The reasons hedgemons and empires arise in the first place is a tendency of the human mind to lean towards a bicamerality of sorts. The dual nature of reality re-inforces this as a result, the world is always divided in no more and no less than two poles, not just the physical geographic poles, but even political polarities follow this logic. Thus, any Libertarian who has finally acquired the skill of telling the truth will have you know that they are just opportunists without a strong party affiliation or moral compass.
During the reign of a declining hedgemon, it might appear as if there are more than two poles, but the human world is unlikely to ever unite under a single banner and so a reversion to the mean is to be expected. This invalidates all theories of “multipolarity” in international relations, it is just Jimmy, changing rooms on a planet destined to circle around the sun forever.
This is true of the farthest reaches of cognition, in the sense that even a computer simulation depicting naturally evolving order using genetic algorithms will also start to resemble a strange attractor if left running for long enough. This is the iron law of duality itself.
To be certain, it wasn’t the neocons or the long list of their failures that cemented this narrative of multi-polar world, nor the advent of the internet that solidified the understanding of its possibility, but the fracturing of the narrative that alluded to a united and unifying power that exploded mid-air and disintegrated into power centers scattered over the globe that created this illusion. In a lot of ways, a multipolar world is synonymous with total anarchy and this more dangerous than a uni or bi-polar balance of power.
This planet has never had a multipolar power structure and likely never will because true multipolarity, in the better sense of the concept (as opposed to anarchy) is already a singularity for which the humans are not yet evolved enough, and likely never will be because progress in this arena is inevitably retarded by wars. Those peddling the narrative of multipolarity are either themselves confused or have an axe to grind, or worse, are deluded without a handle on history.
Moreover, the idea of multipolarity goes against the very foundations of realism in international relations. For a superstructure is always needed to contain the plularity, and a truly decentralised diffusion of political power invalidates its very necessity. Nor is the imminent power vaccum created by Jimmy’s timely exit without its power struggles and aspirations. However, what is important to note is that whichever “Pax” follows the current one, the reality will be far from any true multipolarity.
“No national government is currently organized along tricameral lines.”, says Wikipedia, to which one would like to add “and probably no nation ever will be”. In fact, what appears as multipolarity is a crumbling of an extant, decidedly superior order into a decidedly inferior one, usually with the use of force majeure. The thing to note here is that there is only one story - that of The Bridegroom and the whore of Babylon, and Jimmy is surely not the former.
Whether the next Babylon is erected in the eastern or western hemisphere, what is clear is the shift in the balance of power will be reflected in the absolute decimation of not just infrastructure, economy, and culture, but the very values, lifestyles, ethos, and pathos of the people that represented the old empire will get reappropriated and repackaged into the inanity of the day, and so on ad-infinitum because humans cannot reach a singularity en masse, for the same reason they cannot truly decentralize, fan out, or dissipate into malleable power structures and tend to coagulate around fanciful illusions like security or short-term gains.
It would not be correct to assume that there never has been an ultimate vision for the planet. However, history confirms the author’s assertions inside every book, every word, and every heart that knows the glory of the former USSR. Life ever since has been but a daily grind to nowhere, which is ironic because that is what communism was supposed to be. Comparatively, the “ultimate, final vision” which is the myth of multi-polarity is a narrative perpetuated by soothsayers who promise the masses better days but in reality only manage to eke out little recompense for such propaganda. The soviets were smart, they could have advocated a multi-polar peaceful solution too, however, they knew it was statistically improbable to the point of being an impossibility - which makes multipolarity a myth-at-par any singularity or utopia imaginable.
Truthfully, there is nothing in science, nor in scientific materialism that prohibits the creation of a utopia except the demands on human patience and commitment which is a resource scarcer than rare earths. Vision alone cannot ferry the passengers to the other shore, passion will decay in a matter of moments, and the use of force destroys even the good parts of any historical momentum. No matter how much blood is spilled to mark the seriousness of the occasions that light the way like milestones, the hurtling towards death is a drive of forgetfulness.
Maybe one day when everyone is teaching Lacanian psychoanalysis to newly minted teenagers in government schools will we finally have an understanding capable of constructing a truly multipolar or n-polar world as a gateway to true singularity, until then however, the woman very much exists and she will keep devouring your children and their childern until time immemorial.
Jimmy however, does not have that much time and is already strapping bombs to his vest inside the barn in preparation of one final spectacle to blow up the whole prison and go out in style. The rest of the world, however, thinks otherwise and this itself is a proof of a dual “two-party” system operating at a global scale. A tug-of-war has ensued and a lot of heads will roll when that ship finally sails but until then it isn’t as if the fantasyland, balmy shores of multi-polar, multi-cultural kool-aid isn’t a nice reverie in itself.