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A tale of two worlds: core and periphery in the post-cold war era

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

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As the world moves away from the familiar bipolar cold war era, many international relations theorists have renewed an old debate about which is more stable: a world with two great powers or a world with many great powers. Based on the chief assumptions of structural realism—namely, that the international system is characterized by anarchy and that states are unitary actors seeking to survive in this anarchic system—some security analysts are predicting that a world of several great powers will lead to a return to the shifting alliances and instabilities of the multipolar era that existed prior to World War II. For instance, John Mearsheimer argues that “prediction[s] of peace in a multipolar Europe [are] flawed.” Thomas Christensen and Jack Snyder argue that states in a multipolar world can follow either the pre-World War I or the pre-World War II alliance pattern, thus implying that a third course is improbable. They further assert that “the fundamental, invariant structural feature, international anarchy, generally selects and socializes states to form balancing alignments in order to survive in the face of threats from aggressive competitors.” The realist argument predicts that great powers in a self-help international system will balance one another through arms races and alliance formations.

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Copyright © The IO Foundation 1992

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References

1. We define a “great power” as a country possessing the will and the capability to alter events throughout the international system. For more on the debate about whether a bipolar or multipolar world is more stable, see Waltz, Kenneth N., Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979)Google Scholar; Rosecrance, Richard, “Bipolarity, Multipolarity and the Future,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 10 (09 1966), pp. 314–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Deutsch, Karl and Singer, J. David, ”Multipolar Power Systems and International Stability,” World Politics 16 (04 1964), pp. 390406CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gaddis, John Lewis, “The Long Peace: Elements of Stability in the Postwar International System,” International Security 10 (Spring 1986), pp. 99142CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. See, for example, Christensen, Thomas J. and Snyder, Jack, “Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity,” International Organization 44 (Spring 1990), pp. 137–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Mearsheimer, John J., “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War,” International Security 15 (Summer 1990), pp. 5–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In other articles, Snyder focuses more heavily on domestic institutions and the internal and external factors that influence them. See, for example, Snyder, Jack, “Averting Anarchy in the New Europe,” International Security 14 (Spring 1990), pp. 541CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. Mearsheimer, , “Back to the Future,” p. 8Google Scholar.

4. Christensen, and Snyder, , “Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks,” p. 140Google Scholar.

5. The term “great power society” is derived from the conception of “international society” in Bull's, HedleyThe Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London: Macmillan, 1977), pp. 1214CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In an international society, state interaction is influenced by a set of shared norms about permissible and impermissible behavior. These norms provide a basis for order that is absent in an anarchical environment. Our modification simply stresses that the conditions of an international society outlined by Bull are present within the core states but are not extended throughout the world, as we discuss in detail later in our article.

6. See Fukuyama, Francis, “The End of History?The National Interest 16 (Summer 1989), pp. 318Google Scholar; and Huntington, Samuel, “No Exit: The Errors of Endism,” The National Interest 17 (Fall 1989), pp. 311Google Scholar. See also the responses that follow in these issues of The National Interest.

7. With the disappearance of the “Second World,” the terms “First World” and “Third World” need to be reworked. We find the terms “core” and “periphery” more analytically useful because they denote and demarcate two different kinds of space. First, in economic terms, “core” refers to the industrialized states of Western Europe, North America, and Japan, whereas “periphery” refers to the agriculturally based, industrializing states of the developing world. See Galtung, Johan, “A Structural Theory of Imperialism,” Journal of Peace Research 13 (05 1971), pp. 81117CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wallerstein, Immanuel, “The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 16 (09 1974), pp. 387415CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Second, in reference to power, periphery denotes those states which are “weak” relative to the core of great powers dominating the international system. See Wight, Martin, Power Politics (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1978), pp. 6168Google Scholar. “Middle powers” and “semiperipheral states” also form a useful third set for some analyses, but this grouping is not important to our article.

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10. Waltz recognizes that states are not in fact unitary actors, but he argues that if he can assume so and can create a theory that explains behavior without looking at internal state characteristics, the assumption is justifiable. See Waltz, Kenneth N., “Response to My Critics,” in Keohane, , Neorealism and Its Critics, pp. 338–39Google Scholar. Waltz himself does not assume that all states will act rationally, although formal theories about states as rational actors derive quite logically from his realist approach. See de Mesquita, Bruce Bueno, The War Trap (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; and Snidal, Duncan, “The Game Theory of International Politics,” World Politics 38 (10 1985), pp. 2557CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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12. Waltz, Theory of International Politics.

