INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS PROJECT

ON

END OF COLD WAR, RISE OF UNIPOLARISM AND US

HEGEMONY IN WORLD POLITICS
SUBMITTED TO:

Dr. Avinash Samal

Faculty, Political Science.

SUBMITTED BY:

Suhail Bansal
Roll no. 173
SECTION C
SEMESTER V,
B.A. LL.B. (HONS.)

SUBMITTED ON:
16 August, 2016

DECLARATION
I, Suhail Bansal of Semester V, Section C declare that this project submitted to H.N.L.U. Raipur
is an original work done by me under the able guidance of Dr. Avinash Samal, Faculty of
International Relations. The work is a bona fide creation done by me. Due references in terms of
been duly given wherever necessary.

Suhail Bansal
Roll No. 173
Semester V, Sec. C

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I feel highly elated to work on the topic End of Cold War, Rise of Unipolarism and US
Hegemony in World Politics.
The practical realization of this project has obligated the assistance of many persons. I express
my deepest regard and gratitude towards Dr. Avinash Samal, Faculty of International Relations.
His consistent supervision, constant inspiration and invaluable guidance have been of immense
help in understanding and carrying out the nuances of the project report.
I take this opportunity to also thank the University and the Vice Chancellor for providing
extensive database resources in the Library and for the Internet facilities provided by the
University. Some printing errors might have crept in, which are deeply regretted. I would be
grateful to receive comments and suggestions to further improve this project report.

Suhail Bansal
Roll No.-173
Semester-V
Section C

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Declaration

Acknowledgements

ii

Introduction

iii

Objectives

iv

Research Methodology

Period of Multipolarity

Period of Bipolarity

A Unipolar Future

Current US Unipolarism

Protection of Human Rights

Coclusion

References

Introduction
In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, the first of a series of events bringing the period known as the Cold
War to an end. From a state of military multipolarity (1815-1945), the world had progressed to
one of bipolarity (1945-1989), to the current situation of unipolarity. It is difficult to see whether
or not the world has become more secure following the end of the Cold War.

The end of the Cold War changed the appearance of the global system and its political order. The
United States faced an unpredictable phase of hegemony and political autonomy, shaping new
balances within the international community through an uncontested unipolarity. Now,
globalizing dynamics in global economics, new political threats come from unstable contexts in
world politics, economic giants stand from the blurred merging of developing countries
This project aims at focusing on the unipolar dimension of the current global system. The project
further offers a small review of the instruments of United States' hegemony in world politics.
This project tries to show the effects of unipolarity on the main issues of the global community,
and within the international regimes it is founded upon.

OBJECTIVES
The primary objective of this project report is to understand the periods of Multipolarity,
Bipolarity and Unipolarity, the effects of the Cold War between the US and USSR. This study
also aims at understanding the rise of United States as a sole superpower after the end of the
Cold War and its hegemony and dominance over the world politics.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This Research Project is descriptive, analytical and doctrinal in nature. The project deals with the
end of the Cold War, rise of unipolarism and US hegemony in world politics. Accumulation of
the information on the topic includes wide use of secondary sources like e-books, e-articles. The
matter from these sources have been compiled and analyzed to understand the concept from the
grass root level.
Websites, dictionaries and articles have also been referred.
The structure of the project, as instructed by the Faculty of International Relations has been
adhered to and the same has been helpful in giving the project a fine finish off.

A Period of Multipolarity (1815

1945)
A system of multipolarity increases rivalry in world politics, the reason being that many
states of similar strength compete for power and influence. These states are often
uncertain of other states intentions, which increases the probability of military action.
Also, the power balance in this type of system is changing constantly, as a result of
changing alliances.

Multipolarity denotes the fundamental power structure in an international system

dominated by several large powers, and is characterized by antagonism between these.

What we know as the classical era of power balance came as a result of planned big
power politics. The Napoleonic Wars had led the great powers desiring to prevent similar
events taking place in the future. After the defeat of France, the Congress of Vienna
determined that five states should dominate world politics together, namely Great Britain,
Russia, Prussia, France, and Austria-Hungary.

This power-sharing functioned well for 40 years, until other powers came into play and
try to dominate politics. The instability of this system became manifest during the
Crimean War (185356) when Russia invaded the Ottoman Empire and Britain and
France joined forces to counter the Russians. Yet, the hardest blow to peace came with
German power ambitions which ended in the First World War. This marked the end of
Austria-Hungary.

Finally, the Second World War can be described as the coup de grce for the multipolar
system. This became the end of the European golden age. The end of multipolarity meant
that a new challenger was to enter world power politics. Together with the Soviet Union,
the United States was to dominate the global arena for the next half century.

 A Period of Bipolarity (194589)

Bipolarity is used to denote the basic structure in the international system when it is
dominated by two superpowers. This means that other states must ally themselves with
one of the two major powers, which again limits their room to maneuver and thus result
in more stable international politics.

The Cold War is considered as a relatively peaceful period of history, taking into account
the absence of wars between the major powers. The bipolar balance of power was also a
superpower rivalry between the East and the West, where fear and suspicion
characterized the relationship between the two major powers, and confrontation (although
not direct war between the two) was commonplace.

