By Uri Ludger
There was a thorough security check at the entrance to the University of Nairobi’s Taifa Hall that morning. Pretty standard for an event of this magnitude, I suppose. Still, something about the unforgiving rummaging through every pouch in my backpack ruffled my feathers abit. But then again, this was a head-of-state event — and the Nairobi bureaucrats would be arriving in full force, each one keen to demonstrate their proximity to power.
President Alexander Stubb was ushered onto the stage – in typical Kenyan fashion, his prior achievements and positions held were announced as though they we tales of battle – and began his lecture, titled Geopolitics and the Transformation of Multilateral Order, by quoting, interestingly, Russian revolutionary hero Vladimir Lenin: “I know it is contradictory for someone like me to quote a communist, but I’ll begin my lecture alluding to something Lenin once said, ‘There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.’”
It was a clever way to anchor us in the weight of the current moment — a global inflection point, where the old order is visibly cracking, yet the new one remains indistinct. Stubb cast today’s landscape as a kind of historic rupture: a new 1914, when World War I broke out and set the stage for American hegemony; or a new 1989, when the fall of the Berlin Wall signaled the Cold War’s end and the triumph of Western liberal capitalism.
It’s funny how things change. A few years ago, invoking the term “new world order” would have earned you a raised eyebrow and the label of conspiracy theorist. (Although that’s not by accident; the label of conspiracy theorist itself comes from the very people now actively pushing the term.) Indeed today, it rolls off the tongues of presidents and prime ministers like a polite formality. Stubb himself referenced it more than once during his speech.
As Kenyan conservationist and thinker Mordecai Ogada recently pointed out, language is never neutral, but is a subtle lever of power. “World order” makes imperial ambition sound like moral duty. Order implies hierarchy; it naturalizes the idea that some must sit above others, and in doing so, reserves for them the right to decide how the rest shall live. That same imperialism of language is now at play in the phrase new world order.
Stubb spent much of the lecture distinguishing between multipolarity and multilateralism. Multipolarity, he argued, refers to a world where multiple powers possess enough influence to shape global affairs — a stark contrast to the unipolar world dominated by the U.S over the last 80 years or so. But to him, multipolarity is dangerous: inherently unstable, he said, because heightened competition among big powers leads to friction, and ultimately, to conflict.
To illustrate, he cited one historical example; the Concert of Europe (a time between 1815 and 1914 when Austria, France, Prussia, Russia, and the United Kingdom agreed to to maintain the European balance of power, political boundaries, and spheres of influence), which initially stabilized the continent but later splintered under the weight of nationalism, colonial rivalries, and shifting alliances — precursors to World War I.
This narrative that multipolarity leads to chaos is not incidental. By defining multipolarity as disorderly, Western powers justify managing the global transition on their own terms.
Multilateralism, then, is framed as the antidote — a world where nations work together, guided by shared rules, enforced by institutions like the UN. It sounds noble. It sounds fair. But again, we must ask: who writes these rules? Who enforces them, and when?
Edil AbdiKadir Omar, a student at University of Nairobi Law School, asked the president this very question: “In a world where powerful leaders openly disregard international rulings and seemingly face no consequences,” she asked, “what would you say to young people about international law?”
His answer was diplomatic. Predictable. And yet, her point lingered: “People commit atrocities and get off with a slap on the wrist. Look at Netanyahu. The ICC issued a warrant, but nothing happened.” she explained further when I spoke to her after the lecture.
The problem, she said, isn’t the absence of rules — it’s that the rules don’t apply to everyone.
That’s the architecture of global power. And Kenyans, more than most, know what it feels like to be governed by rules they didn’t write. Decades of IMF and World Bank policies — authored in Washington, lived out in Nairobi — have left a residue.
I’d lost focus at some point — the lecture had ended and President Stubb was now seated on stage going through a Q and A with Nation’s Mariam Bishar — but one line pulled me straight back in. “I have a recommendation,” Stubb said casually. “Don’t cooperate with Russia. That’s just me.”
It was cheeky. It got a few laughs. But it also revealed something deeper: a subtle slip of the mask. For all the talk of rules, openness, and dialogue, there it was — a familiar directive, dressed in offhand charm.
It turns out Stubb is not just a politician but also an author. In his upcoming book The Triangle of Power, he lays out a model for how Western liberal democracies can, quite plainly, maintain its central role—and preserve the liberal world order—by adopting an approach he calls “values-based realism;” combine hard-headed geopolitics with the moral force of “universal” values, and the West can continue to lead — even in a world no longer unipolar.
Stubb’s most provocative claim was that the Global South would decide the next global order. He explained that the West wants to preserve the current system — because they built it. The East wants to revise it — because they were excluded. Historically the South has had to pick between the two on which side to be on, but is now in a position to choose “neither” and instead advocate for its own interest. And that a few “influential swing states,” Kenya included, would tip the balance in either direction.
Prof. Patrick Maluki, E.B.S The chairman of the Foreign Service Academy council praised Stubb’s “tripolar” model, likening it to an African three-legged stool. He echoed President Ruto’s slogan in support of this position: “We are not facing East or West — we are facing forward.” A clever phrase. But forward to where? “Toward development,” he said. “Toward friendship with China, the U.S., Germany.”
Kenya’s recent foreign policy posture suggests agreement with this outlook — a carefully curated neutrality, projecting a nation that won’t be pulled into old binaries. But neutrality can be a seduction. As some countries are invited to sit at the table of global power, they risk mistaking proximity for influence. Kenya must be vigilant not to become a proxy — a polite participant in someone else’s vision of order, granted just enough visibility to legitimize decisions made elsewhere.
The atmosphere that day was thick with ceremony but strangely thin on national pride. When the Kenyan anthem played, nobody sang it. No assertion of place.
I scanned the room. I’d hoped to sit near the front, but those seats were long gone — diplomats, protocol officers, university staff. A handful of Finns — I assumed NGO staff or part of the delegation — kept quietly to themselves. Before the lecture began, the room buzzed with that familiar mix of self-importance and fraternity — men in oversized suits and swollen egos, each angling for the “best seat.”
The event ended, as these things do, with polite applause and careful optimism. But I felt uneasy. This wasn’t dialogue. It was choreography. A performance of openness, with Kenya cast in a supporting role — praised for maturity, courted for allegiance, reminded — gently — where leadership still resides.
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