The historian, Arnold J. Toynbee wrote “The sunsets and sunrises of civilization are inevitably separated by intervals of isolated darkness.”1 A series of sunsets and sunrises describes the world political order after 1914. The interregnums that occurred were of short duration.
Before World War I, a multi-polar world order had been established by Europe; principally by the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Russia. Through techno-logical, scientific, economic, financial, and military power, these political rivals exerted either direct control or indirect influence over most of Eurasia. (Map 1)
Map 1 – 2. Multi-polar world order – 1914
World War I up-ended that order. The war was more than a four year long blood bath. It was an act of collective suicide. After 1918, new maps showed the loss of the territories of the Central Powers and the expansion of the territories of the victorious Allies. (Map 2)
But the maps were acts of self-deception. The war had bankrupted the Allies as well as the Central Powers, emotionally as well as financially. Real power had shifted to the extremities of the European world – to the United States in the west and the Soviet Union, which replaced Russia, in the east.
World War II completed the “sunset” of Europe and the world political order it established in the 19th Century. It had taken just 31 years, 1914-1945, for Europe to reach Toynbee’s “isolated darkness.”

Map 2 – 3. Multi-polar world order – 1919
The British [Red] and French [Blue] colonial empires reached their peaks after World War I.
After World War II came the Cold War, 1947-1991, and the solidification of a bipolar world order between the United States and the Soviet Union. Now each possessed a military reach that extended beyond Eurasia to encompass the globe. (Map 3)

Map 3- 4. The bipolar world order – 1947-1991
After 44 years, the Cold War ended; the Soviet Union collapsed; and the United States emerged as the world’s hyperpower – “a state that dominates all other states in every domain…it has no rivals that can match its capabilities.”5” The world political order was now unipolar as illustrated in Canada’s National Post on October 28, 2011. (Map 4)
Map 4 – 6. Unipolar world order – post-1991
This “Pax Americana” ushered in “a period of relative peace and stability that extended throughout the area of American influence.”7 But it was maintained by endless military deployments,”8 that exhausted the capacity, capability, and readiness of the US military.
Within a decade, the United States suffered “‘hegemonic overreach’ – ‘the contradiction between the hegemon’s growing military-political commitments and its slipping economic capability…’”9 Unipolarity became unsustainable.

The date and place for the beginning of the end of unipolarity was the twenty-year war in Afghanistan, (2001-2021). It was the longest war in the history of the United States. Despite possessing the most advanced military technology, the world’s only hyperpower was defeated by guerrilla forces armed with AK-47s and driving Toyota SUVs. In the words of The New York Times, August 8, 2021, “the images [of the US evacuation from Kabul] evoked America’s frantic departure from [Saigon, South] Vietnam [April 30, 1975] encapsulating Afghanistan’s breathtaking collapse…”
Afghanistan, Ukraine, The Sahel, The Caucasus, The Middle East, The South China Sea; – The United States no longer possesses the military, financial, or diplomatic capabilities to successfully deal with all the crises, new and old, engulfing Eurasia. (Map 5)
On May 29, 2022, James Di Pane, Policy Analyst, The Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC, had written, “While the quality of the US military force is currently unrivaled, its size is at a historic low, and this limits its ability to respond to the multiple threats the country faces globally. It simply does not have enough forces. This is a concern, particularly when the US needs to surge to a conflict without jeopardizing the posture of US forces in another important region. For example, if the United States were to engage Russia in a direct confrontation, it will be forced to deploy military equipment and personnel from all over the world to the Eastern European front. By doing so, the US would be forced to draw forces from other regions of the world, such as the West Pacific, where our presence is critical in deterring China.”10

Since then, the US military position has been further compromised by the war between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah. This has opened a “third front” in Southwest Asia, one that may expand to involve Iran. In any escalation, the security of the oil refineries and shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf would be in harm’s way, unsettling the world economy.
Map 5 – 11.
Furthermore, according to Global Firepower’s 2024 ranking of countries by naval power, the US Navy, on which the projectio

Map 6 – 13.

