Moscow, Delhi and Beijing advocate a multipolarity with very vague contours

(Warsaw) A “multipolar world”: Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi take up this formula like a mantra. But beyond a desire to reduce Western domination, it is not certain that their visions are convergent.

The leaders of these great countries claim a demiurgic power over world affairs, seeing it as a democratization of the world order in the face of American diktat.

“We must jointly advocate an equal and orderly multipolar world,” Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in early July. “All participants […] “are committed to the formation of a fair multipolar world order,” Vladimir Putin also insisted at the same time. “The new world order is multipolar,” assured Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the end of 2023.

For the Russian president, his invasion of Ukraine is not imperialism, but a fight against American hegemony in Europe. Beijing, which has its own ambitions in the Asia-Pacific region, seems to find its account there. And these speeches also charm elsewhere, in Africa in particular.

Because behind the word “multipolar” lies the exasperation caused by five centuries of Western domination over world affairs.

It is a form of revenge for these authoritarian leaders at the head of countries wounded by the fall of the USSR, colonialism or even globalized capitalism serving, above all, Western interests.

Plural alternatives

Between them, “there is the common vision of the simultaneous appreciation of the end of a Western age,” notes Jean-Marc Balencie, head of the prospective site Horizons 2035. However, this observation does not mean a unified long-term ambition. It “opens the way to plural alternatives, because the candidates for leadership have contradictory interests,” he says.

“Many countries […] “They say they want a multipolar world,” says Stephen Wertheim of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, but Moscow, Beijing and Delhi do not know “precisely what kind of order, particularly institutional, they want to achieve in 20 years.”

Their rejection of the West “does not mean that they share the same vision of what the alternative should be,” says Yun Sun, co-director of the China and East Asia program at the Stimson Center in Washington.

Official doctrines are therefore full of declamatory promises: “We must build partnerships in which countries treat each other as equals,” promises Beijing in its document framing its proposals “for a shared future” of 2023.

Moscow, for its part, wants to promote “the global majority” against the “golden billion” that the West would be.

“The sign of the times is centripetal tendencies in the development of non-Western communities and civilizational regions,” Russian theorist Sergei Karaganov believes in a major report at the end of 2023 entitled “Russia’s policy in its relationship with the global world.”

For this thinker, “the institutional priorities are the following: developing their own organizations for the countries of the “World Majority”, in which Western countries are not represented”, a reference to the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and the SCO, but also “the accelerated creation of technological platforms” between these countries or even “the intensive expansion of contacts in the field of education and science”.

But the non-Western world is not monolithic, rivalries are also very marked: in Southeast Asia, Chinese ambitions are worrying; in the former Soviet empire, Russian pretensions are arousing fears; and Sino-Indian tensions are another example of a source of tension.

If Russia has chosen a complete break with Washington and Europe, no other power has followed suit. “The Global South includes many countries and blocs with their own interests,” summarizes Yun Sun.

Fracture

This multipolarization is also fraught with unknowns. It could turn into a fracture. For example, “at the instigation of the Chinese who are pushing the evolution of their own technical standards against those generated by the West,” warns Mr. Balencie. Or the “balkanization of the internet,” with isolated systems in China, Russia, Iran, etc.

In the financial sphere, the Russians and the Chinese want to de-dollarize global flows, but is it acceptable for the Indians to see the yuan as the reference currency? And what country will want substantial reserves of a very unstable ruble?

For third countries, multipolarity offers “alternatives to the one-on-one with the West,” explains Mr. Balencie.

“Small countries want to maintain their sovereignty while obtaining security and economic assistance from the big powers,” Mr. Wertheim also summarizes, and faced with several options “they could play one bloc against the other, but would risk falling under the thumb of a boss.”

Yun Sun warns: “The word multipolarity evokes equality, but this is misleading. For China, Russia and India, the world remains hierarchical.”