Educational Philosophy and Theory

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The emerging multipolar world order: A

preliminary analysis

Michael A. Peters

To cite this article: Michael A. Peters (2023) The emerging multipolar world order:
A preliminary analysis, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 55:14, 1653-1663, DOI:
10.1080/00131857.2022.2151896

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Educational Philosophy and Theory
2023, VOL. 55, NO. 14, 1653–1663
https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2022.2151896

Editorial

The emerging multipolar world order: A preliminary

analysis

The model of world order has changed dramatically in the postwar era from the bipolarity
between the US and Soviet Russia that characterized the Cold War, to a period of unipolarity
after the fall of Soviet Russia in 1989 when the US became the world’s sole superpower, to
complex multipolarity following the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. This is how Josef Borell (2021),
Vice President of the European Commission, describes the transition:
Over the last three decades, we have seen a rapid transformation in the distribution of power around the
world. We went from a bipolar configuration between 1945 and 1989 to a unipolar configuration between
1989 and 2008, before entering in what we today could call ‘complex multipolarity’.

He indicates that world economic order is comprised of ‘three dominant poles: the United
States, China and the European Union’ although politically the world structure is more complex
because 1. ‘an emerging Sino-American bipolarity is increasingly structuring the world system’;
2. there are strong regional political and military powers like Russia and Turkey that do not
wield world economic power; and 3. there are world actors between the two like the EU that
‘carry a strong economic weight but who are political poles in the making’ struggling ‘to close
to close the gap between economic power and geopolitical influence’.
There are some missing pieces in Borrell’s analysis that seem to ignore the dynamism of
emerging blocs that cohere and help to amplify the existing poles as well as the development
of strategic partnerships both military and political. The first point is more a perspective about
the historical process of the construction of ‘poles’ and the way that they are no longer deter-
mined by western dominant influences. Here I mention two obvious examples: the Asian
inflection of world capitalism and the consequences of the final overcoming of the legacy of
the colonial world system, especially evident in the growing solidarity and expansion of BRICs
and the G77. No one doubts that there has been a shift in the centre of economic gravity from
the rich trans-Atlantic democracies to Asia that helps to define the rise of China within a dense
network of bilateral trading relationships, with ASEAN as its largest trading partner. The capitalist
world system has the power to create new poles and power blocs. Nor do most commentators
discount the history of the decline of the world colonial system that profited Europe and the
US but now defines the dynamic nature of the process of economic development of ex-colonies,
particularly demographically large Asian countries like China, India and Indonesia that support
very large and growing mass domestic markets.
One might argue that there are not two systems but only one system of world capitalism
in its different historical phases or moments: a colonial and postcolonial phase. The latter also
adds a moral perspective to the argument that has a historical effectivity in terms of UN bloc
voting as well as the solidarity of the Global South. As Morgan Stanley research group expresses
it in ‘Five Reasons for the Trend towards Multipolarity’: ‘In a multipolar economic world, you
have groups of nations with enough influence and incentive to pursue economic strategies
that, if achieved, do not substantially follow the same direction of other global power centres’.
Among the continued geopolitical tensions between the US and China the rest of the world is
forced to strike a balancing act and while multilateralism is in retreat new development models

© 2022 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia

1654 EDITORIAL

are being offered: ‘Improved Sino-Russian relations, the emergence of China’s Belt and Road
Initiative (BRI), the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, and the New Development Bank (pre-
viously the BRICS Bank) are clear signs of a shift to a multipolar world, providing alternatives
to the Bretton Woods institutions and setting up a competition for influence between the US
and China’.1 This account pays attention to both political alliances and also the underlying
institutional infrastructure. Wallerstein’s world systems theory as an approach to explain the
development and dynamics of the capitalist world economy analysing it in term of international
trade and changing relationships between the periphery and the core economies is a better
conceptualisation because it incorporates Braudel’s notion of world history (the longue durée,
the medium time of economies, societies, and cultures, and histoire événementielle) such that it
can theoretically entertain a reversal or modification of the core/periphery relation through
BRICs solidarity as the latest incipient phase. In the not too distant future it is possible that we
will see China and India as poles in the international system with European countries increas-
ingly consigned to the periphery.
The EU as a regional bloc, not a country, is also an important world player although it is
tethered to the US in terms of NATO and committed to NATO expansion with prospective new
memberships of Sweden and Finland, and the Ukraine pending. Under the circumstances, even
with the promotion of integration in Europe, it is not clear that the EU can fulfill its ambition
to become a global power, able to function as one of the poles in the new multipolar global
order when its security strategy is determined and largely financed by Washington.
The United Kingdom has now permanently separated and left the EU in a weakened state
significantly damaging its own economy in the process. The disastrous failure of the neoliberal
Truss government which took office for a mere 45 days, offering unfunded tax cuts for the rich
during a cost-of-living crisis, plunged the UK’s financial markets into disarray and reputedly
losing some 50 billion pounds. The Conservatives have settled down with Sunak but still face
declining polls that will intensify after Jeremy Hart’s substantial cuts to welfare services. Its
plans to become a ‘science superpower’ again through its universities have fallen behind,
deprived of EU public good science funding. The post-Elizabethan UK faces further relative
decline with India pipping it as the fifth world’s leading economy.
Germany and France increasingly act independently to protect their national interests. Federal
Chancellor Olaf Scholtz on his one-day trip to China, the first European leader to visit since the
Covid pandemic, risking criticism from the US and his own party, stated the new pragmatism:
‘New centers of power are emerging in a multipolar world, and we aim to establish and expand
partnerships with all of them’. Some smaller European powers including Hungary and Serbia
have begun to operate outside the EU immigration mandates, displaying strong sympathies
with Russia, and have become part of the broad far-right reassertion of power across Europe
represented in Italy recently electing a party under Giorgia Meloni with strong roots in Italian
Fascism. This political shift will make it more difficult to pursue coordinated and joint action
by member states and raise questions whether the EU can cultivate a shared vision of foreign
policy in confronting the major challenges of the 21st century including the consequences of
climate change, the energy and food crisis, and rising geopolitical tensions. The Russian war
against the Ukraine unexpectedly provided a source of inspiration for European integration, a
clarification of western values, and promoted the greatest sense of unity with the US than any
time in recent years.
The Russian Federation militarily a world ‘land’ power has become more problematic as an
economic pole as the effects of sanctions and the war against Ukraine has begun to bite and
deplete its economy and military resources. Much will be determined by responses to Europe’s
energy crisis, the US continued funding of Ukraine and the willingness of both sides to accept
efforts at peacebuilding. The objections to NATO’s eastward expansion against explicit statements
of intention meant that the US has achieved its strategic goals more easily than it dreamed
possible only a couple of years ago. At the same time the Ukraine war and Russia’s annexation
 Educational Philosophy and Theory 1655

of the Crimea and eastern states of the Donbas have diminished Russia’s chances of occupying
a powerful pole in a multipolar 21st century as a single power operating by itself. Even with
its newly strengthened relationship with China –Xi says ‘China-Russia cooperation has no lim-
its’—its economic union in the form of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and a revitalised
and enlarged Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Russia is in a much weaker state as a
consequence of Putin’s actions, at least at this point in early November 2022. It is likely that
the Ukraine war will end with a negotiated peace before the European winter.
1656 EDITORIAL

