Multipolarity or a New Bipolarity?

Even as Beijing continues to challenge conventional notions of democracy and human rights, America will have to decide what it stands for and what it wants from the world

- Manoj Kewalramani

CREATION myths are central to human societies. Across cultures, they often begin with chaos yielding to structure—an episodic balance of forces that allows humanity to progress. Some of these arrangements endure for centuries, others only moments, until the balance inevitably breaks and the cycle begins anew. What is often overlooked, however, is that creation rests on destruction: the old must give way for the new to emerge. And as it is in the heavens, so it must be on Earth. This destructive flux of creation is what global politics is contending with today. To understand the nature of this churn, however, it is first important to answer the question: what constitutes world order?