The superpowers supported different sides in conflicts during the Cold War, especially in
Africa and Asia which often were the battlegrounds for rivalry between the two blocks.
The total number of armed conflicts in this period was 115.

The Cold War ended after the Soviet economy had stagnated following their participation
in the arms race with the USA, and also as a result of declining oil prices in the 1980s. A
later attempt to introduce a market economy failed, the power of the communist party
was undermined, East European countries declared independence, the Warsaw Pact
dissolved, and finally the world saw the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. When the Soviet
leader, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned in 1991 it marked the end of the bipolar era in world
politics.

A Unipolar Future (1989

present)

Unipolarity is used to describe the power structure when one superpower dominates
alone. The end of the Cold War meant that the previous decades superpower rivalry now
had ended. There was no longer the traditional East vs. West conflict, at least not the
way it had been earlier in the 20thcentury.

The United States surfaced as the sole dominating power in world politics as there were
no real challengers to their hegemonic position. This allowed greater room for the
superpower to maneuver and to get involved in international issues that not necessarily
coincided with national interest. We can describe this new political situation as being
unipolar.

Has the world become less stable following the end of the Cold War? According to
structural realists unipolarity is unstable because it is progressing toward multipolarity, as
other powers will seek to break the hegemony of the superpower. As Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (1762) so eloquently put it: The strongest is never enough to always be
master.

Even though the superpower can restrain this development, at least in the short run, the
power will eventually be weakened as a consequence of dominating other states. The
USA has as an example, tried to clinch hegemonic power by keeping 100,000 troops
stationed in Asia and Europe. By guaranteeing the safety of its allies, the USA has
subdued the need for security for other states.

This has prevented these states from participating in an arms race. However, the
dominance is costly, and has limited the USAs economic growth. In the longer term this
will decrease U.S. power because other states do not have the same costs.
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We agree that todays unipolar balance of power is robust. At present time no state seems
able to challenge the USA militarily. One of the reasons is that the USA is in a
geographically advantageous situation compared to other countries. Relevant challengers
like China, Japan, India, and Russia hold less favorable strategic positions as they are
amidst more multipolar regions.

Yet, we also agree with Waltz that the USA will become weakened over time due to its
over-commitment. But since the system is built around the power of the United States, it
will continue to be in existence as long as the USA can attend to the worlds security
needs. Unless something unexpected happens, the unipolar balance of power could have a
long lifetime.

The Current US Unipolarism

With the end of the Cold War and the collapse and dissolution of the USSR, the bipolar
international system transformed in unipolarity and the US emerged as the only
superpower. In a unipolar system the power of a state is not balanced and controlled by
the other states, this inequality allows the hegemony of the international system to
influence and shape the rest of the world. After 1989 the US has been considered the
militarily, economically and technologically leading country of the world (Brooks and
Wohlforth), a lonely superpower able to impose its will on another countries
(Huntington, 39) and, in some cases such as the 2003 war to Iraq waged without the
United Nations (UN) Security Council consensus, to act outside the laws of the
international community.

This unbalanced preponderance has been promoted and reinforced by some factors. The
US geographic position assured the security of the country for many years: while other
states for example China, Russia and the European countries are land powers
surrounded by potential enemies, the US is isolated and too far away from its potential
threats. As a result, no country in the last 70 years tried to attack American soil. This
geographical security is strengthened by an unchallengeable military power. According to
latest data of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), in 2011 US
military spending accounted for more than 40 per cent of the world total, followed by
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China with approximately 8 per cent, and Russia, United Kingdom and France with a
percentage between 4 and 3.5 per cent each (Background Paper on Military
Expenditures, 5). US military capabilities assure it a strong sea and air power and allow it
to projects its force globally, enabling it to hit a target everywhere at every time.

Yet the notion of hegemony does not only imply geographical security and military
preponderance, but also influence and cultural hegemony. In Gramscis notion of
hegemony one of the most quoted definitions of the concept the hegemonic ruling
class of a capitalist society has for example the power to influence and persuade the
subordinated social classes to accept and adopt its values. As a great power during the
Cold War, and as a lonely superpower in the last 20 years, the US played a key role in the
architecture of the new world order (Ikenberry). From an economic point of view, the US
laid the foundations of the global liberal economic order long before the unipolar era,
supporting the Bretton Woods system, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade which
was replaced in 1994 by the World Trade Organization, and indirectly controlling some
international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the
World Bank. Nowadays, the US controls around the 17 per cent of the total votes of the
IMF and it is the largest shareholder in the World Bank, leading to the tradition that the
President of the World Bank has always been a US citizen nominated by the US
President, while the President of the IMF has always been a European.

