On February 4, Russia and China issued a joint manifesto for a new world order, announcing their shared commitment to “advancing multipolarity”. (I’d link to it but it’s hosted on the Kremlin site.)

But is is still worth reading, or has it already been overtaken by events? The multipolar dream of the rising non-western powers has run slap-bang into the brick wall of Putin’s humiliation in Ukraine. While the fallout remains hard to predict, Brian Balkus makes a strong case in Palladium Magazine that the likely outcome is not a multipolar but a bipolar future, with Europe more reliant on American power and Russia reduced to China’s client.

“The U.S. and China are unified markets that together comprised 42% of global GDP and 52% of global defense spending in 2021. Their ability to leverage hard military power and economic coercion is an insurmountable obstacle to the emergence of the other powers that would make a multipolar world order. With the potential long-term exception of India, no country has the size and strategic resources to compete individually, and current multinational institutions like the UN and the EU are built on soft foundations which cannot be transformed into hard power.

“If world history continues to be driven by power and intimidation, where will that leave these weak multinational institutions? City-state-type entities like Qatar or Singapore may establish stable positions as bridges and traders within this world order, but they will not be sovereign within it, nor become primary players. New alliance structures arguably built on firmer foundations, such as AUKUS, a trilateral security pact signed between Australia, the U.K., and the U.S. in 2021, may evolve into more consequential forces within the world order.

“For now, the Ukraine war is hastening the birth of a new world order, but it isn’t a multilateral one. The U.S. and China are establishing themselves as the two separate suns that all other nations orbit.”

It’s been less than two months since the manifesto for a multipolar world, but in great power politics that may turn out to be a very long time indeed…