This is the first book-length treatment of international politics in a unipolar world that adopts a structural realist perspective. It applies Waltzs microeconomic analogy to a market with a price leader. It shows that other states have an incentive to cooperate with the unipole, because they do not have the ability to balance it on their own or to form a grand coalition against it. It develops and tests hypotheses for state behavior both in the current day and in past quasi-unipolar situations. It concludes that unipolarity is sustainable as long as the unipole distributes rewards to other states.
Introduction - Unbalanced Unipolarity - Realism, Balancing, and Unipolarity - State Behavior in a Unipolar System - Unipolarity and Balancing in History - Behavior of the Unipole: 1991-2004 - Behavior of the Others: 1991-2004 - Impact of Unipolarity on Stability and State Behavior - Conclusion - An Unbalanced Future