How do we interpret the recent changes in world politics and what is the future likely to hold? The book places the events of the past few years in broad historical context, examining how the political, military and economic arrangements of the past are reflected in current events.

Meredith Woo-cumings, Michael Loriaux

The 70-years' crisis and the logic of trilateralism in the "new world order", Bruce Cumings; Mitteleuropa and East Asia - the return of history and the redefinition of security, James Kurth; East Asia's American problem - solutions in the 1990s, Meredith Woo-Cumings; the taming of German power - unification 1989-90, Peter Katzenstein; the riddle of the Rhine - France and the geopolitics of European integration, 1991-92, Michael Loriaux; domestic reform and international change during the reigns of Mikail Gorbachev and Tsar Alexander II, Valerie Bunce; pax (norte) Americana - Latin America after the Cold War, John H. Coatsworth; America's state and society in the flow of history, Franz Schurman.