I don’t care what anyone says, this American served alongside Canadians 🇨🇦 and as such, I consider them allies. Actually, I’ve been thinking about them a lot lately.

The question I keep asking myself is, what does a multipolar world actually look like?

Very few people alive today have much real experience with one. Most of us grew up in either a bipolar world, the Cold War, or a largely US-led one after it.

That’s over.

As the US keeps voluntarily stepping back from its leadership role, the second half of this century is going to get weird fast.

Not necessarily one giant world war tomorrow, but something more jagged like more frequent regional conflicts, more middle powers rearming, more overlapping defense pacts, and more countries trying to hedge against a future they don’t trust the US to manage.

Also, these so-called middle powers aren’t all on the same level. Some, like Canada, have a surplus of engineering talent. Others have nukes. Some will pull ahead in military and economic power. Some will fall behind.

That’s the danger of multipolarity. It can look stable right up until it isn’t.

Europe before World War I is the obvious cautionary tale. The system became so tense and so interconnected that one dude in Sarajevo lit the whole f*cking ammo dump.

It will be interesting to watch Canada’s rise in this new world.