The 21st century has truly arrived like a sci-fi movie where the viewer in the year 1999 is watching a television show about how the world will be in the next 20 years. Mind boggling to the viewer at the turn of the millennium but not so for the one actually living in 2022. Let's recap on what has transpired briefly geopolitically since 1999. One key element of the world of 1999 was that there was a great sense of unipolarity in the international system. This stems from the end of the Cold War in 1991 following the collapse of the Soviet Union, which broke up the then bipolar world order of the 20th century. Indeed the only viable world power at that time was non other than the United States. The United States in 1999 was under a Democratic President, Bill Clinton. The US was on a mission to spread democracy across the world and Clinton himself elevated his role to be that of peacemaker as was noted in the Balkans and Northern Ireland. A number of event's of international proportion set the pace for the reconfiguration of the geopolitical landscape which changed the world as we knew it with event's such as 9/11 shaping the world towards a new trajectory and realignment.
Political scientist Francis Fukuyama came up with the idea of "end of history" to almost coronate US hegemony and western epistemology on the global stage and the set standard of how the world system should be governed following the fall of communism. How wrong he was as this western lens was only a magnifying glass to the west and appeared to give little regard to the non-western world and all its ideologies and contributions to the geopolitical landscape. A rising China was one of them and one the West quickly took note of as the country entered the world stage thanks largely to the economic policies, and political reform (as meager as they were) under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping which began in the late 1970s following the passing of its first leader under the Chinese Communist Party, Chairman Mao Zedong in 1976. The US saw massive competition in almost every sphere by a rising China while at the same time a resurgent Russia rising from the ashes of the Soviet Union under its leader Vladimir Putin who today, like China's current leader Xi Jinping, whi have been seen as pariahs by the international community (mainly in the west), as the geopolitical space experiences yet another shaking as these two nations seek to rise to challenge the US for greater influence on the world stage.
I mentioned multipolar for a reason as these are not the only nations with noting. Multipolarity can be defined as the distribution of power globally that is not limited to just two nations. The inclusion of Unions also puts into perspective of where the world is moving with the European Union really flexing its muscles, despite Brexit undermining its influence and authority, and futurists or anti globalist thinkers link to a pathway to a future world government. While other unions or alliances are still building themselves, and some if not most have multiple overlaps, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), AUKUS alliance ,G7, Eurasian Union, African Union etc come to mind. However most of these are "talking shops" rather than actual policy driven organisations, hence the Westphalian system of the nation state is still very much alive and more effective than ever. Hence, we are seen other countries around the world taking up this space with their neighborhoods being their first port of call to show their influence, whether diplomatically, economically or dare I say coercively. These nations include Turkey, India, Japan, and Australia to name a few. Others are also showing or have already been showing considerable influence in their region or sphere of influence and include South Africa which acts as a regional power in Africa, particularly in Southern Africa, Brazil in South America and Germany in Europe. Here lies the multipolar universe in action. Decolonial thinker Ramón Grosfoguel has discussed a concept called pluriversality which can be defined as a world with many worlds and this is exactly where the current geopolitical environment is currently at and growing. We expect to see more countries rising to take up space on the geopolitical landscape as progress further into the 'unpredictable times' of the 21st century.