Into the Multi(polar)verse
A new world order is emerging.
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Readers of The New York Times who are baffled by “President Trump’s zigzagging strategies” have been authoritatively granted absolution by none other than columnist Thomas Friedman: “It is not your fault. It’s his.” Friedman goes on to say that President Trump “never had a coherent theory of the biggest trends in the world today and how to best align America with them to thrive in the 21st century.” The result, he claims, is the “crazy cocktail” we now see of “on-again-off-again” measures.
While observers of current U.S. foreign policy may experience vertigo, those of us who nevertheless try to follow it closely should endeavor—despite the obvious difficulties, and the possibility that some basic policy change may occur tomorrow—to provide the public with a bit more clarity than the conclusion that “Trump aspires to be a geopolitical shoplifter.”
Of course, we shouldn’t expect explanations from the administration that would satisfy an international relations theorist. In fact, we should not expect very coherent—or even compatible—explanations for its actions at all. What to make, for example, of the various explanations for its trade policy toward Canada: is the goal greater suppression of the fentanyl trade, abolition of protectionist policies concerning e.g. dairy products, or—as former prime minister Justin Trudeau has suggested—weakening Canada economically to facilitate annexation by the United States?
On the other hand, there is one common thread running through the administration’s foreign policy: disdain for the general trend of post-World War II U.S. foreign policy, whether in the form of American leadership of the Free World during the Cold War, President George H. W. Bush’s vision of “the new world order” at the end of the Cold War, or the “rule-based international order,” as President Biden called it. (Whether one wants to refer to American “hegemony” is a matter of taste; the term can be used pejoratively, but, used neutrally, hegemony refers to a recognized position of de facto leadership.)
Trump’s assessment is that America’s position enabled both allies and adversaries to take advantage of us as we focused on creating and maintaining a global order from which others benefited as much as, if not more, than we did. In short, we were suckers and suffered the inevitable fate of suckers. As he sometimes notes, this is fundamentally our own fault; others can hardly be blamed for taking advantage of someone who lets them.
However, if the “rules-based international order” is on its way out, what do we want and/or expect to replace it? What will and/or should the world look like after the American Atlas has completely shed the burden he has been carrying for 80 years? The administration may not ask itself this question, but those trying to make sense of recent events are bound to.
Emerging Multipolarity
With full awareness of the mutability of current policy, and the humility it should instill in analysts, it can be noted that the Trump administration’s behavior—so far, at least—fits well under the rubric of “multipolarity,” as used in international relations theory. A straight-line projection (admittedly always risky and never guaranteed to be accurate) would suggest the development of a “multipolar system” in the coming years.
In the simplest terms, a “multipolar system” exists when there are a number of “great powers” (at least three, but more likely five or a few more) who, for self-interested reasons, are jealous of any attempt by the others to become too powerful, and hence tend to rearrange their relations so as to block whoever is considered too ambitious at the time. In principle, a balance is maintained among the great powers. This ability to maintain order without a hegemon is multipolarity’s chief selling-point for practitioners and observers of international relations.
While being mindful of the interests of the other great powers, each has a “sphere of influence,” informally recognized by the others, in which it can act at will. In ordinary circumstances, a great power will be hesitant to become too active in another’s sphere of influence. Small powers that have the bad luck to fall within a great power’s sphere of influence have to grin and bear it; their ability to maneuver internationally is strictly constrained. Small powers not falling into a sphere of influence are somewhat luckier, but they have to be concerned when the great powers meet: since they are not at the table, they, potentially at least, are on the menu.
This simple, even simplistic, explanation raises at least two questions: first, who determines who is a great power? And second, who determines the boundaries of their respective spheres of influence?
On the first question: the definitive, but unsatisfying, answer is that a great power is a country that the other great powers recognize as such. In general, this means that a great power is one that can act independently on the world stage and whose power is such that it is prudent for other great powers to take its interests into account when they act.
What would this mean in practice for an emerging multipolar system?
No doubt the United States and China are great powers. Russia is not in the same league as these countries in demographic or economic terms, but it is a major nuclear power with strengths in conventional and “hybrid” warfare. Putin clearly means to re-establish Russia as a great power and has done so through his willingness to pursue the Ukraine War despite its high cost in blood and treasure.
India is now the world’s most populous country and its economy and military power are growing. For their own reasons, both the United States and Russia would have an interest in seeing India attain great power status; China, on the other hand, would be reluctant to see India emerge as a recognized great power. India is and often acts as the subcontinent’s major power, but whether and how it might seek to act globally is unclear.
Japan, often regarded as an emerging great power in discussions of multipolarity at the end of the Cold War, is now in an approximate tie for third largest GDP with Germany and India. For decades, its postwar pacifism made the issue moot. This has been eroding, but at the same time, its demographic trajectory has worsened and its economy is no longer growing. In addition, militarily, its lack of “strategic depth” is a drawback.
Which leaves the question of Europe. Given its technological level, economic size and population, it is hard to see why Germany could not become a military match for Russia if it were to devote itself whole-heartedly to doing so, though for historical reasons, transforming itself into an independent military power (especially one with nuclear weapons) would be very difficult domestically and anathema to its neighbors. The UK has a much more useful military tradition but would not be up to bearing the burdens of a great power role. France, despite its Gaullist tendencies, is not up to the job either.
Thus, European officials seem to be converging, in response to current U.S. foreign policy, on the notion of European “strategic autonomy,” long promoted by French president Emmanuel Macron. In 2023, the EU’s then-high representative, Josep Borrell, described a meeting with Chinese officials as follows:
[It was] important to [tell] to [my] Chinese counterpart, the Director and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, that for China and Europe cooperation is very much important, that Europe takes China very seriously and we also expect to be considered, not through the lens of our relations with others, but in ourselves. Because since the war in Ukraine, Europe has become a geopolitical power.
Unfortunately for Borrell, if you have to tell someone that you are a great power, you probably aren’t. Achieving that status would require, in addition to the necessary popular and elite support for the needed sacrifices, the creation of a mechanism for coordinating the political-military policies of European states that avoids the time-consuming complexities of both NATO and EU institutions and bureaucracies. Is this likely to happen?
On the second question: the great powers tend to expand their spheres of influence until they bump into another power’s1; at that point, ideally and usually, the details are settled by diplomacy between the contending great powers, taking into account the subtle pressures exerted by the other great powers, each according to how it sees the settlement of the issue affecting its own relative power. Atypically, but catastrophically, the issue of in whose sphere of influence Serbia lay was “settled” in 1914 by a war that left neither of main contenders (the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires) standing. Multipolarity succeeded in keeping the peace (as international relations theorists often insist it does) until it didn’t.
What might the spheres of influence of the various great powers look like in a future multipolar system?
The United States has traditionally (via the Monroe Doctrine) claimed all of the Western hemisphere as its sphere of influence. This claim was unsuccessfully challenged by France in Mexico during the 1860s, by Germany with the ill-fated Zimmerman telegram during World War I, and by extensive Nazi intelligence operations during World War II. The Soviet Union, by contrast, was able to protect the Cuban communist regime against U.S. military pressure and economic boycotts. The survival of a hostile Venezuelan regime also questions to what extent the term “sphere of influence” is appropriate in this case.
Today, Trump’s claims on Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal illustrate the “sphere of influence” concept quite clearly. The administration clearly believes that no serious legal justification for these claims is necessary (and in the case of Greenland none whatsoever has been offered) because North and Central America (at least) are in the U.S. sphere of influence.
The U.S. sphere of influence extends to East Asia as well. Assuming Japan does not emerge as a great power, the inclusion of the major East Asian countries (Japan, South Korea, the Philippines) within the U.S. “sphere of influence” will come under pressure from China. In the case of Taiwan, China vociferously asserts that its future is an internal Chinese matter, thus denying that the United States has any legitimate interest.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine illustrates the same point. Discarding the various fanciful pretexts, such as fighting Nazism, Putin’s real “justification” is that Ukraine is inherently part of the Russian sphere of influence. Whether that claim gains general recognition, and whether similar claims to other parts of Eastern Europe (territories that were once part of the Tsarist Empire) are accepted, may depend on the eventual settlement of the Ukraine War.
China, meanwhile, has territorial claims over Taiwan, the South China Sea and the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. It has officially abandoned its claims over territory that it lost to Russia in 1860 (vast swathes of the Russian Far East including Vladivostok), but occasionally, in unofficial publications, those claims are revived. For now, we don’t have any clues as to what events or circumstances might lead China to pursue those claims in a serious manner.
Whether China in the future might expand its notion of its sphere of influence to include a form of global hegemony is one of the biggest questions that would hang over the emergence of a multipolar system. More fundamentally, although China often sounds favorable to the idea of multipolarity, there is reason to believe that its current leadership aims at something more ambitious.
Evidence for this fear may be found in the “Joint Statement” that presidents Xi and Putin issued several weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Despite their evident desire to highlight their unity, the Chinese held back from endorsing the Russian goal of multipolarity, producing the following “agreement to disagree”:
The Russian side notes the significance of the concept of constructing a “community of common destiny for mankind” proposed by the Chinese side to ensure greater solidarity of the international community and consolidation of efforts in responding to common challenges. The Chinese side notes the significance of the efforts taken by the Russian side to establish a just multipolar system of international relations.
Chinese leaders are far from explaining the meaning of the “community of common destiny for mankind” in any clear way, but the Joint Statement makes evident that it is different from multipolarity. Multipolarity assumes that the great powers continue to compete from self-interested motives; it is the “system” that regulates—in invisible hand fashion—their actions to prevent anarchy. By contrast, the notion of a “community” is much more idealistic, not to say utopian. In Xi Jinping’s words:
We call on the people of all countries to work together to build a community with a shared future for mankind, to build an open, inclusive, clean, and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security, and common prosperity. We should respect each other, discuss issues as equals, resolutely reject the Cold War mentality and power politics, and take a new approach to developing state-to-state relations with communication, not confrontation, and with partnership, not alliance.
