For the past few years, prominent world leaders and diplomats, for example President Emmanuel Macron of France, President Vladimir Putin of Russia and External Affairs Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar of India, have been arguing that the world we live in is a multipolar world. Many nations, particularly second tier powers like France and India, have been recalibrating their foreign policies in accordance with this assumption and talking about the opportunity to exercise their “strategic autonomy”. Multipolarity gives greater freedom to lesser powers.
The second coming of Donald Trump and his aggressive foreign policy moves have forced us to rethink and conclude that the world is still unipolar.
Emperor Trump and his Global Durbar
In the first month of his second term, President Trump has taken steps and made pronouncements that not only reversed US foreign policy but also completely gutted the very international liberal order that the US, and its European allies, so meticulously constructed and maintained for over seven decades. His foreign policy is also alienating friends and developing a new loosely constructed axis with nations not as invested in the current order as are America’s NATO partners.
This new reality was dramatically highlighted by a recent US vote at the UN on the territorial integrity of Ukraine that aligned with Belarus, Hungary, Israel and Russia and against Ukraine and most of the EU. Trump’s most impactful foreign policy action so far has been the complete reversal of America’s Ukraine policy. Pausing military aid to Ukraine is his way of not only showing Ukraine who is the boss but also to Europe. The move upends the global order as we know it.
His other major policy change which has the potential to undermine the very essence of the global economy and American liberalism is a return to protectionism with a vengeance. His pronouncements are also having an impact. His threats against Panama prompted the country to end its participation in China’s Belt and Road Initiative and renegotiate terms of use of the Panama Canal with the US. His consistent mention of India as a big abuser of tariffs and promise to levy heavy reciprocal tariffs resulted in India preemptively reducing tariffs and promising to increase imports from the US to reduce the trade deficit before India’s PM Narendra Modi met Trump in the White House. This was delivery before demand.
But the spectacle of world leaders making the pilgrimage to the Durbar (court) of Trump is telling. It started with the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, followed by King Abdullah of Jordan, PM Shigeru Ishiba of Japan, PM Modi of India, President Macron and PM Keir Starmer of the UK. Every one was effusive about their personal equation with the President. Trump is acting like a global emperor holding court while leaders of other nations present themselves humbly in his court to pay tribute.
Trump’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy and the way he and Vice President J D Vance berated him has shocked the world. It also highlights how unilateral and dismissive Trump has become.
Is this multipolarity?
There are some who argue that we have a multipolar world if we consider Europe as a unified power. First, Europe is not unified despite NATO and the EU. The rise of the right in Europe has divided nations and shattered national and regional consensus. While Europe has an economy that is in size comparable to China’s, it is getting squeezed by the manufacturing capacity of China and the protectionism of the US. When it comes to defense, the continent’s dependence on the American security umbrella has diminished their capacity. Forget about projecting power, without the US they are incapable of standing up to Russia whose economy is smaller than that of Germany, UK, France and Italy.
Trump has succeeded in sidelining Europe from the Russia-Ukraine peace process exposing the limits of European power. If Europe can truly step up and replace US aid for Ukraine that includes money, weapons, logistics, training and satellite-based intelligence, then one could argue at that stage that we are in a multipolar world.
Today, Europe is simultaneously dealing with two major foreign policy challenges. Their immediate concern is the spat with the US over the rather astonishing confrontation between Zelensky and Trump. The loud shouting match has led to putting US support for Ukraine and its relations with Europe in serious jeopardy.
Secondly, Europe finds itself without a friend. Russia is an enemy; China is a serious competitor, and the US is on the verge of divorcing Europe. Hence, along with trying to salvage ties with the US, Europe is looking for a new friend and they have chosen India.
Last week British PM Starmer hosted a summit to develop a plan to mend US-Europe, US-Ukraine relations while Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, travelled to India with 26 other commissioners in search of a friend, to deepen trade and strategic relations with India.
Polarity or distribution of power is a systemic feature. If the world was multipolar then Trump would not have been able to act with impunity and disregard for international norms and the interests of allies
Consider France and India, the two nations whose stature would be elevated to that of one of the powers in a world of many powers. The US GDP is ten times that of France, and the US defense budget is 15 times that of France. The US GDP is over seven times that of India, and the defense budget is thirteen times that of India. Does this look like a multipolar system? Even if one argues that China, with an economy that is two thirds of the US economy and a defense budget that is one fourth of the US, is approaching the status of a peer competitor, it makes the system bipolar not multipolar. China’s growing power does not enhance India’s or France’s national capabilities.
The numbers speak loudly. The gap in economic and military capabilities of the US and all other powers is significant. The obsession of the Biden administration to accommodate allies and make concessions to gain cooperation, created an aura of relative American decline that many nations took as emergence of a multipolar order.
America’s rather meek response to India’s attempted assassination of a US citizen, and India’s oil trade with Russia had created an impression that the US desperately needed India to counter China. The concessions that the Indian government has made to the US since Trump’s election were unthinkable during the Biden era. Trump’s election did not change the balance of power in the world, yet we see a marked difference in the way Ukraine, India, Panama, France, Canada and Mexico have sacrificed their national interests to satisfy Trump’s demands.
Power and impunity
Polarity or distribution of power is a systemic and structural feature. If the world was multipolar then Trump would not have been able to act with so much impunity and disregard for international norms and national interests of friends and foes. When states act contrary to what the system allows them to do, they are instantly punished. So far, the system appears to be bending to America under Trump rather than forcing it to bend to the norms of the global order.
If the system is still unipolar, it didn’t become so just because Trump got elected, then it behooves us to understand what unipolarity is and how it has evolved. A unipolar system exists if there is one global power that enjoys primacy and capacity to unilaterally shape and reshape the global order. The US enjoyed a unipolar moment after the end of World War II, which allowed it to construct the multilateral global order that we call the liberal international system. US’ hegemony in this system was challenged by the Soviet Union, triggering a Cold War. The US again enjoyed a second unipolar moment after the end of the Cold War and reshaped the global order to usher in the era of globalisation. In both instances, the US has used multilateralism as a cover for its hegemony.
I contend that the system is still unipolar, because the unipole, the US, enjoys enough power to once again reshape the international system. What we are perhaps witnessing now is Trump wielding US power to once again reconstitute the global order in such a way that it allows the unipole to act with greater autonomy vis-à-vis the rules of the system. Trump calls this autonomy as America First.
The premise that US primacy will be sustained by a globalised world, which led to the creation of the neoliberal order in the second innings of US unipolarity, was proven wrong by the rise of China and the decline of American manufacturing. Even though the US per capita GDP today is nearly equal to the combined per capita GDP of Germany and Japan (the so-called winners of post-World War II peace), the US fears decline and under Trump is making a course correction. It can do so because the system is unipolar.
Rising and regional powers may come together to balance the US and move the system towards multipolarity. Maybe China will rise faster and usher in bipolarity. But for now, we seem to be in a unipolar system.
Trump’s foreign policy blitzkrieg on the world clearly signals that nations are wary of the military and economic clout of the United States. Perhaps Trump’s policies may weaken the US in the long run. But for now, it is evident that we are not living in a multipolar world but rather in a unipolar world where American power still holds considerable sway. Nations who were conducting foreign policy under the assumption that the world is multipolar must rapidly reassess their priorities and recalibrate their foreign policies.
