Sergey Karaganov on a unipolar world

Dean of the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow In the 1950-1980s, the world was relatively governable with two superpowers―the Soviet Union and the United States―making key decisions. In the 1990s it seemed that for a historical second the world had become unipolar and the West, led by the United States, was destined to dominate forever, that the world would be governed by the hegemon. While the West was relishing its beautiful dream of the ‘end of history’, it continued to go its own way. The 2000s became a disastrous period for the West. Such a rapid downfall in peacetime happened only once when the Soviet Union broke up. As a result, the vacuum of governance, which had been expanding for objective reasons, penetrated deeper and reached a new quality. The ‘new’ actors began to challenge the remains of the unipolar system.