How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/
ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the ever-changing global political environment and offers key insights that underpin the understanding of the term world order. In doing so, a brief journey through time will reveal conceptual insights into an ongoing dynamic process between the two extremes of multipolarism and unipolarism, the M.U.M. model, its dynamics, and how it relates to potential concepts such as balance, imbalance, and the subjective restoration of what has been lost. Based on these general findings and clarifications, a look into the future will allow the reader to add a prominent individual value to currently existing ideologies such as a unipolar, bipolar, or multipolar world order, and will stimulate the creation of a more personal, lasting, and independent conceptual understanding beyond such terminology in common use.
KEYWORDS
Unipolar, bipolar, multipolar, world order, fragmentation, political divergence, global alliance
INTRODUCTION
Starting this journey into the depth of the meaning of the terminology of world order and its impact on our daily life, I strongly believe that we first of all need to agree on two specific aspects: namely, that a political or global order per se is only a temporary phenomenon, and that we may always identify a previous epoch and follow up on the time lapse in question. Based on such agreements and findings, we are able to see that the world community potentially finds itself in the fortunate situation of learning from the past and building a future in a more meaningful and sustainable way. Even though analysing the political past does not sound like a ground-breaking innovation, we still need to assume that this source of knowledge is broadly ignored in today’s political decision-making. Accepting that such historical resources are ignored and claiming that the persons in charge of building a secure global environment fumble in the dark turns out to be the only option to save the face of a large number of politicians with regard to their professional executive strategies. More often than not, such actions are made in an egocentric way, suppressing the global community’s needs. The Secretary-General of the United Nations questions the number of men in executive positions, and calls for an increasing number of women in decision-making processes, counting on female rational competencies (Besheer 2023). But let us go back in history, learn from the past, and find out how we can make better decisions in a constantly changing world.
Accordingly, we will need to verify what the term world order potentially meant through the ages, how it impacted regional and global affairs, and how it developed over the last centuries. We all may further agree that the topic of global politics and international affairs is a complex and complicated one. Therefore, we need to start inhabiting this field carefully and step by step, ensuring that our common understanding grows from one headline to the next. Thus, we should start discussing the topics of unipolarism, bipolarism, and multipolarism in this proper logical sequence. We will end the chapter by having a look at historical global affairs from a more holistic perspective, giving a prominent focus to a crucial aspect that has always ruled global politics, namely communication.
In order to start off with the fundamental core term, namely world order, I must point out that there is no concrete and sole definition per se. While some scholars describe it as an arrangement between major powers on how to rule the rest of the world, others define it as a concept of regional rules that are applicable to the rest of the globe (Rodrik and Walt 2021). Let us proceed and build our own understanding of this term and construct.
MAIN CORPUS
Unipolarism on a regional and global level
As briefly outlined in the introduction, regional, national, continental, and intercontinental affairs are of a temporary character and, therefore, highly dynamic. Therefore, we are not able to adequately label a specific starting point from when international connections gave birth to strategic alliances. A lack of documentation prevents us going further back in history than a few thousand years.
Basically, we could go back some 3,000 to 4,000 years, when nomadic tribes started to settle in Sumer (Lawson 2016) and establish trade alliances. Such micro alliances potentially gave birth to more complex settings of interconnectivity and could be seen as a concrete cradle of regional impact, as trust, acceptance, and interregional relations must have existed, since these tribes could not have moved peacefully and securely on their specific routes without an infrastructure based on mutual acceptance. Interpersonal connections are a fundamental need of a human being, not only in the professional environment, but also in the social setting. Based on the fact that humans are social creatures, a social structure of interaction and exchange builds part of the first education of a being. Therefore, we are conditioned to interact with other parties from our childhood on, and it is logical that each type of order or harmony represents the balancing processes between order and disorder (Blackwill and Wright 2020). This is a strong hint towards the fact that trust and acceptance are not birth rights, but need to be established, in all environments of human interaction.
This primary education builds the cornerstone of a human’s interactive superstructure that may grow and become more complex, with reference to each individual’s setting and ability. At this point, we are able to see that the concept of unipolarism starts at an individual level, namely within the family. From a baby’s egocentric perspective, the family forms the first functional cell, namely the child’s world per se. As time goes by, the child will discover that there are more families living in the same area and that connecting with such parallel cells forms part of a social individual’s life. Such connections are the root cause of social aid, exchange, stability, and growth. Thus we can say that concepts of polarism are born with the individual’s self-realisation and by placing such findings into a wider environment.
