Abstract The article is premised on the idea that the geopolitical landscape will have looked utterly different by the end of the crisis. Hierarchies and positions will change, and the current economic powers will switch places. During this period, development patterns and the strategies adopted by different states or regional units will be put to a test. Future hierarchies will be based on the prestige that different states will have ma- naged to build based on the soundness of these strategies and the costs incurred to implement them. Some of the geopolitical consequences of the crisis are underlined: the impact of the emerging financial powers on future world hierarchies, the challenges to the liberal-democratic model and the searches for alternative developments modes, the shift of power to the East, with the accompanying phenomenon of China’s per- forming the role of regional leader more and more decisively, the changing meaning of globalization as no longer free circulation of financial flows and goods around the world and breakdown of barriers to world trade but rather as inter-nationalization. In this context, one of striking paradoxes created by the crisis is the fact that the financial collapse has global origins and consequently, its consequences can be mastered only by global action. Yet, the tendency is for every state to solve its financial and economic problems on its own and common action is hardly conceivable right now. The foreground is dominated by the rhetoric of coo- peration, while the background witnesses the competition between states and regions. Key words: Global crisis, development mode, liberal-democratic model, state capitalism, China. Paul Dobrescu* Global Economic Crisis – the Geopolitical Crossroads of Our Time * Professor, PhD, Rector, National School of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania.