The Multipolar World Order (yes, it's here)

[Mike]

This is largely about the multipolar world. It's a debate that pits Konstantin Kisin (who is pro-west and against the multipolar world order) vs Cynthia Miller and Yanis Varoufakis (both critical of the west and for the multipolar world order).

There's something for everyone here, regardless of where you stand on this issue.

The debate begins after opening statements from the participants. The moderator does a pretty good job of giving everyone equal time.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=37NcXBB1gMs

[onawah]

Psychopathic Authoritarianism Is Real—And Controlling Us! w/ Joseph Sansone
The Jimmy Dore Show
1.89M subscribers
Nov 4, 2026

"Psychotherapist and author Joseph Sansone joins Jimmy to discuss his book “Psychopathic Authoritarianism,” which applies the psychological concepts of sadism, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy to explain how authoritarian systems can cultivate obedience, conformity, and social division. Sansone argues that the COVID-19 response demonstrated how fear, propaganda, and the “drama triangle” of victim, persecutor, and rescuer can encourage ordinary people to police and punish one another, while Jimmy connects these ideas to Jungian concepts of projection and collective identity.

The conversation broadens to concerns about centralized government, digital surveillance, biometric identification, central bank digital currencies, and the concentration of political and technological power, with Sansone arguing that decentralization and individual agency are essential responses. Sansone concludes that resisting authoritarianism requires recognizing our own capacity for cruelty, questioning emotional reactions to media, and choosing empathy, courage, creativity, and personal responsibility.

Joseph Sansone on Twitter: / phdsansone
Sansone’s book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Psychopathic-A..."

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=JWRz3vvpQSY

[Ravenlocke]

Polnexus

Could a move away from the dollar after the Iran war trigger a banking crisis in Europe by spring 2027? We tested the scenario against IMF, BIS and market data. Verdict: diversification is real, but slow. Analysis, not a forecast.
#dollar #economy #BRICS

https://x.com/PolNexusPolonia/status...04229242306715

https://www.polnexus.co.uk/news/doll...rio-for-europe

The scenario in five steps

The hypothesis describes a chain of events. First, some countries come to see the United States as an aggressor and stop settling trade in dollars. Second, this causes a shock in the dollar market.

Third, European politicians meet in Switzerland to talk about money. Fourth, governments impose capital controls and tighter banking rules. Fifth, around March and April 2027 a serious currency collapse hits Europe’s banks and cannot be contained.

Prices would keep rising in the meantime.

Step one: are countries abandoning the dollar?

This is where the hypothesis has its strongest support, though only partial. Since the war with Iran began on 28 February 2026, more trade has been settled outside the dollar. According to a European Central Bank report, settlements in China’s CIPS system rose by about a third in March 2026.

Al Jazeera reported in April 2026 that Iran is charging transit fees for the Strait of Hormuz in yuan; we found no official confirmation of how widespread this is. 1 per cent of its imports in rupees between March and May 2026, mostly for Russian oil.

The scale, however, remains small. 70 per cent of global foreign-exchange reserves (IMF COFER data, second quarter of 2026). Under the IMF’s earlier methodology the share was about 71 per cent at the start of the century and about 66 per cent in 2015, so this is a slow decline, not a flight.

26 per cent for the yuan. According to the BIS 2025 survey, the dollar is on one side of about 89 per cent of all currency trades, slightly more than in 2022. At its New Delhi summit the BRICS group announced no common currency and called local-currency settlement a complement to the existing system.

No country has announced that it is dropping the dollar.

Step two: is there a dollar shock?

Market data do not show one. The dollar is stronger today than in January 2026, and the Federal Reserve’s broad dollar index is practically where it was a year ago. There is clear stress in interest rates: the ten-year US Treasury yield stood at 4.88 per cent on 9 November, after peaking at 5.31 per cent on 5 October. But the classic signature of a currency crisis is a falling dollar together with rising yields, and over this period the dollar strengthened.

Indicators of strain in dollar funding are calm. On 4 November central banks were using just 169 million dollars of the Fed’s swap lines. 95).

