Multipolarity is a Terrible Idea
Bretton Woods and the post-Cold war solidified the position of the United States as the leading, sometimes only superpower in the financial and military world. But it didn’t always do it by force, as many assume, and it didn’t do it alone. Everything settled out that way because that is the lowest energy, the most efficient state for society to be in, and it’s going to take more than Xi’s dreams and Putin’s hallucinations to change it.
Efficient Economics
Money was invented to replace the barter system. If I have apples and want a hammer, but the hammer seller wants a bicycle, I have to trek around until I can trade what I have for what I want. Currency changed this, and allowed me to receive money for my apples and buy the hammer directly. Early cultures solved this by trading seashells, maybe, but there is a serious threat of inflation there — the ocean is big, bigger perhaps than the federal reserve. Then we switched to precious metals — copper, iron, silver, and eventually gold. Copper and iron were excellent currencies, because they were inherently useful — you could make a knife out of them. Silver and gold are useful today, but in ancient times they were a luxury item, which complicated things, but copper and iron were becoming too easy to produce, and inflation set in. Good and silver lasted until the industrial age, and the value of produced goods far exceeded the value of gold reserves. So we all, as a society, were forced to decouple our currencies from metals. That reintroduced an old problem, though. If a USD, GBP, and Yen are all convertible to silver, it’s clear how to trade one for the other. If a dollar is just a dollar, it’s not immediately clear how many yen it is worth, so how do we buy goods from Japan? Enter Bretton Woods. Every currency is valued compared to the dollar, and international trades are done in dollar amounts. It’s not that the US orchestrated this in some conspiracy, it’s that it is literally the best system, and it had to be the USD because the US economy is the most stable. Nobody can invade the US, it has a highly diversified and resilient economy, and it was in the right place at the right time — after WW2.
Hegemony is Best, All Hail the Hegemon
People who talk about multipolarity often do so excitedly, as though they are yearning for it, as though that is the desired state to “end the American hegemony". These are people who do not take seriously the study of the plights of our ancestors. Multipolarity has been tried, and from 1500–1945 there was a major war between major powers every ten years. Bipolarity, which is more likely with the “West" and China, resulted in millions of deaths and suffering as those who were forced into the Soviet Union had to endure conditions on par with chattel slavery combined with Nazi concentration camps. China looks to be no different, with a total surveillance state and draconian consequences for non-conformists. There’s a reason there are no Medeas, Carlsons, or Chomskys on China, no voices, no matter how ignorant, that are allowed to speak out. Despite the perception caused by increased media coverage, war has become rare and less deadly (per capita) under the US hegemony. The idea of returning to a nuclear cold war defined by spheres of influence is bad for everyone, including China. The US doesn’t have to be the hegemon, but we must have one, and right now the alternatives are much worse.
Low Energy Statecraft
Let’s imagine the international community has a bunch of particles in a physics experiment. Left to their own devices these particles will always settle into a rest state of lowest energy. Each particle represents a corporation, or a nation-state, or a culture, or anything else created by man. The system wants to be at rest, the particles inside like it when they aren’t bouncing around off of each other all the time. Corporations crave a state of stability and regulation — that’s why we don’t have large corporations forming in decentralized states with weak governments. Living under a financial and military hegemon brings stability to the system. Everyone holds massive dollar reserves meaning that if one country fails the system can self-correct. The currency is stable. Wars between major powers aren’t allowed to occur, as above them all sits the hege
Stability is Good
When Putin or Xi try to disrupt the system, they will have to acquire more energy than all the corporations, all the cultures, all the militaries put together that have adapted to life alongside the hegemon. Xi might convince Macron for an afternoon, and Putin might convince Merkel for a decade, but as soon as they get home the particles in their own country bring the system back to stability, back to the low energy state. Because lower energy means lower costs, and lower costs means more profits, and like it or not, capitalism sucks, and democracy sucks, but it’s the best system of all the ones we have tried so far. Moving backwards, like Xi, and Putin, and conservatives at large want to, simply requires too much energy, and it will fail.