Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Western liberalism proclaimed itself as the end of history—an ideology that, through the language of universal human rights, free markets, and liberal democracy, promised a stable and global order. Yet, once again, history has proven to be far from over. What Francis Fukuyama described in the 1990s—drawing on Hegel and Kojève—as the final ideological evolution of mankind is now unraveling in the face of the return of “the political,” just as Carl Schmitt had warned.
As Fukuyama famously wrote:
“What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution.”
In contrast, Schmitt insisted that politics can never be fully eradicated, noting:
“The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.”
The alliance between Iran, Russia, and China cannot be reduced to a tactical or purely geopolitical convergence. It reflects the emergence of a logical alternative to the liberal order—an order whose legitimacy has been severely challenged by the war in Ukraine, the stalemate in Gaza, and the collapse of trust in Western multilateral structures. Despite their differences in civilization, language, and ideology, these three states converge on one critical point: the redefinition of sovereignty in opposition to unrestrained globalization and the Western desire for cultural standardization.
In Western political thought—from Machiavelli to Schmitt—politics has always been defined through boundaries; through the distinction between friend and enemy, self and other. Modern liberalism attempted to erase those boundaries and transform human beings into global subjects, stripped of cultural, religious, or national belonging. Yet resistance to this project—especially from powers with imperial legacies and civilizational narratives—has brought about the revival of the political.
Chantal Mouffe, one of the most prominent critics of liberal consensus politics, argued that:
“Modern liberalism tries to depoliticize human relations by replacing the antagonism of friend/enemy with economic competition and moral universalism.”
Similarly, John Gray wrote in False Dawn that:
“The project of globalization is ultimately a project of cultural homogenization.”
Today, China—drawing on Confucian heritage and a centralized authoritarian model; Russia—reviving Eurasianist thought and conservative orthodoxy; and Iran—with its revolutionary discourse and Islamic identity—are collectively articulating a new axis of meaning in global politics.
This emergent order, implicitly shaped by the Tehran-Moscow-Beijing triangle, is defined by multipolarity, sovereign reassertion, and a rejection of liberal universalism. In this new order, “difference” is not a threat but a value. Politics is no longer reduced to technocracy or economics; it regains its historical, cultural, and philosophical weight. If the liberal order sought the “end of politics,” this alternative order marks the “return of politics”—a politics rooted in history, identity, and meaning.
As Schmitt warned,
“A world which has been depoliticized is a world without identity or meaning.”
Of course, this alliance is not without internal contradictions—cultural divergences, conflicting national interests, and the lack of integrative institutions may pose limits to its cohesion. But these very frictions may themselves signal the end of the Western order: an order where unity was only possible through sameness, while in the new order, unity arises from difference.
Raymond Aron, reflecting on international politics, reminds us that:
“International politics is not ruled by harmony, but by the management of diversity and conflict.”
The rise of the Tehran-Moscow-Beijing bloc should not be seen merely as a reaction to Western pressure, but rather as an attempt to articulate a new horizon for political order—one where concepts like justice, sovereignty, independence, and identity return to the heart of global governance.
And perhaps it is in light of this transformation that we must return to Schmitt’s essential question:
“Who decides?”
If a new world order is indeed emerging, its answer may lie not in global institutions, but in the historical decisions of actors who no longer accept being consumers of Western-designed order—but instead aspire to become its architects.
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