56 International Relations Theory of War
to provocations made against it by the Al Qaeda organization, which was
hosted in Afghanistan, and could not fail to respond to the provocations
of the president of Iraq. The actions of these two players challenged its
supremacy in the system and required Washington to act to remove them.
The United States, which did not act for expansion immediately upon its
rise to the position of the sole hyperpower in a unipolar world, effectively
underwent “a systemic socialization process,” acquiring the behavior
required of its status in the system, which forced it to act in that manner,
even when perceived by many American decision makers as being against
the interests of their country. Following this, the United States started to
act according to those constraints: it initiated wars against Afghanistan
(2001) and Iraq (2003) and expanded territorially at their end.
However, the theory, as a theory dealing with international outcomes,
presents a stronger plea. It attributes little importance to the way in which
countries behave or the action strategies they choose. The theory argues
that behavior patterns that will be ostensibly different from the way in
which the theory anticipates them will not change the results or outcomes
that it anticipates. In bipolar systems, revisionist behavior of the two super-
powers will not affect the international outcomes, and in most cases, they
will maintain the existing status quo. For example, in the bipolar system
of 1946–1991, the wars involving the two superpowers constituting it did
not lead to expansion—the wars of the United States against Korea, Viet-
nam, and Iraq (1991), and the Soviet invasion of Hungary and war against
Afghanistan. The intrasystemic international outcomes at the end of those
wars remained maintaining of the territorial status quo preceding their out-
break. In unipolar systems, in the vast majority of cases, balancing attempts
of small and medium powers against the sole hyperpower will end with-
out success. For example, in the unipolar system of 1992–2016, the bal-
ancing actions of France, Germany, and Russia toward the United States
before the Iraq War (2003) had no effect whatsoever on the intrasystemic
international outcome—the instigation of war by the sole hyperpower
of the system, the United States, and its military victory and territorial
expansion at its end.
From the argument that each of the three polarity models has a dif-
ferent effect on the two international outcomes assessed, it may be con-
cluded that once the polarity model changes, the outcomes will change
too. This means that the following conclusions may be drawn: the same
polar power will adopt a different policy or strategy under different polar-
ity models and as the theory anticipates—the United States as a status
quo power in the bipolar system of 1946–1991 and as a kind of revisionist
power in the unipolar system of 1992–2016; the policy or strategy of polar
powers and of nonpolar powers under the same polarity and as the theory
anticipates: in unipolarity, the hyperpower, such as the United States, will
act as a kind of revisionist power. In contrast, the great powers that are
not polar powers will act as status quo countries—for example, Russia,