{"id":950,"date":"2025-03-07T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2025-03-07T11:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/2025\/03\/07\/felix-sanz-claves-orden-mundial\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T12:27:42","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T10:27:42","slug":"felix-sanz-claves-orden-mundial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/2025\/03\/07\/felix-sanz-claves-orden-mundial\/","title":{"rendered":"Former CNI director F\u00e9lix Sanz explained the key aspects of the turbulent world order at a Social Council conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Social Council of the University of La Laguna has conceived a new series of talks, entitled \u201cDialogues,\u201d which will address current issues with renowned specialists. first of these meetings<\/a> It was held yesterday, Thursday, March 6, at the Espacio Mutua Tinerfe\u00f1a in La Laguna, and addressed the current turbulent world order, marked by the irruption of Donald Trump on the international scene, with F\u00e9lix Sanz Rold\u00e1n, director of the National Intelligence Center (CNI) between 2009 and 2019 and, currently, president of the Social Council of the University of Castilla-La Mancha.<\/p>\n

Sanz began his remarks by making clear the extreme difficulty of addressing the current shifting international geopolitics: \u201cI can\u2019t offer you a solution as to what the world order will be next month, and I don\u2019t think anyone in the world knows.\u201d In his opinion, what has happened with the arrival of the new occupant of the White House is that \u201csomeone has kicked the chessboard, the pieces have gone flying, but fortunately they\u2019ve landed back in. We have to see what we do with those pieces, whether we continue with the same rules or different ones, and whether their capabilities will be the same. It\u2019s a complex situation.\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sanz Rold\u00e1n explained that the ultimate form of world order is one of balance, \u201cwhere no one does anything that those around them cannot tolerate. Peace is something else entirely.\u201d It is, therefore, a system of rules that international political entities, which are not necessarily exclusively states, decide to adopt in order to achieve a degree of harmony, even though each of these entities may hold very different views. In this context, diplomacy is a fundamental resource.<\/p>\n

One characteristic that the former director of the CNI appreciates is that successive world orders have changed at an ever-increasing pace: starting with the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which introduced the ideas of the inviolability of borders and the sovereignty of states, almost two hundred years passed until the Congress of Vienna (1815) established a second world order after the Napoleonic Wars. The third change occurred a century later, with the beginning of the Cold War, and lasted barely 50 years, as the fall of the Berlin Wall imposed a new status quo. The fall of the Twin Towers brought another; the withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan, yet another; and there was further disruption with the invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Therefore, according to the expert, January 20, 2025, the start of Trump's second presidency, marked the beginning of a new world order, and given the dizzying pace of change, what will happen next is unpredictable. Until then, the world was defined by a pole of power, which was the United States and was based on its military might; and a pole of influence, represented by China and its soft power<\/em>; While the remaining countries swung towards one or the other according to their interests. Now two more poles have emerged: Russia, which was a pariah and, \u201cthanks to Trump,\u201d is once again an international player; and the European Union, which has been forced to act at a speed to which it is not accustomed.<\/p>\n

Sanz believes that, although the situation seems alarming, hasty decisions should not be made because the truth is that the US is weaker and in four years, with the new presidential elections, the situation could change. And even sooner: in seventeen months it will be the\u201cmidterm elections<\/em>\u201dIn which Trump could see his power weakened. \u201cThings have been made easy for China, because not even the US can do without it. Without China, Teslas couldn't be manufactured, since the 40% component comes from the Asian country, and the semiconductor industry also depends on them.\u201d.<\/p>\n

In his opinion, the new US president \u201ccouldn\u2019t have started worse by shedding four major burdens\u201d: Gaza, Ukraine, Taiwan, and the EU. This is partly because \u201cTrump doesn\u2019t understand economics; he sees the parts but not the whole.\u201d And for this reason, he believes that even domestically he will face opposition regarding the tariffs he will impose on imports; he has already met with automakers who have likely explained to him the importance of countries like Mexico, Canada, and Germany to that industry.<\/p>\n

Regarding Russia, he doesn't believe Putin is inclined to negotiate, and Sanz believes they must work to achieve a relationship of mutual trust, while reminding him that "it's no longer an empire." Trump fervently desires the photo op of a handshake with the President of the Russian Federation that would portray him as the architect of peace, but the Eastern European leader is playing hard to get, and therefore the American is putting as much pressure as possible on Ukraine to appease him.<\/p>\n

All of this could be good for Europe, because it has been a real wake-up call. On the one hand, it is positive that the United Kingdom, a natural ally of the US, has turned towards Europe. On the other hand, while the Maastricht Treaty (1993) already spoke of creating a common foreign policy that should become a common defense policy and, finally, a common defense, the truth is that no serious steps had been taken to fulfill that commitment. And yet, now there is 800 billion euros for defense on the table.<\/p>\n

\u201cSimply providing the money isn\u2019t enough; you have to know what to do with it. It has to be accompanied by a common policy, a strategy, and a defense industry. There\u2019s still a lot to be done, but we\u2019ve started, and that\u2019s something I think Trump didn\u2019t expect.\u201d Furthermore, in his opinion, Europe has something distinctive: values developed over centuries, which are what Europe has always contributed to the international community and which constitute its true strength.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Social Council of the University of La Laguna has conceived a new series of talks entitled\u2026<\/p>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":953,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,6,59,10],"tags":[601,602,603,604,605,606,607],"class_list":["post-950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-consejo-social","category-destacado","category-institucion","category-portada-ull","tag-consejo-social","tag-donald-trump","tag-felix-sanz-roldan","tag-orden-mundial","tag-ue","tag-union-europea","tag-vladimir-putin"],"acf":[],"primary_category":null,"featured_image_thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/10\/Un-orden-mundial.-33-300x200.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=950"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":952,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950\/revisions\/952"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}