Geopolitics of resistance

Abstract

This review examines Vladimir Padrino López’s book Multipolar Geopolitics: 20 Years After April 13 as a political and strategic reflection on the transition from a unipolar world order to an emerging multipolar, or more precisely tripolar, configuration of global power. The book is interpreted not as an academic treatise, but as a geopolitical diagnosis written from the perspective of a state located at the intersection of resource competition, external pressure, and the struggle for sovereignty. The review shows that Padrino López places Venezuela’s experience within a broader transformation of international relations, where sovereignty is no longer merely a legal principle but a condition of survival and strategic autonomy.

Particular attention is paid to several key themes of the book: the erosion of the unipolar order, the return of territory and strategic geography to global politics, the growing significance of artificial intelligence as a factor of power, and the author’s concept of four “umbrellas” of state power — nuclear capability, economic and financial capacity, energy resources, and technological superiority. The review also analyzes Padrino López’s idea of tripolarity, centered on the United States, Russia, and China, as a more accurate description of the current international system than the broader and less specific notion of multipolarity.
The authors emphasize the relevance of the book for understanding Latin American geopolitical thought, which differs from Western traditions of power projection. In this perspective, strength is understood not primarily as the capacity to dominate others, but as the ability to avoid becoming an object of external will. The review concludes that Padrino López’s work should be read as a warning about the costs of preserving global dominance in a changing world and as a contribution to the intellectual tradition of Latin American resistance, sovereignty, and regional autonomy.