Unipolar World in Retrospect and the Onset of Multi-Polarity

The U.S. managed to establish dominance by resorting to soft power, after they have destroyed each and every country by use of hard power.

We all sing multipolar world, multipolar world, multipolar world!  SCF readers may have noticed that the geopolitical buzzword as of recent has been the term: multipolar world. The Mauerfall or in English the much hailed Fall of the Berlin Wall was certainly a personification of proverbial demolition of the world as we knew before: the world of polarities, the world of the contrasting and even oft conflicting values between the USA and the USSR gave rise to the age of unipolar world shaping up on the political horizon. The USA at the time became the only world power. There was an overwhelming belief that arms race and anti-Soviet propaganda were done away with at that point in history.

For some political analysts the collapse of real socialism arguably represented the end of history of antagonism between the two political centres of power. For others it appears to have paved a pathway to the conflict of civilizations on religious and cultural bases to name but two. The third group saw in the onset of the Cold War the beginning of global shifts in trade and business on the free market and the formation of the global state. In retrospect, some of these forecasts have come true to date, some though have proven to be a mere delusion. Arguably, the war in Ukraine has given rise to a number of crucial changes and it is about to change further. The Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 may have exacerbated the issues further or possibly brought on an eye opening enlightenment for the EU nations at least.

At the time George H.W. Bush came to power in the White House but this road to a political Pandora’s box is believed to have been orchestrated even earlier on by Ronald Reagan who was famous and infamous for his anti-communism or even more so anti Soviet beliefs and actions. One can now say without fear of contradiction that these anti – Communism aka anti – Soviet sentiments at face value have in effect always been anti – Russia. Yet, they appear to have changed its manifest forms and shapes many a time historically. His hateful words in calling the USSR an evil Empire  are still haunting in one way or another in that so patently did these words distort reality. Later on, Gorbachev’s rise to power in the USSR was welcomed with utmost appreciation due to his enormous and thus alluring enthusiasm for the renewal of formal relations between the USA and the USSR. The overwhelming atmosphere in the USA was truly a welcoming and wholehearted appreciation during the time of George H.W. Bush.

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none – William Shakespeare

The Downfall of the USSR two years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall coincided with the so called Neoconservatives or Neo-cons assuming power and dominance in the U.S. foreign policy at the time. If you look the word up in a dictionary, it says that a neoconservative or a neocon is someone whose politics are conservative or right wing, who believes strongly in the free market and thinks that their country should use its military power to become involved with or try to control problems in other countries. The U.S. Neocons seized their abundant opportunities in the wake of the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Downfall of the USSR in which to their mind liberal democracy has won its ideological victory. Its meaning and ‘ideological’ scope was depicted in 1989, when a political analyst in the U.S. State Department wrote a paper for the right-leaning international relations magazine The National Interest entitled “The End of History?”. His name was Francis Fukuyama, whose article caused great controversy that he soon turned his article into a book. He did so in 1992: The End of History and the Last Man. As the term and the phenomenon seemed to have evolved in due course, Paul Wolfowitz further elaborated upon it in 1991 and authored a doctrine, later called Paul Wolfowitz’s doctrine that the USA were to jump in the political loophole and use this rare opportunity and certainly not allow other potential rivals to emerge in the financial and political arena since apparently only the USA was the only great leading power capable of existing as such and of imposing rules onto others from their omnipotent position of power. To some thinkers there was a striking resemblance between the newly emerging Pax Americana to that of the Roman Peace i.e. Pax Romana

‘Pax Romana, (Latin: “Roman Peace”) a state of comparative tranquillity throughout the Mediterranean world from the reign of Augustus (27 BCE–14 CE) to the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161 –180 CE). Augustus laid the foundation for this period of concord, which also extended to North Africa and Persia. The empire protected and governed individual provinces, permitting each to make and administer its own laws while accepting Roman taxation and military control.’

Pax Americana was believed to be its historical equivalent in the early 1990s. But the U.S. leaders at the time who, by assuming power saw that as their chance to seize that golden opportunity and impose global hegemony. At the time there was an ongoing public debate in the USA whether the USA should become a global power or not. Strangely, there was a growing number of people pushing for the USA to disband NATO and rid of it for good, but the American neocons liberal hawks eventually prevailed.

