Unipolarity and Its Consequences - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 87

across the global system—a reassessment by both the leading state and subordinate states.
The overall impact of unipolarity is to shift the mix of strategies. During the bipolar Cold War
era, the United States pursued both logics of order—rule-based and hub-and-spoke. Under
conditions of unipolarity, the hub-and-spoke logic of order has gained greater prominence.
In the absence of a common threat—such as was manifest during the Cold War—the Un-
ited States has incentives to negotiate bilateral bargains on security with countries, creating
a wider hierarchical hub-and-spoke system of security protection. At the extreme, this would
amount to a so-called East Asianization of world politics. The pattern of America's relations
with East Asia would be generalized across the globe.
Fourth, I argue, nonetheless, that the unipolar state still has incentives to operate in a one-
world system of rules and bargained institutions. The overall character of the order hinges on
several key variables—time horizon, legitimacy, and the ability to establish credible commit-
ment and restraint. As a unipolar state, the United States is not destined to completely aban-
don rule-based order. This is true if only because the alternatives are ultimately unsustain-
able. An imperial system of American rule—even the hub-and-spoke version that holds sway
in East Asia—is costly, fraught with contradictions, and premised on unrealistic assumptions
about future American power advantages. There are still an array of incentives and impulses
that will persuade the United States to try to organize unipolarity around rules and institu-
tions. The United States will want to renegotiate rules and institutions in some global areas,
but it ultimately will also want to wield its power legitimately in a world of rules and institu-
tions.
Finally, based on these considerations, I argue that the global system should retain polit-
ical characteristics of unipolarity even as the distribution of material capabilities shift away
from the United States. A relative decline in American power disparities will not inevitably
lead to the formation of new poles or a multipolar balance of power system. The fact that Ch-
ina has taken steps to join this order is evidence of the way in which the logic and character of
liberal order reinforces a one-pole system. The pathway toward a return to multipolarity has
several stops along the way: the diffusion of power, the rise of new poles, and the igniting of
balancing and security competition. The liberal character of the political formation that has
emerged around American unipolarity will influence the return to multipolarity. Even if there
is a diffusion of material capabilities away from the United States, the rise of new global-
scale poles and the return to balancing and security competition is not inevitable.
Unipolarity and the Balance of Power
What are the effects of unipolarity on patterns of cooperation and strategies of rule by the
leading state? The most dramatic possibility is offered by realist theory, namely that weaker