When Charles Krauthammer coined the concept of the “unipolar moment” in the pages of Foreign Affairs in 1990, his formulation served as a stark corrective to the prevailing liberal triumphalism of the era. In the wake of 1989, Western optimism had declared an ultimate victory over all ideological alternatives, positing that the post-Cold War order would be definitive and irrevocable. Krauthammer’s “moment,” however, suggested that unipolarity was neither inevitable nor eternal. It challenged the burgeoning liberal consensus that, in international politics as in domestic governance, there was “no alternative”—that humanity had permanently transcended the age of wars, authoritarianism, and violent nationalism.
This liberal optimism was predicated on the notion of an unstoppable, all-encompassing globalization—a force expected to transform not only economic markets but also political relationships and cultural patterns across the globe. By contrast, the “unipolar moment” thesis was profoundly skeptical of such teleological expectations. It recognized a fundamental historical truth: while the Velvet Revolutions of Eastern Europe had altered the landscape, the landscape would inevitably shift again. Old ideas and forms of governance may be temporarily defeated, but they are rarely permanently extinguished.
Ideas do not die; they merely hibernate. Like dormant seeds, they await the right conditions to reemerge. History does not disappear. The history of ideas, in particular, serves as a deep reservoir of concepts and practices that retain the power to be recycled, becoming once again a source of inspiration for future generations. The history of Realism reminds us that the “balance of power” remains one of the oldest prescriptions for countering overambitious global hegemons and their aspiring successors. In the logic of realism, power invariably provokes counter-power; hegemony begets resistance. The more unipolarity asserts itself, the more resistance it generates.
Furthermore, the more globalism claims a final victory over the sovereignty of the nation-state, the more fiercely nationalism will fight to survive. Consequently, the “unipolar moment” was relatively short-lived. Even the 1990s—often mythologized as the “liberal decade” in the West, buoyed by hopes for the democratization of the Global East—witnessed serious indicators of resistance. In Europe, the European Union began to emerge as a potential competitor to the United States, harboring ambitions even in the security realm. Yet, the illusion of a self-perpetuating, neo-Kantian “liberal peace” was shattered by the wars in the post-Yugoslav Balkans, where anti-liberal practices resurfaced with vengeance on the European periphery.
During this period, a newly reunited Germany briefly acted as a “European America”—a power capable of unilateral action and enforcing its will upon others. This was most evident in Germany’s successful push for the international recognition of post-Yugoslav states, particularly Croatia, in December 1991. Leveraging its newfound weight following unification, Berlin secured leadership over a relatively weak and indecisive European Community.
However, the limits of this European autonomy were quickly exposed. As the war spread to Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-1995), the United States reappeared to demonstrate that neither Germany nor Europe as a whole possessed the capacity to halt conflict on their own continent. America acted as the indispensable global power—the only actor capable of efficiently ending hostilities and subsequently shaping the constitutional and political orders of the Balkans, most notably through the Dayton Peace Accords. These interventions—culminating in the bombing of Serbia (and to a lesser degree Montenegro) over Kosovo in 1999—served as a forceful demonstration of American primacy to European observers. In retrospect, this marked the peak of the “moment.” After a brief hesitation, the United States had returned to the heart of Europe to stay.
The pendulum began to swing back toward Realism with the first major political transition in Russia—symbolized by Vladimir Putin’s accession to power at the turn of the millennium. Although Putin would not openly position himself as an adversary of the West until 2007, the first tremors of Russian refusal to acquiesce to the “only game in town”—American hegemony—were already perceptible during the NATO bombing of Serbia. Putin’s rise, following the chaotic decade of Yeltsin’s rule, signaled a nascent resistance to unipolarity.
Furthermore, while NATO successfully concluded the kinetic phase of the war in 1999, the 78-day bombing campaign exposed significant fissures within the alliance. The internal cohesion of the West was strained to a degree that made future consensus on such interventions far less likely. NATO had hoped that the mere threat of overwhelming force would suffice to achieve its objectives; it did not. It is worth remembering that the conflict ended only when diplomatic channels were opened via non-NATO intermediaries: Russia’s Viktor Chernomyrdin and Finland’s Martti Ahtisaari.
By 2003, with the invasion of Iraq, these internal disputes among Western allies spilled into public view. Unable to secure a NATO mandate, the United States and the United Kingdom were forced to rely on an ad hoc “Coalition of the Willing.” The open resistance of Germany and France challenged the very legitimacy of American unipolarity. Coming just two years after the September 11th attacks—which had briefly united East and West in condemnation of Islamist extremism—this rift marked the end of the post-Cold War consensus.
The essence of the Realist approach—as Stevan Nedeljković elucidates in his 2025 Serbian-language volume Ravnoteža moći: od Tukidida do Trampa (Balance of Power: From Thucydides to Trump)—lies in the axiom that the rise of a hegemon inevitably invites opposition. Whenever one state achieves dominance, other contenders arise to balance against it, either individually or jointly. Balancing of power appears to be the enduring historical mechanism for the erosion of unipolarity. While unipolar systems can promise, and occasionally deliver, peace—as Pax Americana did in Bosnia and Herzegovina—even the mightiest power lacks the capacity to control the entire globe indefinitely. Hence, anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism re-emerged as inevitable responses to the overwhelming, and for many, unbearable, concentration of American power in the 1990s.
