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50 Fletcher F. World Aff. i (2026)

handle is hein.journals/forwa50 and id is 1 raw text is: THE FLETCHERFORUM of WORLD AFFAIRS THE FLETCHER SCHOOL, TUFTS UNIVERSITY WINTER 2026 VOL. 50:1 $14.00 USA Asserting The Non-West: Quo Vadis? EDITOR'S NOTE Taking on the mantle of prefacing this Edition of The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs comes with a signal honor: this is officially Volume 50, and The Forum is half a century old! Needless to add, with great power, comes great responsibility. Such is also the responsibility that comes with penning this note. As I bask in the Ginn Library reading room's archaic charm, I find myself surrounded by a series of transitions: the world has more active conflicts than perhaps any time since the end of the Second World War, conventional alliances no longer work in conventional ways, countries engage in issue-based coalitions, and while multilateralism sees a major erosion of faith and credibility, minilateralism and transactional politics have become the lingua franca of global engagement.1 Artificial Intelligence is set to transform the way the world works, and the emer- gence of hyper-evolutionary technologies has likely put us on a track to technological growth that few can reliably predict: How do you legislate on something that has already evolved beyond legislation by the time it is codified through long, messy, democratic procedures?2 Maybe the portraits around me in Ginn could have answered those questions; or maybe they, too, would be left scratching their heads.3 Amidst this era of arguably unprecedented geopolitical transitions, the shape of international politics is being molded in ways that experts are still grappling with. With the new administration in Washington, D.C., making it clear that the United States is refocusing inward, the idea of the liberal international order-embedded in the U.S., where the term is hotly debated-is now being reevaluated.4 The West is a term used to refer to the United States and its European Allies, particularly those in the i