India
India's economic growth looks powerful, however its greatest weakness tends to be its diversity. The Indian nation has roughly 50 languages domestically, in many rural areas, only the local language is spoken. In order to forge a strong long term economically viable nation, a single language is crucial. Contracts must have equally understood concepts in their use of words for all parties involved. Translations often create misconceptions that lead to additional inefficiencies in the market. There must also exist a certain amount of cultural loyalty that allows for cooperation between regions with mutual benefits and expectations. You won't find such loyalty between Sikh businesses in one area and Hindi businesses in a separate area. Such differences have definite long term impacts on the synergy of an economy. Even now India's growth is limited to certain specific areas and not an overall wide area of sustainable long term growth. This may change, but as India's population reduces, its interaction within the nation may also be reduced creating smaller more isolated areas where the interchange of cultures or common bonds of a nation become even more difficult.
Fragmentation of the Muslim World
Islam as a united front has been a myth since the 7th century. As soon as Mohammed was interred, the various Muslim factions broke out into various groups vying for succession (see discussion in AI-Jane forum titled "Some Observations about Muslim History"). Ever since that nascent period of Islam one will find a series of religious and political fiefdoms that controlled different parts of the Islamic world. Without a unified front the Muslims, while at times more sophisticated culturally, generally reflected the disunity of the Christian world similar to the medieval period of Europe. This disunity still exists today. One can see it in the strife between Iran and Iraq in the past, the desire to join the west, as Turkey does, and the desire to fight the west as many factions within the Arabic Islamic world desire. Niall Ferguson also points out the lack of a monolithic Islamic community in his observations of young Muslims in England who prefer assimilation to the jihadist Islamic Bolshevism of renegades like Usama bin Laden. Generally the fragmentation, regardless of Saddam Husseins dreams of pan Arabiac power, or those of wannabe caliphate Usama bin Laden. In short it has never been possible for a single group or individual to forge a single entity in the Arabic region, much less world wide in such diverse cultures as Indonesia and Morocco. While the present acts of Whabbists may damage the US and western powers, their ability to hold and develop a power base is almost nonexistent when the question of government and expansion is applied.
Historical periods of apolarity
It is possible, given the weaknesses of the potential rivals and present combatants with the US, to imagine a period when no polarity exists, or in other words a multipolarity where no group can achieve dominance. Should these many weaknesses come the fore in a close proximity of time, the question then becomes what are the potential scenarios for such a world where no polarity exists? This scenario almost came to pass after World War I when the US walked away from the League of Nations, ensuring that organizations classification as a weak and powerless body. The US also returned to its isolationist sentiments by reducing its overall exposure to the political world. The power vacuum established by the fall of the Hapsburgs (Austro Hungarian empire), the Hohenzollerns (Kaiser Wilhelm empire of Germany) The Romanovs (Russia) and Ottoman empire, was short lived with the Ottoman empire being dismantled to fuel the recovery of western nations after WWI. During this period the Bolshevists rebuilt Russia in the form of the USSR and Germany developed its own plans of revenge and return to empire under a rebuilt and changed nation. Ferguson says we must go back much further than WWI to find a multipolar world. A period of time in which no dominant power existed and little interaction between nations was the norm. It is the dream of the extreme left in which neocons have met with abject failure and globalism has retreated to a distant memory. Such an era did exist, sometime around the ninth and tenth century. Europe, with the last remnants of the Roman empire in the west collapsing, was divided between small kingdoms and the Church. The Islamic nations were also torn by both sectarian and religious divisions. "By 900 the Abbasid caliphate initially established by Abu al-Abbas in 750 had passed its peak and it was in steep decline. China, an imperial power was in a dip between the T'ang and Sung dynasties, neither had serious aspirations of territorial expansion " (from Niall Ferguson "A World Without Power"). Older weak empires allowed a vacuum in which smaller groups could have a devastating impact on other nations. Vikings ravaged the European west, the Seljuks (who were both the forerunner to the Ottoman empire and one of the reasons for the later crusades, began carving parts of the failing Byzantium empire. The Abbysaid Caliphate lost control of Asia Minor. On a more localized level villagers were born, lived and died in the same village, while never seeing anything beyond the valley in which they lived. Their contact with the outside world consisted mainly of marauders attacking while the rule of international law or the proscribed international agreements ceased to exist. No strong secular systems existed, religious interpretation was by local clergy on an almost tribal shamanistic basis. In the Islamic world it was the ulema (revivalist clerics) that projected local power and decision making. The world in this period was focused on the downward spiral of political and economic fragmentation.
Apolarity today
One of the saving graces of apolarity during the medieval period was technology, or rather, the lack of it. The damage, while devastating, was usually centered upon small village raids, and additional isolated instances of pillage upon monasteries or castles. Superstitions often kept people from traveling too far from hearth and home, thus ensuring localized and not regional attacks by bandits. Marauding groups tended toward the softer targets and in a way helped develop a stronger civilization as these isolated groups began again forming alliances (those first and tentative steps towards globalization?) in order to combat them (them being the Vikings, Scotti, Rus, and so on). Communication was limited and small city states like Venice were not as quick to share their technology or develop alliances with those less fortunate groups. Information flow, including trade rights were kept secret. Could the same happen today?
No, there are simply too many changes, global changes, that have come about. Technology today includes the potential viral warfare as well as possible nuclear warfare. Isolationist camps will simply not be under the protection of distance or anonymity. Groups that may acquire nuclear weapons would be able to hold cities hostage while pillaging in local areas, viral plagues could run rampant and even spread more vociferously than the Black Plague of Europe and Asia. Viral or bacterial technology is no longer considered difficult to obtain or develop (you can get your bubonic plague over the mail system now just by ordering it from the CDC). Even non strategic or conventional weapons technology is capable of a massive destruction that a local populace will find difficult to counter. This could very well be the outcome of multipolarity or a world in which no superpowers exist. Colin Powell once commented that the effective cost or burdens that the US bears is not simply measured in the amount of money it donates to various world organizations. Rather it is also reflected in the peace and stability that the US promotes through its actions. Europe's desire to "reduce" the US is both short sighted and dangerous from a historical perspective, the US which doesn't act as an empire (in the sense of colonial expansion and direct dominance of conquered peoples). If for some reason the US were reduced, then the question would be where China would go? What happens to regional dominance in the area of the Pacific? Russia remains a large force of nature in Eastern Europe, is Europe ready to counter Russia's desire to regain its former borders or colonies? Eventually Germany, the most populous nation in Europe and economically the strongest, will shake of the mantle of being the Germany of WWII, will Europe then also be able to maintain the alliance as Germany begins to find its collective feet.
What would the effect of multipolarity on situations in Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion? Kosovo? Bosnia? Sudan? How would the US as a multipolar country have handled Usama bin Ladin and his support from the Taliban? These are all important questions relative to the present. When groups seek the goal of multipolarity are they judging it with the consequences of such actions in mind with the present or with an idealism towards a world that can no longer exist in this reality?
It is something we should all ask ourselves regardless of the political leaning we have today.
