From Washington to Beijing and Moscow to New Delhi, a consensus is emerging that the world has entered a multipolar era. Political leaders, diplomats, and analysts routinely declare that unrivaled American dominance has ended and global power is now dispersed across multiple centers. The assertion has become so commonplace that it is often treated as a self-evident fact rather than a proposition to be examined. Even officials in the United States, long the principal beneficiary of the unipolar post–Cold War order, have adopted this language. At the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, Secretary of State Marco Rubio observed that Washington’s moment as the sole superpower was historically “not normal” and that the international system would inevitably tend toward multipolarity. Rubio’s statement appeared to echo the growing belief in China, Russia, and much of the developing world that the United States’ power is declining and its long-standing global primacy is unsustainable.

This seeming convergence obscures a difference in how the various players define “multipolarity.” For the Trump administration, acknowledging multipolarity doesn’t mean accepting limits on American power. Instead, it serves as a justification for abandoning the traditional U.S. conception of global leadership and the responsibilities that come with it. The idea of multipolarity allows Washington to pursue a narrower, more transactional foreign policy—one focused on extracting advantage rather than underwriting order, unconcerned with the maintenance of institutions or norms that do not serve immediate American interests. For China, Russia, and many developing countries, by contrast, multipolarity is not merely descriptive but aspirational. It is a political project aimed at constraining American dominance, eroding Western-led institutions, and constructing alternative models of governance, development, and security in which the United States is not the only country in charge.

The idea of multipolarity has been popular since the United States emerged as the sole dominant power at the end of the Cold War. After the 1990–91 Gulf War, which revealed the scale of American military superiority, French leaders warned of the dangers posed by the American “hyperpower.” China and Russia later transformed this critique into a strategy, seeking to organize resistance to U.S. primacy. They established what they declared to be a “strategic partnership” in the late 1990s and formed the multilateral BRICS alliance along with Brazil, India, and South Africa to coordinate among non-Western powers. They believed that such efforts could accelerate the transition away from American hegemony.

Trump’s return to office made the arrival of a multipolar moment seem inevitable. The United States was internally divided, economically unsettled, and weary of global commitments. China’s economy had grown to nearly the same size as that of the European Union, and the country had become a formidable technological leader in its own right. Russia’s war in Ukraine had demonstrated Moscow’s willingness to use force to revise borders in Europe. And BRICS had expanded to include new members in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, reinforcing the impression of a rising alternative system to counter American dominance. Many observers concluded that the multipolar world had arrived and that American unipolarity was living on borrowed time.

A year later, however, this conviction appears misplaced. The Trump administration has embarked on a forceful reassertion of American power by imposing onerous tariffs, intervening in other countries, and brokering peace negotiations and commercial dealmaking across the world. China and Russia have resisted Washington on select issues, but they have been unable to mount a comprehensive challenge to the United States’ effort to restructure global rules. Washington’s European allies have proved even less able to stand up to the United States. Facing Trump’s insults and pressure, they have wilted and caved.

The reality is that the world is still unipolar. The illusions of multipolarity have not created a more balanced international arrangement. Instead, they have done the opposite: they have empowered the United States to shed previous constraints and project its power even more aggressively. No other power or bloc has been able to mount a credible challenge or work collectively to counter U.S. power. But unlike in the prior period of unipolarity that emerged at the end of the Cold War, the United States is now exercising unilateral power shorn of responsibilities.

Claims that the world is becoming multipolar rely on observable indicators of the growing strength of emerging powers, including shifts in relative shares of global GDP and the construction of new development and governance institutions headquartered outside the United States and Europe. These changes show that power is distributed more widely today than at the end of the Cold War. But they do not necessarily signify a transformation in the structure of the international system.

Defined narrowly, a pole is a state or bloc that possesses comprehensive capabilities to shape the international system. A pole is not merely influential in one or two domains, such as nuclear warfare or trade, but rather must be capable of projecting military power globally, sustaining technological and industrial leadership, anchoring alliances, shaping norms, providing public goods, and absorbing systemic shocks. When measured against this more demanding standard, the number of genuine poles in the world today is the same as it has been for the........

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