There have been important changes in the international order in the past several decades, but the continuities are no less significant, particularly with regard to North-South relations. Although U.S. policies toward the Third World were framed within a Cold War context, that was more a matter of doctrinal utility than of fact. The North-South conflicts, with their deep roots in the colonial era, are likely to continue as the policies of the United States and other advanced industrial powers are adapted to changing circumstances, of which the end of the Cold War is only one aspect.

By the 1970s, the United States had lost its post-World War II position of overwhelming dominance, and there was speculation about competing trading blocs (dollar, yen, European Currency Union). While it remains the leading economic power, the United States faces serious internal problems, exacerbated by policies of the past decade whose social and economic costs cannot be indefinitely deferred. At the same time, Soviet military expenditures were leveling off and internal problems were mounting, with economic stagnation and increasing pressures for an end to tyrannical rule. A few years later, the Soviet system had collapsed. The Cold War ended with the victory of what had always been the far richer and more powerful contestant. The Soviet collapse was part of a much more general economic catastrophe of the 1980s, more severe in the Third World domains of the West than in the Soviet empire. As commonly observed, the global system has become economically tripolar but militarily unipolar.