Multipolarity in the 21st Century

A New World Order

Donette Murray, David Brown

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415475471
• eBook ISBN: 9781136461071
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: History

This book seeks to help shape the debate surrounding power and polarity in the twenty-first century, both by assessing the likelihood of US decline and by analysing what each of the so-called 'rising powers' can do.

As the twenty-first century moves out of its first decade, American supremacy continues to generate intense debate about the nature, quality and sustainability of US power. At the same time, significant developments in four rising powers - China, Russia, India and the European Union – have provoked analysts to ask whether multipolarity is a realistic prospect.

Multipolarity in the 21st Century assesses the likelihood of a multipolar world developing, either by a marked US decline and or by the ability of these putative 'rivals' to continue to rise to the level necessary to be credibly considered a superpower. Written by a combination of emerging scholars and recognised experts, this volume will provide a timely and authoritative analysis of one of the most controversial and compelling security debates of the twenty-first century.

This book will be of much interest to students of Security Studies, Foreign Policy and International Relations in general.

1 Introduction

Donette Murray¹

For better or worse, America is the global pacesetter, and there is no rival in sight. … American global hegemony is now a fact of life. No one, including America, has any choice in the matter.

Zbigniew Brzezinski²

The international system – as constructed following the Second World War – will be almost unrecognizable by 2025 owing to the rise of emerging powers, a globalizing economy, an historic transfer of relative wealth and economic power from West to East, and the growing influence of nonstate actors. By 2025 the international system will be a global multipolar one with gaps in national power continuing to narrow between developed and developing countries.

National Intelligence Council [original bold]³

Zhou Enlai’s famous one-liner about the French Revolution being too recent to warrant comment is not easily dismissed. It is a sober reminder that seismic events take some time to play out and do not easily conform to our need to grapple with, dissect and ‘explain’ history, more or less as it happens. Major power shifts (perceived or actual) always trigger debate. The passing of the Soviet Union in December 1991 brought the final curtain down on a near half century of bipolarity and, in doing so, ushered in a decade of intense speculation. Described by former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director, Robert Gates, as ‘far more unstable, turbulent, unpredictable and violent’,⁴ the era born out of the rapid demise of the existential military threat and the structural geopolitical upheavals that followed provoked myriad assessments. Few doubted that the implosion of the Soviet Union presaged a geopolitical sea-change but, for several years at least, significantly less consensus coalesced around what this meant for international security and politics in the wider sense. The collapse of bipolarity heralded, for some, the belated emergence of the multipolar age long delayed by the Cold War.⁵ Others saw, inter alia, a uni-tripolar⁶ configuration – where three centres of power, likely to be Europe, Asia and the Americas, existed but were dominated by the US – or a uni-multipolar balance of power. The latter, proposed by Samuel Huntington, sought to balance American dominance with the existence of other significant powers, which the US would still have to take into account in order to achieve its ends.⁷ A third alternative, advanced by Charles Krauthammer, was a unipolar ‘moment’ during which, to paraphrase another commentator, the US ‘bestrode the world like a colossus’.⁸ This world was characterised by a structure in which one state’s capabilities were simply too great to be counterbalanced.⁹ According to Krauthammer’s analysis, if America did not wreck its economy – a prediction that seems even more prescient in the contemporary environment – then unipolarity could last for 30 or 40 years. A final group, less confident about the purported existence of any delineated ‘poles’, argued that a world in such a state of flux, witnessing huge transformations and in the process of forming a new identity, was better described as an ‘interregnum’.¹⁰

In the early years of the twenty-first century, however, the reality of US dominance and the, as yet unrealised, might of its putative rivals seemed to confirm the existence of a unipolar world. In 2002 Krauthammer returned to his 1990 assessment, newly confident that this previous analysis had been too modest: ‘The unipolar moment has become the unipolar era’.¹¹ This was echoed in a range of literature, including Robert Lieber’s edited volume Eagle Rules?, which similarly asserted that the US was likely to endure long into the future.¹² Having seemingly put the question of the supremacy of US power to bed, therefore, the discussion subsequently shifted to one concerned with the character of US power. Various appellations – ‘hyperpower’ (coined by then French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine¹³), ‘hegemon’ and ‘empire’ – were used in an attempt to capture the essence of the behemoth that was post-Cold War America. The latter, spearheaded by UK academic Michael Cox, acknowledged that there were certain problems with affixing the label ‘empire’, but nevertheless concluded that, in a new and significant way, the US had (benign) imperial characteristics.¹⁴ This discourse was interesting, not least because it seemed to offer some clues as to the likely future course of US foreign policy.

