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ments and on the more general orientation of the state to the character of international order
under conditions of unipolarity.
Finally, another factor that will shape the shift in incentives either toward or away from
commitments to rules and institutions is whether those commitments in fact establish credible
constraints and limits on the exercise of unipolar power. The institutional bargain—whether
negotiated under conditions of Cold War bipolarity or unipolarity—hinges on the credibility
of the restraints and commitments that are embedded in the agreements. A state will not be
willing to restrict its own policy autonomy if it is not reasonably confident that the agree-
ment will have some shaping and constraining effect on the other state. During the Cold War,
the credibility of the American restraints and commitments were backed up by the bipolar
structure of the system itself—and the incentives that the United States had to maintain the
anti-Soviet coalition. The question that weaker states must ask when the power structure is
unipolar is: are institutional restraints on the exercise of arbitrary and indiscriminate power
still credible?
Conclusion
Unipolarity is a distinctive distribution of power that the world has not seen until recently.
It is an international system in which material capabilities are highly concentrated. A single
state stands above other states, commanding the full range of power resources. In bipolar and
multipolar systems, there is a diffusion of power among several great powers. In a unipolar
system, in contrast, one state stands above others. In the 1990s, the United States emerged as
a unipolar state. It was uniquely powerful, positioned at the center on a one-pole global sys-
tem. This chapter has explored both the causes and consequences of unipolarity. The first ob-
servation is that despite the unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of one state,
a counterbalancing response did not emerge. This absence of a traditional balancing response
is a puzzle. In one sense, the sheer predominance of the United States created constraints on
the ability of other great powers to aggregate sufficient capabilities to challenge unipolarity.
The constraints on balancing were reinforced by the geography of world politics that created
regional blockages on the rise of great-power challenges to the United States. Regional bal-
ances of power have constrained the workings of the global balance of power. The United
States, in contrast, has been able to rise in power separated by oceans from the other great
powers.
But these explanations for the absence of balancing presume that there has been a demand
for balancing—and this is not evident. Nuclear weapons have reduced the threat of aggres-
sion by the great powers, and this has made unipolarity itself less threatening. That most of
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