For ~35 years there has been a lot of talk about the rise of a 'multipolar' world. But what if that is the wrong way to understand what's happening? ➤ The U.S. is retrenching from Eurasia. Yet no single Eurasian power is positioned to fill the vacuum. ➤ China has the econ, industrial & tech weight to challenge U.S. primacy. But China cannot dominate Eurasia because Russia, India and Turkey all have powerful incentives to prevent Beijing from turning its relative strength into regional hegemony. ➤ Russia may be weakened by the Ukraine war, but that makes Moscow more - not less - important to the Eurasian balance. Russia cannot afford to let China exploit its weakened strategic rear while Moscow concentrates on confronting the West. ➤ India has its own China problem. New Delhi cannot match Beijing across the Eurasian landmass, so it is looking outward - deepening relationships across the Pacific to prevent China from dominating India's strategic environs and relieve pressure on the Indian Ocean. ➤Turkey is playing the same game on a different map. Ankara is expanding across the Black Sea, Caucasus, Caspian and Middle East - not because it can dominate Eurasia, but because it can complicate the ambitions of Russia, China and India. ➤This also explains the SCO & BRICS. They may look like the foundations of a post-Western bloc. In reality, they are forums where competing powers coordinate, deconflict & bargain, while preserving max strategic autonomy. ➤ So 'multipolarity' is a misleading description. Multiple centers of power do not necessarily create multiple poles. What is emerging across Eurasia is something messier: a fragmented balance in which China, Russia, India & Turkey simultaneously cooperate, compete & constrain one another. ➤ That fragmentation could actually serve Washington. The U.S. does not necessarily need to dominate Eurasia to shape its order. As it retrenches, it can leverage the rivalries of Eurasia's major powers - shifting burdens to them while ensuring none becomes hegemonic. The goal isn't dominance. It's balance. My latest essay: geopoliticalfutures.com/eura…