The president stated during a campaign address that the current system has “run out of steam.”
According to US President Joe Biden, the existing US-led international system has “sort of run out of steam,” but Washington will shape the one that replaces it. Moscow and Beijing’s leaders, meanwhile, have made the opposite case.
Speaking at a campaign event in Washington, Biden boasted about signing a train and ports agreement with the EU, India, and Saudi Arabia at the G20 summit in New Delhi last month, as well as persuading Japan and South Korea to give money to Ukraine.
“So, I think we have an opportunity to do things, if we’re bold enough and have enough confidence in ourselves, to unite the world in ways that it never has been,” Biden said.
“It worked pretty damn well for 50 years after the war, but that’s kind of run out of steam. ran out of steam, sort of. In a way, we need a brand-new global order, he continued.
Following the Second World War, a bipolar world order with the US and USSR competing for influence and geopolitical dominance arose. A unipolar international order with the US as the lone superpower was established after the fall of the Soviet Union. In his 1991 State of the Union speech, then-US President George H.W. Bush declared the end of the Cold War and the start of a “new world order” as the USSR began to fall apart.
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American dominance is less certain now, three decades later, as Washington struggles to raise the money necessary to wage two wars abroad. In 1991, China had the eleventh-largest economy in the world; today, it is only second to that of the US. President Xi Jinping has repeatedly described the US-led West as “declining” and praised the emergence of a “multipolar world,” in which international relations are governed by laws and treaties rather than US-enforced “rules,” as Beijing increases its nuclear arsenal and modernises its military.
Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, has also talked extensively about creating a multipolar world, defining it as one in which different “civilization-states” are free to pursue their own interests without being constrained by a hegemonic power like the US. Putin stated on China Central Television (CCTV) last week that this objective is shared by Russia, China, and its allies in the BRICS organisation as well as nations in the Global South.
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“We start with the premise that all persons are created equal and finish where the rights and freedoms of another person or of a whole state begin. All people also have the same rights. According to Putin, this is how a multipolar world should gradually emerge.
