Creation of a multipolar world as an important condition for the formation of a new world order

Introduction.

Over the past three decades, political circles have been constantly arguing about the world order, which affect such issues as the number and status of the leading world powers, building relations between them, their role in the political and economic processes of society, in solving global and regional problems. Within the framework of this discussion, the problem of creating a multipolar world, which should replace the unipolar model formed after the Second World War, is of particular importance. American scientists believe that the world is unipolar and will remain so for a long time and consider this model of world order as an unconditional benefit for all humankind. However, political institutions in Russia, China and other BRICS countries, as well as some experts from the European Union, have long agreed that the unipolar world has outlived itself and our planet needs a more balanced, multipolar world [3, p. 405].

Results.

The concept of multipolarity in the context of international relations is first found in the publication of American political scientists K. Deutsch and D. Singer «Multipolar Energy System and International Stabil-ity», which dates back to 1964, although these researchers do not define this term. However, if you

delve deeply into the content of this work, then under the multipolarity of K. Deutsch and D. Singer understands a system of international relations in which several countries that have reached the highest level of economic, political, and socio-cultural development have the opportunity to influence world events [6, p. 9].

Later, the phenomenon of multipolarity was touched upon in their works by such foreign scientists as D. Kampf (article «The Emergence of a multipolar world»), Yale University historian P. Kennedy (book «The Rise and Fall of Great Powers»), geopolitician D. Walton (book «Geopolitics and Great Powers in the XXI century»), American political scientist D. Hiro (the book «After the Empire. The birth of a multipolar world») and others. However, these works do not contain an exact definition of what a multipolar world is, and the theory of its origin is not considered [6, p. 9].

In modern political science studies, the term «multi-polarity» implies the presence of several centers of power in the world that do not exceed and do not spread their own.influence on each other» [1, p. 37]. In other words, a multipolar world is «an international configuration where the world is divided into spheres of influence between great powers, and none of the existing centers of power is able to independently impose its will in someone else's sphere of influence without creating a broad coalition of forces» [1, p. 37].

Unipolarity, on the contrary, presupposes the dominance of one state in the international arena – in the military-political, economic and cultural spheres, and the vast majority of theorists emphasize the power and power potential of a single hegemon. For example, K. Lane defines a unipolar system «as a system in which one state is geopolitically dominated, since it has the capabilities to prevent the formation of a coalition directed against it» [9, p. 5]. Of particular note is the difference between the unipolar world and the global empire, since the former presupposes the existence of many formally independent states, while the latter tries to absorb, as happened when the Roman Empire existed, which became the «hegemon» of its time [8, p. 190].

During the twentieth century, the international system underwent several phases of evolutionary transformation. The scrapping of the European international system during the Second World War ended with the establishment of a bipolar model in which the United States and the USSR played the role of hegemonic states in a world partially divided into zones of preferential influence. Nevertheless, by the end of the twentieth century, symptoms of a decline in American influence began to be traced. Signs of this were considered a relative decrease in the share of US GDP in the global economy and «imperial overstrain» caused by the control of global communications and military spending. And then a number of regional states, primarily Asian ones – China, Iran, and India – went on to «rise» [7, p. 20– 21]. Such phenomena became an impulse that helped accelerate the transition to a new, multipolar (multipolar, polycentric) model of international relations.

Discussion. The modern system of international relations can be considered an example of partial multipolarity, in which only one Euro-Atlantic center of power dominates, although other large states are beginning to claim the status of «poles» in various regional and functional segments of the existing system.

Currently, the use of the term multipolarity implies only an indication that in the process of globalization, the undisputed centers of influence in the modern world (the United States, the European Union) have certain competitors – powerful regional states and unions of states belonging to the «second» world, or rapidly developing countries. Assessing the modern world, it is necessary to allocate a special place to the Asian region, which today is becoming one of the main centers of influence. First, we are talking about China, followed by Japan and South Korea. The fall of old geopolitical structures and the formation of new ones is accompanied by a sharp change in the balance of power and an increase in the economic potential of the Asia-Pacific region (APR). It is in this region that a special structure is being formed, which in the near future, while maintaining existing trends, can have a significant impact on the alignment of world forces, even to a certain extent change the balance of interests in the international arena.

The general trends in the evolution of individual elements of the international system primarily depend on the tactics of the Euro-Atlantic community, on its ability to find forms of response and means of influence that can restore the manageability of international economic processes and avoid further destructive consequences.

It should be noted that researchers around the world disagree about which world we live in now – a multipolar one or whether the world is still ruled by one power. Russian and Chinese political scientists believe that the multipolar world began its existence in 2010, but foreign experts insist that at present the world order is still built on the hegemony of the United States, that we are still dealing with the predominance of one power, i.e. with unipolarity [2]. Of course, even in the third decade of the XXI century, the US government has a great influence on the world system, but in our opinion, it is difficult to call this country a hegemon, since other powerful states are gradually coming to the fore. As an example, the BRICS association is a political and economic association of Brazil (B), Russia (R), India (I), China (K) (despite the economic nature of this association, «political games» are also inherent in it). November 23, 2017 The MGIMO Institute of International Studies hosted a round table organized by the BRICS Center on the topic «BRICS today: progressive development and new challenges in conditions of international instability (towards the results of China's presidency)», where the opinion was expressed that

BRICS is not a panacea in regulating the world order, but this organization has every chance to become one of the means to create a new multipolar system [5].

Modern transformations in the world system allow us to identify the following trends in the formation of the world order: the gradual loss of US leadership positions, a change in the balance of power, the strengthening of regional groupings, the emergence of new contenders for the role of centers of power. These trends, according to Russian analysts, are the impetus for understanding and accepting the process of system transformation and transition to a multipolar world order [4, p. 6–7].

However, the process of losing dominance is complex and long-term, and is also accompanied by fierce opposition from the existing hegemon state. The main problem in the formation of the modern world order is that the unipolar world no longer exists (although it is difficult for individual countries to recognize their loss of primacy and power), but the process of transition of the unipolar world to a multipolar world is still in progress, which makes it difficult for the full functioning of the system of international relations. Nevertheless, we should already talk about the transformation of the global world order, which changed the geo-economic and geopolitical situation already in the second decade of the XXI century. In particular, this is due to the formation of a new competitive environment, since the world's economic leaders, in addition to the United States, the EU and Japan, also include the so-called growing centers of economic influence: China, India, Singapore and South Korea.

Several trends can be identified that characterize the gradual change in the world order system: the weakening of the West; the shift of the center of the world economy towards Asia; the isolation of the Islamic world as a destabilizing structure in the in-