Lifting this content up to the level of clans, ethnicities, nations, and even professional environments, we will see that the value of personal interaction does not lose importance while the size of the setting grows. On an international level, heads of state foster their relations on a personal level by dialogue and mutual visits. Based on common trust and understanding, international projects, such as trade alliances, educational exchanges, and health care support, are planned and initiated. These generally have mutual stability from a multilevel aspect as a goal.
Reviewing the news as well as historical references, we may learn that such interactions can be found all over the globe, throughout all ages, following a diverse range of strategies. The intensity of one’s network does not label a stakeholder automatically as the ruling force of a unipolar concept. Aside from this, it is important to realise that several strong stakeholders and even empires coexisted globally at the same time. The term unipolarism became crucially relevant not long ago. Basically, it outlines a period when one regional superpower does not face any other major power as a competitor (Ahere 2011), and potentially identifies several minor powers that may play a specific role with or without crucial abilities. A tremendous change in the global community was needed to initiate this phenomenon.
An intermediate process before finally arriving at what we may consider to be truly, but temporarily, unipolar in the modern age is the imperialistic epochs. Here, we may consider empires such as the Mongolian, the Ottoman, the Mayan, and the Roman (Blackwill and Wright 2020), and the epoch of European colonialism. Consequently, we may realise that the wealth and dominance of Western European countries were based on historical circumstances and exploitation (Lawson 2016), which caused a significant imbalance in global markets and selective access by the global community to such markets. The prominent period generated by these circumstances led the Western European imperialists to being comfortably settled for over three hundred years. During this time, they managed to create lasting benefits from their imperialistic activities (Lawson 2016), with these benefits lasting, in some cases, up to the present age.
In order to return to the initially mentioned dynamics of global politics, we may connect deeper with the topic of globally spread coexisting regional dominant parties. Even though we can count several of them at a global level, they remain locally and regionally eminent and do not generate an overall global impact, which means that they follow a locally unipolar concept. To regionally bound citizens, such sociopolitical constructs represent the world per se, obviously assuming that such individuals do not travel or do not envision looking over their shoulder.
Keeping in mind that terms like polarism strongly depend on external factors, of a hard-skill or soft-skill nature, we can further put these thoughts into practice and create some examples. Applied hard skills materialise, for example, in regional dominance related to trade or military power, while relevant soft skills are more likely to refer to the importance and impact of external alliances. We can now go further and even integrate the terms bipolarism and multipolarism into our reflection, but we are not there yet.
What has changed over the last centuries, and this is identified as a soft skill or fact, is the speed and quantity of communication. The ability to send a telegram within minutes, to make a phone call, and, more recently, to have access to the internet made the world community gather much more closely side by side and turned likely regional wallflowers into parties with an increasing level of global impact. This initiated a new level of dynamics, namely that individuals, nations, and companies could react within minutes to decisions made or statements shared at the other extreme of the globe. This was the moment when even individual travelling and the shipping of goods sped up, and the worldwide spread of super, major, and minor powers turned into one global community. Now, forming one global community, it is obvious that the terms related to polarism reach another level of importance and relevance.
Bipolarism and its dramatic birth
The global community, as described above, arranged itself within a balance of existing regional and interregional ruling authorities. According to global dynamics and circumstances, such empires bloomed and disappeared from time to time, as such developments strongly depend on the specific and overall circumstances of such historical sequences (Koechler 2023). More recently, European colonialism pushed this naturally balanced process to collapse. Caught up in an extreme rivalry of expanding global impact, gathering natural resources, and shifting ethnic groups from one continent to another, such invasive behaviour challenged the existing world order, of a multitude of globally spread unipolar empires, to its limits, and this existing order was widely taken over by European intruders, acting under the egocentric banner of imperialism.
Interestingly, the timeline between 1871 and 1914 is recognised as the great period of peace within the Western European alliance (Flanagan 2011). Obviously, this statement places its focus on the European territory, excluding the proceedings and dramas that took place in the territories to be annexed, where fierce fighting between existing civilisations and European invaders formed, more often than not, a long-lasting, brutal, and sad reality.