The tripartite multipolarity of Borrell’s analysis is well illustrated in the following graphic of
the $100 trillion world economy, that makes clearly evident the size of Russia’s and UK’s econ-
omies relative to that of the EU. In terms of geopolitics the graphic includes within China’s
Asian geography both Japan and South Korea, allies of the US, and also India which is
non-aligned, while the US includes Canada and Mexico both autonomous states allied with the
US. What appears as the third ‘European’ space includes Russia, Switzerland, the Nordic states
of Sweden and Norway, and the UK which is no longer part of the EU. When these states are
taken away the EU space its relative small size is obvious compared to either the US or China
which are clearly the dominant poles, with EU a distant third. In terms of geopolitical dynamics
Asia includes India and Indonesia both of which have strong economic growth rates, and ASEAN
countries which is emerging as the Asian EU with growth prospect that may well put it in the
same league before the end of the decade.
The Middle East is divided but holds the prospect of becoming a Muslim pole through the
leadership of Turkey and Iran, with relationships to other Muslim states in the Asia-Pacific,
demonstrating that it is not always a matter of geographical contiguity but may also embrace
elements of religion, language and ideology. Australia and Brazil are significant as regional
powers in South America and Oceania respectively, although unlikely ever to comprise poles
in themselves, although may become influential components of larger blocs. Africa while eco-
nomically becoming more significant demonstrates little unity or power to act as a sovereign
power, although Nigeria is emerging as a powerful leading economy within Africa and the
continent is the source of strong demographic growth. The graphic does not indicate growth
rates, spheres of influence, alliances, or trading partnerships but it does suggest three poles
and a lesser group of regional powers, structured through the superpower status of China and
the US. What it does not show are the relationships among nation states, often multiple and
based on shared histories, politics and trade. In these terms we can note a clear opposition:
the US pole with the EU and NATO countries, together with neoliberal states, UK, Australia,
Canada and NZ on the one hand; and the China pole based on closer Sino-Russian relations,
the Belt and Road Initiative with over seventy countries, the six founding Eurasian states of the
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation also including India and Pakistan, and a series of memoranda
of understanding and bilateral trade agreements with ASEAN, Asia and the rest of the world.
The Ukraine war has had the effect of unifying the US and the EU through the expansion
of NATO, creating one pole while promoting closer Sino-Russian relations as the other pole,
that between them structure the international system. The war against Ukraine seems to have
accelerated a process of bipolarity within multipolarity, with only five countries opposing the
UN censure of Russia with fifty-one abstentions. The Ukrainian defence and retaking of Kherson
has had positive effects for the west, emboldening the US which taunted China recently over
Taiwan with a provocative visit by Nancy Pelosi. It temporarily strengthens the US position
and highlights Joe Biden’s point of inflection between democracies and autocracies. It also
provides a two superpowers and a regional conflict of Ukraine-NATO, driven between Russia
and Europe, with emerging strong regional powers in Asia. The G20 meeting in Indonesia
with a face-to-face meeting between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden displaying a willingness to
engage in dialogue with agreement not to start a new Cold War in Asia and ‘to chart the
right course’, as Xi put it, to elevate the relationship and seek the right direction for bilat-
eral ties.
The concept of multipolarity has a history in China and has been part of debate for several
decades going back to the Cold War era. Leonid Savin (2018) traces the Chinese concept of
multipolarity to Huan Xiang, Deng’s advisor, in the mid 1980s who perceived that the old order
was disintegrating and that the military power of US and Russia was declining. Against internal
criticism quintipolar multipolarity (US, Russia, China, Japan and Germany) was seen as inevitable.
In the 1990s three approaches had been developed: 1. One superpower and four strong powers
(Yang Dazhou); 2. One super, many strong powers to be completed (Yan Xuetong); 3.
 Educational Philosophy and Theory 1657

‘multipolarity is formed’ (Song Baoxian and Yu Xiaoqiu).2 Five principles of peaceful coexistence
which formed the basis of the 1954 treaty with India have become the basis for China’s mul-
tipolar strategy: 1. Mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty; 2. Non-aggression; 3.
Non-interference in internal affairs; 4. Equality and mutual benefit; 5. Peaceful coexistence. The
criticism held in the later 1990s by Yang Dazhou that China did not possess sufficient qualifi-
cation at that point to be a pole and that the US will maintain its superpower status for at
least three decades, seems misconceived in retrospect. It was a view that underestimated the
spectacular growth of China during the first decades of the 2000s and the relative decline of
the US. Predictions at the end of the 1990s did not mature although there was also some
experimentation with the concept of poles and units (yuan) based on the Cold War standard
of two poles of the United States and Soviet Union (Savin, 2018). In the G20 meeting in Indonesia
both leaders Xi and Biden, and their host Joko Widodo reflecting the concern of other leaders,
strongly indicated that they did not want to return to the old Cold War bipolar structure and
mentality that could put global governance at risk at a time when increased international
cooperation was called in order to manage economic recovery and sustainability in the
post-pandemic era. Local sentiment indicated support for recovery and development and a step
back from increasing trade protectionism and the US’ aggressive monetary tightening.
While perhaps too focused on nation states at the exclusion of the changing nature of the
capitalist digital system and the emergence of non-state global multinational actors, Borrell’s
description stands in stark contrast to President Joe Biden’s analysis that the world faces a clear
choice between the politics of democracy or autocracy which appears as tired American rhetoric.
In the National Security Strategy (October, 2022) Biden prefaces the document by claiming
‘our world is at an inflection point’ and ‘this decisive decade’ ‘is a strategic competition to shape
the future of the international order’. As he pitches the official narrative:

The People’s Republic of China harbors the intention and, increasingly, the capacity to reshape the inter-
national order in favor of one that tilts the global playing field to its benefit, even as the United States
remains committed to managing the competition between our countries responsibly.