13. Ibid., pp. 161 ff. For a similar view, see John Lewis Gaddis, “The Long Peace”; and Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future.”

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19. See Craig, Gordon A. and George, Alexander L., Force and Statecraft: Diplomatic Problems of Our Time, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 6061Google Scholar.

20. For excellent discussions about the security dilemma, see Herz, “Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma”; Jervis, Robert, “Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma”; and Snyder, Jack, “Perceptions of the Security Dilemma in 1914,” in Jervis, Robert, Lebow, Richard Ned, and Stein, Janice Gross, eds., Psychology and Deterrence (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), pp. 153–79Google Scholar.

21. See Kennedy, Paul, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987)Google Scholar.

22. As most wars were fought on the ground (some at sea and none in the air), states sought more territory not only for offensive reasons, such as glory and gold, but also for defensive reasons, such as protecting access to resources or simply making their borders more secure. The history of the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries is a history of territorial expansion by the great powers: the Europeans expanding throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America; the Americans establishing colonies and then states across the continent; and the Russians moving toward Siberia and the Pacific.

23. Kennedy, , The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, pp. 7071Google Scholar.

24. See Kissinger, Henry A., A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812–22 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957)Google Scholar; and Gulick, Edward Vose, Europe's Classical Balance of Power (New York: Norton, 1967)Google Scholar.

25. Lauren, Paul Gordon, “Crisis Prevention in Nineteenth-Century Diplomacy,” in George, Alexander L., Managing U.S.-Soviet Rivalry (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1983), pp. 3164Google Scholar.

26. Craig, and George, , Force and Statecraft, p. 24Google Scholar.

27. Nye, Joseph S. Jr, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (New York: Basic Books, 1990), pp. 178 and 189Google Scholar.

28. Hobson, J. A., “The Economic Taproot of Imperialism,” in Boulding, Kenneth E. and Mukerjee, Tapan, eds., Economic Imperialism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), pp. 12Google Scholar.

29. See Boulding, Kenneth E., “Introduction,” in Boulding, and Mukerjee, , Economic Imperialism, pp. ix–xviiiGoogle Scholar. Sometimes the division of territory abroad among the colonial powers was amicable, as it was in Africa under the Treaty of Berlin of 1885, when the term “spheres of influence” was first used. See Thomson, David, Europe Since Napoleon, rev. ed. (New York: Knopf, 1981), pp. 465–66Google Scholar.

30. Kissinger, A World Restored.

31. Britain, France, and Russia fought in the Crimea in 1854–55. Bismarck went to war first with Austria and then with France to unify the German states in 1870–71.

32. On the role of the nature of military force in the outbreak of World War I, see Snyder, Jack, The Ideology of the Offensive (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

33. See Keohane, Robert O., After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 253Google Scholar.

34. See Vernon, Raymond, “Japan, the United States, and the Global Economy,” The Washington Quarterly 13 (Summer 1990), pp. 5768Google Scholar; and Puchala, Donald, “The Pangs of Atlantic Interdependence,” in Belien, H. M., ed., The United States and the European Community: Convergence or Conflict? (The Hague: Nijgh & Van Ditmar Universitair, 1989), pp. 131–46Google Scholar. For an alternative argument examining how states can regulate foreign investment and do have the power to conduct a national economic strategy, see Reich, Simon, “Roads to Follow: Regulating Direct Foreign Investment,” International Organization 43 (Autumn 1989), pp. 543–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35. For recent brief reports, see “The Myth of Economic Sovereignty,” The Economist, 23 June 1990, p. 67; and “Business Without Borders,” U.S. News and World Report, 16 July 1990, pp. 29–31. For a scholarly analysis, see Milner, Helen, “Trading Places: Industries for Free Trade,” World Politics 40 (04 1988), pp. 350–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36. Western leaders have made this point very clear regarding the applications of East European countries to join the European Community. Moreover, the series of binding United Nations resolutions regarding the use of force against Iraq suggest that “defectors” from world norms may face not only exclusion but also military invasion.

37. See Gelman, Harry, Gorbachev and the Future of the Soviet Military Institution (London: Institute for International Strategic Studies, Spring 1991), p. 34Google Scholar.

38. On the problems of defining anarchy and its effects, see Axelrod, Robert and Keohane, Robert O., “Achieving Cooperation Under Anarchy: Strategies and Institutions,” in Oye, Kenneth, ed., Cooperation Under Anarchy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 226–54Google Scholar.