It is easy to dismiss this as woolly-headed rhetoric; but one key is the rejection of alliances. (“Partnership” in the Chinese lexicon involves cooperation in general but excludes cooperation against a common threat.) Along with the rejection of the “Cold War mentality,” this notion of “community” tilts the scale in favor of a big country like China: its smaller neighbors may not form a defensive alliance. In other words, although all countries are formally equal, in practice, one will be bigger and more powerful than the other and can be expected to come out on top in any negotiation. If China believes it is destined to become the world’s most powerful nation, then the extension of this “community” to all mankind would cement China’s preeminent status.
Multipolarity and Realism
As noted, multipolarity theorists argue that it isn’t necessary for the participants in a multipolar system to be aware of and obey the “rules of game.” Thus, great power A will act moderate in its ambitions, not because the rules tell it to, but because it will anticipate how great powers B, C, and D will cooperate (implicitly if not explicitly) to resist A’s immoderate self-aggrandizement. Of course, this only works if a rising power is guided by its long-term interests, prudently understood. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Germany conducted its policy in this manner as long as Bismarck was chancellor; after Kaiser Wilhelm II’s behavior, Germany’s less cautious behavior precipitated the Triple Entente of France, Russia and Britain in opposition to it.
In accordance with the realist understanding of foreign relations, many predicted that once the Cold War ended, many of America’s allies would go their own way, and become available to bolster an anti-American coalition if America’s ambitions were out-sized. Instead, we saw the “unipolar” moment of the 1990s, in which the U.S.-led order either promised or threatened (depending on one’s point of view) to become global.
The major stumbling block was China, whose actual trajectory refuted the optimism expressed in many circles in the United States that continued economic development would inevitably bring about more a liberal government, one that would see integration in the U.S.-led order as aligned with its interests. Russia followed in the footsteps of post-World War I Germany: after a bewildering collapse which the people did not understand, weak democratic government and economic distress bred the desire to overturn the previous verdict of history. Russia or its proxies control regions of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, resulting in what were called “frozen conflicts”—a situation of no war, but no peace either. Finally, regimes (such as those of North Korea and Iran) that we had been able to dismiss as “rogue” persisted in their nuclear programs and hostility to the status quo.
With the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the realists could claim (belated) vindication. The U.S.-led order was widely seen as insufficient to maintain itself in the new environment.
Is Multipolarity Inevitable?
From the realist perspective, the global dissemination of technological, military, and economic power, especially in Asia, would inevitably doom any U.S. attempt to maintain the role it has played in the world since World War Two. Nuclear weapons, the realists would note, can be produced using 80-year-old technology; as is often said, anyone with an iPhone has access to more computing power than the Manhattan Project. The rapid development of drone warfare during the Ukraine War highlights the point that relatively cheap weapons can have major military significance. In an environment which favors the dispersal of military power, how can one nation maintain the position that the United States has held for decades?
These are serious problems, but it is worth noting that U.S. decisions themselves have played the major role in its retreat from global hegemony. President Barack Obama’s rejection of American exceptionalism, and President Trump’s unwillingness to assume the burdens of world leadership, point in the same direction; the Biden administration’s support for the “rules-based international order” marked a reaction to this trend, but the cautiousness of its actions often didn’t match the strength of its rhetoric. For example, its strong political support for Ukraine was paired with a policy of cautious military support, leading to a war of attrition that could be portrayed by the second Trump administration as futile.
We don’t know if a more muscular version of Biden’s “rules-based international order” would have succeeded in creating an anti-China coalition similar to the anti-Soviet coalition of the Cold War. It would have required more vigorous political leadership, including a willingness to make the case that American policy for the past 80 years, despite all its flaws, was essentially successful in its major goals: avoiding a war among major powers, and enabling unprecedented prosperity both for America and an increasing number of other countries.
But the alternative view—that American foreign policy has failed to protect American interests—is in the ascendant. Thus we are unlikely to find out in the next few years whether such a reassertion of American hegemony would have been possible. For good or for bad, a multipolar world order appears to be our future.
Abram N. Shulsky is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington. He served most recently in government as a special assistant to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. He is co-author, with Gary J. Schmitt, of Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence.
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One could imagine a great power that is satisfied with its current sphere of influence and does not even want to expand it. Such abstinence would likely be understood in terms of domestic factors (e.g. expansion might threaten the domestic power balance, as happened when the U.S. acquisition of territory after the Mexican War exacerbated the slavery issue.)
 | A guest post by
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Let’s face it. We are well into the worst case scenario envisioned in the 25th Amendment - a delusional president with a Messiah complex, convinced of his own infallibility, and he’ll be happy to take our economy and our Republic down with him in order to prove it.
A president determined above all else to either neuter, silence, suborn, or criminalize his legal and political opponents in order to ensure that his agenda remains operative. A president prepared to take any steps he can to stay in power as long as possible both simply to do so, and to ensure that he never faces prosecution for his crimes and his treason.
We are in HItler country, albeit with a very cut-rate Hitler but one with every single one of Hitler’s delusions writ small.