Originally published on 4 Oct 2025.

I’ve always felt uneasy calling the period after the Soviet Union’s collapse the “Post–Cold War.” To me, it was a temporary label—anything “post” must eventually become “pre” to something else. History never really stops. Even when 9/11 and the “War on Terror” seemed to change everything, I sensed that the world’s basic structure hadn’t shifted. Despite the chaos and destruction in West Asia and North Africa, global politics still revolved around a single dominant power.

Looking back now, it feels clear that the Post–Cold War era truly ended with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Scholars and policymakers increasingly describe the new reality as multipolar—a world with several centers of cultural, technological, and military power no longer bound to Western leadership.

I find it useful to think of the years between 1991 and 2022 as the “Unipolar Moment.” Realist thinkers like John Mearsheimer had long warned that unipolar systems never last—power always attracts counterbalances. And they were right.

Still, I see this reinterpretation with some optimism. Maybe what comes next won’t be a new world war or another cold war. Perhaps, if we’re fortunate, we’ll enter a “New Concert System,” a more cooperative balance among great powers.

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