The crumbling of the so called Communist Empire in Eastern Europe in 1989 and 1990 has led many political observers and analysts to proclaim that the international political environ ment has been transformed. These observers and analysts con clude that, as a consequence of this collapse, the interna tional political environment has ceased to be one of a bipolar character, in which the United States and the Soviet Union were the principal players, and will soon assume a multipolar char acter, in which either (1) the United States and the Soviet Union will be but two of several major players (Hyland, 1990), or (2) the United States, Japan, and the reunited Germany will be the major players, with a considerably less significant role for the Soviet Union (Tarnoff, 1989).
There is little doubt that the international political order is changing, and that, in the fall of 1990, it is signif icantly different from what it was in the fall of 1988. It is only superficial analysis, however, that can conclude that this change was the result of the Communist collapse in Eastern Europe in 1989. The change is a part of a process which began in early November 1982, when Leonid Brezhnev died, and which continues unabated in the fall of 1990.
It is also somewhat too soon to predict with any degree of accuracy who the major players in the developing multipolar
environment will and will not be, and which, if any, of these players will be first among equals, the status that the United States has occupied in NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organiza tion), and the Soviet Union occupied in the Warsaw Pact. In spite of the difficulties being experienced by the national government in the Soviet Union, it requires a great leap of faith to assume that economic problems, and national republic discords in the Soviet Union will deny a major international political role to a country with an armed force as formidable as is that of the Soviet Union.
An ...