No Common Power: Understanding International Relations - Softcover

This third edition of "No Common Power" integrates post-Cold War events with the underlying structural characteristics of the international system that continue to resist fundamental change: because states are "without common power" (to quote Thomas Hobbes) in their international relations, states exist in a system that lacks effective authority for resolving inevitable disputes. Yet at the same time, everyday realities of world affairs display a great deal of practical order. This paradox is examined in this book. It also looks at the future of international relations in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War. It devotes particular attention to revolutionary changes in the former Soviet Union and provides expanded coverage of North-South relations. Attention is also given to the implications of the Gulf War and to conflict in the former Yugoslavia, as well as to the problems of U.N. peacekeeping, arms control agreements, democracies and war, the Maastricht Treaty and European Union, the consequences of a rapid expansion in international economic relations and the opportunities and limits of interdependence.