Central banks are, however, buying a lot of gold: 1,092 tonnes in 2024, 863 tonnes in 2025 and 675 tonnes in the first three quarters of 2026, according to the World Gold Council. That signals diversification, not a flight from the dollar.

Step three: a meeting in Switzerland

We found no source for any emergency meeting of European politicians about money. Two kinds of meetings take place in Switzerland as a matter of routine. Central bank governors meet at the BIS in Basel every two months, but they are bankers, not politicians, and their conclusions do not bind governments.

The Davos forum runs from 18 to 22 January 2027 and is a private discussion forum, not a decision-making body. A meeting in Switzerland would not, on its own, be evidence of a crisis plan.

Steps four and five: capital controls and collapse

There are no sources for these links. There are no official announcements of capital controls in Europe and no known mechanism tying a collapse to March or April 2027. On 9 November ECB Banking Supervision said the euro area banking sector remains financially sound, while noting rising funding costs.

The logic of the chain is also weak. A crisis of confidence in the dollar would more likely send money into the euro and the Swiss franc than out of Europe. That is what happened in 2026: the Swiss National Bank sold francs to slow the currency’s rise after the war broke out.

Europe has seen capital controls before (Cyprus in 2013, Greece in 2015), but they followed local banking and debt crises, not a move away from the dollar. The Fed also keeps standing, unlimited swap lines with the ECB, the Bank of England and the Swiss National Bank, designed to supply dollars in times of strain.

What about rising prices?

This part of the hypothesis has partial support. Euro area inflation is 4.0 per cent in the flash estimate for October, driven mainly by energy. UK CPI inflation was 3.5 per cent in September, and the ONS publishes October data on 18 November. The Bank of England raised its rate to 4 per cent on 5 November. Higher prices reflect the oil shock that followed the war, not a currency collapse.

Three scenarios to the end of 2027

The probabilities below are editorial estimates by our geopolitical analyst, not data and not a market forecast.

Slow diversification: the dollar’s share slips by fractions of a percentage point a year, gold and local settlement grow, and there is no crisis. Estimate: 60–70 per cent.

Iran shock and a non-dollar settlement bloc: no deal with Iran, wider sanctions and some oil trade in yuan or rupees, but the dollar stays dominant and there is no systemic crisis. Estimate: 25–35 per cent.

A systemic loss of confidence in the dollar, closest to the publisher’s hypothesis: 2–5 per cent by the end of 2027, and under 1 per cent for the March–April 2027 window. Even then, Europe would more likely receive capital inflows than suffer outflows.

Indicators to watch

the dollar weakening for several weeks while US Treasury yields rise,

Fed swap line usage climbing into the billions of dollars,

the St Louis financial stress index staying above zero,

failed US Treasury auctions,

the dollar’s COFER share falling by more than one percentage point in a quarter,

US sanctions on Chinese banks, not only refineries,

unscheduled ECB decisions or EU summits on capital flows.

None of these signals is visible today. The move away from the dollar is real, but it is slow. The data do not point to a currency collapse in Europe in spring 2027, though they do not make such a scenario impossible. We will keep tracking these indicators and update this analysis.

[Mike]

Having read some posts here and watched a few YouTube vids and read comments etc, there seems to be some confusion over this topic. Or maybe I'm the confused one. You tell me.

It seems the definition of "globalism" has changed since I stopped paying attention. I think people are confusing a unipolar world with a one-world government(globalism). Those are 2 entirely different things, as I understand it.

Globalism seeks to obliterate borders (and therefore sovereign nations) as a means of setting up a one-world government. Right? All run by a secret cabal of international elites who have no loyalty to any particular country, only their lust for complete power. Right?

A uni-polar world simply means one country is largely dominating the world stage, though not always completely. It's something like that. It's nothing to do with the eradication of borders or the total takeover by a shadowy elite. All the world's countries still exist as sovereign nations in a unipolar world order.

