A Bipolar World

Abstract

Contemporary history tends to exaggerate the influence of recent events — the impact of World War II on Europe’s role in world affairs, for example. Long-term factors — the growing economic and political importance of the United States, Japan, and the Soviet Union, or the demographic patterns that began to reduce Europe’s proportion of the world’s population after 1930 — do not receive the attention given to a recent cataclysmic event such as World War II.

There are on earth today two great peoples, who, from different points of departure seem to be advancing towards the same end. They are the Russians and the Anglo-Americans.

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America