The current era has certainly changed from the Cold War in the sense not only that the United States is the most powerful state in the international system but also that there is no credible challenger to its preeminence after the demise of the Soviet Union. Therefore, describing the current distribution of power as unipolar is, on the surface, not terribly problematic.9 However, every new arrangement in terms of power distribution among the major powers does not lead states automatically to discard the patterns of behaviour that existed before the power shift. Furthermore, unlike earlier major changes in the distribution of power in the international system, for example in the aftermath of the two world wars in the twentieth century, the current redistribution of power did not result from a systemic conflict. The relatively peaceful transition from bipolarity to unipolarity has, therefore, not resulted in major disruptions in patterns of state behaviour, in already existing alliance relationships, or in the rules and norms governing the system. Consequently, unlike in the aftermath of the two world wars, when new power relations and the rules governing them had to be established afresh, the transition to US THE UNIPOLAR CONCERT41 unipolarity did not mean that the relationships and processes that had been developed during the 50 years before that suddenly disappeared. -Page 40, The unipolar concert: Unipolarity and multilateralism in the age of globalization by Mohammed Ayoob and Matthew Zierler
Posted on: Fri, 20 Jun 2014 04:47:00 +0000
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