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The world is at present undergoing a series of profound and complex changes, adding up to a sort of slow-motion revolution (or a very fast evolution) of many dimensions. The unipolar society of states (which came into being in 1992 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991) is transforming itself into a more historically familiar structure—a multipolar society of states. Yet the processes of both globalisation and regionalisation are also hard at work, complicating that fundamental redistribution of power. Moreover, the world is becoming more urbanised than ever before. Over 50 per cent, and probably in time, 70 or 80 per cent of its rapidly–rising population, especially in Asia, will live in cities.[1] That social transformation will accelerate another which might best be called ‘the revolution of rising expectations’. The poor world is beginning to know how the rich world lives, and to ask why it should not live in some approximation of those conditions. Partly in consequence, there is also a redistribution of power within the state, away from the government and towards ‘non-state actors’, some very dangerous. As if all that material change were not enough, there is also an ongoing normative shift (a shift in the rules governing action by sovereign states) which is at least equally revolutionary and, to cap it all, a climate change process of possibly catastrophic outcomes.
Over the long term, most of the world’s governments will need to rethink their strategic and diplomatic priorities in the light of this major transformation of the international context. Although the changes will not be complete or even fully visible for a decade or two, they are to my mind already casting their shadows before them. Changes in US strategic priorities, in particular, will be important not only to Australia and its region, but to the entire world.
The original populariser of the concept of unipolarity[2] wrote of a ‘unipolar moment’ and that now seems prescient enough. The remaining duration of that moment, on present evidence, is now very brief, which would mean the new multipolar power-structure being in place about a decade from now. The origin of the current unipolar phase was the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and thus the demise of the bipolar world of the Cold War, which had lasted since 1946. The new Russia had insufficient economic, diplomatic or political strength to step into the strategic shoes of the old Soviet Union; neither then did China, the European Union or any other possible candidate. So it was the absence of a peer-competitor for the United States which created the unipolar world, and it is that situation which is now changing faster than many people expected, producing the mutation back into a multipolar world.
My case for believing that the phase of unchallenged US paramountcy has already entered its twilight years[3] rests on an analysis of the factors which created and sustained it in the first place, and which are, I shall argue, currently being fairly rapidly eroded. Some of these factors are quite independent of the United States, but I shall look first at those related to it.
The unipolar world depended on three pillars: (1) the overwhelming ascendancy of the US military over that of any other sovereign state, or potential alliance of states, seen in the Pentagon as a possible rival or ‘peer-competitor’; (2) its diplomatic strength, as expressed in secure alliances, and capacity to induce ‘bandwagoning’ by states which were not actual allies; and (3) its initially unmatched economic strength. All three of these factors seem to me to be diminishing, though at different rates.