I didn't dream up the idea of multipolar world, and in a way it represents an ideal more than an inevitability (the "utopian" interpretion you point out) because it's an advantageous power structure. Individual players have less power, and the need to keep an eye open in multiple directions reduces the intensity of the focus on one foe. There's a corrective feature built in, where if two of the players start to focus too much on each other, the others will see an opportunity to take advantage of the distraction. A multipolar world punishes the sort of obsession that sustained the (amusingly-named) bipolar world of the Cold War.

However, it's an unstable structure with a tendency to reduce itself to a bipolar configuration as powers drop out or are subsumed into other powers. Bipolar structures can be locked into stability for decades (Cold War again), but there's a greater risk of catastrophic failure bringing down the whole edifice.

I give the balance of the points to multipolar because of decentralization, but you're right, we can expect more entertaingly chaotic politics from that kind of arrangement.

This being the fourth paragraph, I realize that I just devoted four paragraphs to paraphrasing what you said in four paragraphs, when all I needed to say was "yep ditto". I always did tend to run on...sorry about that.