In of US power and deployment of US troops depends, has fallen to fourth place behind Russia (1), China (2), and North Korea (3).12
In addition, unipolarity is being challenged by China. With the world’s second largest economy pursuing global influence through its Belt Road Initiative. (Map 6)

As China’s economic power grows, so does the strength of its military, and the intensity of its rhetoric on the “reunification” of Taiwan.
A sign of the unraveling of the unipolar world order was Washington’s diplomatic failure in 2022 to persuade the international community to impose economic sanctions on Moscow for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.14
In the words of Teuku Faizasyah, spokesperson for the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Indonesia would not “blindly follow steps taken by another country.”15
But in a unipolar world order, countries do just that – “blindly follow” the hyperpower.
So while the West, Colombia and Paraguay agreed to impose sanctions; the rest of the world, and in particular China and India, refused. (Map 7)
Map 7 – 16. Ukrainian – Russian War and the Collapse of unipolar world order
As The Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) noted on November 23, 2023 “Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Turkey and the UAE are just a few of the key players in the Global South that have remained opposed or neutral to unilateral sanctions. A June 2023 joint statement by the foreign ministers of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (collectively the ‘BRICS’) expressed that the use of unilateral sanctions is ‘incompatible’ with the UN Charter.”17
Dr. Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State, had warned of this break-down of unipolarity on January 25, 2018, in his testimony on “Global Challenges and US National Security Strategy” before the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services.
“What is occurring is more than a coincidence of individual crises across various geographies. Rather, it is a systemic failure of world order which, after gathering momentum for nearly two decades, is trending towards the international system’s erosion rather than its consolidation, whether in terms of respect for sovereignty, rejection of territorial acquisition by force, expansion of mutually beneficial trade without geoeconomic coercion, or encouragement of human rights. In the absence of a shared concept among the major powers…traditional patterns of great power rivalry are returning.”18
In such a multi-polar world order, strategic autonomy becomes necessary statecraft. It is the means whereby one state effectively utilizes relations with other states to protect its core national security interests. It utilizes geopolitics, geostrategy, and geoeconomics. It is pragmatic self-interest, not Machiavellianism.
Specifically, it is a government’s calculated balance between accepting foreign military aid and not becoming dependent on such aid for its self-defense. Since the motive of the donor is to best advance its interests, not necessarily those of the receiver, such aid can be unilaterally stopped to the detriment of the recipient country.
A case in point is Russia’s support for Armenia. As the BBC reported April 23, 2024, “Both Russia and the Russian-led CSTO military alliance of which Armenia is a member stayed neutral and refused to intervene in the most recent conflict with Azerbaijan. And Moscow has also failed to deliver $200m of Russian-made weapons which Yerevan had already paid for.”19
By strategic autonomy, a government also seeks to prevent political alliances from being used to pressure it into intervening in foreign conflicts unrelated to its own security needs.
A case in point is the United States securing NATO involvement in the twenty year war in Afghanistan. “Originally tasked with securing Kabul and its surrounding areas, NATO expands in September 2005, July 2006, and October 2006. The number of ISAF troops [United Nations authorized International Security Assistance Force placed under NATO command20] grows accordingly, from an initial five thousand to around sixty-five thousand troops from forty-two countries, including all twenty-eight NATO member states. In 2006, ISAF assumes command of the international military forces in eastern Afghanistan from the US-led coalition, and also becomes more involved in intensive combat operations in southern Afghanistan.”21 Until defeated by the Taliban.
The concept of strategic autonomy originated with the European Union (EU). But the EU and NATO are, for all practical purposes, a single entity. According to La Revue Diplomatique, “As of mid-March 2024, 23 member countries of the EU-27 are members of NATO-32. Thus, most of the EU member states are now also members of NATO-32, including France.”22
The EU concentrates on economic issues while NATO concentrates on military matters. Notwithstanding agreements with other countries around the globe, the primary focus of each is Europe.
Under strategic autonomy, the EU / NATO does not wish to remain dependent upon the United States for its defense. Especially, if disagreements emerge, for example, between Brussels and Washington over Russia.
