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Lebanon, North Korea, Russia ... here is the world's new multipolar disorder

The unipolar moment of American supremacy has passed. But the new multipolarity may prove to be very nasty indeed

Timothy Garton Ash in Stanford
Thursday July 20, 2006
The Guardian

Welcome to the world's new multipolar disorder. The state of Israel is now at war with Hizbullah, but not with the state of Lebanon. The Lebanese state does not control its own territory. Iran heavily influences, but does not control, Hizbullah. Fresh from its triumph at the G8 summit in St Petersburg, Russia probably has the closest relations of any of the G8 powers with Syria (to which it supplies weapons) and Iran. China is in there too, as are the leading European powers - once again failing to act as one European union. The US possesses the mightiest military the world has ever seen, and how is it being used? To evacuate its citizens from Lebanon. If the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, manages to broker an end to the fighting, it will only be through complex multilateral diplomacy.

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So, welcome to the new multipolar disorder - and farewell to the unipolar moment of apparently unchallengeable American supremacy. The hyperpower! The mega-Rome! Remember that? Moment turns out to have been the right word: a brief episode between the end of the old bipolar world of the cold war and the beginning of the new multipolar world of the 21st century. This new multipolarity is the result of at least three trends. The first, and most familiar, is the rise or revival of other states - China, India, Brazil, Russia as comeback kid - whose power resources compete with those of the established powers of the west. The second is the growing power of non-state actors. These are of widely differing kinds. They range from movements like Hamas, Hizbullah and al-Qaida, to non-governmental organisations like Greenpeace, from big energy corporations and drug companies to regions and religions.

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