How To Defeat an Empire: The Post-Hegemonic World Is Shaping Up | Dr. Jeff Rich

## Istanbul: Imagining a multipolar future The conversation in Istanbul began from a sober recognition: the unipolar moment is over and the world is scrambling to imagine what comes next. Participants from across the globe sketched competing visions—some aspirational, some defensive—but they converged on a central problem: how to reconcile deepening interdependence with the revival of distinct civilizational claims and sovereign prerogatives. The debate was not simply academic. It was a real-time negotiation of how states, regions, and networks of influence will arrange themselves when American primacy can no longer determine outcomes unilaterally. Practical questions—trade, security, diplomatic norms, institutional legitimacy—are suddenly foregrounded because choices in those arenas will shape whether the emerging order is permissive and cooperative or fractious and competitive. Instead of treating multipolarity as a mere distribution of capabilities, the exchange in Istanbul insisted that multipolarity will be a contest over principles: the meaning of sovereignty, the limits of intervention, and what counts as legitimate global governance. That contest will be fought on many fronts—diplomatic forums, regional institutions, economic corridors, and intellectual narratives. The stakes are enormous; they include whether the international system can manage interdependence without recreating spheres of domination, and whether a revived multilateralism can displace the habit of great-power unilateralism that has characterized recent decades. ## China, India and civilisation states A striking strand of the discussion centered on the idea of "civilization states"—a notion that seeks to place culture, history, and long arcs of continuity at the core of state identity. The concept was invoked to explain why some actors resist universalist blueprints of modernization and why others assert a distinctive path to statecraft and development. But the conversation also made clear that the label is analytically slippery and politically freighted. One reading presented China as a civilization state in a particular way: a polity that grounds legitimacy in a long historical continuity and a narrative that stands apart from Western models of nation-state modernity. Another reading located a similar impulse in Indian intellectual currents, though framed through anti-colonial reclamation rather than claims of uniqueness. Yet the exchange also cautioned against treating civilizations as impermeable monoliths. Civilizations have always been sites of exchange, borrowing, and synthesis—Buddhism’s spread between India and East Asia, or Constantinople’s role as a Eurasian hub, are reminders that cultures evolve through contact as much as through autonomy. The more consequential point was not whether China or India merit the civilization-state label, but how that framing affects diplomacy and rivalry. An insistence on civilizational exceptionalism can harden status competition and complicate dispute management. Conversely, acknowledging distinct civilizational logics can help diplomats craft negotiation strategies that respect differing horizons of meaning. Crucially, the India–China relationship emerged as potentially the most consequential bilateral dynamic in the world—one defined not by monolithic harmony but by managed friction, competitive cooperation, and a shared need to prevent localized tensions from spiraling into systemic confrontation. ## Interdependence, sovereignty and globalism A recurrent paradox surfaced: modern states are simultaneously more sovereign in their self-fashioning and less autonomous because of interdependence. The conversation stressed that while some polities might imagine they could decouple—run their own industrial bases, secure food supplies, and create closed technological ecosystems—the lived reality of supply chains, climate systems, pandemics, and digital networks makes complete autarky impractical. That tension fuels two different political impulses. On one side is the reaction against “globalism”—a critique of distant technocratic decision-making that seems to erode national identities and local control. On the other side is the pragmatic recognition that shared problems—public health, AI governance, climate mitigation—demand cooperative institutions and shared norms. Both impulses are legitimate grievances and governance challenges. The critical task is to navigate between the extremes: to institutionalize cooperation in ways that are transparent, accountable, and respectful of domestic politics, while resisting tendencies that turn global governance into a top-down managerial apparatus detached from popular consent. Examples discussed underscored this balance. The World Health Organization, despite its flaws, is an essential mechanism precisely because pathogens do not respect borders. Equally, the rapid diffusion of advanced AI poses