On the threshold of a bipolar world? The prospects of the systemic confrontation in the 21st century

The problem of the American leadership is one of the actual and widely discussed issues of the contemporary international relations theory. Many scholars point out that economic and military rise of several secondary states (China first of all) coupled with U.S. relative decline, conditioned by the global financial crisis, allow predicting the advance of new bipolarity. Meanwhile, considerable part of these predictions is based almost on the formal and statistic indicators, underestimating fundamental elaborations in the theory of international systems. In order to fill the gap, the author of this article analyzes features of an ideal bipolar international system, discovering key factors of its stability and dynamics. Resuming, the author formulates prognosis about the promises of the systemic confrontation and the return of the bipolar world in the beginning of 21 st century.