Make The Unipolar World Order Great Again

Russia | MEMRI Daily Brief No. 864

Defining America First

The deep divisions within the conservative camp stem directly from the absence of a clear definition of “America First.” Yet it should mean one thing, unmistakably: the United States confidently leading the world order. For this reason, “America First” should imply strengthening the unipolar world order shaped after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In the 90s, American political thinker Charles Krauthammer spoke of the “unipolar moment,”[1] as he was not sure whether it would be permanent or not. In fact, according to anti-liberal Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, the unipolar system began to erode with the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center by Islamic terrorists and with the rise to power of Russian President Vladimir Putin.[2] Furthermore, progressive liberalism began to erode the West from within. Progressive liberalism, or woke culture, has also been supported and promoted in Ivy League schools by China and Qatar with the main goal of bringing about the collapse of the U.S.-led unipolar world order.[3]

However, in the wake of MAGA’s electoral victory, we now stand at a historic crossroads: one path locks in a permanent American-led unipolar order for centuries to come; the other yields the stage to a multipolar world, in which the United States will be just one of many geopolitical “poles” and will lose its global leadership. This decision will define not only our generation but the trajectory of Western civilization itself.

The Choice: Unipolarity or Decline

“America First” should mean choosing a unipolar world order. Otherwise, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and the Muslim Brotherhood – all advocates of multipolarity – will be free to build their own “poles” to challenge and ultimately destroy the West. Accepting multipolarity would mean that, by 2030, China’s navy will outnumber ours,[4] Iran’s axis will stretch from Caracas to Beirut, and the U.S. dollar will no longer be the only global reserve currency – unless we choose to cement our American dominance now. Hesitation will be interpreted as weakness by our adversaries.

The Collective West: America’s Force Multiplier

Yet a lasting U.S.-led unipolar order cannot be built by America alone; it needs the Collective West – a tight alliance of nations that voluntarily uphold Washington’s leadership because they share the same ideological foundations. These are not mere partners of convenience but nations committed to democratic governance, free markets, and the rule of law. Within this framework, Israel is a cornerstone ally: it prevents new power centers (e.g., Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood) from rising in the Middle East and dismembering the U.S.-led order. The emergence of such poles would not only endanger U.S. hegemony in the broader Middle East but also threaten it at home, as elements of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States would be emboldened to defy the West from within. Similarly, Taiwan and the Philippines stand as full members of the Collective West, pushing back against China’s drive to build a rival pole to Washington.

The Collective West, supported by Washington, enables the United States to avoid putting boots on the ground while still directly safeguarding American supremacy and unipolarity. In this way, the United States can maintain global dominance by subsidizing friendly nations to do the heavy lifting, rather than bearing all the human costs directly.

Choosing Allies Wisely

To preserve this force multiplier, the U.S. must choose its allies wisely and carefully. Washington cannot go hand in hand with countries that quietly support anti-U.S. poles. Qatar exemplifies this peril: while hosting the CENTCOM base, it actively promotes a multipolar order that undermines American primacy. In fact, Qatar’s patronage of the Muslim Brotherhood – funding its networks from Egypt to U.S. campuses – fuels an Islamist pole aligned with multipolar challengers like Iran.

Furthermore, Turkey (a NATO member) under the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is simultaneously pursuing two agendas that challenge the U.S.-led order. It is promoting the Muslim Brotherhood, whose ultimate goal is establishing a caliphate, and advancing the pan-Turkic project of “Great Turan” – a vision of uniting Turkic peoples from Turkey through Central Asia.[5] Both initiatives would create poles of power directly opposing American unipolarity and Western values.

Embracing such duplicitous partners risks subsidizing our own decline.

Ukraine: Containing Russia’s Multipolar Ambitions

The war in Ukraine exemplifies the collision between the unipolar order and Russia’s determined push toward multipolarity. Yet this confrontation was avoidable. The West squandered opportunities to integrate Russia into the Euro-Atlantic framework after the Cold War, treating Moscow as a defeated adversary rather than a potential partner. This strategic blunder contributed to move Russia away from the West. As Russian intellectual Fyodor Lukyanov explains, “multipolarity” emerged in the mid-1990s as a direct response to Western triumphalism.[6] Today, Renowned Russian academic Sergei Karaganov urges Russia to permanently abandon Europe and turn fully toward Asia.[7]

America’s goal cannot be reversing Russia’s turn eastward. It is too late. However, now, the objective must be preventing Russia from consolidating as a pole capable of challenging U.S. supremacy. As multipolarity on the ground remains more aspiration than reality, Washington’s strategic imperative is to contain Russia’s ability to project power while weakening its partnerships with China and Iran.

By supporting Ukraine, the United States demonstrated that challenging unipolarity carries prohibitive costs. Yet, the war in Ukraine must end, but not through a settlement that validates multipolarity. The United States should pursue mediation – but only from a position of strength that preserves the unipolar framework. This means guaranteeing Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity while potentially accepting temporary Russian occupation of currently held territories as a frozen conflict – similar to what Russia imposed on Georgia, but this time contained rather than enabling expansion. Ukraine must receive concrete security guarantees, ensuring it remains outside Russian domination even without formal NATO membership. Most critically, sanctions that keep Russia economically weakened and unable to rebuild its military capacity must remain in place. The West’s failure to integrate Russia in the 1990s was a strategic error, but allowing Russia to emerge from the war in Ukraine strengthened and validated would be catastrophic.