The world exists as a set of hierarchies. Hierarchies within hierarchies. Think Russian dolls. It's an inevitable arrangement. A natural condition of the planet. Someone will almost always be on top. And if no one is on top at any particular time, everyone will be fighting to be on top.

This describes the unipolar world vs the multipolar world. A unipolar world is stable, and a multipolar world is violent and chaotic.

The countries that claim to favor a multipolar world only do so because they aren't the superpower of the unipolar world. Once something resembling a multipolar world emerges, they'll all scramble to be the dominant power in a unipolar world, and all that talk of a multipolar world will fly out the window.

Since hierarchy is inevitable, a unipolar world is inevitable. So the question isn't really whether you favor the unipolar world or the multipolar world; the question is this: which country do you favor to run the unipolar world?

[Vicus]

Mike: this article will "clarified" your question, and indeed the title from this Thread should be changed...from multi polar to multi - nodal...

It is about: geoeconomic

https://projectavalon.net/forum4/sho...=1#post1726430

[bojancan]

A multipolar world is an international system where power is distributed among three or more major centers of influence rather than concentrated in a single superpower (unipolarity) or two dominant blocs (bipolarity).


Key Characteristics

• Multiple Power Centers: Power is diffused among major global and regional actors, such as the United States, China, Russia, India, and rising coalitions like BRICS.
• Dimensions of Power: Influence is measured through material factors (military strength, economic output, population, and territory) as well as structural and ideational power (the ability to shape global rules and norms).
• Shift from US Hegemony: Many analysts view the post-Cold War era of US unipolarity as transitioning into a more fragmented, competitive global framework..


Main Drivers

• Rise of New Economies: Groupings like BRICS and the Multipolar World - CIRSD have expanded to represent a significant share of global GDP, energy reserves, and trade, pushing for de-dollarization and alternatives to Western-led institutions.
• Strategic Autonomy: Middle powers and regional actors—including India, European nations, and Gulf states—increasingly chart independent foreign policies rather than aligning strictly with Washington or Beijing.

Debates and Risks

• Stability vs. Volatility: Proponents argue a multipolar order allows for a more balanced, inclusive global system that prevents single-power subjugation. Critics and scholars warn that it can spark severe geopolitical volatility, arms races, rising militarization, and proxy or regional conflicts (such as in Europe and the Middle East).
• Public Perspectives: On platforms like Reddit, opinions are mixed; some users from the Global South favor multipolarity to diversify partnerships, while others worry about increased fragmentation and the erosion of international law.


https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&s...=1794587999967

[Mike]

Posted by Vicus (here)
Nodes, not poles: Why the new geoeconomic order is multinodal, not multipolar

27 August 2026 by Larry C. Johnson



[Before diving into tonight's featured article I want to offer a brief comment on John Ratcliffe's strange visit to Moscow. The key for me is the C-17. Why use that plane? The CIA Director has a Gulfstream V (GV), which has a published maximum range of about 6,500 nautical miles, more than enough to reach Moscow. Commodore Steve Jermy has offered up the best possible explanation... Ratcliffe was picking up the bodies of dead CIA officers that the Russians had collected. Coffins travel better on a C-17 than a GV.]

Every commentator now reaches for the same word. The American century is ending, the dollar’s grip is loosening, new blocs are forming, and the world, we are told, is becoming “multipolar.” The word feels precise. It is not. “Multipolar” imports a set of twentieth-century assumptions that actively misdescribe what is emerging in the global economy, and because the word we choose determines what we look for and what we measure, the wrong word produces the wrong analysis. There is a better one, and it is not merely a matter of style. The order taking shape is multinodal.

The distinction matters most precisely in the domain where change is fastest — the geoeconomic one, the world of payment rails, trade corridors, currencies, energy routes, and supply chains. That is a networked world, and networks are made of nodes, not poles.

