Triangles, Wrecked Angles and Beyond: The Post-Cold War Division of Power

Abstract

The existence of multiple centres of power is not a phenomenon restricted to the post-Cold War state system. This condition has historically been a more normal feature of post-Westphalia international politics than the bipolar organization of states into contending alliance formations. Because of their reverberations throughout the international system, the Northern events of the late 1980s and early 1990s — the transformation of the political map of Eastern Europe, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its successor states’ rejection of socialism, and the termination of the Cold War — nonetheless sharpen the need for continuing assessments of the character of the late-century, and late-millennium, conjuncture.