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GOVERNANCE, SECURITY AND
DEVELOPMENT
Polarity in
International Relations
Past, Present, Future
Edited by
Nina Græger
Bertel Heurlin
Ole Wæver
Anders Wivel
Governance, Security and Development
Series Editor
Trine Flockhart, Department of Political Science and Public
Management, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
The series addresses issues related to an international system that is
increasingly dominated by changing and inter-linked processes of gover-
nance involving formal and informal institutions and multiple processes
of change and continuity within security and development. In the area
of security the processes involve traditional key actors in international
society and new much less traditional actors engaging with new forms
of security and including individuals, groups, and states. In the area
of development, focus is increasingly on improvements in political and
economic conditions for individuals and groups but from an under-
standing that development is dependent on good governance and security.
Books published in the Series may engage with any one of the three topics
on its own merits - or they may address the interplay and dynamics that
occur when Governance, Security and Development interact (or collide)
in an increasingly interconnected and constantly changing international
system.
Nina Græger · Bertel Heurlin · Ole Wæver ·
Anders Wivel
Editors
Polarity
in International
Relations
Past, Present, Future
Editors
Nina Græger Bertel Heurlin
Department of Political Science Department of Political Science
University of Copenhagen University of Copenhagen
Copenhagen, Denmark Copenhagen, Denmark
Ole Wæver Anders Wivel

Department of Political Science Department of Political Science
University of Copenhagen University of Copenhagen
Copenhagen, Denmark Copenhagen, Denmark
ISSN 2945-7815 ISSN 2945-7823 (electronic)

Governance, Security and Development
ISBN 978-3-031-05504-1 ISBN 978-3-031-05505-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05505-8
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
Chapter 17 is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Inter-
national License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). For further details see
license information in the chapter.
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
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names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
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In memory of Birthe Hansen (1960–2020)
Preface and Acknowledgements
Discussions on the state of the current international order and its poten-
tial transformation have shaped both academic and policy debates on
international relations for most of the post-Cold War era. However,
whereas these discussions were closely tied to the concept of polarity
in the first decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, more recent
debates have focused more on the liberal content of the post-Cold War
international order and how it is challenged from actors inside and outside
“the West”. This volume seeks to connect these two debates. It explores
the nature and logics of uni-, bi-, multi-, and non-polarity. The authors
discuss how different types of polarity affect international order and
foreign policy action space and zoom in on current challenges and oppor-
tunities. In doing so the book seeks to contribute to our understanding
of polarity as well as the challenges and opportunities of an international
order with less US dominance and more Chinese influence.
We would like to thank a number of people for their contributions
and support. First and foremost, we thank the contributors for believing
in the project and taking time out of busy schedules to engage critically
with the concept of polarity and the effect(s) of polarity on world politics.
We learned a lot from working with the contributors, and we are confi-
dent that their insights will be of value to anyone seeking to understand
polarity and changes in the international order. We also would like to
thank series editor Trine Flockhart, who believed in the project from the
vii
viii PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
beginning, and an anonymous peer reviewer, who challenged us to signif-

icantly improve our original ideas and set-up of the volume. Anca Pusca
and her team at Palgrave were supportive and highly professional. Our
research assistant Sofie Lauridsen was competent and flexible. Finally, we
would like to thank the Department of Political Science and the Centre
for Advanced Security Theory (CAST), University of Copenhagen, for
economic and administrative support.
We dedicate the book to our colleague Birthe Hansen (1960–2020).
Birthe pioneered conceptual developments in the study of unipolarity. She
advocated an understanding of polarity, which highlighted the impor-
tance of the political agenda of great powers as well as the distribution
of capabilities; an argument which has only become more important in
recent years. An expert on international security in the Middle East, her
work documented how system structure had regional effects on peace
and war. In addition, Birthe played important roles as colleague, teacher,
supervisor, and mentor for numerous students and colleagues.
Copenhagen, Denmark Nina Græger

August 2022 Bertel Heurlin
Ole Wæver
Anders Wivel
Contents
1 Introduction: Understanding Polarity in Theory

and History 1
Nina Græger, Bertel Heurlin, Ole Wæver, and Anders Wivel
Part I Theorizing Polarity

2 Polarity Is What Power Does When It Becomes
Structure 23
Ole Wæver
3 Polarity and Threat Perception in Foreign Policy:
A Dynamic Balancing Model 45
Kai He
4 Uneasy Partners: Neorealism and Unipolar World
Order 63
Georg Sørensen
5 Combining Polarity and Geopolitics: The Explanatory
Power of Geostructural Realism 81
Øystein Tunsjø
6 Between Polarity and Foreign Policy: Freedom
of Manoeuvre Is the Missing Link 101
Hans Mouritzen
ix
x CONTENTS
7 What Future for Small States After Unipolarity?

