RETURN TO MULTI-POLARITY

The essential pillars of U.S. global power that have sustained Washington’s hegemony for the past 70 years are being weakened. The US is weaker internationally than it used to be. Past US Presidents through skillful diplomacy, their knowledge of the international system, their geopolitical skills were able to maximize U.S. influence on the world stage. They could use U.S. military power strategically, deftly, they could lead international coalitions, they could set the international agenda. Today, the US is turning it’s back on all of that and accelerating perhaps markedly, even precipitously, the U.S. decline.

All available economic, educational, technological data indicate that when it comes to U.S. global power, negative trends are likely to aggregate rapidly by 2020, and could reach a critical mass no later than 2030. The American Century, proclaimed so triumphantly at the start of World War II, may already be tattered and fading by 2025, and, except for the finger pointing could be over by 2030.

A decline of US unipolarity and the rise of other powers could undermine US predominance and create the conditions for a multi-polar world in the near future. By withdrawing from world affairs, the  US could open new vacuums of power that could be refilled and occupied by other regional competitors. Other states are indeed ready to replace the US on a regional basis and could aspire to the role of great powers in the near future .A return to a multi-polar world characterized by great powers rivalry looms as a feasible and concrete scenario and a possible outcome for the near future. This shifting from unipolarity to multi-polarity could affect the stability of the future world order.

Historical accounts seem to indicate that multi-polarity often created an unstable and unpredictable world, characterized by shifting alliances and by the aspiration of the rising powers to change the balance of power and create a new order.

A shifting from a well defined hierarchy of power to a great power rivalry will therefore result in a less stable world order.

The prospects of a great power rivalry are particularly strong in East Asia, a region characterized by weak regional alliances and institutions, in which the economic rise of some actors could indeed represent a serious source of instability in the near future. The decline of the US and the rise of China could for example undermine the Asian balance of power and bring to light old rivalries.

A return to multi-polarity will therefore imply more instability among great powers. But great power rivalry will not be the only source of possible instability for the future multi-polar world. The current distribution of power allows not only great powers but also middle, small powers and non-state actors to have military capabilities that could threaten the global security. In particular, the presence of nuclear weapons constitutes a further reason of concern and implies that the future world could carry not only the potential instability of multi-polarity and great powers rivalry, but also the dangers entailed in nuclear proliferation. The future multi-polar world will thus be potentially more unstable than all the other multi-polar periods history has experienced until nowadays: for the first time in history, the world could become both multi-polar and nuclear.