ABSTRACT
The second phase of the emergence of the global international society, namely the two
decades between the wars, discussed in the last chapter, had been a period of unusual
disorder, which amounted in practice to an interregnum of authority in the system. The
four decades that followed the Second World War (1945-85) were a period of much
greater order and authority. The damage inflicted by that war on Europe and Japan
destroyed the capacity of the Europeans to control the system, and left the United States
and the Soviet Union (despite the grave damage inflicted by the war there also) to step
into the shoes of the Europeans.
