Harry Halem
It has become conventional wisdom, both in policy establishments and the international relations academic community, to endorse the emergence of “multipolarity” between 2020 and 2025. The combination of COVID-19, political volatility in the US, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and the Iran-Israel rivalry cum Middle East crisis are all produced as proof. Yet instead, the key conclusion from the previous five years, and in fact, the last 20 years of international politics, is not multipolarity through American decline per se, but a transformation in the relationship between Russia and its neighbours, whether those be adversaries like Ukraine, or partners like Iran. This stems from a collapse in Russia’s relative power, even as Iran comes under extreme pressure.
International relations debate has quickly accepted the concept of “multipolarity”, almost as rapidly as it accepted American hegemony under the “unipolar moment” 35 years ago. Yet the differences between these situations could not be starker. In 1991, the United States had outlasted its greatest geopolitical rival, the USSR, both by exploiting the fragmentation of the communist bloc after the Sino-Soviet split and through a large-scale military buildup that leveraged new technologies and operational concepts. The Soviet Union shattered, with Belarus and Ukraine splitting from the Russian-dominated Soviet empire. The Balts escaped Moscow’s grip as well. Farther west, the small nations of Eastern Europe, for whose liberty the UK entered the Second World War a half-century earlier, were also liberated from geopolitical domination. The same year the USSR dissolved, the United States ejected Iraq from Kuwait with only 292 combat deaths, nearly half of which came from friendly fire. American power was undeniable, hence the intellectual attraction of unipolarity is clearly explicable.
By contrast, the birth of multipolarity lacks comparable evidence. Long-range trends — ranging from the US share of global manufacturing to US relative economic size, productivity, and the relative rate of dollarisation in international trade — provide evidence of a shifting balance of power. Yet there is little indication of true multipolarity. Russia began its attempt to conquer Ukraine outright in February 2022, staging a lightning offensive meant to stun Ukraine into submission and shock the US and Europe enough to keep Ukraine isolated. Three years later, Russia has lost nearly a million military casualties killed or wounded. Its real inflation rate is likely significantly higher than an already high public figure of 10%. The Russian labour market remains tight, given emigration and war deaths. Russia lacks access to international financial institutions and is heavily reliant on Chinese financial and technological assistance to sustain its war effort and economy. Most critically, Russia is spending between 30 and 40% of its annual budget on military items. The broader Russian economy has been retooled for war, meaning the actual defence spending proportion may be even higher. All this is to conquer Ukraine, a country a fraction of Russia’s territorial extent, population, and economic product.
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