The eleventh Valdai Paper «The Return of Realpolitik: Stability vs. Change in the US-Led World Order» examines the prospects of the shift from existing unipolar global order to a multipolar, as well as the associated risks.
Author claims that scholarly and popular discussions radically underestimate the difficulty of hegemonic emergence and therefore overestimate the fragility of the American-centered order. The currently underway power transition from West to East is far more modest than the hyperbolic rhetoric used to describe it. For W. Wohlforth, parallels between China and Wilhelmine Germany are sophisticated: China confronts a settled, ramified institutional order that stacks the deck against revisionism.
This paper is written by William Wohlforth, Dean of the Faculty of Public Administration at Dartmouth College (USA), professor, author of publications on the current state of international relations, including «World Out of Balance: International Relations Theory and the Challenge of American Primacy». According to the abstracts database «Scopus», W. Wolhforth is one of the ten most quoted American experts in international affairs.