Multipolar System Envisioning
At the end of the Cold War, the theory of a "new world order" was very popular. It was first proposed in 1988 by Mikhail Gorbachev and then by US President George H.W. Bush. However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and until the beginning of the new century, the world order debate seemed to have lost its meaning because the new world order had already taken shape. The main reason for this is that the dynamics of the system changed in a western-centered way as the US and its allies filled the vacuum left by the elimination of one of the actors in the bipolar Cold War order. Thus, in addition to the actors with effective and large capacities in the International Relations System, with the weaknesses taking on a central role, Russia and China's search for a new quest based on multipolarity or a quest to protect and advance their capacities within the framework of cooperation, which will not be undertaken by a sovereign actor or alliance, has been accepted.[4]
In the 1990s, there were some attempts by some Russian researchers (notably S.M. Rogov, K.E. Sorokin) to develop the theoretical basis of the multipolar world and clarify the concepts of polarity, in line with Russia's official profile under Foreign Minister E.M. Primakov. Subsequently, the concept of multipolarity moved from political discourse to a series of official documents. In this context, the 1997 China-Russia Joint Declaration is a central document. Its title is the Joint Declaration of the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation on the Establishment of a Multipolar World and a New International Order. Russian Foreign policy doctrines and the National Security Strategy also speak of multipolarity or the polycentric model. US doctrinal documents, for obvious reasons, do not directly mention the concept of a unipolar world, but use euphemisms associated with American global leadership. Thus, for a long time, Western actors did not pay enough attention to the multipolar non-Western discourse. However, the phase of "acceptance" of the inevitable took place approximately in 2007-2009. Indeed, the New York Times editorial "The New Consensus is a Multipolar World" (2007) described the emergence of a new reality in which China had "a parallel seat at the table with other power centers like Brussels or Tokyo". In November 2008, the US National Intelligence Council published its Global Trends 2025 report, which stated that within two decades a "global multipolar system" would emerge as one of the world's "relative certainties".[5] Although the multipolar system is seen as a militarized power competition between actors, it has an important place for the power dynamics within the system through the effective use of economic and commercial capacities. For example, with the rise of the EU, BRICS and G7 alliances, it is seen that a level of competition is tried to be established through organizations instead of states. Therefore, multipolarity can be understood as a way of structuring the global international system in which the main constituent parts are no longer individual states, but economic interest clusters united around the strongest centers of attraction and economic growth.
[1] Kuo, M. A. (2022, Ağustos 22). Russia-China Relations: Emerging Alliance or Eternal Rivals? The Diplomat: https://thediplomat.com/2022/08/russia-china-relations-emerging-alliance-or-eternal-rivals/
[2] IV, J. M. (2020)). Sino‑Russian Cooperation Against Liberal Hegemony. International Politics(57), 809–833. doi:https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-020-00213-z
[3] Hart, B., Lin, B., Funaiole, M., Lu, S., Price, H., Kaufman, N., & Torrijos, G. (2022). How Deep Are China-Russia Military Ties? Retrieved from China Power: https://chinapower.csis.org/china-russia-military-cooperation-arms-sales-exercises/
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