Who soars too near the sun, with golden wings, melts them. – William Shakespeare

The U.S. and its vassals’ decision to expand NATO was taken in 1997, which then gave rise to the aggression on SR Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) in 1999 and then a number of other U.S. invasions, aggressions, orange revolutions, regime changes and ‘engineered uprisings’ such as the ones on Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan and currently the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine. The parallels between all these might sound farfetched and unfounded ‘to a politically unaided eye’. An opportunity to bury the U.S. vs USSR hatchets, to ‘beat swords into ploughshares’, to cooperate in alternative ways by trade, culture, education etc and forge peace globally miserably failed (again). It was in fact the USA who shrieked a resounding ‘No’ and opted for a fierce and often savage geopolitical competition, which has slowly but securely brought the whole world to the brink of the Third World War. At the time of the unipolar world, while it lasted, the USA aka G7 aka the Collective West seem to have ruled the world. Alternatively, some tend to use its more theatrical version ‘the Deep State’.

One of the bigger paradigm shifts occurred when after the first term in office for George H.W. Bush with presidential election of 1992 and with Bill Clinton running for his first term, when the third candidate Pat Buchanan appeared suddenly Some analysts tend to think that Pat Buchanan was planted to run for presidency only to take away some share of the votes and in so doing prevent George H. W. Bush to win his second term in the White House.

With this colossal change, the U.S. foreign policy somehow mysteriously melded into imperial globalism in which financial tycoons rule the stage. Financial capital managed to hijack and control everybody and everything into complete submission in which a plethora of other countries simply abided by the U.S. diktats. That applied even to powerful countries such as UK and Germany thanks to the U.S. financially powerful structures strongly supported by the military industrial complex

By comparison, the EU countries appear to have had more sovereignty during the Cold War than they have done since the U.S. took charge. One wonders whether the Collective West ever showed any degree of resistance to the U.S. hegemony. In 2003 there was evident resistance by Germany and France against the U.S. imperialism in their effort to regain some sovereignty when they tried to oppose the Iraq invasion by the U.S. and UK but they were shamelessly ignored by the USA. It was blatantly obvious then that the USA would never allow any dissenting voices or political rivalry within the Global West either, which is yet another paradox that the U.S. wants to be a dictator per se, yet it waltzes around pretending to bring ‘democracy’ to the world. We witnessed the culmination of it all in the war in Ukraine, in which the USA brutally strong-armed the Global West into joining them in the U.S. proxy war against Russia. When Germany at least tried to silently but adamantly resist, the U.S. blew up the Nord Stream 1 and 2. They still expect the EU to scapegoat their own fundamental interests for the U.S. sake. The war- mongering, profit – driven, power – hungry U.S. accompanied by Japan, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea and possibly Singapore eliminates everybody standing in their way.

It seems mind-boggling how the USA succeeded in establishing their overwhelming dominance not only in the EU but globally as well. They managed to establish dominance by resorting to soft power, after they have destroyed each and every country by use of hard power. There is no effect in the use of the soft power unless the hard power of ‘ guns and tanks’ has previously wreaked havoc in the country of their choice’ at any given point in time. The USA then managed to cajole others to fall for what they marketed as Washington Consensus. The U.S. would steamroll a growing number of rules and regulations in economy, banking and finances, with the unilateral badge of the (pseudo) ‘scientific’ and seemingly a far cry from any ideology and once each ‘targeted’ country applies them, the U.S. pledges the country is bound to benefit hugely from its application in their own respective economic and financial contexts. That was in effect a mechanism concocted in such a way that any country which falls prey to it becomes colonised without their governments being aware of it. If a country have the U.S. ‘miraculous’ systems in place, their economy gain competitive advantage globally but the country accumulates endless debts, which eventually ends up being a perpetuum mobile of poverty incurred upon you by the Washington DC snake oil merchants, who have had a bridge or two to sell to the gullible masses for too long.

Virtue is chok’d with foul ambition – William Shakespeare

Mercifully, this overwhelmingly frightening concept of global hegemony has become overly ambitious. Simply put, the political Gulliver of blinded ambition could not have fit in the land of ‘differently abled’ Lilliputians for too long.

Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself And falls on the other side

William Shakespeare

Much to the U.S. surprise, a number of wise and level headed nations have since put two and two together, predominantly China and Russia with the highest echelons within the Russian and Chinese respective governments, which since paved Putin’s and Xi’s pathways to power. The rest, which accounts for around 85% of the world as we speak, then joyfully joined in their wake. The resistance to globalist imperialism, which is wrongly called the U.S. foreign policy, has gained too much momentum even before the Ukrainian crisis. The growing sentiment is that they are fiercely against the U.S. liberal but estranged elites ruling the whole world from one centre of power.

Original article: https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/05/19/unipolar-world-in-retrospect-and-onset-of-multi-polarity/