The world as we knew it no longer exists. The shock is hitting those countries hardest that pursue their own geopolitical and economic interests but are unable to actively shape the world order.

In the third part of the Chronicles of the New World Disorder, we describe how regional powers try to find their role within it. The story began with China and India: they rose up against the West's colonial trade policies and successfully led their billion-strong populations out of poverty, while other countries, dragged along in the wake of the Washington Consensus, remained trapped in the poverty cycle.

Europe, by contrast, perfected the art of freeriding. It passively rode the American wave, selling Italian and French luxury handbags and German limousines to the elites of those very countries it publicly denounced as autocracies - and conquering export markets that Washington had pried open with gunboat diplomacy.

It profited without shaping. Those in its immediate neighbourhood suffered most under this mentality: Turkey, which was strung along for years with promises that were never meant to be kept - and Ukraine, which was dragged into the European swamp of indecision and particular interests without being granted the privileges that were supposed to come with it.

Russia, meanwhile, found itself locked in a defensive struggle. Economically weakened and increasingly isolated, the Kremlin leaned ever more heavily on military means - to the detriment of its neighbours. When the Euromaidan seemed to bring the dynamics of the Arab Spring to Russia's borders, Moscow felt compelled to act: in Libya, in Syria, and finally in the Donbass.

Since a conventional confrontation with the overwhelmingly superior United States appeared hopeless, it shifted the fight into the grey zone - into a realm where war and peace become indistinguishable.