Crowley, page 141-143

John Lewis Gaddis, "Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War," 1982

The difficulty here, however, is that we have

very limited experience with tripolar systems;

indeed,

our actual experience is limited to the

functioning

of a single system—the balance of

power— operating

within the multipolar (generally five powers)

framework

that characterized world

politics until World War II, or the bipolar

arrangement

that has characterized them since. Alternative

systems, such as tripolarity, remain derived

primarily from multipolar and bipolar theories.









The nature of international politics

since 1945 can be viewed in terms of “systems

theory.” Jervis has argued that

an “international system” exists when





interconnections exist between units in

the system, so that changes in some parts of it

produce changes in other parts as well, and that



the collective behavior of the system as a whole

differs from the expectations and priorities of

the individual units that make it up.5 Since

World War II, the







major powers assumed

that little could

happen in the world without either

enhancing or damaging their own interests: as

Jervis notes, “almost by definition a great power

is more tightly connected to larger numbers of

other states than is a small power.”6 Further,

the collective behavior of states has not

corresponded to their individual expectations,

particularly when many of the







statesmen who pieced together the post-war

arrangements expected another war to erupt

relatively soon thereafter.7



Systems theory

provides criteria for differentiating between

stable and unstable political frameworks that may

help to explain why

some international systems last longer than

others.

Deutsch and Singer

defined “stability” as “the probability that the

system retains all of its essential

characteristics; that no single nation becomes

dominant; that most of its members continue to

survive; and that large-scale war does not occur.”

This system has a



capacity for self-regulation; that is, to

counterbalance threatening situations before they

spin









out of control. Craig and George established

that





self-regulating mechanisms are most likely to

operate

when there is some basic

agreement among the

major states of

the system on the objectives of



it, when the structure of the system accurately

reflects power distribution in the system, and

when pre-established

procedures exist for resolving differences.