39. For an analysis of how nuclear weapons affect the structure of the international system, see Weber, Steve, “Realism, Detente, and Nuclear Weapons,” International Organization 44 (Winter 1990), pp. 5582CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40. See Krasner, Stephen, ed., International Regimes (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Keohane, , After Hegemony; and Keohane and Nye's discussion of “processes” in Keohane, Robert O. and Nye, Joseph S. Jr, ”Power and Interdependence Revisited,” International Organization 41 (Autumn 1987), pp. 725–53Google Scholar.

41. See Doyle, “Liberalism and World Politics”; Doyle, “Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs”; Bull, , The Anarchical Society, pp. 243–48Google Scholar; Kober, Stanley, “Idealpolitik,” Foreign Policy 79 (Summer 1990), pp. 1318Google Scholar; and Kant, Perpetual Peace.

42. On this issue, see, for example, Keohane, Robert O. and Nye, Joseph S. Jr, “International Interdependence and Integration,” in Greenstein, Fred I. and Polsby, Nelson W., eds., International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1975), pp. 363414Google Scholar.

43. On the distinctions between harmony, cooperation, and discord, see Keohane, , After Hegemony, pp. 5152Google Scholar.

44. Farnsworth, Clyde H., “Business Groups Urge New Farm Trade Talks,” The New York Times, 27 01 1991, p. 6Google Scholar.

45. On domestic constraints, see, for example, George, Alexander L., “Domestic Constraints on Regime Change in U.S. Foreign Policy: The Need for Policy Legitimacy,” in Holsti, Ole R., Silverson, Randolph M., and George, Alexander L., eds., Change in the International System (Boulder, Colo.: Wesrview Press, 1980), pp. 233–62Google Scholar.

46. Although interstate wars in the developing world have been surprisingly fewer than those in Europe before the construction of the balance of nuclear terror there, interstate wars still occur in every region, and preparations for future wars are still rising. For instance, while the developing world accounted for 8 percent of global military expenditures in 1960, it accounted for 20 percent by 1985. See Sivard, Ruth Leger, World Military and Social Expenditures, 1986 (Washington, D.C.: World Priorities, 1986), p. 27Google Scholar.

47. On sovereignty in the Third World, see Jackson, Robert H. and Rosberg, Carl G., “Why Africa's Weak States Persist: The Empirical and the Juridical in Statehood,” World Politics 35 (10 1982), pp. 124CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Krasner, Stephen, Structural Conflict: The Third World Against Global Liberalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985)Google Scholar; and Herbst, Jeffrey, “War and the State in Africa,” International Security 14 (Spring 1990), pp. 117–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48. Even this fundamental assumption is now circumspect. Among the states of the European Community, it is not clear what the “existence of the state” will mean in the years after 1992.

49. This definition is in Gilpin's, RobertWar and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 131CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Similarly, Carr asserted that “every act of the state, in its power aspects, is directed to war.” See Carr, E. H., The Twenty Years Crisis, 1919–1939 (London: Macmillan, 1940), p. 139Google Scholar.

50. See, for example, Alexander, Arthur J., Perestroika and Change in Soviet Weapons Acquisition (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 06 1990), pp. 38Google Scholar; and Aslund, Anders, Gorbachev's Struggle for Economic Reform (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

51. Okimoto, Daniel I., “The Economics of National Defense,” in Okimoto, Daniel I., ed., Japan's Economy: Coping with Change in the International Environment (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1982), pp. 231–83Google Scholar.

52. Regarding economic hegemony, see Keohane, , After Hegemony, pp. 135–81Google Scholar; Gilpin, Robert, The Political Economy of International Relations (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Krasner, Stephen, “State Power and the Structure of International Trade,” World Politics 28 (04 1976), pp. 317–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Regarding military prowess, see Gaddis, John Lewis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

53. Nonmilitary threats such as starvation, flooding, or global warming can also challenge the existence of Third World states, but usually these nonmilitary variables must be translated into military mobilization to destroy a given regime. For a different kind of argument examining the effect of internal and external threats on the behavior of states in the periphery, see David, Steven R., “Explaining Third World Alignment,” World Politics 43 (01 1991), pp. 233–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54. See Herbst, “War and the State in Africa.”

55. Force has been used in other ways in the periphery to provide for greater security, a stronger state, or both. Hanlon described South Africa's policy of destabilizing its neighbors in the early 1980s as a policy designed to ensure South Africa's economic hegemony and to prevent its neighbors from carrying out attacks against its apartheid system. Napper argued that Somalia's 1977 intervention in the Ogaden was designed to add the Somalian population there to the existing Somalian state. See Hanlon, Joseph, Beggar Your Neighbours (London: Catholic Institute for International Relations, 1986)Google Scholar; and Napper, Larry C., “The Ogaden War,” in George, Managing U.S.Soviet Rivalry, pp. 225–53Google Scholar.

