Ralph Schoellhammer
What is a “pole“? I believe in the ongoing debate about uni- and multipolarity we have to establish what the characteristics of a pole are, independently of their number. When we talk about a pole in geopolitics, it describes a geographical region that is dominated by a single state that has the ability to influence or dominate the behaviour of other states in that region. In other words, multipolarity is just a euphemism for a world divided into different regions that are controlled by a local hegemon that tries to establish a sphere of interest.
The popular claim that the end of the unipolar order and the so-called rules-based liberal international order will be replaced by both a new era of sovereignty as well as multipolarity has a massive internal contradiction: There will be no new universal sovereignty, only the sovereignty of regional hegemons who most likely will be more aggressive than the US has been as the sole, unipolar hegemon. Criticizing the US has been fashionable for both the intelligentsia on the Left and the Right, but in hindsight Washington was enacting mostly a hands-off approach during its unipolar moment.
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