Multipolar illusions and tragedy of new great power politics

The geopolitical context is changing rapidly and hence the search for a new framework is imperative.

- MONISH TOURANGBAM

Representational image: The world in flux. Image created by Grok AI.

(Grok AI.)

Very early on after the end of the Cold War, Christopher Layne wrote a seminal article, “The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise” contending that America’s unipolar moment was transitory and that competing powers will eventually rise over a course of time.

Such a proposition broadly postulated the eventual rise of multipolar features in the international system. By then, the Chinese economy had opened as a trading nation for more than a decade, and was steadily socialising into the global economic structure under the guiding hands of the United States that had co-opted China since the rapprochement. India’s economic opening roughly coincided with the end of the Cold War, and was taking nascent steps to becoming an emerging economy. Economies in East Asia, also called the “Asian tigers”, were emerging as pivotal stakeholders of the global economy, alongside Japan and China.

The world really seemed poised for a more multipolar future in the economic realm while being still unipolar in the military dimension given the oversized influence of the US military firepower and technical edge, particularly after the demonstration of its revolution in military affairs(RMA) during the first Iraq war. Beijing watched acutely and adopted the RMA in its own military modernization, which was yet to become a challenge for the United States. But around the turn of the new century, the United States started sensing the rise of a potential competitor to its hegemony.