Furthermore, the US tried to shape and protect the world order also politically. During the
Cold War, American power supported anticommunist governments and guerrillas in order
to contrast the spread of the socialist values, supplying for example arms to non-state
groups in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia and Nicaragua through its regional allies
(Mathiak and Lumpe). Likewise, after the USSR collapse the democratic peace theory
with its assertion that two democracies do not go to war each other became the rationale
behind US promotion and support of accountable liberal democracies all over the world
(Gleditsch; Lake; Ikenberry). This unequal distribution of power and the implicit
recognition of the US hegemony resulted in a world characterized by no wars among the
major states and the lowest number of interstate armed conflicts of the last 50 years
(Uppsala Conflict Data Program). Conversely, the US unipolar world has been
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characterized by the highest number of intrastate conflicts, most of these erupted in the
aftermath of the USSR dissolution (Harbom and Wallensteen). Nevertheless, the
intrastate and regional character of these conflicts hardly constituted a potential danger
for US hegemony, or a threat for the polarity and the stability of the world order.

In the last decades, US power was thus challenged only sporadically and using
asymmetric means, as happened the 11th September 2001 during the terrorist attacks to
New York. Yet the lack of respect for the international community rules and the impulse
to use hard power without considering other actors of the G.W. Bush administration
eroded US image as a benign superpower (Reus-Smith). This loss of influence, together
with a slow decline of the hegemon and a rise of new powers, would suggest that US
unipolarity could not last forever.

Dominance of the United States

The foremost feature of the post-Cold War world is the dominance of the United States,
which is what leads many analysts to describe it as a "unipolar" world. Even during the
Cold War years, when American power was rivalled by that of the Soviet Union in an
historically unparalled manner, the United States considered itself as the superior power
and, therefore, the leader of the world. But the urge for a leadership role, the maintenance
of its position as the "number one power", has become much more pronounced after the
collapse of the Soviet Union.

In separate articles in the spring 1995 issue of Foreign Policy, the journal of the Carnagie
Endowment for International Peace, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Senate
majority leader Robert Dole, while presenting their respective visions for American
foreign policy in the wake of the November 1994 Congressional elections, singled out
one common desideratum: "American leadership." Between them, they used the world
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leadership (in one form or another) some 36 times. In its 1992 report, Changing Our
Ways, the Carnegie Endowment National Commission on America and the New World
treats leadership as a kind of noble duty. It says: "Twice before in this century the United
States and our allies triumphed in a global struggle. Twice before we earned the right to
be an arbiter of a post-war world. This is our third chance."3 Former Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger, commenting on the May 1995 summit between President Bill Clinton
and Russian President Boris Yeltsin, lamented that this was a missed opportunity for
American leadership. Unless America leads, he added with a note of trepidation, it will be
"marginalized."

Conclusion

A whole range of conflicts erupted in the years following the end of the Cold War. Even
so, in sum there has been a strong decline in the number of armed conflicts since 1992.
The problem of terrorism has not been easy to solve for the USA. Serious terror attacks
are the only form of armed conflicts that have increased in numbers. It is difficult to draw
any real conclusions as to whether or not the world has become more stable after 1989.

The multipolar system was less stable than the bipolar, and resulted in two world wars.
The bipolar era meant more stable international politics due to the dominance of the USA
and the Soviet Union. The transition to todays unipolar power structure has brought
major changes to world politics, with the USA emerging as the sole superpower. The total
number of armed conflicts has decreased, despite the increase in number of terror attacks.
However, it can be argued that the world could again become militarily multipolar, with
China and Russia as possible challengers to U.S. hegemonic dominance.

Although it might be tempting to live in a unipolar system from the US perspective,

globalization has led to a nonpolar international system characterized by numerous
centers with meaningful power . In the globalized contemporary system of nation-states
and in this post-imperial age with an open world market of interwoven economies as well
as international intergovernmental institutions, such as the UN or the NATO, one single
nation cannot claim global political power . The U.S. cannot act as unipolar since it relies
on the consent and participation of allies if it intends to exercise political power beyond
its own borders. Thus its impact into the region is limited to the participation of other
countries as well. The international intergovernmental institutions, such as the UN
Security Council, are in the end the limitations to the US superpower. The loss of
credibility of US foreign policies after the Iraq intervention, the rise of Russias economic
and political power as well as Chinas rising economy are mere factors which challenge
US supremacy.

References

http://www.e-ir.info/2015/09/13/the-impact-of-the-unipolar-moment-on-us-foreign-

policies-in-the-mid-east/
http://www.idsa-india.org/an-sep-2.html
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00064
http://carnegietsinghua.org/publications/?fa=47688
http://post.queensu.ca/~nossalk/papers/hyperpower.htm
http://sites.dartmouth.edu/wwohlforth/files/2013/04/61.1.ikenberry.pdf
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http://www.e-ir.info/2013/06/03/towards-a-multi-polar-international-system-which-

prospects-for-global-peace/
http://politics-themasterscience.blogspot.in/2012/01/unipolarity-bipolarity-

multipolarity.html
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/wohlforthvol24no1.pdf
http://www.popularsocialscience.com/2013/02/05/a-unipolar-world-systems-and-wars-in-

three-different-military-eras/
http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pdfs/StructuralRealism.pdf
http://www3.nccu.edu.tw/~lorenzo/Mastundando.pdf

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