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Iran nuclear deal indicative of new multi-polar world

Mark Urban | 16:19 UK time, Tuesday, 18 May 2010

is an important moment, as the world becomes more multi-polar and less predictable.

Some people are reporting American chagrin that the Brazilians, in helping to strike the deal which will see some low-enriched uranium sent to Turkey in return for higher-grade nuclear fuel for a research reactor, may have stymied US-led attempts to achieve a similar but more comprehensive arrangement.

It's not so long since the US was regarded as "the hyper-power" and many still see it as the world's only superpower.

But as other nations - particularly Brazil, India, and China - grow stronger and more internationally assertive the result is likely to be more confusion in international politics.

It will also lead many smaller countries to indulge in power politics, playing big states off against one another.

Many around the world may have longed for an end to the era of American international dominance, but will they end up thinking they should have been more careful about what they wished for?

Are the Chinese any gentler in their extraction of minerals from Africa than US companies are? Does India offer better rights to workers as it hoovers up hi-tech jobs?
Or do Russian sales of weapons to Iran or Syria do any more to increase regional stability than US ones to Israel?

It might be argued, to extend market economics to the international sphere, that as the world becomes more multi-polar, power will be dispensed more efficiently.

But the counter-argument is that it will also become a less predictable place - witness the Brazil/Turkey deal with Iran - in which certain actors will behave with far less transparency or accountability than we are used to from the US.

A more multi-polar world could also be a less orderly one - particularly if the US, weighed down by its long campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, is more reluctant to intervene again.

In the mid-1990s Washington was cursed by many for non-intervention in Rwanda or the Balkans. After 9/11 it was denounced for intervening too freely.

Now, beset by economic woes and its long overseas wars, the trend is once again to be wary of foreign entanglements.

released today, notes that were the alliance to disappear, "the prospects for international stability and peace would be far more uncertain than they are".

It also argues Nato aims to, "enhance international security, safeguard liberty, and promote the rule of law".

The alliance great and good that compiled the Mission Statement were wary about talking too explicitly about the dangers of a diminished US role in the world or of the "de-coupling" of European and American members of the Atlantic alliance in the future.

Perhaps then the most valuable role that Nato can play in the future is in managing the decline of the hyper-power, keeping it engaged in world events in a benign and more consensual way than it was under the Bush administration.

If the Brazil/Turkey deal with Iran shows us the greater potential for surprises in the future, then perhaps Nato can act as a comfort blanket in a new age of uncertainty.

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    russia is building nuclear in turkey and turkey has just signed a deal with iran.

    india is 1/3 under maoist armed insurgent control and cannot be called stable.

    rule of law works when everyone plays that game just like currency markets work when everyone lets their currency float. Not much sign of either.

    the 'manage the decline' spiel is probably speak by civil service losers who have no idea how to win in the open field nor any nation building science? which is why they took cushty jobs in the civil service and merely perpetuate ritual?

    how long should Vanunu be jailed for telling the world about something the passport fakers deny having?

    as one freedom fighter once said about western civilisation 'i think it would be a good idea'.

    being civilised is to put the good first. not some have a 'remove fascist dictatorships' marxist fit.

    as we have no nation building science in what are our guardian class skilled in? expenses? ritual?

    the people who have a nation building paln [even a bad one] are those who are proving successful such as the taliban and the maoists? those who don't have that science talk about 'managing decline' [because they do not understand how to rise?]

  • Comment number 2.

    THE APE CONFUSED BY LANGUAGE (#1)

    There is no ecological niche in the universe, where we (as currntly configured) could be sustainable. Planet of the Apes, perhaps, held a clue.

  • Comment number 3.

    2

    possibly like a virus that kills its host?

    however one [british] model that is accepted around the world is that of a game with rules and a ref. The super power on a football pitch are the rules. One player doesn't make up the rules as they go along.

    if international activity was a football match what kind of game are nations playing? and where is the ref? In this one model we can see why the credit crunch happened [the refs were nobbled].

    i was once an extra in a [very bad] film where one team kept putting more players on the pitch without taking anyone off so that in the end one side had 100 players against 11.

    in the same way one can have rules in reason. if the good is the highest idea of the mind what follows? If other things such as race, tribe, religion, fairness, equality etc are taken as highest idea what follows? given the choice which is rational to choose? the better or the worse. the complete or the incomplete? etc.

    we have no 'football game' where nationality is channelled [some of them 1970s games were rough-italian defenders!] because there are no rules. there is no nation building science. not that there couldn't be one.

  • Comment number 4.

    Thank god (finally) for the diminution of NYC/Jewish dominated US foreign policy over the last 50 years.

    The Chinese finally sussed them out during the 90's and ironically used their love for money against them to sadly undermine their host's economies.

    The Chinese, by not letting their currency float, have totally controlled the entire process.

    The end of Jewish hegemony?...I certainly hope so!

  • Comment number 5.

    NATO in a multilateral World could be the biggest menace to Humankind, because nobody could guarantee there would be no more politics like Bush/Blair in the democracies`futures..

  • Comment number 6.

    Yes well written and often I have wondered if the US was not a dominant player then what? But it's seems absolute power corrupts absolutely, this is the case with US. There is a certain sense of the referee being one sided and the carte blanche that Israel enjoys with the USA seems to make the world wonder. The great Roman empire fell and gradually the world plodded on, the current world does not need one nation exerting it's own pressure on others. In a world of chaos there will prevail a sense of conformity so it's quite OK for the USA dominance to come to an end. It's only a sense of economics no money, all the nukes in the world are useless.

  • Comment number 7.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 8.

    do the rules of MAD not apply anymore?

  • Comment number 9.

    What is more important? National stability in the short-term, or international stability?

    Riots in the streets of Greece and Romania are only the start of opposition to the austerity measures proposed by governments. Churchill said his attempt to subject the UK to austerity in the 1920's - by returning the UK to the gold standard - was his worst ever mistake.

    National politics, quite naturally, dislikes the long-term perspective.

  • Comment number 10.

    the best role a journo could have is to be honest and not beholden to anyone. sadly that is a rare bird these days.

    so cameron is all up for a war with iran, he alone appears to know that iran has a programme to build nukes..and the timetable is short (not sure why it should be so)

    such a brave man is cameron to make such a public statement whilst the rest of the world waits with baited breath for him to declare it ..

  • Comment number 11.

    The US is not the only superpower anymore because Russia is a superpower again just Google the facts as there is just so much information verifying Russia is a superpower again that your article is misleading the readers this article above.

    Russia is a global Superpower; it is a state with a leading position in the international system w becausehich has the ability to influence events globally and its own interests by projecting its power on a worldwide scale to protect those interests. Russia for fills the criteria of a superpower for its resources measured by its four axes of power: massive military, economic power, political power, and cultural (and the ability to use soft and hard power).Russia has as a massive political community that occupies a continental-sized landmass, has a sizable population (relative at least to other major powers); a super ordinate economic capacity, including ample indigenous supplies of food and natural resources; has a high degree of non-dependence on an international intercourse; and, most importantly has a well-developed nuclear capacity (in fact the worlds largest).

    Russia is able to conduct a global strategy as a superpower including of having the ability to destroy the world (in fact more than the United States can); can command vast economic potential and world influence; and to present a universal ideology as Russia can project its power, soft and hard, globally on a world wide scale.

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