The above-mentioned 43 years of European peace imply the assumption that countries involved in the conquest of regions abroad were simply too busy looting their new territories to fight each other on European terrain. However, this changed when inter-European relations were stressed and the fear of a German takeover of continental political power arose (Flanagan 2011). As a consequence of this fear, and other circumstances, the political balance between the European cluster powers, Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy on the one side, and Britain, France, and Russia on the other, got out of balance (Sakhawat 2019) and culminated in the beginning of the First World War. Obviously, this is only one of several theories on the causes that supported its start.
The global community unfortunately experienced not only the First World War, but also the Second within a period of only about three decades. As a consequence of the first, Germany was bound to fulfil the constituent parts of the Treaty of Versailles, while the second gave birth to another scenario, namely the long-lasting split of the victorious powers, Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States of America, and as a consequence of this, to the Cold War (Schweitzer 2014).
As there are no conflicts without the building of new alliances, we may briefly say that as a consequence of the early and ongoing stages of the Cold War there appeared the long-lasting desire within the world community to finally obtain ordo ab chao. Accordingly, each party of the former united victorious powers attempted to establish, support, and materialise their own concept of global order. The major players of the world community split into two camps, namely the American and the Soviet ones (Blackwill and Wright 2020). One attempt at global order was realised by the Western alliance by founding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, while the counter-movement by Eastern European nations was to sign the Warsaw Pact and create the Warsaw Treaty Organization (Mastny 2001). Based on their economic relevance, both Russia and the United States had a crucial impact within their alliances and played a key role in building today’s global political scenario (Varisco 2013).
In order to support our common understanding of this situation, we need to explore some additional information on the topic of bipolarism, namely that two types of this phenomenon exist. On one side, we have power-based polarism. This describes two major stakeholders facing each other on one level of economic power or military opportunity. On the other side, and this one is more relevant for us here, we find cluster-based polarism, which is a setting where one major camp is built out of several like-minded previously minor powers. Obviously, the Cold War period was a mix of both (Ahere 2011), as we may identify the East and the West with the Soviet Union and the United States only, ignoring their minor partners.
Giving historical credit to all the above-mentioned sociopolitical events, we finally arrive at the epoch after the Second World War, in the middle of the Cold War, when twelve Western European countries and the United States founded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO 2024), while seven Eastern European nations signed the Warsaw Pact and founded the Warsaw Treaty Organization (Mastny 2001).
Summing up our findings briefly, we started our journey throughout time when a multitude of most likely unipolar empires coexisted globally. Here, we may see that polarity describes a temporary balance of power and impact between or within the conglomerate of main actors (Ahere 2011). This balance was interrupted by the colonialist activities of Western European countries, when these lost themselves in an imperialist trade war, not focusing on internal European affairs. Even though none of the colonialists owned a proper empire, most of them longed for this by extending their territories abroad. The two World Wars finalised the imperialistic epoch. The pre-colonialist order gave birth, due to the colonialist transformative centuries, to even more stakeholders looking for an impactful status that they could not cope with afterwards. After the Second World War, the early stages of creating political order were overshadowed by the fundamental desire to foster economic impact and advantage. In this way, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and, as a response, the Warsaw Treaty Organization were founded. Both attempted to receive and secure the largest piece of the cake.
As the success and impact of both organisations were measured in economic strength, NATO placed itself into a comfortable and eminent position, dominating international markets for several decades, surpassing its counterpart by far and turning it into an irrelevant body that is hardly remembered. When the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 exposed to the public its inability to uphold the desired leadership position (Ciambra 2007), the former Eastern Bloc focused on reorganising itself and thus gave even more space for NATO to rise to its top position (Adams 2023). This unipolar epoch led by NATO established a short period of major peace and less international rivalry between the aforementioned blocs (Ahere 2011), based on the fact that Russia and China were simply too weak to challenge the United States at that time (Blackwill and Wright 2020).
The unrivalled global standing of the United States did not promote a mandatorily quiet and balanced world at all (Mastanduno 2009). Even though it was fairly peaceful, we may ascertain that such unstable political circumstances basically call for further development on the potential opponent’s side, in one direction or the other (Ciambra 2007). This status of political unipolar autonomy enabled NATO to focus on building new alliances (Ciambra 2007). This seemed to be highly necessary, as a unipolar standing within the global community of indecisive states tends to appear like a one against all situation, and could easily turn out to be a bipolar setting of one major power and a fragmented opponent, totally unpredictable in its development. Facing and maintaining such a status quo, in a highly dynamic context, is built on political and economic costs that remain prohibitive (Dall’Agnol 2018). Furthermore, with the continuous economic growth of such formerly minor powers, these continuously qualify for more crucial positions of impact within world politics and need to be taken into future account (Wade 2011).
