Great Powers and World Order encourages critical thinking about the nature of world order by presenting the historical information and theoretical concepts needed to make projections about the global future. Charles W. Kegley and Gregory Raymond ask students to compare retrospective cases and formulate their own hypotheses about not only the causes of war, but also the consequences of peace settlements. Historical case studies open a window to see what strategies for constructing world order were tried before, why one course of action was chosen over another, and how things turned out. By moving back and forth in each case study between history and theory, rather than treating them as separate topics, the authors hope to situate the assumptions, causal claims, and policy prescriptions of different schools of thought within the temporal domains in which they took root, giving the reader a better sense of why policy makers embraced a particular view of world order instead of an alternative vision.

America's Unipolar Moment

America's unipolar moment

The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward . . . a new world order . . . freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace.

—George H. W. Bush, U.S. President

Early on the morning of August 2, 1990, columns of T-72 tanks from Iraq's elite Republican Guard crossed their country's southern border and raced down a six-lane highway toward Kuwait City. Alleging that his military had been invited by Kuwaiti revolutionaries to help liberate the tiny, oil-rich emirate from the corrupt Al-Sabah family, Iraqi president Saddam Hussein declared that he would annex Kuwait and threatened to ...

  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles