2| Z ACHARY P AIKIN , S HADA I SLAM AND S VEN B ISCOP If one views today’s international order as uniform and rooted in Western leadership, then Russian and Chinese assertiveness(or merely Russian and Chinese power) automatically poses a threat to the order’s wellbeing. However, today’s international order is in fact plural. Several sub-orders can be identified, segmented based on geography, ideology or even policy area, within the overall international order. While the foundations of the international security and normative orders may be contested for various reasons by Moscow and Beijing, the economic and multilateral orders appear much more resilient. The fact that many states in the‘Global South’ view the war in Ukraine as a strategic dispute between Russia and the West rather than an existential threat to the international order is itself a The fact that many states in the ‘Global South’ view the war in Ukraine as a strategic dispute between Russia and the West testament to the multilateral order’s resilience. rather than an existential threat to the international order is itself a testament to the multilateral order’s resilience. And while Russia may be challenging major aspects of Europe’s rules-based security and normative orders, China’s relationship to multilateralism and international institutions is more nuanced. China has often sought to increase its influence within existing institutions(e.g. the United Nations and the Asian Development Bank) before creating its own(e.g. the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank) when these efforts were stymied. As for the international economic order, the difficulty in bringing about not only decoupling but even mere‘de-risking’ points to the fact that economic openness, broadly speaking, will likely remain the norm rather than the exception. Any Chinese plan to displace American hegemony does not amount to a desire to overturn the global order, given that US leadership and the contemporary order are not perfectly synonymous. And Russia’s behaviour, while destructive, cannot cause the global order to disintegrate completely if other powers(both North and South) remain broadly committed to upholding it. By not applying sanctions, China does support Russia indirectly. But in that it is not alone – only the EU and NATO countries, and their closest partners, such as Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea, have adopted sanctions. The rest of the world, including major democracies such as Brazil, India, Indonesia and South Africa, has not followed suit. To many in the West, this came as an unpleasant surprise, and it does highlight the waning of Western influence. But it is understandable that there are many countries in the‘Global South’ – that have been(and are) the victims of war and have often only received limited Western support – that do not feel the urge to choose sides in this particular conflict simply because it is one that Europeans and Americans care about. Many indeed do cringe whenever a Western leader states that in the 21 st century it is