Multipolarism?

...The crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions is equally significant. The post-cold-war era, when there was only a single superpower, is over now. The United States is being forced to enlist Russia and, to a lesser extent, China as partners in finding a compromise. With this, the economic rise of India and the resurgence of anti-yanqui nationalism in several states in Latin America, we have clearly entered a multi-polar world.

No one in Downing Street or Washington will admit it publicly, but Jacques Chirac has turned out to be right. His global Gaullism, the notion that the world has several power centers, and it is no longer just "the west versus the rest", offers a more accurate picture than the image of the lone cowboy acting in the name of us all. The analysis is not Chirac's alone, of course. The French president is in most ways a discredited figure, little loved even at home. But he is the most prominent European to dare to embrace multi-polarity as the new reality of international politics.

Leaders of the non-aligned nations have been saying the same thing for a long time, as have Washington's latest bugbears, such as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. In his soft-spoken way, Kofi Annan has also been calling for a new recognition of the dispersal of international power. In a little-reported speech in London this week, he took issue with even the concept of a five-nation power centre made up of the permanent members of the UN Security Council. "Do not underestimate the slow erosion of the UN's authority and legitimacy that stems from the perception that it has a very narrow power base, with just five countries calling the shots," he pleaded.

UN reform is a slow process, and it is doubtful whether the new claimants for permanent security-council seats, such as Brazil, India and Japan, will get their way soon. But the trend is in their direction, regardless of whether it is formalized by the UN now or in several years.

So, Bush's frantic pleas to his American audience not to retreat are signs not just that his ideological simplicities carry less conviction at home than they once did. He has also begun to see that US power abroad is on the wane.