Will the global economic crisis induce seismic geopolitical changes?

The paper begins with an analysis of the causes of strong rebalancing of the world economy at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, which leads to weakening of the relative economic importance of developed countries. Then, the authors analyze whether we are in the process of creating a new multilateral geopolitical stage and how much has become important the role of some groups of countries (BRIC and G20). The authors analyze the changes in the global financial architecture defined after World War II under the predominant US influence. In the next two sections the authors first discus how the global crisis will affect the geopolitical constellation and second, they present some estimates that the U.S. dominance, with some dispersion of its global power, could be retained. The authors have concluded that not any of constant geopolitical elements in the leading world countries has substantially changed since 2007, although the economic supremacy of developed economies has significantly decreased in comparison with developing countries and China, in particular. The U.S. leadership is not just a result of its economic and military superiority, but it also results from the relative attractiveness of its ideas and values. So, it is hard to believe that a strong geopolitical reconfiguration could be caused by the global economic crisis, especially in the medium term.