This Is Not Neoconservatism

This vision of U.S.-led unipolarity should not be confused with neoconservative ideology. Unlike neoconservatism’s focus on transforming foreign societies through direct military intervention, this framework advocates strategic primacy through burden-sharing with allies. As mentioned, the United States will not put boots on the ground; instead, the Collective West – supported economically and politically by Washington – will handle the military burden of preventing rival power centers from emerging. This arrangement works because these hostile poles (China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, the Muslim Brotherhood) threaten not only American hegemony but the very existence of Collective West nations themselves, since it is built on the fact that confronting these threats is essential to their own survival. The goal is to prevent the emergence of rival power centers that could challenge U.S. dominance by empowering partners to advance American interests.

Supporting allies like the Philippines, Taiwan, and Israel is framed as protecting tangible American interests – dollar hegemony, trade routes, and the prevention of hostile poles – and the survival of the Collective West nations facing existential threats on their borders.

Weakening Rivals, Not Exporting Democracy

Pursuing a U.S.-led unipolar order does not mean exporting democracy through regime change or nation-building. The goal is not to transform adversaries into democracies, but to systematically erode their political power and influence on the global stage, preventing them from consolidating into true poles capable of challenging the West.

In fact, even if some analysts claim that a multipolar world already exists, the reality is that potential rival poles – such as Russia or Iran – are too weak to genuinely challenge American dominance especially if we endorse the goals of unipolarity now.

Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin proclaimed, “We have lost the West, but we have discovered ‘the rest'”[8] – referring to the Global South. Hence, the United States must ensure that “the rest” remains firmly within Western influence rather than falling into the orbit of rival powers. This requires a two-pronged approach: American soft power – cultural influence, economic partnerships, and strategic diplomacy – combined with the hard power of Collective West allies who bear the military burden of containing hostile forces.

In Africa, for instance, U.S. direct investment in infrastructure and trade partnerships offers far greater strategic returns than the failed foreign aid model, which has only bred dependency and resentment.

Once rival poles are weakened and their influence curtailed, populations within these regions will face a choice: Align with the prosperous, stable Collective West or remain isolated under authoritarian regimes. Democracy, if it comes, must emerge organically from these societies – not through American military intervention, but through the appeal of Western success and the stark contrast with weakened authoritarian alternatives.

Conservative Values, Not Ideological Imperialism

In this context, the conservative movement should champion the values outlined by conservative commentator John O’Sullivan: a majoritarian democracy resting on constitutional guarantees of free speech, free association, free media, and other liberties needed to ensure that debate is real and elections are fair. These principles define what the Collective West stands for and why it merits defense – not as a universal blueprint to be imposed everywhere, but as the foundation of our own strength and cohesion.

This approach fundamentally differs from Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History” vision,[9] which predicted liberal democracy’s inevitable global triumph. We are not pursuing universal democratization; rather, we seek to erode the power of adversaries threatening American supremacy while maintaining the ideological clarity that distinguishes the Collective West from authoritarian competitors. The values O’Sullivan identifies – free debate, constitutional protections, genuine electoral competition – are what make Western societies resilient, innovative, and capable of generating the economic and military power necessary to sustain unipolarity.[10]

Strategic Investment Over Multipolarity

Indeed, maintaining the unipolar order requires financial commitments to the Collective West – such as bailing out Argentina – and military aid to Taiwan and Israel. These transfers are vital as they guarantee U.S. supremacy in the world order. They are not charity but investments in American power, ensuring that the Collective West remain stable, powerful, and capable to protect our interests.

Some may argue that the funds committed to maintaining American primacy should be invested domestically instead. However, history demonstrates that retreating from global leadership does not lead to prosperity but rather to economic decline. During the 1920s and 1930s, the U.S. tried to stay isolated from world politics and trade to avoid trouble, but that strategy backfired. When global trade and finance fell apart, it triggered the Great Depression, which wrecked the lives of American workers and farmers. In contrast, after World War II, the Marshall Plan invested heavily in rebuilding Europe – despite critics who called it wasteful foreign spending. Whether or not the Marshall Plan was solely responsible for Europe’s reconstruction remains debatable, but what is undeniable is that it created enormous export markets for American goods and triggered the unprecedented economic boom of the 1950s-60s.[11] The lesson is unmistakable: American economic strength requires American global leadership.

Succumbing to multipolarity would instead shrink the dollar’s share of global reserves, drive up U.S. borrowing costs, and strip power from American sanctions – making the United States poorer and less influential. The economic consequences alone would be staggering, affecting everything from mortgage rates to the price of imports.

Tariffs And Unipolarity

Trump’s use of tariffs, even against U.S. allies, may appear to contradict the logic of maintaining a U.S.-led unipolar order through the Collective West. However, these tariffs can be understood as a recalibration tool rather than a rejection of alliances. By pressuring allies to contribute more fairly to collective defense (e.g., NATO) and to reduce trade imbalances, tariffs serve as leverage to ensure the sustainability of American leadership. A unipolar order cannot survive if it bankrupts the leading power through one-sided economic arrangements.

Yet this recalibration must be strategically oriented, not indiscriminate. Tariffs should not alienate vital democratic partners like India. Preserving this cooperation is vital for U.S. interests since New Delhi can counter China’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific and prevent the formation of an Islamist pole in South Asia. The U.S. must distinguish between economically wealthy allies like European nations – who can afford to contribute more – and partners from emerging economies like India. Recalibrating the U.S. approach to India to prioritize collaboration over pressure will preserve and enhance the U.S.-India partnership.[12]

The Time To Act

Every year we leave “America First” undefined, our enemies get stronger. It is time for the United States to reclaim the commanding heights of history and Make the Unipolar World Order Great Again.

AUTHOR

Anna Mahjar-Bardicco

Anna Mahjar-Barducci is a MEMRI Senior Research Fellow