transnational risks—breaches of national health databases or cross-border cyber incidents—that require collective protocols. The conversation argued for a pragmatic multilateralism: not utopian cosmopolitanism, but a toolbox of shared institutions and procedures capable of managing interdependence without swallowing national democracies. ## A new order rooted in the UN Charter One of the more consequential proposals from the forum reframes the post-hegemonic aspiration as a “Charter order” anchored in the United Nations Charter. This is less a nostalgic plea for the postwar liberal international order than an attempt to recover a legal and normative foundation that states of all stripes still recognize in principle. The Charter’s commitment to sovereign equality, territorial integrity, and the peaceful settlement of disputes provides a lingua franca for actors who otherwise disagree about grand strategy or ideology. The argument in favor of the Charter as a basis for a new order was twofold. Practically, it uses an extant framework that has some entrenched institutions, practices, and legitimacy across large swathes of the world—far easier to adapt than to invent an entirely new normative architecture. Politically, invoking the Charter allows non-Western states to contest the present-day monopoly on normative authority by pointing to an ostensibly neutral yardstick: what does adherence to the Charter require, and who is exempt? But the conversation did not shy away from hard truths: the Charter has been selectively honoured, and powerful states have long instrumentalized international institutions to serve narrow strategic aims. If the Charter is to be revitalized as the basis of a more equitable international order, two tasks are critical. First, hold violators accountable, including those that cloak strategic interests in the language of universalism. Second, upgrade mechanisms—dispute resolution, arms control, reconstruction processes—so they can handle the scale and complexity of contemporary crises while remaining responsive to sovereignty concerns. ## BRICS, regional alternatives and contesting unilateralism A recurring practical theme was the proliferation of regional and plurilateral formations—BRICS, regional diplomacy around strategic choke points, and alternatives to Western-dominated financial and security architectures. These groupings are not monolithic blocs; they are laboratories for a post-hegemonic order where states seek to diversify dependencies and create diplomatic buffers against unilateral coercion. The conversation noted two intertwined dynamics. First, emerging powers are building institutional options that reduce reliance on traditional Western-led systems—whether in finance, trade, or energy. Second, regional diplomacy around specific flashpoints (such as the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz) can produce locally tailored arrangements that stabilize volatile environments without defaulting to great-power militarization. Such regionalism can be stabilizing

How To Defeat an Empire: The Post- Hegemonic World Is Shaping Up | Dr. Jeff Rich In Istanbul, historian Jeff Rich joins Pascal to discuss what a peaceful multipolar world could look like. They debate civilisation states, China–India relations, and the tension between sovereignty and global interdependence. Rich argues that states must challenge US unilateralism while strengthening practical cooperation under the UN Charter. The conversation explores BRICS, regional diplomacy around the Strait of Hormuz, Ukraine’s reconstruction, and the limits of military power, ending with reflections on Václav Havel and ordinary people’s capacity to create change. Jeff's Links: The Burning Archive Substack: https://jeffrich.substack.com The Burning Archive YouTube: https://www.youtube. com/channel/UCzmI2CEnbKq0yswTpqdQfyg Neutrality Studies Links: Neutrality Studies Substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com Support Neutrality Studies: https://neutralitystudies.com/donate Neutrality Studies shop: https://neutralitystudies.com/shop Time Stamps 00:00 Istanbul: Imagining a multipolar future 04:10 China, India and civilisation states 13:01 Interdependence, sovereignty and globalism 20:07 A new order rooted in the UN Charter 29:21 BRICS and regional alternatives 34:53 Ukraine: Reconstruction and reconciliation 42:26 Empire and the limits of US power 48:53 Building peace and the power of the powerless #Pascal Welcome back, everybody, to Neutrality Studies, today again with an in-person interview with my friend and colleague, Jeff Rich. Jeff, welcome to the channel. Thank you. And welcome to Istanbul, to both of us. Thank you. We are just finishing the East-West Forum here. Cheers to that. Yes. And Jeff is, of course, the host of The Burning Archive, and you also write a Substack, The Burning Archive. And he's an Australian thinker about, well, the international world. You also look a lot at history, of course. But here in Istanbul, we were