🌐 Polarity in international relations is any of the verious ways in which power is distributed within the international system. It describes the nature of the international system at any given period of time. One generally distinguishes three types of systems: Multipolarity, Bipolarity and Unipolarity. Now let me focus on these three types of systems in greater detail.
🌐 Unipolarity.
If we look at Unipolarity we can trace its examples back to the ancient times. Unipolarity was most obvious in the greatest empires of the ancient world such as, for example, the Assyrian Empire from 675 BC or the Persian Empire from 539 BC. The brightest example is the Roman empire from 188 BC to 395 AD up to its break-up in 395 AD. If we examine the situation in 20th century it is possible to say that the US dominated the world as a superpower for a certain period of time after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
🌐 Bipolarity.
Bipolarity is a distribution of power in which two states have the majority if economic, military, and cultural influence internationally or regionally. The Bipolar world was presented by two superpower countries the USA and the USSR during the Cold War. These two countries dominated the whole world where the USA controled most part of Western Europe and the USSR created a powerful Communost block in the Eastern Europe. The Bipolar world gave rise to the creation of NATO in 1949 whose main aim at that time was to defend most of the world from Soviet invasion.
🌐 Multipolarity.
If we turn to the idea of the Multipower world it’s interesting to poin out that the President of France from 1995 to 2007 Jacque Chirac, was a greater proponent of the view of a multipolar world. This was partly fuelled by traditional French distrust of a world dominated by the «Anglo-Saxon» USA. Multipolar is a distribution of power in which more than two nation-states have nearly equal amounts of military, economic and cultural influence.
What we witness today is mostly the Multipolar world because political, economic and social factors make all nations interdependent. Moreover, the process of globalization makes the world a smaller place. However we can still see the leading nations in today’s multipolar world. These are the USA, countries of the EU suach as Germany and France, and also Russia and China. Its also important to mention the role of the UK in the Multipolar world it prefers it safe being part of the global world without being included in any union. So it continues the trend of development suggested by Winston Churchill who once said that «We are with Europe but not of it, we are linked but not compromised».
🌐 All in all, If we try to predict the future it’s quite likely that the balance of power in the world will be maintained by various blocks such as G7 versus BRICS because it is impossible for one country to be self-sustained.