After the United States moved from the darkness of the Cold War into the pleasant glow of the so-called unipolar moment, a diverse array of scholars, pundits, and world leaders began predicting, yearning for, or actively seeking a return to a multipolar world. Not surprisingly, Russian and Chinese leaders have long expressed a desire for a more multipolar order, as have the leaders of emerging powers such as India or Brazil. More interestingly, so have important U.S. allies. Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder warned of the “undeniable danger” of U.S. unilateralism, and former French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine once declared that “the entire foreign policy of France … is aimed at making the world of tomorrow composed of several poles, not just one.” Current French President Emmanuel Macron’s support for European unity and strategic autonomy reveals a similar impulse.
Surprise, surprise: U.S. leaders don’t agree. They prefer the expansive opportunities and gratifying status that come from being the indispensable power, and they have been loath to abandon a position of unchallenged primacy. Back in 1991, the George H.W. Bush administration prepared a defense guidance document calling for active efforts to prevent the emergence of peer competitors anywhere in the world. The various National Security Strategy documents issued by Republicans and Democrats in subsequent years have all extolled the need to maintain U.S. primacy, even when they acknowledge the return of great power competition. Prominent academics have weighed in too—some arguing that U.S. primacy is “essential to the future of freedom,” and good for the United States and the world alike. I’ve contributed to this view myself, writing in 2005 that “the central aim of U.S. grand strategy should be to preserve its position of primacy for as long as possible.” (My advice on how to achieve that goal was ignored, however.)
Although the Biden administration recognizes that we are back in a world of several great powers, it seems nostalgic for the brief era when the United States didn’t face peer competitors. Hence its vigorous reassertion of “U.S. leadership,” its desire to inflict a military defeat on Russia that will leave it too weak to cause trouble in the future, and its efforts to stifle China’s rise by restricting Beijing’s access to critical technological inputs while subsidizing the U.S. semiconductor industry.
Even if these efforts succeed (and there’s no guarantee they will), restoring unipolarity is probably impossible. We are going to end up in 1) a bipolar world (with the United States and China as the two poles) or 2) a lopsided version of multipolarity where the United States is first among a set of unequal but still significant major powers (China, Russia, India, possibly Brazil, and conceivably a rearmed Japan and Germany).
What sort of world would that be? International relations theorists are divided on this question. Classical realists such as Hans Morgenthau believed multipolar systems were less war-prone because states could realign to contain dangerous aggressors and deter war. For them, flexibility of alignment was a virtue. Structural realists such as Kenneth Waltz or John Mearsheimer argued the opposite. They believed bipolar systems were in fact more stable because the danger of miscalculation was reduced; the two main powers knew the other would automatically oppose any serious attempt to alter the status quo. Moreover, the two main powers were not as dependent on allied support and could keep their clients in line when necessary. For structural realists, the flexibility inherent in a multipolar order creates greater uncertainty and makes it more likely that a revisionist power will think it can alter the status quo before the others can combine to stop it.
If the future world order is one of lopsided multipolarity and if such orders are more war-prone, then there is some reason to worry. But multipolarity might not be that bad for the United States, provided it recognizes the implications and adjusts its foreign policy appropriately.
For starters, let’s recognize that unipolarity wasn’t that great for the United States, and especially not for those unfortunate countries that got the brunt of U.S. attention in recent decades. The unipolar era included the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, two expensive and ultimately unsuccessful U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some ill-advised regime changes that led to failed states, a financial crisis that altered U.S. domestic politics dramatically, and the emergence of an increasingly ambitious China whose rise was partly facilitated by the United States’ own actions. But the United States hasn’t learned much from the experience, given that it is still listening to the strategic geniuses whose actions squandered Washington’s Cold War triumph and hastened unipolarity’s end. The only restraint on a unipolar power’s actions is self-restraint, and self-restraint is not something a crusader nation such as the United States does very well.
The return of multipolarity will recreate a world where Eurasia contains several major powers of varying strengths. These states are likely to eye each other warily, especially when they are in close proximity. This situation gives the United States considerable flexibility to adjust its alignments as needed, just as it did when it allied with Stalinist Russia in World War II and when it mended fences with Maoist China during the Cold War. The ability to pick and choose the proper allies is the secret ingredient of the United States’ past foreign policy successes: Its position as the only great power in the Western Hemisphere gave it “free security” that no other great power possessed, and it made the United States an especially desirable ally whenever serious trouble arose. As I wrote way back in the 1980s: “For the middle powers of Europe and Asia, the United States is the perfect ally. Its aggregate power ensures that its voice will be heard and its actions will be felt … [but] it is far enough away so as not to pose a significant threat [to its allies].”
In a multipolar world, the other major powers will gradually take on greater responsibility for their own security, thereby reducing the United States’ global burdens. India is building up its military force as its economy grows, and pacifist Japan has pledged to double its defense spending by 2027. That’s not entirely good news, of course, because regional arms races have their own risks and some of these states may eventually act in ways that are dangerous or provocative. But apropos my first point above, it’s not as if the United States has done such a great job keeping order in the Middle East, Europe, or even Asia in recent decades. Are we 100 percent sure the local powers will do worse, or that it would matter to Americans if they did?
Even if multipolarity has its downsides (see below), trying to prevent it would be expensive and probably futile. Russia may eventually suffer a decisive defeat in Ukraine (though that is by no means certain), but its vast size, nuclear arsenal, and abundant natural resources will keep it within the great power ranks no matter how the current war turns out. Export controls and internal challenges may slow China’s rise and its relative power may peak in the next decade, but it will remain a major player and its military capabilities will continue to improve. Japan is still the world’s third largest economy; it is beginning a major rearmament program; and it could acquire a nuclear arsenal quickly if it ever felt it had to. India’s trajectory is harder to forecast, but it will almost certainly wield greater weight in the decades ahead than it has in the past, and the United States has neither the ability nor wish to prevent this. Instead of engaging in a futile effort to roll back the clock, therefore, Americans should start getting ready for a multipolar future.
Ideally a world of lopsided multipolarity will encourage the United States to move away from its instinctive reliance on hard power and coercion and to put greater weight on genuine diplomacy. During the unipolar era, U.S. officials became accustomed to dealing with problems by issuing demands and ultimatums and then ramping up pressure, starting with sanctions and threats of force and then turning to shock and awe and regime change if gentler measures of coercion didn’t work. The disappointing results, alas, speak for themselves. In a multipolar world, by contrast, even the strongest powers must pay more attention to what the others want and work harder to persuade some of them to strike mutually beneficial bargains. Take it or leave it diplomacy must give way to subtler approaches and a lot more give-and-take; relying primarily on the mailed fist will just lead others to distance themselves. In the worst case, they’ll start lining up in opposition.
Make no mistake: For the United States, and perhaps the entire globe, the multipolar future is not without significant downsides. Weaker states in a world of competing great powers can play off each other, which means that U.S. influence over some small states is likely to decline. Competition among the great powers in Eurasia could foster miscalculation and war, just as it did before 1945. More states may decide to seek nuclear weapons, in an era when technological advances may convince some people that those weapons might be usable. None of these developments are to be welcomed.
But assuming the United States remains first among unequals in an emerging multipolar order, its leaders should not be overly concerned. Washington will be in an ideal situation to play the other major powers off against each other, and it can let its partners in Eurasia bear more of the burden of their own security. Although U.S. leaders have long concealed their realist proclivities behind a cloud of idealistic rhetoric, they used to be pretty good at balance-of-power politics. As multipolarity returns, their successors just need to remember how this is done.
Stephen M. Walt is a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University. Twitter: @stephenwalt