As the twenty-first century moves out of its first decade, American supremacy continues to generate intense debate about the nature, quality and sustainability of US power. Pivotal events – such as the perceived emasculating attacks of 11 September 2001 – precipitated much discussion about the longevity of US power. As one commentator put it:

With the coldly calculated use of terror, the perpetrators of 11 September 2001 served abrupt notice of challenge to US global dominance. The seemingly easy path before Americans that had appeared to stretch out well into the 21st century – promising boundless economic growth, a worldwide embrace of US values, an absence of rivals – stood blocked by the rubble in New York and Washington.¹⁵

Clearly, the debate has also been driven by criticism of the orientation and execution of US foreign policy. Attention has focused on the loss – or perceived loss – of ‘soft power’, particularly as a result of the George W. Bush era; in particular. Career Foreign Service officers, such as Richard Haass, sought to argue that the US was on the wrong track:

Unless there are significant changes to US foreign policy we will almost certainly see a return to a world defined by balance of power politics, one in which the US and other major powers will find themselves distracted by one another and unable to devote their resources to taking on what are in fact the real challenges of the day.¹⁶

Further along the political spectrum, commentators such as Robert Kagan, though similarly convinced that the direction was in error, offered what could be interpreted as almost the opposite advice. Believing that the world was experiencing an autocratic revival, Kagan argued that this would lead the US and its allies to abandon their expectations of ‘global convergence and cooperation’.¹⁷ The autocrats themselves were equally unimpressed. In the latter years of Bush’s second term, foreign detractors, such as the then Russian President Vladimir Putin, famously accused the US of making the world a more dangerous place by trying to impose its will through an ‘almost uncontained hyper use of force’.¹⁸ Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad talked of a US that was weakened by its ill-conceived, costly and debilitating invasions.¹⁹ Indeed, such was the intensity and volume of ‘Bush bashing’ that took place that only a scattering of commentators felt confident arguing that the US position was significantly less precarious than the admittedly eye-catching, not to say provocative, Bush administration record seemed to suggest.²⁰ However, more sober ‘corrective’ tracts, such as Singh and Lynch’s After Bush, were the exception rather than the rule.²¹ The majority continued to argue that the US, or rather its leaders, had lost touch with reality and were, as David Calleo put it, both ‘delusional’ and ‘a danger to itself and the world’.²²

Judging by his campaign rhetoric and purported embrace of multilateralism, engagement, humility and restraint, President Obama was sympathetic to this reading of recent history and the argument that power in the international system was becoming increasingly diffuse and contested.²³ His commitment to a more nuanced and cooperative flexing of US muscles was proclaimed in his inaugural address:

‘[O]ur power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please … our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint’.²⁴

Just weeks before, the US National Intelligence Council’s (NIC) Global Trends report had announced the dawning of a global multipolar system.²⁵

At the same time, a second factor – developments in four potential rising powers – have provoked analysts to revisit the question of whether multipolarity is a realistic prospect. China’s staggering growth and apparently more deft handling of the global financial crisis, India’s sustained economic development, Russia’s efforts to recapture some of its Cold War clout (through its energy-fuelled growth programme and military transformation) and the EU’s fraught but ultimately successful attempts to consolidate its decades-long experiment in political and economic integration through the Lisbon Treaty were notably highlighted as further signs of the emergence of a multipolar world. Such a redistribution of power in the international system could be occasioned either by US decline or because the US, still hugely powerful, is joined by two or more of these states (or – in the case of the EU – a collection of states) as putative ‘poles’ in the international arena.

The key aim of this volume is to assess the likelihood of a multipolar world developing, either by a marked US decline or by the ability of these putative ‘rivals’ to continue to rise to the level necessary to be credibly considered a superpower. This involves exploring what each of the so-called rising powers can do (in terms of hard and soft power), what they want to do and the weaknesses and obstacles that may hinder their continued development. The remainder of this introductory chapter is broken down into two sections. In the first section, an initial conceptual framework is outlined, appraising the main theories underpinning the concepts of power and polarity. This will be based around four critical questions. First, what is power and how should it be measured? Second, is the concept of superpower still a relevant and accurate yardstick to use in assessing the nature and power of these emerging states? Third, what constitutes a ‘pole’? Is Waltz’s definition still valid or should it be revisited in light of the growing appreciation of the validity of soft power? Fourth, what are the possible routes to multipolarity and, perhaps more pertinently, would this arise as a result of deliberate planning – through, for example, a balancing strategy – or by default, achieved primarily as a consequence of economic drivers and considerations? In the second section, the structure of the remainder of this volume is outlined, with a brief introduction to the main arguments covered in each of the five substantive empirical chapters, examining in turn the contemporary power of the US and its main potential challengers, China, Russia, the EU and India.

Concepts of power

Power is like the weather. Everyone depends on it and talks abo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The United States: The eagle untamed
• 3. The Chinese dragon
• 4. The Russian bear
• 5. The European Union: A different kind of beast
• 6. The Indian elephant
• 7. Conclusion: The contemporary distribution of power
• Selected bibliography
• Index