Washington is no longer the only dominant force on the international stage, former US Army Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley has said The unipolar era when the US was the only dominant superpower has given way to a multipolar world, retired US General Mark Milley admitted on Tuesday at a meeting of the American Bankers Association in New York.  

The former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, who served under both presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, said that there were now three superpowers in the world: the US, Russia and China.  

“During the Cold War there were two [superpowers], immediately following the Cold War there was a unipolar moment, so for a short time the US clearly was preeminent and the only real superpower out there,” according to Milley.  

“But today, it is clear that we are in a multipolar world,” Milley said.  

He also stated that US leaders should pay especially close attention to Beijing, given China’s rate of growth and ambitions to develop militarily. “They are probably the one country who has the legs and the distance that could literally challenge the US position on a global scale,” the retired general said.  

Milley added that Russia also remains an “acute threat,” given that it has “a lot of nuclear weapons” and is engaged in “the biggest ground war in Europe since 1945.”  

He believes the world has become “a lot more complicated” and stressed that in light of these challenges the US must make efforts to maintain the so-called “rules-based order.” If this order were allowed to fail, Milley warned, the world could be thrown back to a mentality where “only the strong survive.”  Meanwhile, Russia has repeatedly accused the US of exploiting the so-called “rules-based order” to maintain its global hegemony by enforcing its rules on other countries while never following them itself.  

Russian President Vladimir Putin has also repeatedly pointed out that none of the rules in the so-called “rules-based order” have ever been clearly defined or approved by anyone, and has accused the West of constantly changing them “depending on the current political situation.” 

Moscow has instead been promoting a world order based on international law in which countries treat each other on the basis of mutual respect and mutual benefit.   

Speaking at the BRICS Summit in Kazan earlier this month, Putin called for the creation of “a more democratic, inclusive and multipolar world order based on international law and the UN Charter.”