Paths Not Taken: A Retrospective Systemic Reading of Post-Soviet International Alternatives

This article offers a retrospective reading of post-Cold War US foreign policy recommendations made by Morton A. Kaplan in 1985. Grounded in his systems approach to world politics and international change, the article reassesses his idea that the collapse of the Soviet Union would create a systemic, historical singularity that would allow for the establishment of an alternative world order wherein post-Communist Russia could be reinstituted as an equal international partner. With hindsight, Kaplan's analysis indicates the importance of combined systemic and subsystemic processes in the regulation or destabilization of the international system, as well as in conceptualizing and shaping the future of any international system.