102 International Relations Theory of War
the system—anarchy, which spurs the powers to tend to hegemony, and
homeostasis, which dictates to powers to operate to maintain the existing
state of the system.
Hyperpowers in a unipolar world will not be able to escape their promi-
nent status in the system, which requires them to prove their leadership
constantly. If their leadership is weakened, they will be challenged by the
second-level powers, which will try to exploit the opportunity to relegate
them to second level and take their place. These two constraints, which
were ostensibly supposed to lead to constant wars in the system, are miti-
gated by the power of the hyperpower. However, even if hyperpowers
in unipolar systems behave with moderation, weak countries will fear
their future behavior. This fear will lead to weak countries in the system to
attempt to increase their power, or join forces with other countries through
alliances, in order to restore the balance of the distribution of international
power in the system.
The presence of one hyperpower that constitutes the system increases
the number of possible bipartite relationships between it and second-
level powers, and ostensibly increases the potential for the development
of conflicts that may deteriorate into war. Whereas unipolar systems will
spur hyperpowers to act to form hegemony headed by them in the face of
anarchy, at the same time they will dictate acting to preserve the unipolar-
ity owing to the other order principle, homeostasis. These two phenomena
will lead to the relative stability of unipolar systems, their slow movement
until their collapse, and a change in the polarity model to one of the two
other possible models—a multipolar or bipolar system.
Unipolar systems will dictate to each hyperpower to tend always to
expansion irrespective of its regime model—democratic or authoritarian.
The Stability of the Unipolar System, 1992–2016The stability of the unipolar system has gained two extreme hypoth-
eses. On the one hand, realism predicts instability.^118 Mearsheimer warned
that “we shall miss the Cold War” all too soon, the onset of multipolarity
leading to a strong chance of the outbreak of a major war in multipolar
Europe.^119 On the other hand, Wohlforth argues that the current unipolar-
ity is peaceful because the excess raw power of the United States means
that no country will tend to perform any action that might cause the
United States to resist it. At the same time, unipolarity minimizes security
competition among the other great powers.^120
According to the current study, Wohlforth’s conclusion that unipo-
lar systems are the most stable is wrong because it makes no distinction
between unipolar systems and hegemonic systems. In hegemonic systems,
there is a single power whose absolute superiority nullifies the threats of
other countries to its status. In unipolar systems, there might be just one