Crowley, page 141-143John Lewis Gaddis, "Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War," 1982The difficulty here, however, is that we havevery limited experience with tripolar systems;indeed,our actual experience is limited to thefunctioningof a single system—the balance ofpower— operatingwithin the multipolar (generally five powers)frameworkthat characterized worldpolitics until World War II, or the bipolararrangementthat has characterized them since. Alternativesystems, such as tripolarity, remain derivedprimarily from multipolar and bipolar theories. The nature of international politicssince 1945 can be viewed in terms of “systemstheory.” Jervis has argued thatan “international system” exists wheninterconnections exist between units inthe system, so that changes in some parts of itproduce changes in other parts as well, and thatthe collective behavior of the system as a wholediffers from the expectations and priorities ofthe individual units that make it up.5 SinceWorld War II, themajor powers assumedthat little couldhappen in the world without eitherenhancing or damaging their own interests: asJervis notes, “almost by definition a great poweris more tightly connected to larger numbers ofother states than is a small power.”6 Further,the collective behavior of states has notcorresponded to their individual expectations,particularly when many of thestatesmen who pieced together the post-wararrangements expected another war to eruptrelatively soon thereafter.7Systems theoryprovides criteria for differentiating betweenstable and unstable political frameworks that mayhelp to explain whysome international systems last longer thanothers. Deutsch and Singerdefined “stability” as “the probability that thesystem retains all of its essentialcharacteristics; that no single nation becomesdominant; that most of its members continue tosurvive; and that large-scale war does not occur.”This system has acapacity for self-regulation; that is, tocounterbalance threatening situations before theyspinout of control. Craig and George establishedthatself-regulating mechanisms are most likely tooperatewhen there is some basicagreement among themajor states ofthe system on the objectives ofit, when the structure of the system accuratelyreflects power distribution in the system, andwhen pre-establishedprocedures exist for resolving differences.

Source: CNN January 12, 2017 14:03 UTC