Order in a Divided World

Abstract

States, some eight score of them — large and small, powerful and weak, rich and poor, old and new — make up the world of the late twentieth century. Such a multistate system has built-in tendencies toward disorder; indeed, many scholars hold that such a system is inevitably and irremediably disorderly. The sheer number of the units that constitute the system, and the abruptness with which that number has recently been enlarged, may contribute to disorderly tendencies. The diversity of the units may be a problem; small states have notorious difficulties in coexisting with great powers, and differences of religion, culture, economic organization, and political ideology often complicate relationships among states. The special difficulties of managing international relations today may be attributed in considerable measure to rapid decolonization in the period since 1945, which has added as significantly to the disuniformity as to the multiplicity of the states composing the system.