A Tale of Two Worlds: Core and Periphery in the Post-Cold War Era

As the world moves away from the familiar bipolar cold war era, many international relations theorists have renewed an old debate about which is more stable: a world with two great powers or a world with many great powers. Based on the chief assumptions of structural realism - namely, that the international system is characterized by anarchy and that states are unitary actors seeking to survive in this anarchic system - some security analysts are predicting that a world of several great powers will lead to a return to the shifting alliances and instabilities of the multipolar era that existed prior to World War II.