However, the founding of the Warsaw Treaty Organization should not have been the last and only attempt to build a counterpart to NATO. In 2001, an economic researcher introduced the term BRIC nations for the first time and thereby indirectly initiated the existence of what later on became a proper intergovernmental organisation, starting off with members Brazil, Russia, India, and China (Erdmann 2024b). Afterwards, South Africa was accepted to provide a solid fifth member. In 2024, additional states joined, namely Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates (Jütten and Falkenberg 2024), looking for credibility and legitimacy while most of them follow authoritarian concepts (Adams 2023).
While the proper building process of BRICS is outlined in my above-mentioned article, I wish to call to your attention the fact that nowadays BRICS, like NATO, is a relic of Cold War dynamics and keeps the potential rivalry between the West and the East alive (Stares et al. 2020). Needless to say, human nature attempts to constantly develop and change, that is, to improve. Such moderate competitive behaviour may support a sound and stable growth. But where does such rivalry lead at a state level, especially when a rational balance might be missing and one party only longs for external power, while it struggles with internal corruption, institutional weaknesses, and political instability (Adams 2023)? I strongly believe that two opposing parties can still follow common overall goals, in particular when we live in an epoch when terms such as you and me are more likely replaced by us.
As previously discussed, nowadays all of us form part of the global community, a setting that is built upon communication abilities and which distinguishes itself by the necessity for responsibility towards oneself and the global community per se. Therefore, it is obvious that decisions need to be taken in favour of humankind and planet Earth, and that personal interests need to be weighed up and examined in relation to the necessities of the world community. Obviously, there is no place for blind rivalry and politicians who act as if they are playing egocentric games in a sandbox. War and violence do not form part of a mature person’s mindset per se. Based on this finding, we may all agree that politicians and citizens need to overcome their most basic intrinsic instincts and master their mindsets in order to start thinking truly as one. There is obviously nothing to lose, as we can only generate global benefits in a conglomerate of like-thinking minds. In the history of humankind, fragmentation has likely always been a tool of, or a door to, isolation, destructiveness, shortsighted decision-making, and weakness (Erdmann 2024a).
The fact that BRICS countries make up about 50 per cent of the global population (Adams 2023) does not automatically support peace, balance, or constructive dialogue. In order to understand NATO’s counterpart better, we need to grasp what BRICS truly stands for. BRICS is not only an ideological antipole, but an economic power, a military might, and a political alliance that is constantly developing itself (Adams 2023). Even Russia’s ongoing aggression towards Ukraine could not deter several states from officially joining BRICS in 2024.
At this point, we may recognise that another fundamental change in the global trade war has taken place. Misled by the Cold War scenario, the global community still labels the two camps as major actors in a potentially bipolar world: Russia and the United States. Here, we need to admit that China has replaced Russia by having a stronger economic impact and a more significant military might (Ashford and Cooper 2023). It is interesting to consider what this fact may mean for the power balance within BRICS itself.
Such happenings are only a slight hint of how complex the interlinkages are, how static international negotiations can become, and how the global community distances itself more and more from a crucial and sustainable oneness, while it is noteworthy that a lasting oneness could also have a bipolar foundation.
Multipolarism in the past and nowadays
As we can see, based on the previous two sections, there has always been more than one single truly unipolar empire or ruling concept throughout the history of humankind. Wherever we find a ruling authority, there may also exist a dynamic of resistance, struggling for power itself or at least for a broader availability of choice and opportunity. Such dynamics do not form a solid platform for sustainable peace, are most likely fragile (Wolforth 1999), and do not represent a power balance per se. Although we had several regional empires coexisting in the past, we moved on to an epoch when this multipolar balance of coexistence collapsed. Taking advantage of these chaotic circumstances, with the colonial interlude and the two World Wars, the NATO partners took over and formed a unipolar and economically dominant concept that ruled over the global markets for several decades (Blackwill and Wright 2020). Such a development caused a debate on a global scale (Mastanduno 2009), and directly results in our timeline from the previously described appearance of a multipolar balance (Straus 1997).
