'The unipolar moment has given way to a contested and unstable multipolarity.' Critically analyse this statement with reference to US strategic behaviour since 2001.

The "unipolar moment" describes 1991–2001, when the United States faced no peer competitor. Two decades of unilateral war-making since 9/11 eroded that primacy without producing a settled successor order; the statement is therefore largely valid, though power has been redistributed rather than transferred.

How US behaviour since 2001 eroded unipolarity

• Overstretch through regime change: the "global war on terrorism" began against Taliban-run Afghanistan but widened into regime-change wars in Iraq, West Asia and North Africa, mostly outside an explicit UN mandate — costly in legitimacy as much as in resources.
• Weak strategic dividend: the main phase ended with the Taliban's return to Kabul in August 2021 as foreign troops withdrew [1], while terrorism dispersed rather than disappeared — the Sahel now accounts for over half of global terrorism deaths [2].
• Adversary consolidation: NATO's first post-Cold War enlargement (1999) [3] and its sequels hardened Russia's confrontation with the West, while China moved from close economic partner to systemic rival.

Why the new order is "contested", not consolidated

• US capabilities remain unmatched — global force projection, dollar centrality, technological and alliance depth — and it stays militarily engaged in West Asia.
• No challenger offers a comprehensive alternative order; Guterres notes the "post-Cold War period is over" [4], yet the world is "not there yet… in a purgatory of polarity" [5].

Sources of instability

• Multipolarity without inclusive multilateral governance breeds impunity and Security Council paralysis, making UNSC reform urgent [5].
• Middle powers hedge: India's strategic autonomy and multi-alignment (Quad alongside BRICS and SCO) expands choice but adds systemic unpredictability.

Thus unipolarity has clearly ended, yet multipolarity remains an unfinished, contested transition rather than an accomplished structure. Stability will depend less on which power dominates than on rebuilding rules-based, representative institutions. For India, this fluid order rewards a calibrated multi-alignment anchored in reformed multilateralism — the very correction the UN itself now advocates.