25/09/2020

ACTIVE AND DIVERSE INTERPOLARITY

Over the last decades, we have gone through different designations that have tried to describe the world situation from the point of view of International Relations and Geopolitics.

Within this context, we have witnessed the valorization and devaluation of certain elements and the absolute contempt of others by those who believed it to be their place to make determining decisions in the name of all.

This is why the End of History has been announced and why the concept of nation-state has been absolutely devalued, without contemplating the fact that the process of incorporation of each country/region to globalization should take into account the particularities of each.

There were also many discussions about the Unipolar World (United States) that followed the bipolarity of the Cold War. This generated the single thought theory that did so much damage to the Latin American political and economic debate. It was then argued that multipolarity did exist, since there were several nations that had achieved sufficient importance, if not in every aspect, at least in various that could be decisive for the whole.

What is the situation today, when it is no longer sufficient to measure power by the number of tanks, regiments, ships or planes?

How do we explain what it means to be a World power in a world that trembled on September 11 due to the actions of a group of twenty people from a remote mountain region in Afghanistan?

Why has Bolton settled in a castle near the Vatican to be close to what he wants to destroy?

These examples aim to show how diverse the elements of power or spaces of power are today that are shaping the current geopolitical reality.

Our first consideration should be that the actions that are likely to define international reality must be multiple and diverse.

The situation no longer depends essentially on an invasion or a declaration of war as the sole element to modify reality in a given area. Various terms have been created to refer to the situation we are experiencing.

What are the characteristics of our time?

  1. The existence of multiple power centers that may or may not be graduated, but that all have sufficient damage capacity to alter the status quo: the United States, Russia, China, the European Union, India, Japan, Great Britain when it recovers from Brexit, South America if it is able to unite on the Brazil-Argentina axis, the Arab World (fragmented but with the ability to create conflicts in which several of the other members of this list participate), Israel and two religions: Christianity and Islam .
  2. The multiplicity of relations and conflicts that can appear between these centers of power and which are solved without taking into account the other members of the list.
  3. The diversity of issues for which these conflicts could appear. We then have poles of power characterized by their ability to interact freely without the need of previously referring to those in the first level, if we define them in relation to their level of potential and to the power to create conflicts in very diverse areas without transferring them to other spaces.
  4. The understanding that there is a constant level of activity which is independent and not subject to the approval of one or two power centers.

If it were necessary to have a term to frame this situation, based on the above, we should lean towards calling the situation in which we live as an active, diverse and open interpolarity. To try to create a definition that allows us to understand the situation and the possibilities that each country or region may have, helps us to interpret the facts of the international situation without basing ourselves on criteria that is no longer correct

 

Aníbal Jozami is an Argentine businessman and sociologist specialized in International Relations. He is the Dean of the National University of Tres de Febrero.

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