The New World Order
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Monroe Doctrine
12 min read
The article explicitly references 'revived Monroe Doctrine logic' in the 2025 National Security Strategy. Understanding the historical origins and evolution of this 19th-century policy of hemispheric dominance provides essential context for evaluating current US foreign policy approaches.
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Middle power
14 min read
The article discusses how 'middle powers are no longer choosing between Washington and Beijing' and are instead diversifying and hedging. Understanding the concept of middle powers in international relations theory illuminates the strategic dynamics described in the article.
During seemingly civilised bilateral trade talks in Beijing, the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney sat across from Chinese president Xi Jinping and stated that “the world has changed much since that last visit. I believe the progress that we have made in the partnership sets us up well for the new world order.” Whilst this could be seen as a naïve accommodation of authoritarian power, and China’s ever growing leverage when it comes to raw materials, infrastructure, trade, and finance, this arguably signals adaptation to a new reality.
Arguably, what we are witnessing is not the collapse of a rules-based order in favour of Chinese hegemony, nor a clean transition to a stable multipolar equilibrium. We are watching something messier and more dangerous unfold, namely multipolarization, a world in which power fragments, alignments loosen, trust erodes, and states hedge rather than commit. Fragmented and siloed multilateral bodies endure, but they are used instrumentally by the powerful, and offer limited voice to the weak.Nowhere is this clearer than in the growing gap between how the United States misunderstands global change in its National Security Strategy 2025, and how the rest of the world is responding to it.
Multipolarization, not multipolarity
The 2025 Munich Security Report avoids comforting language about an orderly “multipolar world.” Instead, it introduces the sharper concept of multipolarization. Power is not merely spreading across poles, it is becoming volatile, politicised, and contested at multiple levels simultaneously, economic, informational, technological, and institutional.This distinction matters as multipolarity implies adjustment, whereas multipolarization implies strain.
Middle powers are no longer choosing between Washington and Beijing. They are diversifying exposure, building redundancies, and reducing vulnerability to coercion from any single pole. Canada’s renewed engagement with China fits this pattern precisely. It reflects anxiety about dependence on a US that increasingly weaponises tariffs, trade access, and alliance commitments. From Ottawa’s perspective, the risk is not China alone, the risk is unpredictability.
China’s advantage: narrative alignment with systemic change
China has been quick to exploit this environment rhetorically. Beijing now frames its foreign policy as support for an equal and orderly multipolar world, emphasising multilateralism,
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