Hybrid Globalisation: Fragmentations and a Clausewitzian Perspective—On Simultaneity, Tension and the Dynamics of Global Transformation

Earlier theories often envisioned globalisation as a movement towards uniformity, with variation read as local adaptation (glocalisation). That paradigm has visibly fractured. The wars in Ukraine and Iran; the weaponisation of trade, sanctions and technology; the consolidation of BRICS+ following its enlargement in 2024; and the assertive ‘multi-alignment’ of states across Asia, Africa and Latin America make clear that we no longer inhabit a single integrated system but a contested, multi-civilisational order in which the formerly subordinated states of the Global South have become co-authors of world politics. Hybrid globalisation, by contrast to glocalisation, generalises contrasts: integration and resistance, digital acceleration and cultural anchoring, openness and closure become tensions both within societies and between them, and especially between former colonial centres and rising postcolonial powers. Originating in the logic of hybrid warfare, hybrid globalisation unfolds across interwoven digital–analogue, state–non-state and local–global arenas. Economic, political, technological and cultural transformations no longer occur sequentially but simultaneously, producing fragmentation and identity voids that are felt most acutely in postcolonial societies whose institutions absorb the shocks of accelerated change while their citizens carry the cultural costs. These dynamics parallel the conditions captured by VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) and BANI (brittleness, anxiety, nonlinearity, incomprehensibility). To navigate this fractured environment, the article introduces Clausewitz’s concept of a floating balance of opposites as a paradigmatic perspective. Rather than resolving contradictions, this framework conceptualises navigation as the structural mediation of tensions, offering an analytical lens for understanding the dynamics of hybrid globalisation. The concept of balance is derived from Clausewitz’s curious trinity and his dialectic of attack and defence. It is applied here not in a military sense but as a methodological approach to a fluid, evolving balance between self-transcendence and self-preservation. This balance is offered as a paradigmatic model for the multipolar, post-Western twenty-first century—and especially for the agency of the Global South within it.