincidence of interests is favored by geographical proximity, but the complementarity of offers also plays an important role. The higher the stakes, the broader the alliance must be. It therefore becomes useful to create a “map of common interests”, which would establish how other partners are positioned in relation to the files that are of particular interest to Romania, after which potential lines of alliances with variable geometry can be drawn.”
Dr. Ion I. Jinga
Note: The opinions expressed in this article do not bind the official position of the author.
