The Fall of the Center

"Empires don't fall all at once. They crumble first on the margins, where the center can no longer reach."

— Adapted from Fernand Braudel

"The 21st century will be the century in which the great powers rediscover that they do not control the map—they only draw it."

— Parag Khanna
Why This Book, Why Now?

We are living through a time of tectonic shifts in the international order. The system that emerged after 1991, based on American hegemony and the expansion of the liberal-democratic model, is being challenged on multiple fronts. Russia challenged it head-on by invading Ukraine in February 2022; China challenges it silently by building a parallel system of influence that extends from the South China Sea to the digital Silk Roads; the United States, internally divided and oscillating between interventionism and retreat, no longer offers the same strategic predictability as before.

This book stems from the conviction that these three crises—the war in Ukraine, the internal restructuring of Russia, and the Sino-American tension in the Pacific—are not isolated phenomena. They are manifestations of the same systemic transformation: the weakening of traditional imperial centers and the emergence of new centrifugal dynamics that are reshaping the world's political map.

The central thesis of this work is that a Russian defeat in Ukraine—or at least the recognition that the Kremlin's maximalist objectives are unattainable—will not simply produce a new government in Moscow. It will trigger an imperial reordering with unpredictable consequences: centrifugal pressures on the ethnic republics of the Federation, a growing dependence on China that could transform Russia into a de facto vassal state, and disputes over Russian territorial integrity, especially in the less populated and more fragile regions of Siberia and the Far East.

Meanwhile, in the Pacific, Taiwan emerges as the point by which the American capacity to prevent a coercive alteration of the regional order is measured. The most recent analyses from the US intelligence community indicate that Beijing does not plan an invasion for 2027, but Chinese military maneuvers around the island have intensified dramatically since the end of 2025, with exercises simulating naval blockades and amphibious operations on an unprecedented scale.

The book is structured in five parts that can be read sequentially or independently. The first part deals with Ukraine's post-war future and the monumental challenges of reconstruction. The second analyzes defeated Russia and the dynamics of succession. The third examines the Sino-Russian relationship as a form of economic vassalage. The fourth explores centrifugal movements within the Russian Federation. The fifth projects scenarios for Taiwan and the Pacific.

A forward-looking approach was deliberately chosen, working with plausible scenarios rather than closed prophecies. Each chapter combines historical analysis, current data, and well-founded extrapolations, seeking to offer the reader an integrated view of transformations that, although they may seem distant, are already underway.