SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The world is evolving towards a realization that no individual state or power could steer the world as a unipolar power. The end of the Cold War and the global competition over international suzerainty after the Second World War in 1945 made bipolarity more relevant till the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The US invasions of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) happened within that vacuum when the world order was transitioning from the so-called unipolarity to what I have called “non-polarity” This has become even more evident by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It has impacted the lives of every individual from Europe to South Asia. The dependency on the food and energy resources of individuals on Ukrainian and Russian sources brings the war uncomfortably close to people’s daily lives while making it compulsory for the powers in control to redesign their policies. The supra explanation ability of ‘polarity’ is challenged if analyzed with a microscopic lens. Nothing will remain unaffected by this radical shift, neither regional politics nor our personal lives. Indeed, the latter point is indicative of massive changes.