Polarity (international relations)

Polarity in international relations is any of the various ways in which power is distributed within the international system. It describes the nature of the international system at any given period of time. One generally distinguishes three types of systems: unipolarity, bipolarity, and multipolarity for three or more centers of power. The type of system is completely dependent on the distribution of power and influence of states in a region or globally. Scholars differ as to whether bipolarity or unipolarity is likely to produce the most stable and peaceful outcomes. Kenneth Waltz and John Mearsheimer are among those who argue that bipolarity tends to generate relatively more stability,. In contrast, John Ikenberry and William Wohlforth are among those arguing for the stabilizing impact of unipolarity. Some scholars, such as Karl Deutsch and J. David Singer, argued that multipolarity was the most stable structure. The Cold War period was widely understood as one of bipolarity with the US and the USSR as the world's two superpowers, whereas the end of the Cold War led to unipolarity with the US as the world's sole superpower in the 1990s and 2000s. Scholars have debated how to characterize the current international system. Unipolarity is a condition in which one state under the condition of international anarchy enjoys a preponderance of power and faces no competitor states. According to William Wohlforth, "a unipolar system is one in which a counterbalance is impossible. When a counterbalance becomes possible, the system is not unipolar." A unipolar state is not the same as an empire or a hegemon that can control the behavior of all other states. Numerous thinkers predicted U.S primacy in the 20th century onwards, including William Gladstone, Michel Chevalier, K'ang Yu-wei, Georges Vacher de Lapouge, H. G. Wells in Anticipations (1900), and William Thomas Stead. Liberal institutionalist John Ikenberry argues in a series of influential writings that the United States purposely set up an international order after the end of World War that sustained US primacy.

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John Joseph Mearsheimer (ˈmɪərʃaɪmər; born December 14, 1947) is an American political scientist and international relations scholar, who belongs to the realist school of thought. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He has been described as the most influential realist of his generation. Mearsheimer is best known for developing the theory of offensive realism, which describes the interaction between great powers as being primarily driven by the rational desire to achieve regional hegemony in an anarchic international system.

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Multipolar Pseudochirality-Induced Optical Torque

Olivier Martin, Karim Achouri, Andrei Kiselev, Mintae Chung

It has been observed that achiral nanoparticles, such as flat helices, may be subjected to an optical torque even when illuminated by normally incident linearly polarized light. However, the origin of this fascinating phenomenon has so far remained mostly ...

Washington2023

Revealing a Mode Interplay That Controls Second-Harmonic Radiation in Gold Nanoantennas

Olivier Martin, Jérémy Butet, Gabriel David Bernasconi, Chen Yan

In this work, we investigate the generation of second- harmonic light by gold nanorods and demonstrate that the collected nonlinear intensity depends upon a phase interplay between di ff erent modes available in the nanostructure. By recording the backward ...

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Evaluation of the nonlinear response of plasmonic metasurfaces: Miller's rule, nonlinear effective susceptibility method, and full-wave computation

Olivier Martin, Jérémy Butet

In this article, the second-harmonic generation (SHG) from gold split-ring resonators is investigated using different theoretical methods, namely, Miller's rule, the nonlinear effective susceptibility method, and full-wave computation based on a surface in ...

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