Then, based on this unipolar setting, something very interesting happened. It is not only the fact that BRICS built a counterpart to NATO and challenged the recently existing main world order (Adams 2023), but also the shift from a fragmented world order towards an interconnected global community. The two main characters, namely the Western and the Eastern alliances, struggling for economic dominance and impact, are only two parts of the triad. We now need to take a third party into account and realise that we are talking about a new setting of multipolarism in a new epoch. Personally, I label this journey the M.U.M. model, as it describes a move from one specific form of multipolarism towards a temporary unipolarism, a process that enabled a new setting of multipolarism. This model outlines the notion that terms and concepts repeat themselves but change their setting from time to time. The process of improving repetition can be visualised by imagining a spiral staircase: you arrive at the same spot over and over again, but on a new level.
The third party in building modern multipolarism is formed by a group of fragmented, isolated, or indecisive nations that do not wish to affiliate to one of the main parties or that wait and see which alignment could generate the most significant benefit in the short or in the long term. Such a conglomerate of opportunist nations is able to initiate unpredictable dynamics in world politics. Based on the fact that the United States does not nowadays show as strong an economic impact as it used to do (Ashford and Cooper 2023), the potential fragmented minor powers are free to choose which superpower they may follow and which alliance will turn out to be more beneficial in the long run. Countries such as India, Japan, and Australia would appreciate a stronger American commitment against China (Burrows 2017), while India, being a BRICS member like China, has the ability to become a major power by itself. All these tensions, inside and outside of BRICS, complicate the balancing process towards an overall oneness.
Accordingly, these minor powers, and nations with a great deal of development potential, not only consume a lot of the main stakeholders’ time and energy while they are courted, but they also imply the capacity to properly organise themselves and to establish a functioning third party, longing for the position of a proper main character for itself. In this way, modern multipolarism would be born (Ahere 2011). The fact that all stakeholders, at all their levels of impact, still depend on and interact with each other, often at an economic level, describes the absurdity of this global overall interconnectivity (Tella 2015).
We can identify several states that, even though they are economically weak, try to upgrade their standing within the global community, individually or as part of a proper camp, by increasing their relevance as regards peace by building nuclear weapons (Blackwill and Wright 2020). While nuclear weapons were used in the past in a dissuasive way, it is questionable whether countries such as India, Pakistan, and North Korea would follow the same concept if a potential national threat occurred (Burrows 2017). Based on these developments, this period in time entails radical international uncertainty (Blackwill and Wright 2020), and an ongoing rivalry between major nuclear powers does not build a lasting stable and peaceful time at all (Martin 2022).
SUMMARY
The chapter’s organising claim is that the categories in common use, unipolar, bipolar and multipolar, describe positions in a cycle rather than alternative states of the world, and that treating them as alternatives obscures what is actually happening. The spiral figure carries the argument: the same configuration recurs, but never at the same level, because each passage through it leaves behind institutions, grievances and capabilities that the previous one did not have. From this the author derives the observation that gives the chapter its title, namely that what is emerging is not a return to any earlier multipolarity but something the older vocabulary cannot name, since the decisive third element is not a power but a set of states that have declined to choose, and whose unpredictability is itself a structural feature rather than a transitional one.
CONCLUSION
The benefits, challenges, and threats of such a complex construct as polarism are obvious. Even though it seems to be a natural process to identify competition between poles (Ahere 2011), stakeholders find themselves in a setting that does not really promote constructive and sustainable decision-making in favour of the world community. All initially listed terms lose their constructive potential based on the fact that, being driven by the basic fear of ending up neglected by global business, political decision-makers select paths that further promote fragmentation, restlessness, and egocentric behaviour, instead of initiating and strengthening global unity and responsibility.
In order to accurately label our status quo, we find ourselves in a political environment where we shift from a more likely natural setting of two poles to an absurd, obscure construct of three poles. The third pole completes the construct of a fragmented and polarised pluralism and represents a variable that is unpredictable in itself. These minor parties may connect individually with a more settled and impactful major party, or they may complete the scramble for power and impact by forming an authority of their own. Nowadays, we see fragmented third parties being connected to both major players. India has the potential to become a sole major power, but also forms part of BRICS and the G20 at the same time.
Even splitting and reorganising such an entity turns out to be highly complex. Russia and China, obviously both members of BRICS, cooperate on one platform but struggle against each other on another, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Here, Russia tried to make India and Pakistan join, even though the two countries suffer a highly tense relationship, in order to weaken China’s impact within this Eurasian partnership (Burrows 2017). Potentially, this was also one reason for the acceptance of a multitude of new BRICS members in 2024.
