*ping* Saw your comment earlier about multipolar world in other thread and would like to know your thoughts on this article by Nathan Sears.
Will read and get back to you. Thanx for pinging me.
OK, I read the article.
I think the author is partly correct and partly incorrect. He says that the rising force of Russia and China is being counterbalanced by a potential alliance of the US with Japan and India (Vietnam would fit in, too). That might turn out to be so, but it wouldn’t be unipolar.
After WW II, it really was a unipolar world. The US was undamaged, and a huge industrial capacity, and the most powerful army, especially when you count its overwhelming advantage in nuclear weaponry at the time. It also had a world-dominating economy. For many years, it could influence events all over the world, practically dictating them.
I think the initial impetus for this was noble—we didn’t want another Great War. But, over time, it was painted as imperialism, military, cultural, and economic. Also over the years, the US lost its industrial dominance through off-shoring. We may have the best first punch military and military equipment, but China’s got the steel forges. Furthermore, they have manpower. Russia is probably ahead of us in nuclear weapons because we’ve sat on our hands for at least a generation. They have ten times as many tactical nukes as we do. Who knows what advantages they might have in bio/chem weapons?
So, the author is confusing the rise of a US-led alliance with the dominant strength of the unipolar US of the post-war years. This new alliance may or may not be stronger than the Russia-China axis, but even if it is stronger, its not unipolar. The situation is more like pre-World War I than post-World War II.
My take, FWIW.