A Newer World Order - The Return to a Multipolar Era
Abstract
In 1991 the international system's Bipolar Era and its balance of terror standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union ended peacefully and not as the result of a cataclysmic war. The Soviets and their allies eventually succumbed to the economic burdens of competing in an arms race with the West for nuclear superiority. When the dust cleared the Soviet Union disintegrated into sixteen independent nations and the iron curtain over Eastern Europe disappeared. For the last fifteen years the United States has dominated a new world order as a unipolar power. This research paper will provide a history of the international system and will chronicle its evolution over the last 200 years to include the multipolar bipolar and unipolar eras. It will examine the dynamics and permanence of today's unipolar international system. Finally this study will examine four distinct foreign policy (grand) strategies that the US could choose to implement (isolationism liberal internationalism realism and democratic globalism) and will further consider how that decision might affect US primacy on the world stage and help create a Newer (multipolar) World Order.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 03, 2006
- Accession Number
- ADA449662
Entities
People
- Robert L. Deyeso Jr.
Organizations
- United States Army War College