The Return of Multipolarity

Now that the world is becoming multipolar once again, it won’t hurt to look at earlier multipolar periods and state formations.

Essentially each and every great empire has always been built on the subsidiarity principle, which is one of the pillars on which multipolarity needs to rest. This means that each administrative and bureaucratic level decides about those matters it is best qualified for on the basis of proximity. Regulations on how to build chicken coops, for example, are best made at the lowest level rather than by the central authorities. This is also a way to avoid senseless extra work, because it is much harder for a central bureaucracy to really get to know and understand what is best to do in each of the numerous smaller subdivisions of any substantial territorial organization.

Although it is not an empire, the European Union has long been functioning on the basis of the subsidiarity principle. Officially at least, because in actual fact, the EU is just as centralized, bureaucratic and authoritarian as the former Soviet Union. That might be the reason why the USSR no longer exists, having perished as a result of its insurmountable internal contradictions, as befitted a state allegedly built on the teachings of Karl Marx.

On the basis of what we know about the Roman Empire, it also operated according to the subsidiarity principle. This principle was an absolute requirement for any political structure of its size. In the Roman Empire it was done by allowing for a high degree of local autonomy for regional governors and city governments. Each city was allowed to have its own gods and build temples for them, as long as they would also build temples to the reigning emperor.

Like the Roman Empire, the British Empire was built on the same principle, reaching the peak of its development in the 1930s with the Dominion structure as characteristic feature. Each Dominion was autonomous and only the broad lines of foreign policy and defense were decided at the central level. The structure was a sound one, since the British Empire stood its ground during the First World War, surviving the Second World War (apparently strengthened), but collapsing only a few decades afterward. In the final analysis, the British Empire only lasted about one hundred years altogether.

In terms of longevity, it was less successful than its illustrious predecessor, the Spanish Empire. With an area of about fourteen million square kilometers (c. 1800) stretching from what is today the Canadian border to Tierra del Fuego, it proved more resilient to international crises and “world wars.” The Spanish Empire in the Americas was very well organized. Initially it was organized into two Viceroyalties (New Spain = Mexico, and Peru) and a number of Captaincies General (also called Reinos, “Kingdoms”), notably Guatemala, Puerto Rico and Chile. In the 18th century, new Viceroyalties were created: New Granada and Rio de la Plata and new Captaincies General (Cuba, Venezuela). Some larger regions had the status of Audiencia (a kind of higher court) and then there were the provinces (ruled by local governors) in which all these larger units were subdivided. The entire system seemed to function quite smoothly and except for a number of local rebellions, Spanish rule was never truly endangered.

All Spanish American colonies (including the Philippines) were also governed centrally by the Council of the Indies, which made all the laws and decrees and then would send them over to the King of Spain to be signed and sealed. One could say the Spanish colonies were governed somewhat like the modern EU, with the Council in the role of the European Commission. There was, however, a crucial difference: the Council of the Indies never pretended to be “democratic” and neither did any local Spanish official. There was another important difference with the EU: each local governor, Viceroy and Captain-General was allowed the liberty of not carrying out an order or decree from the Council of the Indies. This principle was called obedezco mas no cumplo (I obey but do not comply). If a certain decree or law, decided at the central level, would be detrimental to the local economy or society of a particular Spanish colonial region, the local governor was permitted to suspend or postpone its application. If this rule would be introduced in the current EU, I am sure “Europe” would be quite a bit more popularly accepted than it is today.

In each of its more than a hundred provinces, audiencias, captaincies-general and viceroyalties, Spanish American society was rigidly layered and structured, as of course were most Ancien Regime societies. Slavery, serfdom and peonage, including debt peonage, as well as other forms of compulsory labor were to be found pretty much everywhere. Nor did it require a particularly numerous armed force or constabulary to maintain order in the colonies. For all we know, though of course it was by no means a paradise or even a utopia, the people in Spanish America were not worse off than most people anywhere else. This refers to the common folk, not to the small landholding or commercial elites.

Of course in hindsight, and by modern standards and values, colonial Spanish American society was unjust and equality was no more than a chimera. Yet, for about three centuries, the Spanish American colonial empire was governed reasonably well and efficiently, both by contemporary and modern standards. The region as a whole was self-sufficient and produced considerable quantities of valuable exports finding their way to places as far away as China, as was the case of Peruvian and Mexican silver, but also sugar, cocoa, hides and jerked beef.

The independence and fragmentation of the Spanish American colonies was brought about by external circumstances. Contrary to what most people still believe, the American and French Revolutions had little impact on the Spanish Empire. It was not even when Napoleon invaded and occupied Spain in 1808. The trigger was produced by Napoleon’s apparent victory when the provisional government left Seville in 1810. In line with prevailing liberal ideology Napoleon decreed the end of Indian serfdom and slavery. This came as an absolute shock to Spanish American elites, who saw the underpinning of their wealth and privilege wiped out.

This in turn prompted them to declare independence so as to preserve slavery and Indian serfdom, in other words, the colonial socioeconomic structure. Thus the creoles, the white Spanish Americans, strove for independence just to retain the colonial way of life. In the course of that war, and in order to bring the blacks and Indians to their side, they were compelled to promise them freedom.

It brings to mind the behavior of today’s EU elites: instead of going along with the winds of change blowing from across the Atlantic, they prefer clinging to their autocratic privileges and keep the citizens in their cages. They react to Trump just like Spanish American elites reacted to Napoleon. The EU is now as ripe for dissolution and massive social upheaval as Spanish America around 1800. Like Spanish America then, the EU will cease to play a role in the multipolar system.

Multipolarity is the norm and only multicultural, multi-ethnic states or empires have what it takes to participate. Between the early 1500s and the mid-20th century all European colonial empires were part of a multipolar system in which no single state or empire was able to impose its will on the others. Alliances were always necessary and these were not really of a permanent nature. During that time, there were a good dozen colonial empires. These were in rough chronological appearance: the Ottoman Empire, Portugal, Spain, Russia, the Netherlands, France, England, Denmark, Sweden, and since around 1900 also Italy, Germany, the United States and Belgium. Major local powers included Austria, Iran, Japan and China.

Relations among these empires and powerful states were characterized by rivalry and alliances were generally a requirement for any successful solution of a conflict. However, there were quite a few instances when two powers slugged it out, such as the Dutch-English wars, the Russo-Turkish wars, the US-Spanish war and the opium wars that England waged against China. Then there were what can be termed “World Wars” involving several participants: the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815) and the Crimean War (1854-1856). If anything, those wars prove that the multipolar environment was not immune to crises. Not only the number of players threatened its stability, but also the resilience and internal structure of individual players.

After the two devastating 20th-century World Wars, multipolarity was replaced by “bipolarity” in the 1940s, when the US enjoyed an unequal condominium with the Soviet Union, morphing into temporary unipolarity after the collapse of Communism in Europe in 1991.

Today, about eighty years after the onset of decolonization and the tentative rise of powerful players in the “Third World” (Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Brazil, Argentina) it seems that finally some sort of true, global multipolarity is breaking through.

What we are seeing today with the apparent collapse of the US empire and the growth of BRICS is therefore a most welcome return to multipolar stability. Given the precedents, however, there is no guarantee the new multipolarity is going to be particularly harmonious and peaceful. It is just impossible to predict what form future conflicts will take and how many victims these will claim.

Source: https://hansvogel.substack.com/p/the-return-of-multipolarity