What if the bipolar international system were still in place?

ON SEPT 13, 1989, a few weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall, then US deputy secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger, addressing an audience at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, cautioned his listeners that while they were celebrating the end of the Cold War, they should also recognise that "we are moving into, or I should say, back into - for such has been the nature of international affairs since time immemorial - a world in which power and influence is diffused among a multiplicity of states".

Yes, suggested the veteran Cold Warrior, Americans may (and perhaps should) be feeling victorious that the Soviet bloc was in the process of disin…