Multipolarity, American Exceptionalism, and Re-Reading History

Abstract

The dominant conceptual framework of the 20th Century referred to the “structural” aspects of international politics. Great Powers, Lesser Powers, strategies, resources, influence and leverage — these were the factors that shaped the format of international relations. Strategists thought in terms of the grand chessboard of calculations of political risk and advantage. The first half of the 20th century was dominated by the contest for power among Great Powers. The entire second half of the 20th Century was dominated by the concept of “bipolarism”. The bipolar structure of international relations was characterized to an exceptional degree by two mutually opposed, antagonistic vectors of economic and political relationships. With the disintegration of the communist bloc, the bipolar world was succeeded by a period of sweeping global readjustment. The last decade of the 20th Century came to an end with a shift from bipolarism to a less easily characterized period of “multipolarism” — a world order characterized by many competing, conflicting, compensating and variously arrayed vectors.