Superpower

About: Superpower is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2852 publications have been published within this topic receiving 43014 citations.

Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy

Abstract: Most wars are now civil wars. Even though international wars attract enormous global attention, they have become infrequent and brief. Civil wars usually attract less attention, but they have become increasingly common and typically go on for years. This report argues that civil war is now an important issue for development. War retards development, but conversely, development retards war. This double causation gives rise to virtuous and vicious circles. Where development succeeds, countries become progressively safer from violent conflict, making subsequent development easier. Where development fails, countries are at high risk of becoming caught in a conflict trap in which war wrecks the economy and increases the risk of further war. The global incidence of civil war is high because the international community has done little to avert it. Inertia is rooted in two beliefs: that we can safely 'let them fight it out among themselves' and that 'nothing can be done' because civil war is driven by ancestral ethnic and religious hatreds. The purpose of this report is to challenge these beliefs.

Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security

Abstract: Part I. Introduction: Developing a Regional Approach to Global Security: 1. Theories and histories about the structure of contemporary international security 2. Levels: distinguishing the regional from the global 3. Security complexes: a theory of regional security Part II. Asia: 4. South Asia: inching towards internal and external transformation 5. Northeast and southeast Asian security complexes during the Cold War 6. The 1990s and beyond: an emergent east Asian complex Conclusion Part III. The Middle East and Africa: Introduction 7. The Middle East: a perennial conflict formation 8. Sub-saharan Africa: security dynamics in a setting of weak and failed states Conclusions Part IV. The Americas: 9. North America: the sole superpower and its surroundings 10. South America: an under-conflictual anomaly? Conclusion: scenarios for the RSCs of the Americas Part V. The Europes: Introduction: 11. EU-Europe: the European Union and its 'near abroad' 12. The Balkans and Turkey 13. The post-Soviet space: a regional security complex around Russia Conclusion: scenarios for the European supercomplex Part VI. Conclusions: 14. Regions and powers: summing up and looking ahead 15. Reflections on conceptualising international security.

The Stability of a Unipolar World

Abstract: The collapse of the Soviet Union produced the greatest change in world power relationships since World War II. With Moscow’s headlong fall from superpower status, the bipolar structure that had shaped the security policies of the major powers for nearly half a century vanished, and the United States emerged as the sole surviving superpower. Commentators were quick to recognize that a new “unipolar moment” of unprecedented U.S. power had arrived.1 In 1992 the Pentagon drafted a new grand strategy designed to preserve unipolarity by preventing the emergence of a global rival.2 But the draft plan soon ran into controversy, as commentators at home and abroad argued that any effort to preserve unipolarity was quixotic and dangerous.3 Ofacials quickly backed away from the idea and now eschew the language of primacy or predominance, speaking instead of the United States as a “leader” or the “indispensable nation.”4 The rise and sudden demise of an ofacial strategy for preserving primacy lends credence to the widespread belief that unipolarity is dangerous and unstable. While scholars frequently discuss unipolarity, their focus is always on its demise. For neorealists, unipolarity is the least stable of all structures because any great concentration of power threatens other states and causes them to take action to restore a balance.5 Other scholars grant that a large

The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives

Abstract: * Introduction: Superpower Politics * Hegemony of a New Type * The Eurasian Chessboard * The Democratic Bridgehead * The Black Hole * The Eurasian Balkans * The Far Eastern Anchor * Conclusion

The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone

Abstract: From the Publisher: "What role should America play in the world? What key challenges face us in the 21st century, and how should we define our national interests? These questions have been given electrifying new significance in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001." Not since Rome has any nation had so much economic, cultural, and military power, but that power does not allow us to solve global problems like terrorism, environmental degradation, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction without involving other nations. In The Paradox of American Power, Joseph S. Nye Jr. focuses on the rise of these and other new challenges and explains clearly why America must adopt a more cooperative engagement with the rest of the world.