5 ISSN 1712-8056[Print] ISSN 1923-6697[Online] www.cscanada.net www.cscanada.org Canadian Social Science Vol. 14, No. 2, 2018, pp. 5-15 DOI:10.3968/10182 Copyright © Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture Issues, Trends and Challenges in an Emerging Global Power Structure Aituaje Irene Pogoson [a] Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria. *Corresponding author. Received 24 November 2017; accepted 27 January 2018 Published online 26 February 2018 Abstract The reality of the early 21 st century is that the world is in the grip of the transformation of the power structure. China has risen into global reckoning; Russia began to rise from its inertia; North Korea has evolved to a global threat. All have begun to lay claims to a greater role in the international political system. The unipolarism of the post-Soviet era seems to be dissolving before our eyes. These emerging trends raise questions as to; what sort of multipolarism are we talking about? How will the coming multipolar order operate? Will great power be able to work together to uphold order? Will they descend into self centred and destabilizing military and economic competitions? Can the world support multiple world orders, co-existent yet separate? There are no iron-clad answers to these questions. However, current geopolitics does, perhaps, allow for a glimpse into the future. This article aims to contribute to that discourse by making three claims. First, there is a dramatic increase in the number of global actors. Second, the diversity among actors has created opportunities for the emergence of new systems and new partnerships and for old ones to be strengthened and transformed. Lastly, the future multi- polar world will be potentially more unstable than all the other multi-polar periods history has experienced: for the first time in history, the world could become both multi- polar and nuclear. Key words: Polarity; Multipolarity; Power-shifts Pogoson, A. I. (2018). Issues, Trends and Challenges in an Emerging Global Power Structure. Canadian Social Science , 14 (2), 5-15. Available from: http://www.cscanada.net/index.php/css/article/view/10182 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/10182 INTRODUCTION Two phenomenal events, more than any other, shaped our world in the last century. The first is the denotation of the first two weapons of mass destruction on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both in Japan in 1945. The second was the pulling down of the Berlin wall in 1989. The use of the atomic bomb in the theatre of war, after several years of secret research and development, announced the arrival of the United States of America as the most powerful nation in the world, Before then, the United States was just one of the major powers, although one whose entry and contributions to the second world war, helped to save the world from Hitler’s philosophy of superiority of the Aryan Race and his dream of imposing a 1000-year Reich on the world, as well as from Japan’s aggressive imperial adventure in South-East Asia. The atomic bomb also ensured that the Soviet Union did not convert its massive military advantage characterized by a huge military manpower and the largest assembly of tanks in any post war era. The Soviet Union had Western Europe by the jugular and was within its operational capability to occupy the rest of Europe but the reality of atomic bombs in the arsenal of the United S was always a sobering strategic reality. The communist romance of turning the world into one giant proletariat universe was moderated by the harsh prospects of nuclear annihilation. For the first four years of the post second world war era, the world was in turmoil arising from the tensions over the management of the spoil of the war-Germany. Several times during that period, the prospects of war between the erstwhile allies against Germany loomed large, the most obvious being the Berlin blockade of 1949 which was broken by heroic air drops of foods and drugs by the Wester powers. Fortunately, there was no war, instead, the Soviet Union developed its own atomic bomb in 1949 and by so doing, ended the monopoly which the United States had enjoyed for four years. brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by CSCanada.net: E-Journals (Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture,...