Polarity in International Relations - Unipolarity - American Primacy

American Primacy

The United States is the only country in the early twenty-first century that possesses the ability to project military power on a global scale, providing it full command of the global commons. With no viable challenger on the horizon in the short term, the current distribution of power overwhelmingly favors the United States, making the world order it set out to construct in 1945 more robust. The question that remains for international relations theorists is how long this “unipolar moment” will last. Sean M. Lynn-Jones, editor of International Security, provides a summary of arguments put forth by Kenneth Waltz, John Ikenberry, and Barry Posner.

Read more about this topic:  Polarity In International Relations, Unipolarity

Famous quotes containing the words american and/or primacy:

    It is in the nature of allegory, as opposed to symbolism, to beg the question of absolute reality. The allegorist avails himself of a formal correspondence between “ideas” and “things,” both of which he assumes as given; he need not inquire whether either sphere is “real” or whether, in the final analysis, reality consists in their interaction.
    Charles, Jr. Feidelson, U.S. educator, critic. Symbolism and American Literature, ch. 1, University of Chicago Press (1953)

    The primacy of the word, basis of the human psyche, that has in our age been used for mind-bending persuasion and brain-washing pulp, disgraced by Goebbels and debased by advertising copy, remains a force for freedom that flies out between all bars.
    Nadine Gordimer (b. 1923)