Biden frames the future in terms of an opposition between ‘autocracies’ and ‘democracies’—an
extension of the same old binary logic of the Cold War: ‘autocracies are working overtime to
undermine democracy and export a model of governance marked by repression at home and
coercion abroad’ while ‘the United States will continue to defend democracy around the world’
ready to partner ‘with any nation that shares our basic belief that the rules-based order must
remain the foundation for global peace and prosperity’. Biden talks of rebuilding the US econ-
omy, upgrading infrastructure, reinvigorating alliances and partnerships, deepening NATO and
AUKUS, and developing creative ways of working ‘with the European Union, the Indo-Pacific
Quad, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, and the Americas Partnership for Economic
Prosperity’. In this context Biden talks of ‘The United States will continue to prioritize leading
the international response to these transnational challenges’.
The National Security Strategy (NSS, 2022) comprises five parts: I. The Competition For What
Comes Next, including ‘the nature of the competition between democracies and autocracies’; II.
Investing In Our Strength; III. Our Global Priorities, ‘out-competing China and constraining Russia’
while ‘cooperating on shared challenges’ around climate and energy, pandemic and biosecurity,
food insecurity, arms control, non-proliferation, and terrorism; IV. Our Strategy By Region; V.
Conclusion. Large sections of the NSS, are tantamount to a point/counterpoint response to China’s
initiatives such as the BRI based increasingly on state-led federal support for infrastructural
renewal, subsidies for strategic technologies such as the semiconductor industry, and continued
systems of tariffs on Chinese goods, especially those in the high-tech area plus an increasing
array of economic sanctions aimed at individuals, institutions and countries. Jeffrey D. Sachs
(2016) indicated some time ago that American foreign policy was at a crossroads: ‘facing China’s
rise, India’s dynamism, Africa’s soaring populations and economic stirrings, Russia’s refusal to
1658 EDITORIAL

bend to its will, its own inability to control events in the Middle East, and Latin America’s deter-
mination to be free of its de facto hegemony, US power has reached its limits’. He argued:
The only sane way forward for the US is vigorous global cooperation to realize the potential of
twenty-first-century science and technology to slash poverty, disease, and environmental threats. The rise
of regional powers is not a threat to the US, but an opportunity for a new era of prosperity and construc-
tive problem solving.3

Nonetheless, despite Washington’s same old Cold War narrative concerning a historic ‘inflection
point’ this is no new Cold War. Putin has called the formation of a multipolar world ‘irreversible’
calling for a ‘democratic, more just world order should be based on mutual respect, trust, and
the generally accepted principles of international law and the UN Charter’. In bitterly ironic
terms, Putin suggests ‘A multipolar system of international relations is now being formed. It is
an irreversible process; it is happening before our eyes and is objective in nature’.4
In their watershed landmark communique, China and Russia announced a strengthened
political and military alliance, on February 4th 2022, before Russia invaded Ukraine, giving strong
credibility the idea of a new world order, a term used half a dozen times in the document. The
‘Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International
Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development’ begins:

Today, the world is going through momentous changes, and humanity is entering a new era of rapid
development and profound transformation. It sees the development of such processes and phenomena
as multipolarity, economic globalization, the advent of information society, cultural diversity, transformation
of the global governance architecture and world order; there is increasing interrelation and interdependence
between the States; a trend has emerged towards redistribution of power in the world; and the interna-
tional community is showing a growing demand for the leadership aiming at peaceful and gradual devel-
opment. At the same time, as the pandemic of the new coronavirus infection continues, the international
and regional security situation is complicating and the number of global challenges and threats is growing
from day to day. Some actors representing but the minority on the international scale continue to advocate
unilateral approaches to addressing international issues and resort to force; they interfere in the internal
affairs of other states, infringing their legitimate rights and interests, and incite contradictions, differences
and confrontation, thus hampering the development and progress of mankind, against the opposition
from the international community.5