This backlash was not confined to the so-called “Axis of Evil;” by 2007, it had taken root in Moscow. Putin’s famous speech at the Munich Security Conference that year was effectively a manifesto for a new foreign policy based on old principles. Concurrently, other actors began to diversify their strategic portfolios. Following Cyprus’s accession to the EU in 2004, Turkey began to shed its role as a mere instrument of U.S. policy, styling itself instead as an autonomous “Afro-Euro-Asian” power—a concept articulated by Ahmet Davutoğlu in his vision of “Strategic Depth.”
The expansion of the European Union to include Romania and Bulgaria in 2007—two nations that had joined NATO in 2004—pushed the frontiers of the West to the Black Sea, directly abutting Russia’s strategic underbelly. The admission of these states was driven as much by geostrategic calculation as by the normative concept of “shared values,” foreshadowing Ursula von der Leyen’s later call for a “geopolitical Commission.”
However, the pivot point for the resistance to unipolarity was 2008. In February, the United States supported the unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo. Russia responded in August by intervening in Georgia. Since then, Moscow has consistently cited the Kosovo precedent to justify its own unilateral actions. By challenging one instance of unilateralism with another, Russia seeks to carve out a “zone of influence” to counter a Western globalism it views as an existential threat.
In a profound irony, the Russia that in 1991 chose independence from the Soviet Union—effectively enabling the empire’s disintegration into fifteen states—has now returned to the politics of spheres of interest. The post-Soviet space (excluding the Baltic states, which escaped into the Euro-Atlantic fold) has been redefined as the “Near Abroad.” Here, Russia applies a de facto Monroe Doctrine, enforcing its primacy. Putin has fully repudiated Yeltsin’s “Russia First” nationalism—which prioritized the Russian Federation over the Soviet empire—and now views the Soviet collapse not as a liberation, but as a geopolitical catastrophe.
Despite the brief interlude of the “Reset” policy during the Obama-Medvedev era, the United States and Russia soon slid into a profound geopolitical and ideological estrangement, with Ukraine emerging as the primary fault line long before the full-scale invasion of 2022. For years, Ukraine had effectively become the “new Germany”—a divided frontier state where the competition for spheres of interest was most acute. However, unlike the Cold War demarcation in Berlin, this new line was drawn deep in the post-Soviet East.
While Putin’s Russia may have been, as Bulgarian political scientist Dimitar Bechev termed it, a “weak power” or merely a “spoiler power” compared to its Soviet predecessor, its revisionist intent was unmistakable. As Ivar Neumann astutely observed, Russian tanks were no longer in Berlin, but they were in Crimea. Their presence there symbolized a renewed ambition to redraw maps and challenge the West, signaling the definitive end of the “unipolar moment.” It also marked the collapse of the defining political philosophy of the liberal decade, which had wagered that the future would be shaped “not by tanks, but by banks.”
This geopolitical fracturing was compounded by the rise of China—an ascent defined initially by economic integration but increasingly by political and military assertiveness. These external challenges precipitated a cascade of internal crises within Europe: the Eurozone debt crisis, the migration crisis following the collapse of the Arab Spring, and the stalling of EU enlargement.
More damaging, however, was the ideological challenge from within. The core nations of the European Union discovered that the revolutions of 1989 were not solely—or perhaps even primarily—about the embrace of liberal democracy. For many in Eastern Europe, the driving force was the restoration of the nationalist sovereign state. Liberal optimists had underestimated the depth of this sentiment. In countries like Poland and Hungary, the motive was to end the era of “limited sovereignty;” for Croatia, joining the EU in 2013 was viewed by many less as a leap into post-nationalism than as a means to secure national sovereignty. Paradoxically, by acceding to the Union, these states acquired a veto power that allowed them to project influence over neighbors still waiting in the antechamber, weaponizing the accession process for nationalistic ends.
This trend was paralleled by a resurgence of nationalism in the “old” West. Germany, the primary beneficiary of the post-Cold War order, became increasingly self-confident—a shift visible during its handling of the Greek debt crisis. Moreover, the fading memory of the Second World War has facilitated a wave of historical revisionism. In this new narrative, Nazism is often relativized as merely one of “two totalitarianisms,” stripping it of its unique historical stigma. In Eastern Europe, and increasingly in Italy, this has led to the normalization of collaborationist legacies that were once universally condemned. As the stigma of the mid-twentieth century fades, liberal values—anti-imperialism, anti-fascism, and globalism—are retreating before assertive, and often vindictive, illiberal alternatives. The resurgence of Russia, Turkey, and China—authoritarian states led by strongmen who openly challenge the liberal order—has emboldened similar forces globally, turning the “third wave” of democratization into a “reverse wave” of de-democratization.