thinking actually about the future of the multipolar world. What do you make out of the discussions here and where, especially, like what you heard from our Chinese colleagues and Indian colleagues, like where do you think the, let's say, the intelligentsia of the Global South is imagining the future to be? #Jeff Rich Yeah, well, that's a great question. And my sense is there's still a lot of differing views around how things might develop. But what was great about the East-West Forum was we had people from Iran, from the USA, from Britain, from Russia, from many places around the world, China and India as well, reflecting those sort of different points of view. But one of the interesting, I guess, conflicts in -- 1 of 16 -- the discussion was around this idea of a civilization state, where I think we heard from Zhang Weiwei, who wrote the book China Rising a dozen years or so ago, which advocated the idea of China as a civilization state. And he had quite an interesting dialogue with, I think it was Dr. Jagannath Panda from India, but based at a Swedish university, around both India-China relations, but also the concept of the civilization state, which I think reflected some different perspectives on just what that was. So, yeah. #Pascal Yeah, it was kind of interesting to see that the Chinese colleague and the Indian colleague, that they didn't agree, basically, especially on the question of, like, Chinese sphere of influence and so on. Yes. The Chinese, Professor Tang's point was like, no, China's not building a sphere of influence. The Indian colleague was skeptical about that. But where they did agree upon is that this is a relevant discussion to have, right? Not necessarily what to do just with the Americans, but also how to organize things amongst the Global South. #Jeff Rich And in many ways, I think the India-China relationship—I mean, people talk about the U.S.-China relationship being the most consequential in the world, but the India-China relationship, in many ways, is the most consequential relationship in the world. #Pascal The two largest states on Earth, yeah, they have fought wars and, you know, and there is... #Jeff Rich I'm not going to say bitterness, but there are negative sentiments on both sides as a result of their different development paths, their different political paths, and also the military conflicts, including the one, you know, really quite recently in 2020, but also, I guess, Operation Sindoor two years ago, I think, as well. #Pascal The interesting thing to me, of course, is that if you look at the Chinese-Indian relationship, it's not one of just peace and harmony, not at all. They do have very active border disputes, but they're kind of managed. And I mean, Professor Tang actually made that point: look, the worst thing we do is kind of fist fighting. We don't have deaths among us. So it's kind of conflict, yes, but managed. On the other hand, there is a lot of cooperation. I mean, they're both BRICS states, so the BRICS future is not necessarily a future without conflict, but it seems to be a future that wants to manage its conflicts differently. -- 2 of 16 -- #Jeff Rich Yeah, I think so. Although I've certainly heard many Indian voices express a little bit more scepticism about the Chinese point of view. And, you know, especially China's relationship with Pakistan and its involvement in Operation Sindoor, etc. So, you know, there are definite significant tensions which also come out in, you know, people-to-people ties and trade relationships, you know, various limitations on the trade relationship, tensions around the Dalai Lama and Tibet and so on. All that sort of stuff, which is not unrelated to the border dispute as well. So there are some significant issues there. But also, intellectuals in both countries have expressed different ideas of a civilization state. So Zhang Weiwei's sort of idea was... Well, really, his initial idea was China was the one and only civilization state. It was, you know, it may be a slight exaggeration to say this, but it was a little bit of a Chinese supremacism, I would say. #Pascal I'm not sure. Wasn't that the discussion? He argued that China is a civilization. And actually, one of the questions was, isn't it true that any civilization will always look at itself as the civilization? Well, that's true. #Jeff Rich I think Zhang pushed back a little bit against it. Yeah, he did. He did. And I mean, I wrote a piece on the civilization state earlier in the year on my Substack, including looking at Zhang's book. And the argument is that China has had a continuous civilization for 5,000 years now. That's a big claim because there's a lot of cultural change and political change and social change that's happened over those 5,000 years, but also that it's a unique combination of the oldest continuous civilization in the world, which is an interesting statement, and a modern state. And it's that combination which he originally articulated as the civilization state. Now, there