The Unfortunate Return of Multipolarity

How Proxy Wars and Realignments Are Shattering the Liberal Order

I. Introduction

The world is not merely drifting away from the unipolar moment of American primacy. It is being thrust, often violently, into a new order without a central axis, fixed rules, or guarantees of stability.

This is not an anomaly. This is what a transition into multipolarity looks like.

I have long been convinced that we are living through a historical moment akin to the early 20th century or the post-Napoleonic realignments of the 19th: a time when existing power structures fray under the pressure of economic exhaustion, ideological fatigue, and geopolitical ambition.

Here are three claims for you to consider: (1) that multipolarity gives rise to proxy conflicts that externalize risk and mask escalation; (2) that spheres of influence and spheres of interest increasingly diverge, complicating traditional alliance structures, and (3) that multipolarity represents not a stable balance but a punctuated equilibrium , or a volatile interregnum between unipolar orders.

This is a moment that will be remembered, not for its clarity, but for its consequences to humanity.

II. Proxy Conflicts as Structural Output

Multipolar systems are unstable by design. Kenneth Waltz, one of the fathers of neorealism (and an especially lucid writer), argued that bipolarity was more stable because it reduced miscalculation. Multipolarity, by contrast, increases the number of variables: alliances are more fluid, adversaries less predictable, and escalation harder to control. In such a system, great powers often choose proxy war as a strategy of plausible deniability and indirect attrition.

The Cold War was rich with such examples. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Angola, etc. But even earlier, colonial competition allowed European powers to escalate essentially local skirmishes into global conflicts. WWI became a “world” war not merely because of alliances, but because Europe had colonies to drag into the fight. WWII expanded beyond Germany and Poland because imperial interests collided across continents.

Today’s timeline echoes this pattern. Anyone who has paid any attention knows full well that the war in Ukraine is not a bilateral conflict, but a proxy contest between NATO and Russia over post-Soviet influence.

Similarly, the Gaza war and Red Sea naval disruptions tie the US, Iran, Israel, and their allies into a shadow struggle that includes Houthis, Hezbollah, and private military companies.

And the recent violence in Kashmir, tied to Pakistani militants and followed by a subtle US realignment toward India, threatens to add South Asia to the list of theaters entangled in the multipolar game.

In all cases the key point is this: Conflicts increasingly serve as release valves for strategic pressure. They allow great powers to test each other’s resolve without triggering direct confrontation. But they also degrade sovereignty and prolong violence in the regions caught in the middle.

Structured Disorder: The Age of Proxy Warfare

Consider the chart above. What stands out is that the number of internationalized intrastate conflicts, civil wars backed by foreign states, has surged dramatically since the early 2010s, far surpassing both traditional interstate wars and localized insurgencies. This isn’t just background noise; it is the structural fingerprint of modern multipolarity.

Where great powers once confronted each other directly, they now do so through fragile states, non-state actors, and regional destabilization. The shift away from open conflict between hegemons has not brought peace. It has globalized the battlefield, while obscuring the belligerents.

III. Spheres of Influence vs. Spheres of Interest

The second feature of multipolarity is that power and interest no longer map cleanly onto one another.

During the Cold War, ideological influence often aligned with economic dependency. US allies accepted American leadership because it came with capital, security, and legitimacy. Today, those linkages have begun to fracture.

A state may fall within a superpower’s economic orbit while resisting its cultural or ideological influence. India is perhaps the clearest example: it is deeply embedded in the Western tech-financial-defense nexus, yet its political behavior — on Russia, on Iran, and on nationalism — remains distinctly autonomous. Hungary is another: it belongs to the EU but defies Brussels in its embrace of illiberal governance.

This divergence creates diplomatic turbulence. Countries like Turkey, Brazil, Vietnam, and even the UAE have learned to triangulate among power poles, playing one off the other. Their foreign policy is not one of alignment but of hedging. Influence is contested, even where interest is shared.

Here, Samuel Huntington’s and Alexander Dugin’s ideas come into sharp focus. Famously, Huntington described a world divided into civilizational blocs, each governed by distinct values and historical experiences. Dugin (famous as Putin’s philosopher) takes this further, arguing that each civilization should have its own inherent identity alongside its political system, free from universalist imposition.

These theories help explain why American-style liberalism is no longer seen as neutral or inevitable. It is just one system among others, and often one treated with suspicion.

The result is an international system where coordination becomes harder. Multilateralism breaks down not just because interests diverge, but because the underlying assumptions — about rights, sovereignty, or legitimacy — are no longer shared.

IV. Multipolarity as Punctuated Equilibrium

The third and perhaps most under-appreciated dimension of multipolarity is that it is not an end state. It is a phase, an unstable interregnum, that disrupts the relative equilibrium of a prior unipolar order. Drawing on the evolutionary concept of punctuated equilibria, we can understand this period as one of systemic upheaval and unpredictable transformation.

The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 ushered in a rare moment of unipolarity, with the United States acting as the undisputed global hegemon. But that moment was always time-bound. As China rose, Russia recovered, and regional actors like Turkey, India, and Iran asserted themselves, the unipolar consensus began to erode.

What we see now is not the emergence of a new, neatly ordered world but the chaos that attends the loss of order.

Henry Kissinger long warned of this. In his memoirs and diplomatic writings, he argued that the US must keep Russia “boxed in” after Perestroika to prevent it from reemerging as a strategic pole. Here he is in 1994: “Russia, whatever its domestic system, has always posed a challenge to the international order simply by virtue of its size, its location, and the volatility of its politics.” RAND Corporation strategy documents publicly advocated the same.

