Foreign Policy
Spring 1998

Sidebar: Waiting for Mr. X

By Stephen M. Walt

The post–Cold War world still awaits its “X” article. Although many have tried, no one has managed to pen the sort of compelling analysis that George Kennan provided for an earlier era, when he articulated the theory of containment. Instead of a single new vision, the most important development in post–Cold War writings on world affairs is the continuing clash between those who believe world politics has been (or is being) fundamentally transformed and those who believe that the future will look a lot like the past.

Scholars who see the end of the Cold War as a watershed fall into two distinct groups. Many experts still see the state as the main actor but believe that the agenda of states is shifting from military competition to economic competitiveness, domestic welfare, and environmental protection. Thus, President Bill Clinton has embraced the view that “enlightened self-interest [and] shared values . . . will compel us to cooperate in more constructive ways.” Some writers attribute this change to the spread of democracy, others to the nuclear stalemate, and still others to changes in international norms.

An even more radical perspective questions whether the state is still the most important international actor. Jessica Mathews believes that “the absolutes of the Westphalian system [of] territorially fixed states . . . are all dissolving,” and John Ruggie argues that we do not even have a vocabulary that can adequately describe the new forces that (he believes) are transforming contemporary world politics. Although there is still no consensus on the causes of this trend, the view that states are of decreasing relevance is surprisingly common among academics, journalists, and policy wonks.

Prominent realists such as Christopher Layne and Kenneth Waltz continue to give the state pride of place and predict a return to familiar patterns of great power competition. Similarly, Robert Keohane and other institutionalists also emphasize the central role of the state and argue that institutions such as the European Union and NATO are important precisely because they provide continuity in the midst of dramatic political shifts. These authors all regard the end of the Cold War as a far-reaching shift in the global balance of power but do not see it as a qualitative transformation in the basic nature of world politics.

Who is right? Too soon to tell, but the debate bears watching in the years to come.

—S.W.