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Lesson Four Stability within a Bipolar System [月度考察] A unipolar system in which the United States, as the only remaining superpower (with a comprehensive set of economic and military resources), provides hegemonic leadership. The United States as a relatively benign hegemon has not yet provoked efforts by other states to form countervailing coalitions. By judicious use of multilateral institutions, the United States is also providing a degree of order and predictability that helps to satisfy other states. The key question, however, is whether or not such an approach can be sustained for the medium and long term. It would certainly be unusual for hegemony not to be challenged. The re-emergence of a bipolar system with the dominant relationship being that between the United States and China. The key issue is whether this relationship will be friendly or hostile. For those who see the distribution of power in the international system as the major determinant of policy, bipolarity is inevitably characterized by competition and conflict between the two great powers. If this logic is accepted, then, as China becomes more ascendant during the twenty-first century it will pose an inexorable challenge to U.S. hegemony, resulting in another Cold War. A tripolar system in which the United States and China are joined by a resurgent Russia. Such a system would likely be highly competitive and unstable with the key imperative to be one of two in a world of three. There is a precedent for this during the 1970s when the United States used the “China card” as counterweight to what was seen at the time as an ascendant Soviet Union. Most international system theorists believe tripolarity to be one of the least stable distributions of power. A classic multipolar system in which there are five major powers-the United States, China, Russia, Japan, and the European Union. Such a system might be reminiscent of the European state system of the nineteenth century, when as Bismarck noted, th