A fundamental concern of international relations is maintenance of world order while providing security for the nation–state. Instability has many causes, and the massive wars accompanying systems transformation are not simply explained. Structural explanations establish a broad historical framework around which other sources of explanation may be integrated.

SYSTEMS STRUCTURE AS KEY TO AN INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL VIEW OF FOREIGN POLICY

By systemic stability and instability we mean how much peace versus massive conflict characterizes the system at a particular time. System stability does not refer to the degree to which the internal components of the system (its structure) are stable in the sense of unchanging. The system is constantly changing, and transformation occurs not as a discontinuity but as an “evolutionary novelty” emerging from the continuum of long-term changes in systemic structure, systemic changes which reflect the dynamics of the various state power cycles within that system (Doran 1971, pp. 1–11, 46–58). Systemic stability is equivalent to the absence of major war, to territorial security combined with peace, or peace based upon the acceptance of a legitimate international political order.

In the late nineteenth century, analysts spoke of the problem of peaceful change to connote the perils of nationalism and imperialism, and challenges to the status quo created by newly rising states. With the obvious failure of the balance of power prior to the First World War, and the struggle to overcome that failure at Versailles, this problem acquired a meaning that was highly structural in concept and useage.