Editor's note: Ramin Mirfakhraie is a sociologist based in the U.S. His research interests include capitalist globalization and international politics. He holds a PhD from the University of Warwick in the UK. The article reflects the author's views and not necessarily those of CGTN.

The world has entered a new era of multipolarity, but it seems the United States is still living in the past, refusing to accept the fact that it is no longer on top of the world, capable of shaping global conditions and outcomes to its own advantage or having others do its bidding. Here are two recent examples that illustrate this.

First, President Joe Biden's suggestion, on May 23 at the Quad Leaders' Summit in Tokyo, that the United States would use military force to defend Taiwan in case of a Chinese "invasion" - comments that some have interpreted as not only a clear deviation from hitherto U.S. policy of "strategic ambiguity" established in 1979 by the "Taiwan Relations Act," but also a sign that the United States has not learned much from its past defeats in, say, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Second, the United States' strong criticism of the Iraqi parliament's approval, on May 26, of a law that criminalizes any attempt at normalizing relations with Israel, which is tantamount to not only interfering in the country's internal affairs, but also pushing it to effectively abandon the cause of Palestine by establishing relations with Israel prior to the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This sort of behavior can be quite dangerous, especially when it comes to dealing with, say, China or Russia, as it can easily lead to much violence or even another world war, which will likely be nuclear, if and when it occurs. Hence, a few reminders are in order in hopes that U.S. leaders, strategists and policymakers can act more responsibly in the new multipolar environment that characterizes the current geopolitical landscape.

Let's begin with an assessment by Francis Fukuyama, whose "end of history" notion hastily celebrated Western liberal democracy as "the final form of human government" shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He reminds us that "The peak period of American hegemony lasted less than 20 years, from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to the financial crisis of 2007-2009." And from this latter point forward, he suggests, "the world has been reverting to a more normal state of multipolarity ... with China, Russia, India, Europe and other centers gaining power relative to America."

Of course, for Fukuyama, the United States' relative loss of power in the world has had more to do with domestic polarization than any other factor, but one must keep in mind that the United States' global hegemony began to decline in the 1970s when U.S. society was not so deeply polarized. It may be argued, then, that the United States' global dominance began to decline in the late 1970s in major part as a result of the core capitalist economies of the West experiencing lower-than-average growth rates, thus prompting them to not only shift their focus from production and manufacturing to financial speculation, with many bubbles that would burst along the way, but also invest massively in the developing economies, especially China's.

Clearly, then, China's rise as a superpower and a major player in the new multipolar world order owes much to the Western capitalist economies and their search for more profits. With a 2020 GDP of around $15 trillion, a Belt and Road Initiative that extends across the entire geostrategic Eurasia landmass, and an impressive network of partners throughout the globe, China is certainly one of the reasons as to why the world can no longer be characterized by unipolarity.

The creation of the European Union in 1993, which includes the core capitalist economies of Western Europe and a common currency, is also an issue that has contributed to the decline of the United States' global hegemony. In the case of Western Europe, it is interesting to note that renowned sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein once suggested that its desire to create "a lasting geopolitical alliance" with Russia, which can be traced back to the 1940s and beyond, would be seen by the United States as potentially undermining the United States' global interests.

Now, with more than a decade passed since Wallerstein made those comments, Western Europe is once again finding itself firmly in the grip of the United States as a result of U.S. pressure due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, with Finland and Sweden, two Northern European countries, recently applying for NATO membership as well. This seemingly firm alliance may not be able to last for long, however; not just due to the EU's reliance on Russian energy, investment, and trade, but also because of its gradual realization, similar to Japan's, that it cannot forever rely on the United States for its security and defense needs.

Another indication of the United States' declining global hegemony is the process of de-dollarization undertaken by a number of countries around the world to deprive the United States of the ability to use the dollar as a weapon of coercive diplomacy. According to news accounts, even Saudi Arabia is considering accepting the Chinese yuan, also called the renminbi, for its oil sales to China.

As limited as de-dollarization efforts have been in scope so far, there is no doubt that they have had a global impact, especially as countries advance in their attempts to increasingly make less use of the SWIFT payment messaging network, which the West, led by the United States, has also used on occasion as a weapon of coercive diplomacy.

Finally, multiple studies show that the United States' excessive use of economic sanctions and embargos against target countries may also be seen as having gradually weakened the U.S. global dominance, not just in terms of lost sales and returns on investment, but also in terms of image, reputation, and legitimation. According to one study, for example, U.S. trade sanctions imposed on "about three-dozen countries since 1993 . . . have cost American exporters $15 billion to $19 billion in lost annual sales overseas and caused long-term damage to U.S. companies - lost market share and reputations abroad as unreliable suppliers."

Reasons abound, then, as to why the United States' unipolar moment has come to an end, though as Fukuyama has correctly observed, "the U.S. will remain a great power for many years." With great power comes great responsibility, however, as the old adage goes, especially if such power stems from practices associated with centuries-old structures and institutions of domination and exploitation around the globe.

Let's hope, therefore, that in this new environment of multipolarity, the world's great powers– along with others in the interstate system– can act as responsibly as possible by working together to mitigate at least some of humanity's most pressing issues, as failure to do so will only make matters worse.

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