Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the international system has been unipolar, centered on the United States. But the rise of China foreshadows a change in the distribution of power. Øystein Tunsjø shows that the international system is moving toward a U.S.-China standoff, bringing us back to bipolarity—a system in which no third power can challenge the top two. The Return of Bipolarity in World Politics surveys the new era of superpowers to argue that the combined effects of the narrowing power gap between China and the United States and the widening power gap between China and any third-ranking power portend a new bipolar system that will differ in crucial ways from that of the last century. Tunsjø expands Kenneth N. Waltz’s structural-realist theory to examine the new bipolarity within the context of geopolitics, which he calls “geostructural realism.” He considers how a new bipolar system will affect balancing and stability in U.S.-China relations, predicting that the new bipolarity will not be as prone to arms races as the previous era’s; that the risk of limited war between the two superpowers is likely to be higher in the coming bipolarity, especially since the two powers are primarily rivals at sea rather than on land; and that the superpowers are likely to be preoccupied with rivalry and conflict in East Asia instead of globally. Tunsjø presents a major challenge to how international relations understands superpowers in the twenty-first century.

rofessor Gilpin uses history, sociology, and economic theory to identify the forces causing change in the world order.

The 2014 crisis in Ukraine sent a tottering U.S.-Russian relationship over a cliff - a dangerous descent into deep mistrust, severed ties, and potential confrontation reminiscent of the Cold War period. In this incisive new analysis, leading expert on Soviet and Russian foreign policy, Robert Legvold, explores in detail this qualitatively new phase in a relationship that has alternated between hope and disappointment for much of the past two decades. Tracing the long and tortured path leading to this critical juncture, he contends that the recent deterioration of Russia-U.S. relations deserves to be understood as a return to cold war with great and lasting consequences. In drawing out the commonalities between the original cold war and the current confrontation, Return to Cold War brings a fresh perspective to what is happening between the two countries, its broader significance beyond the immediate issues of the day, and how political leaders in both countries might adjust their approaches in order, as the author urges, to make this new cold war "as short and shallow as possible."

Since they were pioneered in the 1970s by Robert Keohane and others, the broad range of neoliberal institutionalist theories of international relations have grown in importance. In an increasingly globalized world, the realist and neorealist focus on states, military power, conflict, and anarchy has more and more given way to a recognition of the importance of nonstate actors, nonmilitary forms of power, interdependence, international institutions, and cooperation. Drawing together a group of leading international relations theorists, this book explores the frontiers of new research on the role of such forces in world politics. The topics explored in these chapters include the uneven role of peacekeepers in civil wars, the success of human rights treaties in promoting women's rights, the disproportionate power of developing countries in international environmental policy negotiations, and the prospects for Asian regional cooperation. While all of the chapters demonstrate the empirical and theoretical vitality of liberal and institutionalist theories, they also highlight weaknesses that should drive future research and influence the reform of foreign policy and international organizations. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Vinod Aggarawal, Jonathan Aronson, Elizabeth DeSombre, Page Fortna, Michael Gilligan, Lisa Martin, Timothy McKeown, Ronald Mitchell, Layna Mosley, Beth Simmons, Randall Stone, and Ann Tickner.

Introduction: the guns of August -- Contours of Russian foreign policy -- Bulldogs fighting under the rug: the making of Russian foreign policy -- Resetting expectations: Russia and the United States -- Europe: between integration and confrontation -- Rising China and Russia's Asian vector -- Playing with home field advantage? Russia and its post-Soviet neighbors -- Conclusion: dealing with Russia's foreign policy reawakening.

A decade after the Berlin Wall was torn down and a new international system was born, the nature of that new system is not yet clear. It is a fluid and complex system that remains in evolution. But an evolution toward what? The past can tell us something about what might happen in the future if historical patterns can be discerned and applied to today's world. History shows that the fluidity in today's world has precedents in the early stages of each of the past five international systems. Each of those previous systems had a life cycle: there was a tendency for fluidity and multipolarity to turn into rigidity and bipolarity, with that bipolarity in turn resulting in large scale conflict (or a Cold War) and the demise of the existing international system. Most of the past systems developed before or during the Industrial Age. There are signs that history may be repeated in the Information Age-and it may be moving into a more bipolar and more dangerous stage.

The end of the Cold War and subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union resulted in a new unipolar international system that presented fresh challenges to international relations theory. Since the Enlightenment, scholars have speculated that patterns of cooperation and conflict might be systematically related to the manner in which power is distributed among states. Most of what we know about this relationship, however, is based on European experiences between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, when five or more powerful states dominated international relations, and the latter twentieth century, when two superpowers did so. Building on a highly successful special issue of the leading journal World Politics, this book seeks to determine whether what we think we know about power and patterns of state behavior applies to the current 'unipolar' setting and, if not, how core theoretical propositions about interstate interactions need to be revised.