Bipolarity, multipolarity, and the future

Richard N. RoSeCranCe is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. A leading student of international systems and the dynamics that sustain and transform them, he has authored Action and Reaction in World Politics (1963) and Defense of the Realm: British Strategy in the Nuclear Epoch (1967), as well as edited The Dispersion of Nuclear Weapons (1966). In this selection Professor Rosecrance traces a structure of the global international system that falls midway between the contrasting structures identified in the two previous selections. His invigorating analysis should press the reader to reassess again the prevailing structure and stability of world politics in the nuclear age. [Reprinted from The Journal of Conflict Resolution, X (1966) 314-27, by permission of the author and the publisher. Copyright 1966 by the University of Michigan.]