In response to the perceived growing interference and provocation by the United States, China
and Russia announced their intention to develop a ‘polycentric world order’. The document
begins by declaring that ‘democracy is a universal human value, rather than a privilege of a
limited number of States, and that its promotion and protection is a common responsibility of
the entire world community’. It upholds the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights as setting forth fundamental principles, ‘which all the States must
comply with and observe in deeds’ and suggest that ‘peace, development and cooperation lie
at the core of the modern international system’. The joint statement supports the implementation
of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the ‘call on the international com-
munity to take practical steps in key areas of cooperation such as poverty reduction, food
security, vaccines and epidemics control, financing for development, climate change, sustainable
development, including green development, industrialization, digital economy, and infrastructure
connectivity’. It is clear that the joint China-Russia communique details an international system
with the UN at its core with the aim of working with the Global South to tackle the multiple
world crises that currently face the world including climate change and the pandemic.
One source reminds us that strictly speaking there is only one capitalist system that embraces
the world and that since China admitted capitalism into the system really it is only a matter
of style in the way it is constructed to meet national interests:

Currently there is no concrete ideological or intellectual competition between Russia, China and the US.
All three are stuck within the paradigm of capitalism’s political-economic framework and secular-liberalism
 Educational Philosophy and Theory 1659

intellectual foundations. They merely define these differently and aim to frame both in a manner best
suited to their geopolitical interests.6

Yet it seems that the neoliberal version of world capitalism has shifted again, this time towards
a double and parallel system of state-led capitalism that is further defined in terms of trading
and security relations and partnerships. The same system might be said to define prospects for
the EU. But it is not simply a more efficient and productive system but also a set of differences
that depend on state and international policies that enhance the digital moment of capitalism
while encouraging better redistributive and environmental results. At a deeper level there are
questions about whether capitalism can overcome its industrial past to practically embrace
environmental sustainability and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The other major
element that distinguishes ‘the current multipolar global order from the Cold War era is the
presence of far more assertive and resistance-minded Muslims in the world’, led by Turkey and
Iran, which while not a cohesive force is also ‘not a lackey of big powers anymore’ (ibid).
Indonesia, the largest country in Southeast Asia and the fourth most populous country in the
world at 275 million people, as a presidential representative democratic republic has a GDP
expected to grow by 5.4% in 2022 and 5% in 2023, compared to the S.E. Asian ‘tiger’ economies
of the Philippines (6.5%), Vietnam (6.0%) and Malaysia (6.0%).7 As an original member of both
ASEAN and the Asian Development Bank, Indonesia is committed to eradicate extreme poverty
and move toward establishing a green and resilient economy.The Indonesian Investment
Coordinating Board (BKPM) increased by 8.0% in 2020 (DDI Rp 112.7 T, FDI Rp 98 T) with Asian
countries (Singapore, China, HK, Japan, Malaysia) as the top five investors in transportation,
basic metals, electricity, gas & water supply, housing, industrial and office building, and food
crops, plantation and livestock. This explains why the G20 2022 meeting is being held in Bali
with President Joko Widodo as host and dealmaker. He expects Indonesia to become the sev-
enth largest economy by 2030 (Vaswani, 2022).
There is a slow revolution of the global economy that has been taking place since WWII that
presages development noted by a range of social and economic theorists who were the first
to mention the postindustrial economy. There is a fundamental shift away from principles of
classical industrial economy that held sway since the industrial revolution based on industrial
production, capital/labor oppositional politics, mining of raw materials and use of fossil fuels
within the confines of the nation-state. The international order was largely a reflection of such
a collection of industrial nation-states that build on the international colonial trade favoring
western great powers. Slowly this arrangement has given way to a new international economic
order centered on the rise of global corporations focused on the new digital technologies and
renewable energy sources with the rise of a new global ruling elite who became the leaders
of a transnational capitalist class (TCC). This process is not complete. It is fragmentary, largely
led by the US, China and the EU, and by no means assured as it faces strong anti-globalist,
strengthening nationalist and anti-market forces both domestically and internationally. The older
nation states-based elites who controlled the liberal world order established at the end of WWII
have been increasingly replaced by a new global elite on the one hand and an older-styled
liberal international world agency-based bureaucratic elite on the other. The latter, an elite
based on a new social contract, seek to mediate in the conflicts among nation-states, especially
between Global North and Global South, through a world architecture that reflects older-style
liberal internationalist leanings supported by institutions set up at Bretton-Woods.
At the center of this revolutionary transformation of the global economy are a set of new
digital technologies including the internet, 5 G, supercomputing, and soon quantum computing
that have since the 1970s encouraged a greater world interconnectivity in trade and finance.
The corporations that developed new digital technologies as scalable businesses that exploit
global markets led to first-wave financialization of capitalism and the extensive development
of the structure of world capital markets strongly encouraged by monetarism and neoliberalism
1660 EDITORIAL

