The Challenge of Orderly Multipolarity in Global Diplomacy

The timing is telling. World leaders will gather in New York this month for the 81st United Nations General Assembly under the theme “Restoring Trust, Managing Transformation”.

The difficult word in China’s formulation is no longer “multipolar”; it is “orderly”.

Multipolarity itself is becoming easier to imagine. Middle powers increasingly hedge rather than choose sides, seeking more room to bargain among multiple centres of power. Such diffusion of power, however, is far from the natural company of order.

The problem of the emerging order is therefore not convergence, but sustained coexistence.