Polarity in the Context of U.S.-China Competition: Reassessing Analytical Criteria

How can polarity be used as a pertinent conceptual asset to inform the description of the distribution of military capabilities amongst the most powerful states in the international system today, especially in consideration of U.S.-China competition? Using the military power approach to polarity, this article analyses the literature that emerged in the 2010s to critically examine this concept. In order to enhance the analytical value of polarity and propose verifiable indicators of it, this study draws on Thompson’s lead-sector model as well as Posen’s and Lee and Thompson’s research on the military foundations of polarity. When doing so, we distinguish latent enabling capabilities (as a secondary dimension of polarity) and the actual military power that primarily characterises polarity as a label. When following this operationalisation of polarity, we show that the international system is still unipolar because the U.S. has unmatched global power projection capabilities and first-rate economic and technological might to sustain its military forces. In other words, the current distribution of military capabilities in the system reflects that the contemporary international system is still U.S.-led and unipolar and that China’s rise is still too confined by regional dynamics to constitute a preface of a military-hegemonic rivalry at a global level.