The end of the Cold War in Europe and the dramatic turnabout in Soviet-American relations since the end of the 1980s have caused the most dramatic changes in world politics since World War II. Concurrently, the relative decline of the United States in world politics (as evidenced by continuing budgetary and trade deficits), continues unabated. This book analyzes these changes in a collection of 39 articles, written by political scientists.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 Arms and influence: power, capability, and influence in international politics, K. J. Holisti; force or trade - the costs and benefits of two paths to global influence, Richard Rosecrance; the future of military power, the continuing utility of force, Eliot A. Cohen; the obsolescence of major war, John Mueller; nuclear myths and political realities, Kenneth N. Waltz; the causes of war - contending theories, Jack S. Levy; four decades of nuclear non-proliferation - lessons for the 1990s, Lewis A. Dunn; is crisis management always possible?, Richard Ned Lebow; the arms trade with the Third World - changing patterns in the 1990s, Walter T. Klare; reflections on terrorism, Walter Laqueur; the changing nature of world power, Joseph S. Nye, Jr. Part 2 Discord and collaboration: models of international relations - the realist and complex interdependence perspectives on conflict and cooperation, Ole R. Holsti; U.S.-Soviet relations - threshold of a new era, Arnold L. Horelick; Europe after the superpowers - why we will soon miss the Cold war, John J. Mearsheimer; First world, Third World, which world? - the future of the less developed countries, Mark Falcoff; the volatile Middle East - the roots of Muslim rage, Bernard Lewis; arms control after the Cold War, Joseph S. Nye, Jr; alliances in theory and practice - what lies ahead, Stephen M. Walt; the future and the United Nations, Javier Perez de Cuellar; the reality and relevance of international law, Christopher C. Joyner; achieving cooperation under anarchy - strategies and institutions, Robert Axelrod, Robert Keohane. Part 3 Politics and markets: can the interdependent world political economy survive? - three perspectives on the future, Robert Gilpin; the international political economy, Miles Kahler; the new meaning of European unity, Donald J. Puchala; no more NICS, Robin Broad and John Cavanagh; U.S. policy at a crossroad, Robert E. Litan, Peter O. Suchman; on the road to ruin, Walter Russell Mead; oil and power in the nineties, James Scheslinger; the misleading metaphor of decline, Joseph S. Nye, Jr. Part 4 Ecology and politics: the ecological perspective on international politics, Dennis Pirages; shared problems, common security, Michael G. Renner; population and the global commons, Charles Kegley, Jr, Eugene R. Wittkopf; the waning of global food security, Lester R. Brown; coping with the uncertainties on the greenhouse effect, Jessica T. Matthews; agriculture and the environment - meeting the food needs of the coming decade, Orville L. Freeman; sustainable development - what is it? , Jim MacNeil; the tragedy of the commons in global perspective, Marvin S. Soroos; the international state of nature and the politics of scarcity, William Ophulus; nuclear winter and the end of the arms race, Carl Sagan and Richard Turco.