Strategic Opportunities and Challenges
in the Post-American World Order 127
Revecca Pedi and Anders Wivel
8 Critical, Restless, and Relevant: Realism as Normative
Thought 149
Sten Rynning
Part II Polarity and International Security

9 Polarity, Non-polarity, and the Risks of A-Polarity 171
Robert J. Lieber
10 Unipolarity and Nationalism: The Racialized Legacies
of an Anglo-Saxon Unipole 191
Jennifer Sterling-Folker
11 Managing the Delta of Unipolarity: Post-Cold
War Misalignment of American Political Projects
and World Order from DPG92 to Trump 211
André Ken Jakobsson
12 The Nexus of Systemic Power and Identity: Structural
Variations of the US-China Great Power Rivalry 231
Andreas B. Forsby
13 The US Unipolar World Order and China’s Rise 251
Camilla T. N. Sørensen
14 Polarity and Realignment in East Asia 1945–2020 265
Peter Toft
15 Polarity, Proliferation, and Restraint:
A Market-Centric Approach 291
Eliza Gheorghe
16 Unipolarity and Order in the Arctic 313
Rasmus Gjedssø Bertelsen
17 Europe in the U.S.-Russian Security Dilemma: Is
There a Way Out? 333
Barbara Kunz
CONTENTS xi
18 The Discourse on the US/NATO and the EU

in Danish Foreign Policy: The Language
of Unipolarity? 351
Henrik Larsen
Part III The Future of Polarity and International Order

19 A U.S. Strategy of Judicious Retrenchment 369
Charles Kupchan
20 An Emerging World that Defies Historical Analogy 389
Randall Schweller
21 Polarity and International Order: Past and Future 411
William C. Wohlforth
Index 425
List of Contributors
Bertelsen Rasmus Gjedssø Department of Social Sciences, UiT The

ArcticUniversity of Norway, Tromsø, Norway
Forsby Andreas B. Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS);
Nordic Institute of Asian Studies‚ University of Copenhagen, Copen-
hagen, Denmark
Gheorghe Eliza Department of International Relations, Bilkent Univer-
sity, Ankara, Turkey;
ROCCA Lab, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
Græger Nina Department of Political Science, University of Copen-
hagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
He Kai Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
Heurlin Bertel Department of Political Science, University of Copen-
Jakobsson André Ken Center for War Studies, University of Southern
Denmark, Odense, Denmark
Kunz Barbara Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy (IFSH),
University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
Kupchan Charles Department of Government‚ Georgetown University‚
and Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, DC, USA
xiii
xiv LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Larsen Henrik Department of Political Science, University of Copen-

Lieber Robert J. Department of Government, Georgetown University,
Washington, DC, USA
Mouritzen Hans Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS),
Copenhagen, Denmark
Pedi Revecca Department of International and European Studies,
University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece
Rynning Sten Department of Political Science, University of Southern
Denmark, Odense, Denmark
Schweller Randall Department of Political Science, Ohio State Univer-
sity, Columbus, OH, USA
Sørensen Camilla T. N. Institute for Strategy and War Studies, Royal
Danish Defence College, Copenhagen, Denmark
Sørensen Georg Department of Political Science, Aarhus University,
Aarhus, Denmark
Sterling-Folker Jennifer Department of Political Science, University of
Connecticut, Mansfield, CT, USA
Toft Peter Independent Scholar, Copenhagen, Denmark
Tunsjø Øystein Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, Norwegian
Defence University College, Oslo, Norway
Wæver Ole Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen,
Copenhagen, Denmark
Wivel Anders Department of Political Science, University of Copen-
Wohlforth William C. Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA
List of Figures
Fig. 4.1 A framework for understanding world order 69

Fig. 5.1 GDP: The United States, China and the rest 87
Fig. 6.1 A state’s external freedom of manoeuvre (permitted
options) in a given situation 104
Fig. 6.2 Systemic polarity versus locational polarity 116
Fig. 6.3 A state’s freedom of manoeuvre is the missing link
between polarity and its foreign policy 118
Fig. 12.1 Distributional structure of the international state system 241
Fig. 12.2 Structural logics of the international state system
distributions of power and identity at the third level
of the international system’s structure 244
Fig. 14.1 Distribution of realignments in East Asia, 1945–2020 271
Fig. 14.2 Alignment postures 1945–2020 274
Fig. 21.1 Singer-Small concentration index for great powers 417
Fig. 21.2 Great powers as % of total system capabilities 419
xv
List of Tables
Table 14.1 Number of East Asian states pursuing realignment