Similarly, the EU / NATO does not wish to be in a war allied to the United States against China over Taiwan.
First, it does not possess the capacity, capability, or readiness to do so. In “Two-Theater Tragedy: A Reluctant Europe Cannot Easily Escape a Sino-American War Over Taiwan,” April 10, 2024, Tim Sweijs and Paul van Hooft noted “…Europeans have not seriously considered acting on behalf of Taiwan in case of a war between the United States and China. In any case, European countries lack the capacity to do so… Even if enough European states would reach a consensus to respond with military means, all of the countries, including Europe’s two premier military powers, France and the United Kingdom, lack the capability to make a sustained effort in such a scenario.”23
Second, as David Sacks observed in “Does NATO Have a Role in Asia?” Council on Foreign Relations, May 30, 2024, as the war continues to rage between Russia and Ukraine, EU / NATO does not want to spread “its military power even thinner by pursuing largely symbolic deployments and activities in the Indo-Pacific.”24
Third, most importantly, as Ambassador Mark A. Green previously pointed out in “China is the top trading partner to more than 120 countries,” Wilson Center, January 17, 2023, EU / NATO does not wish a war with China, which is “the largest external trading partner of the European Union.”25
Strategic autonomy was originally conceived as a defense concept by the EU in 2013. A paper by the European Parliament, July 8, 2022, elaborated on the term’s evolution in EU geopolitics. “EU strategic autonomy (EU-SA) refers to the capacity of the EU to act autonomously – that is, without being dependent on other countries – in strategically important policy areas. These can range from defence policy to the economy, and the capacity to uphold democratic values. In order to structure the debate on strategic autonomy into analytical categories, this briefing assumes that by and large there have been several phases to the debate about EU-SA, each with a different focus. From 2013 to 2016, it was mainly seen as an approach to security and defence matters. From 2017 to 2019, EU-SA was considered as a way to defend European interests in a hostile geopolitical environment, marked by Brexit, the Trump Presidency and China’s growing assertiveness. In 2020, the Covid 19 pandemic shifted the focus to mitigating economic dependence on foreign supply chains. Since 2021, the scope of EU-SA has been widened to virtually all EU policy areas, including that of the EU’s values, while the expression ‘strategic autonomy’ was paradoxically used less and was often replaced by similar concepts, such as ‘open strategic autonomy’, ‘strategic sovereignty’, ‘capacity to act’ and ‘resilience’.”26
One criticism of strategic autonomy argues that “In its pure form, strategic autonomy presupposes the state in question possessing overwhelmingly superior power. This is what would enable that state to resist the pressures that may be exerted by other states to compel it to change its policy or moderate its interests. Theoretically, therefore, only a lone superpower in a unipolar international order truly possess strategic autonomy since it is the only country that would wield overwhelming economic, industrial, military and technological capabilities and thus the power to resist pressure from all other states. Even superpowers become susceptible to the pressures exerted by their superpower peers in bipolar or multipolar orders, which means that their ability to be strategically autonomous is not absolute but only relative.”27
Core security interests, however, are absolute. As Lord Palmerston, 19th Century British statesman declared “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”28
And a country need not be a superpower wielding “overwhelming economic, industrial, military and technological capabilities” to protect its core national security interests – economic growth and political independence. Switzerland has done so since 1848 as well as Austria, Finland, Ireland, and Sweden as neutrals during the Cold War.
As unipolarity unravels, the past becomes the future with a return to a multi-polar world order. An assortment of power centers have already emerged – Russia, China, India, the EU, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and Turkey. They are fashioning a world of shifting alliances. (Diagram 1).
Diagram 129. “Preferences for Cooperation of Global Swing States – Comparison of Aggregate Scores”
By utilizing shifting alliances in a multi-polar world, strategic autonomy offers Europe the ability to craft an independent foreign policy that protects its core security interests. If those interests differ from the interests of the United States it does not make Europe an adversary of the United States. It just makes Europe a separate participant in the world order emerging from unipolarity.

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Novus ordo seclorum is dead.
Long live novus ordo seclorum!