Since the end of the Cold War, the world has not shifted towards the multipolarity so much claimed by the BRICS. Military power remains concentrated while legitimacy and international governance fragment.
As a matter of fact, since 1991, many analysts have believed that an inevitable multipolarity is emerging, a world balanced between great powers. The reality is more subtle and contradictory; relative decline does not mean structural transformation, and economic weight does not imply effective capacity for influence. A careful reading of historical dynamics – from Ibn Khaldun’s asabiyya to the contemporary analyses of Kennedy, Organski, Modelski, and Gilpin – reveals a new landscape: military power remains concentrated while the political order fragments. This world is neither strictly unipolar nor multipolar: it is multiplex.
Hegemonic cycles and power in motion
P Kennedy has shown that power begins with the economy. Industrialized and fiscally sound nations are gaining influence, while those that are over-expanding – unbridled military spending, mounting debt, slower growth – are sliding into “imperial overextension.” But the economy alone is not enough. Organski, Modelski, and Gilpin remind us that conflicts break out when rivals achieve material parity and challenge the established order. Long cycles of global leadership are being redrawn by technological innovation, and hegemonic wars can radically reshape the system. Ibn Khaldun had already observed that social cohesion conditions the vitality of dynasties and that political authority crumbles long before the fall of brute force, the solidity of the domestic social and political front counts as much as material capacities, the same is true of the quality of the regime and of the leadership that transforms raw latent power into operational power and influence.
Military unipolarity, fragmented governance
Militarily, American unipolarity remains clear; the Mshare index (which measures manpower and technological sophistication) shows that in 2024, Washington retains a 24% advantage over Beijing, while the US-USSR gap during the Cold War was barely 8.8%. The United States concentrates nearly 40% of the world’s military spending and has hundreds of bases abroad, ensuring an unparalleled global projection. China has only a few regional strongholds, and Russia’s footprint has drastically reduced since 2022. (our Calculations and those of Pal Roren, unipolarity is not over, 2024)
While the CINC, a classic indicator based on demography and raw resources, suggests a decline in the United States, it confuses potential with operational power. Today, only the power actually projected by the United States works on a global scale.
Yet their role in creating new institutions to govern the new world order is not unanimous, at least in the launch phase. Indeed, in January 2026, a new international organization was born in Davos called the “Peace Council” under the impetus of President Donald Trump. It is an efficient minilateralism, designed to plug the flaws and defects of the UN system. This council embodies a selective and transactional unilateralism, where international security is treated in a pragmatic and targeted manner, reflecting the strategic priorities of the United States.
The United States and the Revisionist Powers
Revisionism in international relations refers to the willingness of certain states to challenge or modify the norms, agreements, and historical narratives that structure the global order in order to promote a new balance more aligned with their interests.
Revisionist “neo-empires,” does not, however, constitute a homogeneous phenomenon; some specialists distinguish among revolutionary states, such as Russia and Iran, which fundamentally challenge the global distribution of power and seek to transform the international military balance; positionalist states, such as China, Turkey, and Venezuela, which broadly accept the existing order while striving to strengthen their regional and strategic influence; and reformist states, including India, Brazil, and Germany, which favor a gradual adaptation of global governance institutions without directly challenging the existing military balance.
In this vein, the debate remains open among experts: some view these powers as an existential threat to the liberal order, while others, such as John Ikenberry, argue that they are primarily seeking to readjust the system to their own interests rather than overturn it entirely.
Regardless of the type of revisionist power involved or the interpretations offered by scholars, it is evident that the response of the Trump administration to perceived threats to U.S. hegemony was markedly more confrontational than that of the Biden administration. Whereas the Biden administration has adopted a largely Wilsonian approach—emphasizing democratic values, human rights, and the restoration of credible American leadership on the international stage—the Trump administration favored a Jacksonian, nationalist, and unilateral posture, prioritizing domestic economic security and national well-being over multilateral engagement.
Moreover, the United States continues to deploy its “sharp power” to restore its influence, particularly in the Middle East and Latin America, while consolidating its alliances in the Indo-Pacific region. They are increasing their military spending and using sanctions to isolate their adversaries, in particular the BRICS countries, which are challenging their economic and, above all, monetary supremacy through the de-dollarization of their trade.