have been other thinkers in India, like J. Sai Deepak, who articulated the idea of India as a civilisation state, but it's more of a, I guess, an anti-colonial sort of statement. It's a sort of reclamation of the Indic civilisation or traditions against, you know, colonial sort of mentalities. So there are these quite different ideas of civilisation state. But I'm a bit sceptical of the idea of the civilisation state in general because at some level it's a status game. It's saying we're something more significant than just a nation. We're a civilisation state. And there's a select few, or it's one, or there's a couple of us. And I ultimately think that's not a great way to take the argument about how to give, you know, good multilateralism and good commentary between lots of different countries in the world. #Pascal -- 3 of 16 -- Yeah, but I think it's a fair question though, right? If we use the expression of a civilization state not necessarily as a status symbol, but as an analytical category to say, like, look, there's just something that's different between, let's say, something like Switzerland and China. It's just something that the societies, the systems probably work differently. And we somehow need to put labels on that in order to be able to differentiate and then analyze them differently. And then my argument will be Switzerland is, of course, only one tiny part of Europe, if we want to call it a civilization of the West, right? What we view in Australia, I would say we're actually part of the same thing, right? Because we are an outgrowth of colonialism, all of us. Whereas on the other end, you have people that didn't do that, like the Chinese, like the Indians. Although you might argue, well, they did it within their own spheres and so on, and they expanded it. Okay, fine, but we need a way to articulate that. And now we live in a world of nation-state systems, 193 at the UN, a couple of ones that are not there but are still around. #Jeff Rich You see, my argument would be that it's a bit like your discussion of the one West, that the first undeclared civilization state was the West. It was the American West. And, you know, there was a heavy emphasis after 1945 on, you know, Western civilization and all that, and Westernization, right? As in the Turkey of Atatürk, Westernizing, modernization, all that sort of thing. The one true path of modernization, that's through Western-style development. And in a way, I see some of the Global South—excuse me—articulation of the civilization state as a sort of a, kind of a response to that claim from the West to be the universal civilization. They're saying, as you say, rightly, we've got this proud cultural tradition that defines how we do statecraft and defines our relationships, people to people, and defines our way of life in many ways differently. And so that is a sort of a valid claim. But I think where it gets less valid is where you get these assertions of continuity and sort of this idea that civilizations are sort of sealed off from each other, because the history of world history of interaction between civilizations is—the interaction and exchange between them has been as important as anything. And that's true of India and China. You know, like Buddhism, why not sort of migrate it from India to China? And it's also true of the West. The West is—we're here in Istanbul, which used to be Constantinople, which was the primary city of Europe for, I don't know, a thousand years—and brings together multiple cultures and civilizations that are often actually not seen as part of the West or of Europe. Like, the Ottoman Empire was part of Europe. Orthodox Christianity was part of Europe, part of the West as well. So the West itself is as much an amalgam of things rather than these sort of set-up, you know, sealed- off cultural categories in the way in which they're described, say, in Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations, where you have the West, the sort of liberal Protestant sort of West, and you have a so- called Orthodox civilizational world, and Ukraine is the cleft state between those now. -- 4 of 16 -- #Pascal Hey, just a very quick note. The best way to support this channel is by signing up for my free Substack. You can also help with a paid subscription there, or you can get some of our new merch on neutralitystudies.com. Links below. See you there. I just wonder if it helps us to kind of wrap our minds around, you know, the groups of people, the societies that, if you cut off the others, they would still be able to live on their own. Like, you know, if you cut off Switzerland from the rest of Europe, it will die. It will just wither away and die. We will literally starve. Yeah. The argument would be like, if you try to do that with China and you cut off everything, the Chinese civilization or the Chinese realm would still be able to run itself because it's self-contained. And the way that Russia is proving that now in this war, and the way that th