[inglor_cz]

Multipolar world is probably going to have multiple wars on the "edges of control", similar to the one now raging in Ukraine.

It may also have some positives, too, but situations with several similarly sized powers competing for primacy have historically been pretty bloody. Unlike Apple and Google, the US, China, Russia etc. have military forces at their disposal.

[scilro]

US unipolar hegemony has averted an all-out war, but it has also been very bloody, or at least immiserating, for people at its periphery.

Multipolarity doesn't imply we go back to the 1910s. The idea would be to strengthen multilateral institutions that put a check on things like the World Wars.

[inglor_cz]

Humans are pretty much the same as they were in the 1910s, or the entire history before.

If there is anything that keeps us from tearing each other's throats out, it is a) democracy, which in most countries makes going into a war of aggression somewhat harder (I know, the US is a huge exception, but Trump I. was partially elected on the basis of Clinton being perceived as a war hawk), and b) the intuition that weapons are now so destructive that there is nothing to win, except scorched earth.

Still that didn't stop Putin from launching his war; miscalculation such as his ("the enemy is a paper tiger and will fold immediately") is very possible even today.

IIRC the same delusion led Saddam to invade Iran in 1980.

[suraci]

> democracy, which in most countries makes going into a war of aggression somewhat harder

no, it's just because some countrys lost their power of aggression, nothing related to democracy

the US is not the only one with dirty hands, every NATO member is part of it

just check France, the only reason it doesn't colonize african anymore is it's too weak

not a single french voter gives a fk about what france is doing in africa

[suraci]

well, from the historical perspective, it's more easy(or equally hard) to achieve a peaceful multipolar world than a eternal unipolar world

i mean, all 'rule-based international order' died in history, the Holy Roman Empire, the First Empire of France, and the ancient Chinese empire died in every 300 years

even there is no China, even the empire doesn't implode, will africans and south americans be willing to mining for the west for all their lives? there will be Sankaras and Castros in every several decades, every hegemony has an end

or, american exceptionalism?

[inglor_cz]

Can you name a single period of peaceful multipolar world in situations where the Great Powers could actually reach one another militarily?

I mean, the fact that the Romans and the Chinese never clashed over future Kazakhstan is not a proof of a peaceful multipolar world. It is simply a corollary of the fact that neither empire was able to expand into the steppe.

[suraci]

so it's equally hard

and, i know you guys don't like it, but that's what communism aims for

it's an extremely glorious and great undertaking that has never been done by our predecessors