I have looked at every country’s armed forces and how much money they spend on each soldier. The result is clear: the world is still unipolar.
Published: 28/04/2024 20:30
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The world is changing, they say. Everywhere we hear that the US is losing influence and power, while China, Russia and other regional powers are on the rise. In political science, we talk about structural change in the international system:
- From a unipolar system with one dominant state
- To either a bipolar system (with two dominant states)
- Or a multipolar system (with three or more dominant states)
Most people agree that a multipolar system is the most unstable and least peaceful. As it becomes more difficult to maintain the balance of power in a multipolar system, the likelihood of superpower war also increases.
This is bad news.
Economic and demographic power shift
A number of commentators, experts and researchers believe that multipolarity is either already or will soon be the dominant feature of the international system.
An informal poll recently conducted by the renowned journal Foreign Affairs showed that 65 percent of prominent scholars of international politics believe the world is more multipolar or bipolar than unipolar. Only 23 percent of the researchers believe that the world is still more unipolar.
Those who claim that the world is no longer ruled by the United States claim that we must accept the economic and demographic power shift we have witnessed in the last 30 years. Away from the West, towards India and China.
But does this mean that the world is truly multipolar?
Political scientists often define power as the ability of a state to make another state do something it would not normally do. In light of this definition, neither economy nor population are particularly good measures of the current international distribution of power.
Military strength better measure of power
Even if a country overnight increases its population by 50 million people, it does not necessarily become more powerful.
This also applies before a country’s economy. At its peak during the Cold War, the Soviet Union had an economy only one-third the size of the United States. But the Soviet Union prioritized guns over butter. And that is precisely why the world during the Cold War was bipolar.
Communist power matched, even surpassed, the United States in military strength.
Money and population are primarily potential sources of power. A country’s military provides a better insight into the current balance of power: the ability to get other states to do something they would not normally do.
In a recently published research article, I therefore look at all countries’ armed forces and how much money they spend on each soldier. I then compare how the distribution between the great powers has developed over time.
The result is clear: the world is still unipolar.
Seeing the contours of a bipolar world
Russia, Great Britain and France are nowhere near the military strength of the United States. Vladimir Putin’s Russia shouts loudly, but does not really have the strength to be able to call itself a great power. Britain and France are not the great powers they once were.
Describing the world as multipolar – requiring three or more centers of power – is therefore not correct.
China’s growth is startling. And Beijing plays in a higher division than, for example, Russia. But that alone does not make the world bipolar. If the current system were to be, the 1970s would also have to be considered multipolar with China, Russia and the US as the major powers. So it wasn’t.
The measure I develop lends some support to the idea that we are beginning to see the contours of a bipolar world.
China has a large population and economy which they have quickly converted into military strength. But there is no guarantee that China will be able to continue on the same track. There can also be doubts about how big China’s economy actually is. And for the second year in a row, the country’s population is falling.
But the world is still unipolar
Furthermore, it is not a given that states can or will spend money or employ people for military purposes. Japan, Germany and the EU are examples of players who, for various reasons, have not converted their potential into military strength.
It is therefore correct when experts claim that China’s economy and population give it the opportunity to build up more power. It can make the world more bipolar.
But they are wrong when they say this will happen or has already happened. And they are even more wrong when they say that Russia, India, Brazil or other regional powers should constitute the last center of power.
The world remains unipolar, with the United States at the center. And that is probably the closest we can get to a realistic understanding of today’s global power structure.
X (twitter): @palroren