The Sino-American rivalry and the transition of power
In contemporary history, the Sino-American rivalry is analyzed as the most critical transition of power, because it concerns not only economic competition, but a profound questioning of the rules of the liberal international order in favor of a multipolar and multinormative system.
1. Crossing the critical transit threshold
According to Power Transition Theory (PTT), a phase of great instability opens up when a challenger reaches the critical transit threshold, defined as a capacity equivalent to about 80% of the power of the dominant nation. China entered this parity zone during 2010-2020 and, in terms of GDP at purchasing power parity (PPP), officially surpassed the United States in 2014. Although Washington retains the diplomatic lead and networks of alliances, China is already the largest trading partner of more than 120 countries, surpassing direct American economic influence.
2. The instability inherent in parity
Contrary to the classical theory of the balance of power, a balanced system (parity) is inherently belligerent. The conflict probability peaks when the AP ratio is between 4.5 and 5.6. The challenger can then try to redistribute the global profits, while the leader can consider preventive measures. The dissonance of status fuels the conflict: China now has the attributes of a superpower but considers itself marginalized by an order whose rules it has not dictated.
3. The role of the “Dissatisfied Challenger”
Thucydides’ Trap (which describes the risk of war when a rising power challenges an established dominant power) closes only if the rising power is dissatisfied with the status quo. China shows this dissatisfaction by creating a parallel order: Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), BRICS, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), while pitting its authoritarian state capitalism against the American model of liberal democracy, complicating the negotiation on global norms.
4. The Shift to a “Cold War 2.0”
The Sino-American rivalry has gone beyond mere competition to become a multidimensional confrontation: militarization of the economy via sanctions and tariff war, and technological decoupling on 5G, AI, and semiconductors, signaling a structural breakdown. Peace will depend on the ability of the two giants to invent a non-lethal substitute for global war, perhaps through peaceful competitive coexistence, likely combined with renewed “multilateralism UN.2”.
In this context, several states could find themselves in the position of strategic sacrifices: Ukraine could see its military support reduced and its territory reduced to an incongruous portion to satisfy Moscow; Greenland, considered a strategic territory in the Arctic for Washington, attracts American ambitions and could change flags; Taiwan remains vulnerable to Chinese power; Iran and Venezuela are under maximum pressure for concessions or regime change. These sacrifices illustrate the limits of a fragmented unipolarity and the complexity of international compromises.
Middle Power Strategic Responses
Faced with the unpredictability of the new American foreign policy, the middle powers adopted pragmatic strategies:
In this multiplex and post-hegemonic world, Europe often finds itself in a losing position, shouldering a disproportionate share of the costs of Ukrainian reconstruction and the energy crisis. To ensure its security and influence without an American umbrella, it must go beyond the moralistic posture and build real strategic autonomy, estimated at $262 billion and 300,000 additional soldiers. As de Gaulle has always hammered home, Europe is trying to achieve strategic autonomy because the future of a “European Europe” depends on the ability to negotiate and act on an equal footing with the new empires.
Canada applies a “values-based realism” advocated by Prime Minister Mark Carney to get out of the “fiction” of a protective order; the strategy consists of practicing soft balancing by diversifying alliances according to a variable geometry according to areas of interest or problem areas (J Rosenau) and this in order not to be “on the menu” of the hegemons but in “their table”. Brazil and especially India practice hedging and multi-alignment, dealing with the United States for technology and with Russia for defense.
The UK under Keir Starmer leadership, and Germany new chancellor Friedrich Merz are also moving towards this policy of hedging so as not to displease its traditional ally by striving to preserve its influence and strengthen its strategic autonomy without relying exclusively on the American umbrella in a realistic and pragmatic British style that relies on credible military capabilities, targeted bilateral partnerships and active engagement in multilateral organizations.
It can be concluded that between 1991 and 2026, the international system has not reached multipolarity. It is characterized by a fragmented unipolarity, where power remains concentrated, but governance is dispersed in ad hoc coalitions and transactional agreements. The question for the next decade is no longer whether multipolarity will happen, but how long the system can remain militarily unipolar while being politically fragmented. The world navigates this fundamental ambiguity: the strong exert their influence within the limits of their capacities, the weak adapt to constraints, and no one has yet succeeded in establishing a stable order on the rubble of the old.