56. Some states, such as South Korea, have prospered even while maintaining large military budgets, but these states are the exception rather than the rule in the periphery.

57. Walt, The Origins of Alliances.

58. Kennedy, , The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, p. 153Google Scholar.

59. We are grateful to Peter Katzenstein for reminding us that a leader in civilian technologies is in a position to become a leader in military technologies.

60. For a discussion of what might replace NATO, see Chalmers, Malcolm, “Beyond the Alliance System,” World Policy Journal 7 (Spring 1990), pp. 215–50Google Scholar. For a skeptical view, see ”Organisation of European Unity,” The Economist,14 July 1990, p. 13.

61. See Nye, , “Neorealism and Neoliberalism,” p. 250Google Scholar; and Hinsley, F. H., The Fall and Rise of the Modern International System (Canberra: Australian National University, 1981)Google Scholar.

62. See Steve Weber's concept of “joint custodianship” in Weber, “Realism, Detente, and Nuclear Weapons.”

63. Mearsheimer, , “Back to the Future,” p. 44Google Scholar.

64. Certainly, not all realists focus exclusively on security politics. For a good discussion about the interplay of economics and security politics in realist thought, see Gilpin, Robert, “The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism,” in Keohane, , Neorealism and Its Critics, pp. 301–21Google Scholar.

65. Lags and feedbacks allow regimes to gain some degree of autonomy from the original constellation of power that instituted them. See Krasner, Stephen, “Regimes and the Limits of Realism: Regimes as Autonomous Variables,” in Krasner, , International Regimes, pp. 355–68Google Scholar.

66. One suggestion is the creation of an “international trade organization.” See Bergsten, C. Fred, “The World Economy,” Foreign Affairs 69 (Summer 1990), pp. 96112CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hufbauer, Gary, “Beyond GATT,” Foreign Policy 77 (Winter 19891990), pp. 6476CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Another possible new international regime might be an international environmental regulatory commission.

67. According to Raymond Vernon, “Today, it would be hard to find a country with a greater stake than Japan's in furthering the central objective of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). That objective is to maintain in the world a system of open and stable markets.” See Vernon, , “Japan, the United States, and the Global Economy,” p. 59Google Scholar.

68. For a presentation of the traditional view about the relationship between free trade and polarity, see Gowa, Joanne, “Bipolarity, Multipolarity, and Free Trade,” American Political Science Review 83 (12 1989), pp. 1245–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69. As Shafiqul Islam points out, “In an increasingly interdependent world dominated by market forces, an open economy with two-way capital flows (whether in deficit or surplus) is vulnerable to the actions of foreign and domestic investors alike.” See Islam, Shafiqul, “Capitalism in Conflict,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 69, 19891990, pp. 172–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also “America's Multinational Blues,” The Economist, 21 July 1990, p. 12.

70. The opposite was predicted in Gilpin's, War and Change in World Politics, p. 129Google Scholar.

71. The imbalances have been corrected, in large part, by the devaluation of the dollar. See Kim, Youn-Suk, “Prospects for Japanese-U.S. Trade and Industrial Competition,” Asian Survey 30 (05 1990), pp. 493504CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72. See Farnsworth, Clyde H., “Proposals on Foreign Investment,” The New York Times, 23 July 1990, p. ClGoogle Scholar. In 1980 prices, the United States took in $252 billion in foreign investments between 1980 and 1988. Yet all of the industrial countries, including Japan, experienced higher levels of direct foreign investment during the 1980s than during any previous decade. See “The Myth of Economic Sovereignty,” The Economist, 23 June 1990, p. 67.

73. See Vernon, , “Japan, the United States, and the Global Economy,” p. 58Google Scholar.

74. See Niggle, Christoper J., “Financial Innovation and the Distinction Between Financial and Industrial Capital,” Journal of Economic Issues 20 (06 1986), pp. 375–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75. In direct contradiction to this supposition, Mearsheimer argues that “minor powers in such a [multipolar] system have considerable flexibility regarding military alliances.” See Mearsheimer, , “Back to the Future,” p. 14Google Scholar.

76. Waltz, Kenneth N., “The Myth of National Interdependence,” in Kindleberger, Charles P., ed., The International Corporation (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1970), p. 205Google Scholar.