that promoted deregulation and financial liberalization. It made possible foreign direct invest-
ment flows, economic interpenetration, inter-bank lending as well as the phenomenal growth
of transnational investment in the new stock markets opening up in Hong Kong, Shenzhen and
Shanghai. This world expansion was aided by after China joined the WTO in 2001 and Chinese
banks gained greater autonomy. The Bank of China, the China Construction Bank, the Industrial
and Commercial Bank of China, and the Agricultural Bank of Bank ranked among the largest
in the world as among the seven top largest in assets terms. In 2020 Chinese stocks constituted
about one-third of global gains as transnational investors poured over a $1 trillion into Chinese
capital markets.
Financialization as a systematic high-tech transformation of capitalism based on (i) the
massive expansion of the financial sector where finance companies have taken over from banks
as major financial institutions and banks have moved away from old lending practices to
operate directly in capital markets; (ii) large previously non-financial multinational corporations
have acquired new financial capacities to operate and gain leverage in financial markets; (iii)
domestic households and students have become players in financial markets (the ascendancy
of shareholder capitalism) taking on debt and managing assets; and (iv) in general, represents
the dominance of financial markets over a declining production of the traditional industrial
economy.
The rise of neoliberalism is explained by the growing role and power of finance in the
political economy of capitalism and the growth of a new global finance class but financialization
is result of neoliberal restructuring but has deeper roots in a change in the nature of corpora-
tions that jettisoned its traditional loan-making functions to pursue the creation and sale of its
own financial instruments. Neoliberalism, beginning 1980 in the US under Reagan, encouraged
the shift to a deregulated neoliberal global capitalism symbolized by the repeal of the
Glass-Steagall Act in 1999.
The US as the world’s largest economy is still also the world’s most powerful military with
an annual budget of $780B (est.) and some 800 military bases worldwide. After the war in
Afghanistan it now faces strict limits to its power and in the face of multiple strategic part-
nerships and relationships that stand against it the US no longer holds a position as sole
hegemonic power. The US also faces huge domestic problems at home including the savage
split between political parties, the erosion of its democratic institutions and the prospect of
more political violence after the Trump-inspired insurrection and attack on the Capitol. The
2024 presidential election, possibly between Biden and Trump, will prove to be an historic
moment for the stability and survival of American-style neoliberalism and will likely determine
its continued world status and its rate of decline. Biden’s efforts at rebuilding liberal interna-
tionalism after Trump’s ‘America First’ withdrawal from various world bodies, commitments and
protocols, including the Paris Accord and RCEP, seem frantically too little too late. The hurried
convening of the Quad (US, Japan, India, South Korea) as a bulwark to China and the AUKUS,
based on providing Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, seem of limited value in the
White House effort to ‘out-compete’ and contest China’s spreading influence in the Asia-Pacific.
The much-vaunted ‘pivot to Asia’ by the US dressed up in terms of ‘Indo-Asia’ considered as
a measure of Indian sub-continental democracy alongside the Quad, is deliberately ambiguous
and contests its ‘one China policy’, edging the world closer to conflict than diplomacy. It is
an action that seems likely to increase geopolitical tensions in the Asian region and tests the
‘loyalty’ of US traditional allies, splitting allegiances with smaller countries balancing and
playing off US against China for strategic gains, especially in ASEAN countries and the Pacific
Islands.
The problem is that the world’s democracies are not performing very well. The Blacklivesmatter#
movement protesting police brutal racism and the political insurrection that resulted in an
attack on the Capitol justifies the US slipping well down the Freedom Democracy Index ranking.
According the Economist Group’s Democracy Index 2021 less than half the world’s population
 Educational Philosophy and Theory 1661