What “pole” smuggles in

A pole is a concept borrowed from physics and from Cold War strategy, and it carries freight. Start with the geometry: poles come in pairs. They are, by definition, opposed and equivalent — the north pole implies the south, the Soviet pole implied the American. Reach for the word “multipolar” and you have already imported the idea of a small number of roughly matched centers arranged in opposition. As one analyst has dryly observed, poles are paired opposites of comparable weight — and whatever else the present moment is, it is not a set of equivalent, opposed centers.

The metaphor smuggles in more than geometry. A pole is a center of gravity; lesser bodies orbit it. Built into the word is hierarchy — great powers at the center, clients in the surrounding spheres — and exclusivity, because a body can only fall within one gravitational well at a time. Built in, too, is a particular measure of power: mass. Polarity counts poles by aggregate weight — GDP, military spending, population — the heavier the body, the stronger its pull. And underneath all of it sits the realist picture of world order as a vertical structure with a hegemon, or contending hegemons, at the apex, where power means the capacity to coerce and security means avoiding defeat.

That is a serviceable vocabulary for describing armies and alliances. It is a poor one for describing the plumbing of the world economy.

What “node” captures instead

A node is a different kind of object. It is a point in a network, and it is defined not by its mass but by its connections — by how many links run through it and how much flows across them. A 2024 essay in the China International Strategy Review put it well: a multinodal world is an asymmetric matrix of actors, each embedded in a web of relationships, in which the horizontal business of continuous interaction matters more than the vertical business of one power imposing on another. Scholars at Spain’s Elcano Royal Institute, tracing the same shift in security affairs, describe a system of nodes, modes, and flows in which, crucially, flows simply bypass reluctant or hesitant nodes to keep moving.

Hold those two pictures side by side and the difference becomes concrete. Nodes are many, and they vary wildly in size. They are joined by multiple, redundant links rather than arranged around a single center. They are non-hierarchical — a mesh, not a pyramid. They are measured by throughput, not tonnage. And they are non-exclusive: a node can be wired into a dozen other nodes at once, which is something no body orbiting a pole can do. That last property is not a footnote. It is the defining behavior of the present moment, and the pole metaphor renders it invisible.

Power as throughput, not mass

Consider how power actually operates in the world this series has been documenting. The dollar’s dominance was never a matter of American economic mass alone; it was a matter of position in a network. Nearly everyone had to clear payments through nodes the United States controlled, and that mandatory-passage property — not the size of the U.S. economy — is what made sanctions bite. Political scientists Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman gave this its proper name: weaponized interdependence, the power that accrues to whoever sits astride the chokepoints others must traverse. The Strait of Hormuz, the dollar-clearing system, the CIPS network, a handful of Chinese refineries, a fleet of shadow tankers — these are the coordinates of contemporary power, and every one of them is a node, valued for what passes through it.

This is why “multipolar” keeps producing bad predictions. It tells the analyst to tally great powers by mass, and so he counts the United States, China, perhaps Russia and India and the EU, and stops. He misses that a small state can be an enormous node — that the UAE, Singapore, Qatar, or a port like Gwadar can command flows out of all proportion to their weight. Polarity has no way to see them. Nodality is built to.

Networks reroute; poles do not

continue: https://sonar21.com/nodes-not-poles-...ot-multipolar/

Interesting article. But realistically which countries are more multinodal than the current multipolar superpowers?

I know many smaller countries punch above their weight, nodally speaking, but do they present any serious challenge to China, USA, India, and maybe Russia? They may possess more pound for pound nodal power than the big boys, but still fall short in absolute nodal power. No? (I'm pretending to know what I'm talking about)

[Vicus]

Mike: Read first this: https://projectavalon.net/forum4/sho...=1#post1733205

The Troy from today are:Iran,Yemen,etc... All the country's (BIG and littles) where petroleum and their derivatives are extract,producer, transportation routes,you name it!...(those are their "weapons"...)

And ALL the actual consequences ...we already feel it...( in economics...) yet, BUT...

Will par example a nuclear Attack resolve ANYTHING? on the contrary,after that will come a fall out ALL over the places ... include that little piece of... nothing, Real called Israhell...

That scenario will be the fall from our actual civilization... politics? WTF are those?...

So, here we are again...