In order to challenge our reality a bit further and to breathe even more life into the term pluralism, it is mandatory to outline that none of the main stakeholder parties is bound to such a major camp forever. Potential fragmentation, as we can see, does not only happen on the level of ideological ideas and visions, but also on an economic level, as seen in Latin America when it removed itself from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in order to follow its own development bank (Alexander 2014). Something similar happened when BRICS nations connected to the New Development Bank (Erdmann 2024b). Potentially, the constant back and forth of the non-Western states is their weakest point and the one that truly prevents them from obtaining a lasting leadership role.
On a global scale, we can witness new entries and withdrawals from the networks of main players that potentially add further fuel to the global political fire. Accordingly, lots of obviously paradoxical political decisions take place that stress existing alliances and question the participants’ overall loyal positions, for example the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the fact that India hosts a G20 gathering (Ashford and Cooper 2023). The only way to master today’s global tasks and challenges is by making use of constructive dialogue that guarantees the individual’s necessity to be heard, and that makes all people and political stakeholders understand that only unity enables victory over the destructive forces. Historic rivalry and egocentric decision-making do not take us, as a community, anywhere. Living in a multipolar global order requires, from all parties, flexibility and openness (Ashford and Cooper 2023) in order to accept one’s diversity, and to achieve what was scheduled as a common goal. Having taken a spiral staircase through history, we were able to discover the dynamics of the M.U.M. model. Now, we have no other option than to act more wisely than our predecessors, and to implement our findings in today’s decision-making.
The age of maturity calls global citizens to get rid of egocentric fears, to believe in the importance and strength of community, to mutually improve, and to live life alongside our peers. Man is a social being, and life implies being surrounded by individuals who respect each other, and love life itself. This love of life means caring for the community. Therefore, personal interests can never surpass the community’s needs. Life is a sum of mindful moments, truths, and discoveries: let us read between the lines, look behind the curtain, and swim against the stream. Think twice, and act wise. Future generations may not pardon the tensions that currently occur; most likely, they will demand mature decision-making from people in charge. Humankind is built on diversity, and accepting diverse mindsets does not diminish one’s value or strength. We form one human race, and life shows us its colours in the broad quantity of differences. Such do not separate us, but enrich our common ability to discuss, exchange, and improve. Thus, we are diverse, but united in diversity, and such a conglomerate of thoughts, ideas, and visions adds a unique value to our common life. This is the path, the path to unity. Let us overcome whatever seems to challenge our peace, let us become one.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The model’s central claim, that polarity is a phase rather than a state, is the part of the chapter with the widest application, and one distinction would extend it further.
The literature the chapter draws on measures polarity by the distribution of material capability, and on that measure the current period is genuinely difficult to classify, since one state retains a decisive lead in military reach while another has surpassed it in manufacturing and holds the chokepoints in several supply chains, and neither can act without the other’s participation. The more useful measure, and the one the chapter is reaching toward with its third pole, is not who holds capability but who can be compelled. A world in which most states can decline to choose is structurally different from one in which alignment is enforced, whatever the distribution of capability, and the difference is not captured by any of the three terms in use. The states the chapter describes as fragmented, isolated, or indecisive are better understood as having acquired an option that did not exist during the Cold War, and their exercising it is a rational response to circumstance rather than opportunism.
That reading changes what follows practically. A state that hedges is not withholding a decision it will eventually make; it is pursuing a strategy that works precisely because it is not resolved, and the states in question have said so explicitly. The consequence for anyone seeking to build coalitions is that offers requiring exclusivity will be declined by parties who would otherwise accept them, and that arrangements permitting simultaneous membership elsewhere are the ones that will attract participation. This is why several institutions of the present period are deliberately overlapping rather than exclusive, and it explains the pattern the chapter identifies as contradictory: a state belonging to both the G20 and BRICS is not confused but is doing what the structure rewards.
Two additions on the historical account. The period of relative European peace the chapter dates from 1871 was, as the author correctly notes, peace only within Europe, and the point can be pressed further: the arrangements that produced it, in particular the settlement of colonial claims at Berlin in 1884 and 1885, exported the conflict rather than resolving it, and the boundaries drawn there are among the standing causes of the conflicts this journal examines. And the interpretation of the period after 1990 as unipolar is contested in a way that supports the chapter’s argument: the states that experienced it did not describe it as a period of peace, and the number of interventions undertaken during it exceeded that of the preceding decades, which is evidence for the author’s claim that unipolarity is not the same thing as stability.