That logic now extends to China, whose rise has triggered a bipartisan US shift toward economic decoupling, containment, and technological denial. The Red Scare of the 20th century has been reloaded, not against Bolshevism this time, but against Beijing.

John Mearsheimer’s prediction that the US would not tolerate peer competitors is playing out in real time. The tragedy, as he framed it, is that the structure of international politics compels states to seek dominance and to punish those who do. Multipolarity is not a stable platform for peace. It is a knife-edge moment, where multiple actors test the boundaries of power, often with catastrophic results.

What comes after, whether a bipolar US–China rivalry, a fragmented regionalism, or a renewed unipolarity led by a new actor. is still unclear.

But what is certain is that the world as it was between 1991 and 2015 is not coming back.

V. Timeline of Transition: 2021–2025: From Dismissal to Disorder

How we got here is a treatise unto itself, but consider a sped-up summary of just the recent past. The geopolitical timeline from late 2021 to the present does not represent isolated incidents, but an unbroken arc of systemic breakdown in slow motion.

• December 2021: Russia issues a formal security proposal demanding NATO halt eastward expansion and seek new security guarantees. The US and NATO dismiss it almost out of hand, rather than engaging in a diplomacy. The stage is set for confrontation.
• February 2022: Russia invades Ukraine. Western powers respond with sanctions and arms support. The global south largely abstains from sanctions, signaling the first visible cracks in Western hegemony.
• Throughout 2022–2023: Energy crises rock Europe. Inflationary pressures shift political dynamics globally. Western unity remains on the surface but softens underneath as costs mount. Africa, Latin America, and parts of Southeast Asia resist binary alignment.
• October 7, 2023: Hamas attacks Israel. The Gaza War reignites Middle East fault lines. Iran’s proxies open multiple new fronts, including Red Sea disruptions. The West’s perceived hypocrisy, staunchly backing Ukraine’s sovereignty while supporting Israel’s heavy bombardments, further alienates some in the Global South.
• December 2023: France is expelled from Niger. Russian-backed influence replaces traditional Western partnerships across West Africa. Symbolic and strategic losses accumulate for Europe.
• October 2024: At the Kazan BRICS Summit, member states unveil an alternative financial transaction system to bypass dollar dependence. No single BRICS currency emerges, but the architecture for de-dollarization accelerates.
• Early 2025: Trump administration imposes sweeping tariffs on China and other trading partners. China retaliates aggressively, including capital controls and the dumping of select US treasuries. Financial volatility rises.
• February- 2025: Vice President Vance delivers a combative speech at the Munich Security Conference, calling European strategic dependency a liability. Russia recaptures Kursk, abetted by North Korean troops, confirming new multipolar military linkages and denying Ukraine any imagined bargaining chip in bilateral negotiations.
• March-April 2025: Trump publicly berates Zelensky at the White House. Whitkoff engages in secretive negotiations with Hamas and Iran, fraying traditional US-Israel relations. Pakistan-linked militants kill tourists in Kashmir, and some US officials signal some US-India strategic coordination.
• March-April 2025: Treasury yields spike. Gold premiums diverge between Shanghai and COMEX markets. Financial bifurcation deepens. Strategic supply chain realignments away from China accelerate.

By April 29, 2025, the illusion of a stable, liberal, rules-based international order has palpably gone, and it took a mere three years for it to be entirely shattered. Multipolarity is no longer theoretical; it is the operating condition of the world system.

VI. Looking Ahead: Two Possible Futures

What lies ahead depends not on a single actor or ideology but on how power is balanced, tested, and ultimately restrained. From where we stand now, two plausible scenarios emerge.

Scenario 1: Conflict Spiral and Systemic War

In this future, the escalation dynamics seen in 2022-2025 continue unabated. China blockades Taiwan. The US responds with carrier groups. A single miscalculation (perhaps a mid-air collision, a hacked satellite, or a rogue missile launch) triggers a limited but intense war in the Pacific. Both nations suffer tens of thousands of casualties. Allies are drawn in. Japan and Australia mobilize. Iran launches coordinated attacks on US bases via proxy groups. Israel retaliates fiercely. Europe fractures along interests new and alliances old. Nuclear thresholds are tested.

One version of this future halts just short of nuclear exchange, leaving the world severely bruised but intact. Too optimistic? Another, darker path ends with a civilization-level extinction event, and an existential lesson in the fragility of deterrence. Too pessimistic?

Scenario 2: Unease, Attrition, and Emergent Order

In this more restrained trajectory, multipolarity hardens into decades of proxy conflict, economic warfare, and technological bifurcation. The WTO collapses. The UN becomes ceremonial. Or, perhaps more accurately, even more ceremonial. Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia become arenas for competing blocs. Migration, inflation, and digital disinformation shape politics more than ideology ever did.

And then, something tips. Perhaps it’s technological: a quantum leap or artificial intelligence breakthrough gives one bloc such overwhelming advantage that conflict becomes futile. Or perhaps it is demographic: one civilizational core outlasts the others, in a brutal Darwinian sense. Over time, a new pole asserts itself not through conquest, but through dominance of the terms of life: currency, code, and cognition.

This future is not peaceful, but it is stable. Like Rome after Carthage, the new hegemon faces no peer. Order returns… but at the cost of a generation’s dislocation.

Whether through catastrophe or convergence, the post-1991 world is ending. Unfortunate indeed. In the next world order, it may not be the strongest who prevail, but those who most daringly reimagine what power could now become.

-Prateek