77. Rosecrance, , The Rise of the Trading State, p. 14Google Scholar.

78. Ibid., pp. 145 ff.

79. Ibid., p. 150.

80. Doyle, “Liberalism and World Politics.”

81. Other arguments are that citizens are slow to vote for a war which they pay for with their lives and that the frequent turnover of leaders makes it more difficult for personal hatreds between rulers to develop. See Doyle, , “Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs,” pp. 211–12 and 225–30Google Scholar.

82. Levy, Jack, “The Causes of War: A Review of Theories and Evidence,” in Tetlock, Philip et al. , eds., Behavior, Society, and Nuclear War, vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 270Google Scholar.

83. Doyle, hints at this point in “Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs,” p. 325Google Scholar.

84. Another means of overcoming the security dilemma is through international integration. See, for example, Deutsch, Karl W., “Security Communities,” in Rosenau, James, ed., International Politics and Foreign Policy(New York: Free Press, 1961), pp. 98105Google Scholar.

85. Cintra, Jose Thiago, Regional Conflicts: Trends in a Period of Transition (London: Institute for International Strategic Studies, Spring 1989), pp. 94108Google Scholar.

86. The narrowing of core state interests in the periphery is paralleled by a consensus about these interests. While the first tendency mitigates against intervention by the great powers, the second heightens the opportunities for such intervention. In sum, the great powers have fewer motives to intervene, but when they do find reason, they will act with less hesitation, as they did in Iraq.

87. One potential new form of continual engagement is through international peacekeeping forces. For a review of possibilities, see the conference papers on United Nations Peace-Keeping” as published in Survey, vol. 32, 0506 1990Google Scholar. A more probable form of engagement is through the creation of a diplomatic peace corps by the core states. Great powers such as the United States could be called upon to provide arbitrators and negotiators for crisis situations. Chester Crocker's role in the Angolan-Namibian peace accords could serve as a model for future engagements.

88. For a discussion of these capabilities, see Ross, Andrew L., “World Order and Third World Arms Production,” in Katz, James Everett, ed., The Implications of Third World Military Industrialization: Sowing the Serpents' Teeth (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1986), pp. 277–92Google Scholar.

89. Analysts have shown that 75 percent of weapons acquired in the Third World ended up in fourteen countries. See Klare, Michael, “Wars in the 1990s: Growing Firepower in the Third World,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 46 (05 1990), pp. 913CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Jones, Rodney and Hildreth, Steven, Modern Weapons and Third World Powers (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

90. On Africa's declining wealth, for example, see World Bank, Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 11 1989)Google Scholar.

91. Koichi, Mera, “Problems in the Aid Program,” Japan Echo 26 (Spring 1989), pp. 1318Google Scholar.

92. Regarding macroeconomic structural adjustment, see Ayres, Robert L., Banking on the Poor: The World Bank and World Poverty (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985)Google Scholar. The Japanese foreign assistance budget includes one of the smallest allocations for grants of any aid-giving country. Rather than giving grants, Japan prefers to give loans that are tied to the export or import of some Japanese product or investment. Under the Reagan administration, the United States also moved toward tying more of its foreign assistance projects to American commercial interests. Even the middle powers that have been renowned for giving aid based on “humane internationalism” are increasingly tying assistance to commercial projects. See Stokke, Olav, ed., Western Middle Powers: The Determinants of the Aid Policies of Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1989Google Scholar.

93. See Krasner, , Structural Conflict; and Keohane, , After Hegemony, p. 253Google Scholar.

94. There are some conservative organizations (such as “Edintsvo” [unity] and the United Workers' Front) that seek to revive the Soviet Union as the center of world socialism, but these organizations are small and have no real power.

95. By isolationist, we do not mean autarkic. On the contrary, both Gorbachev and Yeltsin seek to integrate the Soviet Union and Russia with the rest of the international system as much as possible. What we are emphasizing is that neither the Soviet Union nor Russia is capable of influencing international issues that do not deal directly with the Soviet Union, as was evident during the Gulf War.

96. On this point, see also Rosecrance, , “Bipolarity, Multipolarity and the Future,” pp. 315–16Google Scholar.

97. In “Back to the Future, Part II,” pp. 191–92, Hoffmann, Stanley notes that the bipolar world of Thucydides was certainly not stable. In “The Essential Irrelevance of Nuclear Weapons: Stability in the Postwar World,” International Security 13 (Fall 1988), pp. 5579Google Scholar, John Mueller emphasizes neither bipolarity nor nuclear weapons but instead argues that the major states learned from the destruction of World War II that war is not a viable option.