What Is A ‘Multipolar’ World?
It is now widely acknowledged that the world is multipolar. This is so uncontroversial that the Munich Security Conference chose the title “Multipolarization” for its 2025 annual report.
However, there is not a common definition of “multipolarity”. The Munich Security Report noted that, while “the world’s ‘multipolarization’ is a fact”, the “international system shows elements of unipolarity, bipolarity, multipolarity, and nonpolarity”, in which “multiple order models co-exist, compete, or clash”.
Governments have radically different understandings of the meaning of multipolarity.