How to Hold the Center in a Multipolar World

Toward a Coherent Realism: India, Nigeria, and the Strategic Stakes of Civilizational Alignment

Photo by Sylwia Bartyzel on Unsplash

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And we must pierce the magical thinking that dominates the moribund liberal center's capacity for strategic thinking and moral imagination. What we face isn't just a constitutional crisis. This is a civilizational emergency.

A magical thinking dominates the moribund liberal center's capacity for strategic thinking and moral imagination—a belief that procedural norms, polite disagreement, and technocratic solutions will somehow prevail against reactionary forces that seek not to govern within our system but to dismantle it entirely to erect power structures they control.

So who are the great powers that liberals need to talk to now? And how ought we talk to them?

Take India. Modi is not a liberal. But he is a civilizational actor—which makes him legible in ways that many Western technocrats aren't. He is a strategic narcissist who wants to anchor a postcolonial future that vindicates India's mythic past. That is the lever: prestige, myth, and long-horizon glory. Not morality—but narrative. If the West is to survive the interregnum, it must offer India a stake in civilizational coherence rather than transactional containment. India must see the United States as a partner in its myth, from Hollywood to Bollywood.

To survive, the West must rediscover itself not as a geography or alliance—but as a myth worthy of loyalty, shared across time zones and traditions.

The liberal technocratic approach—lecturing India about democratic values while seeking its markets—has failed spectacularly. It misunderstands what drives Modi and the Indian project. They do not seek Western approval; they seek vindication of India's rightful place in world history. Our engagement must inspire glory, not bury partners with NGO reports and scolding press releases.

Equally important is Nigeria—understated strategic ally—which may be key to America's strength in the multi-polar world. Nigeria will be the third-largest country in the world by 2050. Lagos is on pace to become the largest urban economy on the planet. The Nigerian diaspora in the U.S.—especially in Atlanta—is one of the most educated, aspirational, and entrepreneurial diasporas in American history. Atlanta isn't just a cultural beacon. It's an unacknowledged diplomatic hub for the future of Afro-Atlantic cooperation. The lines between Lagos, Atlanta, and Washington must be cultivated now.

Yet, the liberal center has completely failed to grasp Nigeria's significance, trapped in either paternalistic development frameworks or total neglect. While China builds infrastructure and cultivates relationships across Africa, America's foreign policy establishment remains fixated on traditional centers of power. This blindness isn't just a strategic error—it's a moral failure to recognize where humanity's future is taking shape.

21st-century geocultural realism is not about transactional diplomacy. It's about mythological anchoring, and shared meaning and coherence across civilizations.

China has speed, surveillance, and systems. Russia has disruption and grievance. The U.S. still has institutions—but is eating itself from within. The real battlefield is narrative + alliances + economic gravity. And the rebel elites—those who still believe in the Enlightenment project as a living inheritance—must begin forming real counter-networks of political imagination and coherent legitimacy. That means not demanding purity from partners, but offering alignment without surrender.

This is the chessboard we are playing with. And coherence must be our move.

Some of the more informed among you may detect a shift—that I am advocating for a realpolitik strategy that involves moral compromise. And you would not be wrong to raise this concern. You may think this incoherent with my disagreements with men like David Sacks and John Mearsheimer, but this is where I would suggest these men have glaring reducios at the center of their moral field and sense of Great Power Politics. Realpolitik, fully engaged, exists across all layers of international relations. All the way down to culture.

The difference is this: realpolitik without moral anchoring becomes mere cynicism—a cold calculation of power that ultimately serves no purpose beyond power itself. What Sacks and Mearsheimer miss is that strategic engagement must serve civilizational coherence, not just national interest narrowly defined. Their approach strips away the moral dimension entirely, leaving only naked power calculations that ultimately cannot sustain the order they claim to defend. True realpolitik recognizes that cultural and moral narratives are themselves strategic assets—not just inconvenient constraints to be ignored. Hollywood and Bollywood both tell love stories. We should be telling one together.

The liberal center's failure of imagination has left us vulnerable to forces that understand power at a deeper level. While we debate policy papers and procedural norms, our adversaries are reshaping the foundations of global order. They understand that meaning and narrative drive human action more powerfully than economic incentives or legal frameworks.

To mount an effective defense of liberal civilization requires abandoning liberal naivety. We must operate with the moral seriousness and strategic clarity that this civilizational emergency demands. That means forming alliances across shared interests rather than dogmatic alignment of values. It means offering partners like India and Nigeria a stake in a world order that respects their civilizational ambitions while maintaining shared principles of human dignity.

The center must be held—not because it is easy, but because it is ours to hold. But that center cannot be defined by procedural norms alone. It must be anchored in a compelling vision of civilizational coherence that can stand against the forces of chaos and control now arrayed against us.