We have thus entered a period of “liquid post-unipolarism.” It is a transitory era, easier to define by what it is leaving than by where it is arriving. If the previous transition was a march from authoritarian predation toward democratic cooperation, the current trajectory suggests a regression to the status quo ante. The central claim of the 1990s was that history had ended; today’s reality proves the opposite. We are witnessing the “un-ending” of history.
With Donald Trump’s victory in 2024, the United States has formally joined this process of deconstruction. His policy of withdrawing from international institutions and conventions dismantles the architecture of the liberal era. Washington has effectively rejected the concept of political globalization and the “ever closer” global union championed by the United Nations. In its place, it has returned to an explicit American nationalism and an implicit imperialism.
In this new order, the challenging of sovereignty abroad—particularly that of weaker states—coexists with the aggressive assertion of sovereignty for the powerful. “America First” finds its mirror image in “Russia First.” A transactional logic now governs global affairs: for every Kosovo or Venezuela, there is a Ukraine. The Monroe Doctrine is no longer a relic but a blueprint, mirrored by Putin’s doctrine of exclusive control over Russia’s “Near Abroad.” The emerging global security architecture is thus linked not to multilateral norms, but to a concert of neo-imperial powers—potentially a triangular order of Washington, Moscow, and Beijing—where the strong determine the rules, and the weak are expected to understand their place.
However, for a genuine tripolar system to crystallize, all three actors must demonstrate sufficient strength, will, and efficiency to inhabit their new roles. What elevates a mere great power to the status of a global superpower is a comprehensive capacity to project influence across all decisive sectors: military, economic, political, and cultural. Crucially, they must also be recognized by relevant others as poles in the new polarity.
The United States is currently attempting to consolidate its primacy across all four domains. It leverages its military might and weaponizes its economic policy—using tariffs as instruments of raw power. Politically, it seeks to marginalize potential competitors, including the European Union; culturally, it challenges liberal values by promoting a brand of conservatism and “sovereigntism” that borders on autocracy. China and Russia are following suit, with varying degrees of success. Russia’s use of military force in Ukraine—if successful—will requalify Moscow as a superpower, restoring the status the USSR lost when Russia withdrew from the Union under Yeltsin. China, historically reserved regarding global political leadership, will need to shed its reticence and become far more assertive if it wishes to compete. While China’s economic success is formidable, it must be matched by a commensurate expansion of influence in the military, political, and cultural spheres.
If Russia and China fail to adapt to this American-led transformation of the international order, the United States may convert the “unipolar moment” into a “unipolar century.” Yet, it remains an open question whether total global hegemony is truly America’s objective. It is plausible that Washington would prefer to be one of three global superpowers—a hegemon supreme within a defined sphere of influence that matters directly to American interests. Not all empires aim to control the entire globe; the art of politics often lies in knowing one’s limits. Trump’s America appears to lack the appetite for intervening in peripheries irrelevant to its core national interests. Indeed, Trump likely views the expectation that America act as the “world’s policeman” as a trap laid by liberal globalists—a burden harmful to national interests. If this assessment holds, the emerging order will be one of “Limited Imperialism,” with China and Russia serving as partners in a new territorial division of the world.
This scenario would effectively transform the globe into a holding company with three principal shareholders: the United States, Russia, and China. Where does this leave the rest of the world, and specifically the European Union? Indeed, is there any place for the EU in such an order? Trump actively undermines the very concept of the “European experiment,” viewing it as inextricably linked to the liberal values and multilateralism he detests. His actions during the Greenland crisis demonstrated a willingness to turn allies into competitors—and potentially enemies—while degrading small European states like Denmark to the status of a periphery. This strikes at the heart of the European project, which small nations joined precisely to escape peripheral status and compensate for their lack of scale.
Trump’s vision for the EU is binary: it must either revert to being a client of the United States or face active hostility. As Croatian President Zoran Milanović vividly put it, if they do not sit at the table, they will be forced “under the table.” The new U.S. National Security Strategy actively courts the opponents of European integration, supporting nationalist, conservative, and anti-liberal forces within both member states and candidate countries. Yet, “Limited Imperialism” offers only limited sovereignty to small states. Those who refuse the client-sponsor relationship with Washington will become targets, particularly if they remain committed to the European project.
Does this spell the inevitable end of the European Union? Not necessarily. Paradoxically, the EU could become more attractive as a sanctuary for those who oppose this new global order—whether it takes the form of a “unipolar century” or a “tripolar world.” But for such opposition to succeed, the EU would need to evolve into a “Fortress Europe” positioning itself as the last defender of the liberal faith.
It must rigorously pursue a policy of “strategic autonomy” to remain truly independent of the US, Russia, and China. Simultaneously, it must reject the siren song of anti-liberal ideologies and stand firm as a lighthouse for human rights, democracy, and the values of the Enlightenment.
The collapse of an international order is a generational event. Those who find themselves dealt a poor hand in the new distribution of power inevitably become revisionist powers, waiting for a future opportunity to reshape the board. This may well be the fate of the EU in the near future. If so, Europe should not despair. After all, history changes—and then, inevitably, it changes again.
