Brasilia, Feb 25 (Prensa Latina) Former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016) on Friday said that the war in Ukraine paves the way for the assertion of the multipolar world.
“Multi-polar” literally just means there are multiple “poles” of power. This is in contrast to the “unipolar” world order the US set up after WWII. Unipolarity is the real historical anomaly here.
There is nothing inherently radical about wanting a “multipolar world.” Do you know why we wound up with a unipolar world to start with? The capitalist international system was “multipolar” up until the end of WWII. WWI and WWII were the result of “multipolarity.” America took advantage of the chaos to position themselves as world hegemon. This is not an inherently stable configuration for capitalism so it’s now falling apart after a few generations. Now we have “multiple poles” again when in reality having multiple great powers competing for power, territory, etc has literally always been the norm.
It is plainly in the rational self-interest of every state other than the US to want a multipolar world, but in fact, all it means is the collapse of American hegemony. In itself, the collapse of American hegemony is fine, but we still should care about what comes after it.
As far as I can tell, the only real bright spot is that without American hegemony global capitalism absolutely will be significantly more unstable, although that is in itself pretty grim.
“Multi-polar” literally just means there are multiple “poles” of power. This is in contrast to the “unipolar” world order the US set up after WWII. Unipolarity is the real historical anomaly here.
There is nothing inherently radical about wanting a “multipolar world.” Do you know why we wound up with a unipolar world to start with? The capitalist international system was “multipolar” up until the end of WWII. WWI and WWII were the result of “multipolarity.” America took advantage of the chaos to position themselves as world hegemon. This is not an inherently stable configuration for capitalism so it’s now falling apart after a few generations. Now we have “multiple poles” again when in reality having multiple great powers competing for power, territory, etc has literally always been the norm.
It is plainly in the rational self-interest of every state other than the US to want a multipolar world, but in fact, all it means is the collapse of American hegemony. In itself, the collapse of American hegemony is fine, but we still should care about what comes after it.
As far as I can tell, the only real bright spot is that without American hegemony global capitalism absolutely will be significantly more unstable, although that is in itself pretty grim.