"A superb book.…Mearsheimer has made a significant contribution to our understanding of the behavior of great powers."—Barry R. Posen, The National Interest The updated edition of this classic treatise on the behavior of great powers takes a penetrating look at the question likely to dominate international relations in the twenty-first century: Can China rise peacefully? In clear, eloquent prose, John Mearsheimer explains why the answer is no: a rising China will seek to dominate Asia, while the United States, determined to remain the world's sole regional hegemon, will go to great lengths to prevent that from happening. The tragedy of great power politics is inescapable.

The Cold War is over. The Soviet Union has been dissolved. The United States is no longer the world's preeminent economic power. Both Europe and Japan are enjoying a greater share of the world's resources. Still, from the perspective of combined military, economic, political, and diplomatic power, the United States has no equal. President Bush suggests that a 'New World Order' has emerged. Principles of democracy, shared responsibility and mutual cooperation among nations are the hallmarks of that new order. He recommends that the principles of the New World Order guide the foreign policy of the United States throughout the decade of the nineties and into the twenty-first century. This paper probes the dimensions of that New World Order. It discusses the likelihood of a unipolar or multipolar world, and concludes that a stratified world order might be a more apt description. It explores the role of international organizations within the new order. It examines implications for U.S. foreign policy, the Department of Defense, and the U.S. Army. The paper concludes by revealing why President Bush's vision is compelling.

The phrase 'New World Order' has, over the last four years, become a much overused and relatively meaningless cliche. Its original intent was to provide a conceptual illustration of a tortured world community scintillatingly close to creating a new international order in the aftermath of the Cold War. This new international order would make possible a world without conflict, pain or hunger, where people of all regions could live in freedom as equals. This concept, and its attendant utopian condition, brings tears of hope from that portion of humanity which has the time to spend thinking on such things. However, in reality, thus far in our international devolution from 40 years of Cold War, we have made little, if any, progress toward realizing a New World Order. In fact, not only have we yet to decide upon what course we should take in pursuit of this new order, we have not even decided that this new order should be. In the interim, conflict, tension and war continue to expand around the globe while the major powers of the world, those with the potential to control global events for the betterment of the world community, continue in their intellectual struggle to determine a role for themselves.