live in a democracy either in a full democracy (6.4%) or a flawed democracy (39.3%) that
includes the US, with 17.2% living in hybrid and 37.1% living in authoritarian regimes.8
Neoliberalism as an economic doctrine seems to have reached its limits such that free market
fundamentalism has been ditched for heavy levels of Federal support costing the US taxpayers
trillions of dollars since Biden became president, which together with an elaborate and com-
prehensive system of subsidies and economic sanctions against individuals, institutions and
countries, tips the scale in the US’s favor. In this transition we should not forget the way in
which the world’s financial system is propped up by the US dollar reserve system although
there are efforts to bypass it through reciprocal currency trading and the norming of a basket
of alternative currencies.
By contrast, committed to a form of openness and trade based economic globalization China
has become the world’s largest trading nation building up a succession of bilateral trade agree-
ments with over 120 countries over the last twenty years, enhanced further since the Belt and
Road Initiative (BRI) was established in 2013 as Xi’s ‘project of the century’ that links the Eurasian
landmass. China’s globalization does not neglect poverty elimination at home and works to
assist economic development in the Global South, with an increasingly strong focus on Africa.
President Xi has been reelected as leader of the CCP at the 20th Congress for an exceptional
third term and the country is assured of political stability at a time of world crisis. It’s continued
high growth rate, while now surpassed by India, Indonesia and Vietnam, will assure it of being
the world’s leading economic power by the end of the decade. With the relative decline of the
US, and the increasing ascendency of China as the world’s second largest economy and world’s
largest trading nation. China has emerged as the major pole along with the US in structuring
the new multipolar world order comprised of emerging world powers including India, Egypt,
Iran, Brazil, Indonesia and Nigeria, and the existing world players, Russia, the EU and Japan.
At the BRIC’s conference in June Putin talked of creating an international reserve currency.
Leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa with a combined population of 2.88
billion estimated to overtake the G7 contribution to the global economy in under 15 years
demanded a fairer international system.9 The New Development Bank (NDB) was proposed in
the 4th BRICS Summit (2012) with the objective of financing the BRICS association for sustain-
able development of projects and infrastructure, specifically designed to help developing econ-
omies. The G77 established in 1964 with increased membership of 134 countries also has
positioned itself as a counterbalance to the G7.10 It is the largest intergovernmental organization
of developing countries in the UN with the aim ‘to articulate and promote their collective
economic interests and enhance their joint negotiating capacity on all major international
economic issues within the United Nations system, and promote South-South cooperation for
development’. The G77 is not only the largest bloc within the UN system but also sponsors
projects on South-South cooperation through the Perez-Guerrero Trust Fund (PGTF) established
by the UN in 1983 and ‘a South-South network linking scientific organizations, research insti-
tutions and centres of excellence to further expand South-South cooperation in the field of
science, technology, and innovation’.11
Rather than using the nation state as the only unit for making judgements concerning the
international system, in addition, it is also necessary to understand the emerging system in
relational terms defining a new complexity of multipolarity. There are many different levels of
analysis of an emerging dynamic complexity including the interaction of demographic, economic,
political factors and geo-environmental factors best conceived of as overlapping ecologies
defined by their organizational memberships, economic alliances and trading relationships rather
than individual nation state units that structure the main lines of multipolarity:

• Western relative decline (the decolonization thesis): The ongoing relative decline of countries
(nation states), mostly previous European ‘great powers’ through decolonization in the
19th and 20th centuries with the US since reaching its zenith and peaking in the early
1662 EDITORIAL

twentieth century, while others countries including ex-colonies are ‘rising’ or ‘emerging’
in relative terms (‘declining’, ‘rising’ and ‘emerging’).
• The strategic regrouping of the West, US and EU through NATO security; the US ‘pivot to
Asia’ and development of the Quad and AUKUS; Brexit the UK and the Commonwealth.
• The rise of China within a network of trading and security relationships in the Asia-Pacific;
ASEAN is China’s largest trading in 2020 for the first time and China is ASEAN is also
China ‘s largest with two-way investment exceeding $340 billion at the end of July, 2020;
China’s BRI and bilateral trade with Africa.
• The China-Russia axis, Eurasian Economic Union, Shanghai Cooperation Organization, &
the BRI. At the SCO Summit 2022 Xi emphasized time to reshape the international system
and ‘abandon zero-sum games and bloc politics’ to ‘work together to promote the devel-
opment of the international order in a more just and rational direction’.12
• The pivotal position of India as a member of both SCO and the Quad, and as a country
with the strongest growth rate of 6.8 in 2022; a middle power status and a rising power
that under Modi has followed the path of liberalisation and repositioned itself as a global
actor (Kukreja, 2020).
• The construction of the global interconnected digital economy with the flow of digital
goods and services and an acceleration of digitization during the Covid years creating
greater level of digital interconnectivity and digital trade (‘digitalization’).
• The development of global ‘transnational’ corporations often larger than all but the largest
countries with a new ruling elite with more power than most smaller nation-states
(‘transnationalization’).
• The narrative reconstruction of the Global South and rising levels of South-South cooper-
ation with the development of G77 countries no longer seen as ‘passive receivers’ of
Global North international aid, structural adjustment policies and increasing levels of
structural indebtedness (‘new Global South activism’).
• G77 and BRICs as increasingly influential blocs within the UN and international
system.
• The growth, expansion and institutionalization of world agencies and NGOs based on
traditional liberal international order, including the UN and the UN Family of Organizations,13
some 16 autonomous organizations linked to the UN (eg. FAO, IAEA, ILO, IMF, UNESCO,
WHO, WTO, WB) (‘liberal international architecture’).
• The regionalization of territories for reasons of trade and security including EU, NATO,
SCO, RCEP, APEC, ASEAN, Quad, AUKUS etc. (‘regionalization’).

The appalling fact that ‘the 26 richest people in the world hold as much wealth as half the
global population’ in a world where ‘multiple inequalities intersect and reinforce each other
across the generations’ and where ‘the world’s richest 1 per cent captured 27 per cent of the
total cumulative growth in income’ in the period 1980–2016 demonstrates the world structural
inequalities that need urgent attention at a time when both the planet and humanity are
striving for survival in the face of multiple challenges (Guterres, 2020).

Notes
1. https://www.morganstanley.com.au/ideas/five-reasons-for-the-trend-towards-multipolarity
2. https://www.geopolitika.ru/en/article/china-and-multipolarity
3. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentar y/multipolar-world-faces-american-resistance -by
-jeffrey-d-sachs-2016-12?utm_term=&utm_campaign=&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_ac-
c=1220154768&hsa_cam=12374283753&hsa_grp=117511853986&hsa_ad=499567080225&hsa_src=g&hsa_tg
t=aud-1249316001557%3Adsa-19959388920&hsa_kw=&hsa_mt=&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gclid=Cj0K-
CQjw1vSZBhDuARIsAKZlijSk73gYc79kC6QA4nTveUJJi6WjIVKozyeZ5_G5x2KffjUUI-4EKigaAoZLEALw_wcB
 Educational Philosophy and Theory 1663

4. https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/01/08/multipolarity-in-practice-understanding-russia-s-engagement-
with-regional-institutions-pub-80717
5. http://www.lawinfochina.com/display.aspx?id=8215&lib=tax&SearchKeyword=&SearchCKeyword=
6. https://crescent.icit-digital.org/articles/the-structure-of-multipolar-world-order
7. https://www.adb.org/countries/indonesia/economy
8. https://www.economistgroup.com/group-news/economist-intelligence/democracy-index-2021-less-than-half-th
e-world-lives-in-a-democracy
9. https://infobrics.org/page/history-of-brics
10. https://www.g77.org/
11. https://www.g77.org/costis/documents/COSTIS_Final_Print.pdf
12. http://eng.sectsco.org/secretariat/
13. https://www.un.org/en/model-united-nations/un-family-organizations

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID
Michael A. Peters http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1482-2975

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Michael A. Peters
Beijing Normal University, Beijing, P.R. China
[email protected]