It is now conventional wisdom that the United States is lurching from one blunder to the next. By antagonizing Russia and China simultaneously, it pushed them into each other’s arms; by weaponizing the dollar and slapping tariffs on friend and foe alike, it has accelerated de-dollarization. In Iran, meanwhile, the US has failed to achieve regime change while sustaining massive damage to its bases in the Middle East. Finally, there is broad agreement that Ukraine—and by extension NATO—is losing its war with Russia, dealing yet another devastating blow to American power. America’s terminal decline, it is widely assumed, will force Washington to accept a diminished role and accommodate a new, multipolar world order.
I have made this argument myself more than once. But lately, I have started to wonder whether those of us who welcome the rise of a new multipolar order have allowed our wishes to get ahead of reality. The evidence of the past year points in a different direction, nowhere more clearly than in the growing paralysis of BRICS, the organization of emerging economies that has positioned itself as a counterweight to US dominance.
It is necessary to distinguish here between relative weight and relative power. In terms of weight—especially economic weight—multipolarity is already a reality. The US economy accounts for a much smaller share of the global economy than it did a decade ago, thanks above all to China’s rise. But has this decline in relative weight been matched by a comparable decline in power? Not really.