Multipolarity: Glenn Diesen on the end of Ukraine, and Europe in a Trumpist New World
I had the pleasure of discussing multipolarity on the Geopolitics Podcast with Philip Pilkington, Andrew Collingwood and Gavin Haynes. It is important to take a step back and look at the wider changes in the international system that produced the Ukraine War, the US-China tensions and other conflicts around the world.
The world order is shifting from unipolarity to multipolarity. After the Cold War, the US outlined a security strategy based on global primacy in which security for itself and the world depends on perpetual US dominance. The logic was that the benign hegemony of the US would result in the end of security competition between the great powers, as opposed to mitigating the security competition by pursuing a balance of power and indivisible security. The US hegemony could only remain benign for a short period as hegemony requires much coercion to prevent rivals from emerging and to sustain the concentration of power. The US exhausted its resources to maintain an empire, while other centres of power around the world had to collectively balance the US. Unipolarity is now over, yet the US as its NATO allies still pursue a security strategy dependent on dominance rather than recognising that security derives from mitigating the security competition by also taking into account the security of rivals. There are solutions available to all the main conflicts, yet these paths are not taken as they entail the demise of US global primacy and the collective hegemony of the political West.
"The US hegemony could only remain benign for a short period as hegemony requires much coercion to prevent rivals from emerging and to sustain the concentration of power."
Exactly. The US' ruling elite made a choice, that hegemony is more important to them than peace.
They call this "foreign policy".
The rest of us call this evil.
At the end of the day, an offshoot of what Glenn Diesen is describing is the fact that the United States missed a prime opportunity prior to and during the unipolar moment to more or less follow the dictates laid out by George Kennan and John Mearsheimer where instead of trying to remake the world in the US’s image the US should have led by example and largely minded its own business.
Among many other things, the consequences of this extremely foolish and unwise set policies has resulted in what John Mearsheimer referred to when he stated that “the pursuit of liberalism abroad has hurt liberalism at home”.
Even though it might sound like nonsense, in my opinion the human race as a species needs to step back and look at where we’re headed. We need to become much more cognizant of the fact that we have the capacity to chart a course which is much more in line with that which is wise rather than that which is foolish.
This is what my free “course” lays out.
I guess what it amounts to with regard to my “course” is that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.