Original citation

multipolarity – in which capabilities are divided among many great 
powers. Moreover, this emerging world order would be dominated not by 
European empires – still in possession of considerable assets in 1945 – but 
by the United States of America and, later, the Union of Soviet Socialist 
Republics. By 1945, military planners in Washington DC were already 
wondering who the next enemy might be. Europe’s imperial power, 
dominant prior to the First World War, was seen to be in decline. As the 
colonial empires of the UK, France, Portugal and other European powers 
disintegrated, the USA saw a need to establish new forms of economic and 
political hegemony. Such was American self-confidence in the period 
that many of its policy-makers discounted any threat from the USSR, 
which had been economically weakened by its brutal three year war of 
extermination with Germany and confronted by the atomic bomb. There 
was, at first, little indication of the ‘great contest’ that was to follow. 
Stop and read section 3 of Chapter 3, pp.54–56
1. Which came first, the decline of European power in the international system, or 
the independence of its colonies around the world?
2. Did the decline of European imperialism mark an end to all forms of hegemony in 
the international system? If not, what new forms took its place?
The Cold War and the birth of Realism
As we now know, the high hopes born out of the US sense of its own 
‘preponderance of power’ in 1945 were not realised. Very quickly, deep 
differences over the future shape of Europe, the status of Germany, the 
situation in China and even the future of capitalism divided the victorious 
allies. The origins of the ensuing 45-year long Cold War have been hotly 
debated. Some blame Soviet expansionism for causing the rift, others 
the political and economic policies of the USA. The Cold War has also 
been viewed as a natural consequence of competition between the two 
superpowers and their opposing ideologies, with the USA and its allies 
devoted to capitalist principles, while the Soviets and their allies were 
wedded to their vision of state socialism.