Maintaining Peace, Bipolar Structure
In terms of maintaining peace, which structure (multipolar, bipolar, or unipolar) is safest and why?
Prior to World War I (WWI) and World War II (WWII) the structure of the international system was multipolar. With many great powers influencing international politics, the global community was indeed at stake, during this time. However, in the post-war period, the rising tensions between the United States and Soviet Union altered the structure of international power from multipolarity to bipolarity. With the United States’ defeat of the Soviet Union, the structure of international power has been capitulated to unipolarity. Despite the contemporary serenity of unipolarity, bipolarity is the safest international power structure in terms of maintaining peace.
The distribution of power amongst states is the fundamental nature of the international system. It is deemed that the powerful states “usually shape the international agenda” and the weak states “are often neglected.” During WWI the structure of international power was bestowed into two great alliances: the first, between Russia, France, and the United Kingdom; the second, between Germany, Italy, and Austria. However, in spite of the various causes of WWI, it is fair to conclude that a primary cause was multipolarity. As Kenneth Waltz states, “in multipolar systems friendships and rivalries are often ambiguous.” In a multipolar system the costs of war are dispersed amongst many nations; therefore, the chances of a world war are elevated. Nevertheless, the debate regarding the intentional or unintentional behavior of Germany to fuel WWI is inane in comparison to the “concerns of policymakers about the future structure of the balance of power.” In other words, in a multipolar system the balance of power is imbalanced because of the multiple factors the great powers have to take into consideration. For instance, identifying and combating an aggressor in a multipolar system is obscure due to the contradictory views and misinterpretations of each great power, as illustrated by WWI.
During the late 1930’s and early 1940’s at the height of WWII the structure of international power was multipolarity, similar to WWI. Although, theorist and historians seek to identify the causes of the war, similar to WWI, the dynamics of the disruption of international