Around the three poles of Europe, India and South America, a more balanced and democratic world order could be created. One of the many casualties of 9/11 has been the idea that a world with only one superpower would be a more comfortable place to live.

This hinged on the argument that in a unipolar world order the dominant state acts as a producer of global public goods from which everyone benefits. The US’s unwillingness to address its $764 billion trade deficit and its determination to continue consuming beyond its means has caused global economic imbalances. The US looks more like a global free rider, using its power to the detriment of the greater good. The truth is that any other nation in the US position would do the same and probably much worse.

As Vladimir Putin pointed out in a speech at the weekend, the unipolar model is inherently flawed because it concentrates power in ways that are undemocratic. Very true, but how strange to hear it from the Russian president.

In each of Putin’s criticisms, more or less the same could be said about the government he leads. Putin deplores America’s conduct of the war on terror, but the brutality of his assault on Chechnya makes the abuses at Guantanamo look mild by comparison.

The bullying of Russia’s neighbours through energy cut-offs, trade embargoes and the sponsorship of insurgencies shows scant regard for the high-minded principles espoused in his speech. Putin’s real objection to a unipolar world order is that Russia is not the unipole.

Europe, certainly needs a strategy for creating a more balanced and legitimate distribution of global power, but it shouldn’t be one that follows Jacques Chirac’s efforts to offset US influence through big power summitry with an authoritarian Russia. It must be one that is true to Europe’s democratic values.

For some like Tony Blair, the suggestion that US power needs to be balanced is evidence of anti-Americanism. There is an alternative that allows Europe to pursue an effective power balancing strategy without resort to the cynical realpolitik of old, and it has been made possible by the remarkable transformations of the last three decades. Almost two-thirds of the world’s population now lives under democratic rule. It is those states collectively

that form the body of legitimate world opinion and must be mobilised.

India is likely to become the world’s most populous country by the middle of the century. Unlike China, it is an established democracy and ought to be a natural ally in any attempt to create a more balanced and democratic world order. Another priority should be South America, where the democratic gains of the last 20 years have been as great as those of Eastern Europe.

Around these three poles — Europe, India and South America — it would be possible to galvanise a new global democratic sentiment that rejects unipolarist assumptions without being antagonistic towards the US. The end of American primacy is coming.

The choice is between a bipolar system in which it faces an authoritarian China, or a multipolar order in which it can share the challenges of global leadership with other centres of democratic power. The shift from unipolarity to a democratic multipolarity should be our common project of the 21st century. — The Guardian