The Multipolar World
The rules-based international order today appears as a memory of a bygone era. What was long perceived as a stable framework for international cooperation has, in hindsight, proven to be more fragile than many wished to believe. The core message in Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s widely noted speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 20, 2026, was that we must stop pretending the rules-based international order still holds and admit we now inhabit a brutal reality where great-power geopolitics knows no bounds.
Beneath the surface, the rules-based liberal order rested on an uncomfortable but decisive truth: it was not only rules-based, but power-based. Multilateral in form, but hegemonic in content. Pax Americana was not the absence of power politics, but its discipline. The United States served as the system’s guarantor—at times inconsistent, at times hypocritical, yet still the actor that ultimately ensured that rules had consequences. As this role is now questioned, a vacuum is exposed.
Donald Trump’s presidency has made this vacuum visible. His “America First” policy is not a withdrawal from the world, but a reformulation of the U.S. relationship to it. Alliances are reduced to transactions; norms to bargaining chips. Soft power—trust, predictability, institutional continuity—is viewed not as a strategic asset, but as a burden.
Trump’s foreign policy and arrogant rhetoric have caused American diplomatic capital to erode. Threats of tariffs and provocative statements suggesting Canada become the 51st U.S. state have significantly impacted trust in the U.S. within its northern neighbor. When Canada, as a consequence of Trump’s policies, negotiated a limited trade agreement with China—featuring lowered tariffs on Chinese EVs in exchange for Chinese concessions on Canadian agricultural products—Trump threatened on January 24, 2026, to impose 100 percent tariffs on all Canadian goods if the deal were finalized. Such threats, naturally, do not diminish the Canadian need for diversification.
Trump speaks more often and more clearly than many of his predecessors about China as the primary rival of the United States. He warns of Chinese influence, of dependence on Chinese technology and critical minerals, especially rare-earth elements. Yet, simultaneously, his policies tear down the very structures that could have served as a counterweight: multilateral institutions, stable alliances, and shared rules of the game. The U.S. has pointed to the Chinese threat—and ironically paved the way for Chinese dominance.
As American hegemony and the unipolar world order have disintegrated, talk of a multipolar world has emerged. But multipolarity is not necessarily a state of balance. It can also be viewed as an interregnum where old norms weaken before new power structures have had time to coalesce around a new center of power.
Just weeks before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow and Beijing published a joint declaration on a new international order: a multipolar world built on “limitless” cooperation between the two powers. The text spoke of sovereignty, respect, and an end to Western dominance. In hindsight, the declaration appears less as a peace manifesto and more as a vision of a world where power replaces law, and spheres of influence replace universal norms. The war in Ukraine became a brutal test of what this vision means in practice.
China has chosen a different path than Russia. Its strategy is low-key, long-term, and often technocratic. Through trade, investment, and institutions like BRICS, China seeks to weave a web of dependencies. The Global South is presented as a partner but is often treated as an instrument.
This creation of dependency is not an abstract possibility, but a proven tool. When Australia called for an international inquiry into China’s actions at the start of the pandemic in 2020, it was met not with diplomatic objections, but with economic reprisals: tariffs, import bans, and informal trade barriers targeting key Australian sectors. The message was simple, if unspoken: political disloyalty carries a price.
China is often perceived as an attractive partner in the Global South because it does not demand respect for human rights and does not interfere in the domestic politics of its partners. However, this non-interference applies only as long as fundamental Chinese interests are not challenged. When Lithuania permitted a Taiwanese representative office under the name “Taiwan,” China responded by freezing diplomatic relations and pressuring both Lithuanian and European companies through trade and supply chains. Here, too, the measures were formally economic, but fundamentally political.
Another current example of China utilizing its economic power for political ends is the Chinese Ministry of Commerce’s announcement on January 6, 2026, regarding an export ban on dual-use goods to Japan. This was a response to a statement by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in early November 2025, where she described a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan as an “existential threat” to Japan.
In Russia, the multipolar world is seen as an opportunity for Moscow to dominate at least the Slavic-speaking world and the Greek-Orthodox civilization, but preferably all of Europe. On January 19, 2026, Putin returned to this theme in a meeting with the Russian Security Council, underlining Russia’s central role in building a multipolar world and proposing a new Eurasian security order—a continuing sign that Moscow views multipolarity as an active project. In practice, the efforts to expand the “Russian World” (Russkiy Mir) have resulted in an ever-deepening dependence on China. Against this background, multipolarity appears less as an end goal and more as a transition. For China, multipolarity is a tool to dismantle the order that still rests on Western liberal norms, in order to subsequently shape something new.
This presents Europe and Finland with an uncomfortable but inevitable choice. The U.S. is unpredictable. Its policies can swing; its leadership can be inconsistent. But the U.S. is also a constitutional federation built on the principles of the rule of law, the separation of powers, and individual rights and freedoms. Trump may claim he is not bound by international law, but he does not stand above the American Constitution. It is no coincidence that the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the liberal world order largely rest on the same conceptual foundation as the U.S. Constitution. China is governed by a Communist Party. Its global ambitions are not value-neutral, but deeply intertwined with an authoritarian system that does not recognize the primacy of the individual over the state.
The U.S. is led today by a president who rejects the role of “world police,” who aggressively bypasses WTO prohibitions on unilateral tariffs as a political weapon, and who flouts diplomatic etiquette. Yet, Trump’s blunt rhetoric and transactional threats pale in comparison to the full-scale war Russia is waging in Ukraine—a war fought with the discreet, yet decisive, support of China.
In the choice between these two alternatives, neutrality is not an option. For Europe and Finland, value-based realism does not mean accepting the “right of the strong,” but—despite everything—choosing the imperfect order built on rules over the seemingly stable power that lacks them. Multipolarity may sound alluring, but without norms, it risks becoming a world where only the strongest are heard. Despite all the unpredictability, it is therefore toward the United States—its Constitution and its intellectual heritage—that Europe must lean.