This title can be read as evoking a temporal disjuncture, recalling the narrative of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. In the film, the protagonist’s life and relationships unfold according to a reversed biological order, producing a persistent misalignment between internal development and the external environment. The logic of African regional integration processes is fundamentally similar: they often evolve through non-linear patterns, i.e. out of sync with the formal timelines and sequencing envisaged in their founding treaties. Notably, customs unions may formally adopt Common External Tariffs (CETs) and unified customs codes, yet struggle to implement them consistently and uniformly in practice. The result is a persistent gap between legal architecture and operational reality, where integration exists more in juridical form than in the on-the-ground functioning of border and trade systems.

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In this article published on the Eurasia review we argue that the post-1945 global order is gradually being “unbundled” into a fragmented, modular system of governance and power. Instead of stable, rule-based institutions dominating geopolitics, the world is moving towards “liquid institutionalism”: a landscape of flexible, temporary, and issue-specific coalitions. The core claim is that states and supernational organizations increasingly operate outside rigid institutional frameworks or preagreed rules. Global governance is becoming less hierarchical and more networked, with actors opportunistically joining and leaving arrangements depending on convergence of interests, need to overcome crises, or to collectively seize opportunities. This scenario is defined “open-source geopolitics”: a situation where power is decentralized and strategic influence is distributed across overlapping platforms rather than solidify around a single hegemonic order. Consequently, modular governance structures emerge: mini-lateral partnerships, coalitions of willing, and sectorally-focused alliances that solve problems functionally rather than ideologically. A key implication is that success in the emerging order depends less on sovereignty in the classical sense. Countries and institutions able to plug into multiple systems, switch partnerships, and coordinate across fragmented architectures are likely to fare better than those relying on fixed geopolitical blocs. In short, the future global order will not be a clean replacement of U.S.-led liberalism by multipolarity, but a fluid, decentralized, and constantly recomposed system of overlapping institutions and alliances, where resilience comes from flexibility rather than adherence to pre-agreed rules, institutional arrangements or treaties. In the emerging new global order, size and power may matter less than the ability to adapt, connect, and recombine across changing alliances and economic networks.