ABSTRACT
The late Kenneth Waltz, father of the neorealist approach to international relations, fi rst suggested that a bipolar world is more stable,1 arguing that a world dominated by two great powers is less prone to large-scale confl ict.2 The end of the Cold War heralded the dissolution of this system and the emergence of a unipolar world dominated by the United States. Susan Strange’s notion of structural power3 seemed to support this thesis, since, during the 1990s, the US had the authority to shape and determine the structure of the global political economy. This power manifests as the ability to control the four key pillars of the world economy: security, production, fi nance, and knowledge.
