What, then, of power itself? Are we still in some strange way - to bring back the long forgotten Bush-era phrase - in a unipolar moment? Or is power, as it was briefly fashionable to say, increasingly multipolar? Or is it helter-skelter-polar? Or, on a planet whose temperatures are rising, droughts growing more severe and future food prices threatening to soar (meaning yet more protest, violence and disruption), are there even “poles” any more? Whether in decline or not, the United States - these days being hailed as “ the new Saudi Arabia” in terms of its frackable energy wealth - is visibly in no danger of losing its status as the planet’s only imperial power. Never since the modern era began has a waning power so lacked serious competition or been essentially without enemies. Such a prediction would, however, be unwise. It has the classic look of a great power in decline and in another moment it might be easy enough to predict that, though far wealthier than its Cold War superpower adversary, it has simply been heading for the graveyard more slowly but no less surely. Around the world, allies, client states and enemies are paying ever less attention to its wishes and desires, often without serious penalty. Its military, the largest by many multiples on the planet, is nonetheless beginning to cut back. Its rich are ever richer, its poor ever poorer and its middle class in decline. In the meantime, its own political system has grown gargantuan and unwieldy, its electoral process has been overwhelmed by vast flows of money from the wealthy one percent and its governing system is visibly troubled, if not dysfunctional. In fact, everywhere it’s touched militarily, local and regional chaos have followed. And yet these actions have failed to reinforce the imperial system of organizing and garrisoning the planet that it put in place at the end of World War II nor has it proven capable of organizing a new global system for a new century. There is, of course, a single waning superpower that has in this new century sent its military into action globally, aggressively, repeatedly - and disastrously.
So here’s one question: Where exactly is power located on this planet of ours right now? In many cases, outside countries are involved and yet in each instance state power seems to be draining away to no other state’s gain. Civil war, violence and internecine struggles of various sorts are visibly on the rise. Increasingly, the unitary status of states, large and small, old and new, is being called into question. From Ukraine to Syria, South Sudan to Thailand, Libya to Bosnia, Turkey to Venezuela, citizen protest (left and right) is sparking not just disorganization, but what looks like, to coin a word, de-organization at a global level. Take a look around and you’ll see a world at the boiling point. Geopolitically speaking, when it comes to war and the imperial principle, we may be in uncharted territory. There is, it seems, something new under the sun. Bush, center, stands over a map as he is briefed at Al-Asad Airbase in Anbar province, Iraq, Sept.