Confusion continues to abound over how the global order looks and acts

With a long weekend here in Canada - it's Thanksgiving, and with numerous folks in the Americas celebrating Columbus Day - I thought I'd delay just a wee bit.

I could not resist commenting on colleagues, including my colleague from the Fletcher School at Tufts, and frequent Substack opinion writer, Dan Drezner. In his recent Post Dan takes down two FP writers, Emma Ashford and Evan Cooper.  In their recent essay these two writers reflect on what they see as the current shape and consequences of the power dynamics in the contemporary global order: 

An obscure academic term is suddenly back in vogue in international affairs. Multipolarity—the idea that there are many important global powers, not just a few superpowers—is being touted by leaders, CEOs, and pundits as the future. Headlines suggest the growing importance of middle powers, from Turkey and Brazil to South Korea and Australia.

Dan reacts to their characterization of the international system as ‘multipolar’, or emerging multipolarity and references as well a recent discussion he engaged in with colleagues at Tufts:

Last week I participated in a Fletcher School panel about the expansion of BRICS. Rebecca Barrie of Tufts Daily wrote it up. It would be safe to say that the primary disagreement I had with my esteemed colleagues was whether the growth of BRICS represented a global shift towards multipolarity or not.

Now Dan does a very thorough job of examining the numerous power indexes that help us determine whether we continue to have a bipolar global system - the two great powers China and the US, and then the rest or whether based on these power indicators we have something more than that - a multipolar world of China and the US and a number of emerging powers such as India, Brazil, Turkey etc. - what he refers to as ‘unbalanced multipolarity’:

So how persuasive is Ashford’s argument? I think the meat of Ashford and Cooper’s article is in their data section. They present multiple charts showing the history of the distribution of power, with each chart relying on different metrics. … This data thus suggests we are entering a period of unbalanced multipolarity, an international environment in which two major powers (the United States and China) are pre-eminent, but other second-rank powers (i.e., Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, India, Turkey, or France) are also important players.

With a convincing eye Drezner dismisses this growing dispersal of power among these major powers. As Drezner concludes: 

Yeah, I’m not seeing much multipolarity in these charts. I see the United States and China standing head and shoulders above the other candidate great powers. Furthermore, I do not see those other states collectively gaining much relative ground compared to the United States or China.

Drezner then concludes: 

This buttresses a point I made at our BRICS panel: the idea of multipolarity is a very convenient fiction for all the BRICS members. It flatters the non-China members in granting them great power status, while allowing China to keep a lower profile and not shoulder more responsibility than it wants.

So is this the end of the debate? Not really. Of course power matters in international relations. One need only take an intro course or text. But as I have argued, in fact in the very recent past, a September Post titled: ‘Adapting to a possibly more  fragmented Order’, the real target - the driving efforts of today’s powers are the collective initiatives of groups of these states to manage the difficult current relations - achieve their interests and in a variety of cases advance critical global governance policies: 

It is hard at times to discern the driving force of today’s international relations. Some still dwell on and debate the structure and its consequences for the international system - is the order unipolar, bipolar, or multipolar. A lot of my colleagues are still there. A focus on contending politics and numerous efforts to achieve national interest, however, leads to a different narrative. The game today is assuredly multilateral, not multipolar, and possibly just as troubling, increasingly fragmented. The ramifications to global summitry and the key Informals including the G7, G20 and the BRICS, are all there if one just looks, and more than slightly unnerving.

As I said, it is not multipolarity, but multilateralism. Now it is evident that the rise in geopolitical tensions - especially between the US and China but also Russian aggression - have made multilateralism increasingly difficult. As we noted earlier, and as described in detail in a recent ‘Summit Dialogue’ podcast with my CEIP colleague, Stewart Patrick on ‘the Impacts and Outcomes of UNGA78 High Level Week’, UN efforts have ground to a halt. This most significant of multilateral efforts is unable to act. But the collective climate action of the COPs, for example, at least in the area of climate continues even with the geopolitical tensions.

But multilateralism alone is not the only instrument of collective action. I and others have paid serious attention to the Informals for some time as noted in the above quote. This is not to say there hasn’t been greater struggle but the annual leaders’ summits cap off year-long efforts to craft collective policy efforts in debt management,  financial architecture reform, digital governance, and climate among other topics. There are a variety of plurilateral - small groups of actors - that collectively seek to advance international efforts. Turning attention to regional efforts quickly uncovers hoped for future action. The Asia-Pacific is a prime regional setting for plurilateral action even in the face of US and China dominance. Note the current thinking by some Japanese experts, reported by  by Ken Moriyasu in NikkeiAsia reflecting on future Japanese regional efforts: 

The group, led by Keio University Professor Emeritus Yoshihide Soeya and Mike Mochizuki of the Elliott School of International Affairs in George Washington University, spoke at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan to mark the release of the report, entitled, "Asia's Future at a Crossroads: A Japanese Strategy for Peace and Sustainable Prosperity.

Instead of uncritically following Washington, Japan should form a region wide coalition of so-called middle powers to help mitigate the competition between the U.S. and China through constructive diplomacy, thus reducing the danger of war between great powers in the region, " the group argues in a new report. … Soeya has been a strong advocate for Japan adopting "middle-power diplomacy," which aims for a more autonomous foreign policy that is close to but not solely dependent on the U.S.

There are budding plurilateral efforts in several regional contexts and continuing Informals. These initiatives  - those mentioned and others -  are the heart of diplomatic and policy action in this ‘whatever polar world’.