Finally, the closing passage moves from analysis to appeal, and the transition is worth marking because the analysis supports the appeal less directly than the text suggests. If the cycle is structural, then it will recur regardless of anyone’s maturity, and the practical question is not how to escape it but how to reduce what it costs on each passage. The instruments for that are unglamorous and known: channels of communication maintained between adversaries during periods when they have nothing to say to one another, institutions that survive the alignment that created them, and rules that constrain the strongest party at the moment when it has least reason to accept constraint. Each is a mediator’s instrument, and each is available whether or not anyone becomes one.
*Added by the WMO Editorial Team
REFERENCES
Adams, M. (2023). BRICS and the New World Order: Implications for the Existing World Order.
Ahere, J. R. (2011). Does Unipolarity Foster Global Stability? A Critical Analysis.
Alexander, N. (2014). The Emerging Multi-Polar World Order: Its Unprecedented Consensus on a New Model for Financing Infrastructure Investment and Development.
Ashford, E., and E. Cooper (2023). Yes, the World Is Multipolar. Foreign Policy, 5 October 2023.
Besheer, M. (2023). UN Chief Outlines Peace Agenda for Multipolar World. VOA News, 20 July 2023.
Blackwill, R. D., and T. Wright (2020). The End of World Order and American Foreign Policy. Council on Foreign Relations.
Burrows, M. J. (2017). Western Options in a Multipolar World. Atlantic Council.
Ciambra, A. (2007). Unipolarity and Hegemony in the Global Political System. Working paper, Università degli Studi di Catania.
Dall’Agnol, A. C. (2018). Balancing in Unipolarity: Who Is Afraid of Balance of Power? Brazilian Journal of International Relations, 7(3), 494 to 515.
Erdmann, D. (2024a). Personal Identity and Peacebuilding: A Critical Reflection. In Kiyala, J. C. K., and N. Chivasa (Eds.), Climate Change and Socio-political Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa in the Anthropocene, 681 to 688. Springer, Cham.
Erdmann, D. (2024b). BRICS: Minus x Minus = Plus? WMO Conflict Insight.
Flanagan, B. (2011). The Origins of World War I. Essays in History.
Jütten, M., and D. Falkenberg (2024). Expansion of BRICS: A Quest for Greater Global Influence? European Parliamentary Research Service.
Koechler, H. (2023). The Emerging Multipolar Balance of Power.
Lawson, G. (2016). The Rise of Modern International Order. London School of Economics.
Martin, G. T. (2022). The False Dilemma of Unipolar versus Multipolar World Systems.
Mastanduno, M. (2009). Unipolarity, State Behavior, and Systemic Consequences.
Mastny, V. (2001). Learning from the Enemy: NATO as a Model for the Warsaw Pact.
NATO (2024). NATO Member Countries.
Rodrik, D., and S. Walt (2021). How to Construct a New Global Order. Harvard University.
Sakhawat, F. (2019). Nationalism and Imperialism: The Role of Germany before World War I.
Schweitzer, A. (2014). The Origins of the Cold War: A Review Essay.
Stares, P. B., Jia, Q., Tocci, N., Jaishankar, D., and A. Kortunov (2020). Perspectives on a Changing World Order. Council on Foreign Relations.
Straus, I. (1997). Unipolarity: The Concentric Structure of the World Order.
Tella, O. (2015). Polarity in Contemporary International Politics: A Uni-Interpolar Order.
Varisco, A. E. (2013). Towards a Multi-Polar International System: Which Prospects for Global Peace?
Wade, R. H. (2011). Emerging World Order? From Multipolarity to Multilateralism in the G20, the World Bank, and the IMF. Politics and Society, 39(3), 347 to 378.
Wohlforth, W. (1999). The Stability of a Unipolar World. International Security, 24(1), 5 to 41.
Further reading added by the WMO Editorial Team
Waltz, K. N. (1979). Theory of International Politics. McGraw-Hill, New York.
Gilpin, R. (1981). War and Change in World Politics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Ikenberry, G. J. (2001). After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars. Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Acharya, A. (2018). The End of American World Order (2nd edition). Polity Press, Cambridge.
Kupchan, C. A. (2012). No One’s World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn. Oxford University Press, New York.
Organski, A. F. K., & Kugler, J. (1980). The War Ledger. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
General Act of the Berlin Conference on West Africa, 26 February 1885.
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, Charter, 2002, and subsequent accession protocols.