over the systemic transformations of 1945 and 1989 276
Table 14.2 Cold War asymmetrical alignments in East Asia,
1945–1988 281
Table 14.3 Cold War symmetrical realignments in East Asia,
1945–1988 283
Table 14.4 Post-Cold War asymmetrical alignments in East Asia
1989–2020 284
Table 14.5 Post-Cold War symmetrical realignments in East Asia
1989–2020 285
xvii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Understanding Polarity

in Theory and History
Nina Græger, Bertel Heurlin, Ole Wæver, and Anders Wivel
Current debates on international politics seem to agree on one thing:

we are witnessing profound changes in the international order. There
is, however, less agreement on the nature and impact of these changes
and how we theorize and think about that order. Do they constitute a
transformation of the international system and international politics in
N. Græger · B. Heurlin · O. Wæver · A. Wivel (B)

Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen,
Denmark
e-mail: aw@ifs.ku.dk
N. Græger
e-mail: ng@ifs.ku.dk
B. Heurlin
e-mail: bh@ifs.ku.dk
O. Wæver
e-mail: ow@ifs.ku.dk
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
N. Græger et al. (eds.), Polarity in International Relations,
Governance, Security and Development,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05505-8_1
2 N. GRæGER ET AL.
general, necessitating a fundamental rethinking of concepts and theories

in order to understand what is going on? Or are we witnessing changes
in the system with strong historical parallels, which may be understood
by reapplying classical tools and concepts? This volume engages in the
contemporary debates on international order by taking its point of depar-
ture in a classical concept: polarity, i.e. “the distribution of capabilities
among the major structure-producing states” (Grieco, 2007: 65; Waltz,
1979: 88–97). This take signals a shared belief among the contribu-
tors to this volume that polarity remains a valuable analytical lens if we
are to understand the characteristics of a particular international order
(including the present), how it changes, and what these changes imply
for states, societies and human beings.
Polarity continues to play a prominent role in scholarly debates on
the future of the international order. In the immediate aftermath of the
Cold War, some analysts were quick to predict a return to the pre-1945
multipolar order, although they disagreed on the implications for war
and peace (Buzan, 1991; Mearsheimer, 1990). Others argued that the
world was experiencing a unipolar moment likely to last for a period
of one to four decades with the United States as “the only country
with the military, diplomatic, political and economic assets to be a deci-
sive player in any conflict in whatever part of the world it chooses to
involve itself” (Krauthammer, 1990, 1991: 24). The stability of a unipolar
world was underpinned by the historically asymmetric distribution of
power following the end of the Cold War, making the United States
the strongest great power vis-à-vis potential rivals in the history of the
modern state system (Wohlforth, 1999). A position resulting not only
from the collapse of the Soviet Union, but also from the strength of
the American superpower in the last decade of the Cold War (Wagner,
1993). To some, mostly US scholars, the continued peace and stability
of the system depended on the continued strength of the United States
(Kupchan, 1998).
The 2000s and 2010s saw an increasing diversity in the interpretation
of the polarity of the international system.1 Some continued to interpret
the system in terms of unipolarity (e.g. Gowa & Ramsay, 2017; Hansen,
2011; Monteiro, 2014). Others found evidence of an emerging multi-
polarity (e.g. Garzón, 2017; Lieber, 2014; Waltz, 2000) or bipolarity
(e.g. Maher, 2018; Tunsjø, 2018; Xuetong, 2013). Still others found that
while the system was solidly unipolar when assessed in terms of the relative
distribution of power, the implications of polarity had changed for both
1 INTRODUCTION: UNDERSTANDING POLARITY … 3
the unipole and other states as a consequence of systemic changes such as

globalization (Brooks & Wohlforth, 2015, 2016). Since the mid-2010s,
the debate has been paralleled by a debate on the crisis in and possible end
of the liberal international order (occasionally equated with the American
world order).2 This debate is less focused on relative power and system
structures and more concerned with international norms and institutions,
and it tends to engage more with current events and, in particular, the
international consequences of a less powerful and more inward-looking
American superpower. In this volume, we connect these two important
debates beginning from the concept of polarity while actively exploring
the implications of structural characteristics and change for the current
and future fabric of international order as well as the conduct of foreign
policy.
This chapter proceeds in five steps. First, we explain the aim of the
volume. Second, we unpack our shared assumptions and starting points.
Third, we provide an overview of the polarity literature and how it has
evolved since the early Cold War. Fourth, we outline the structure and
content of the volume. Fifth, we summarize the findings and discuss their
implications.
The Aim
The aim of the volume is three-fold. First, to take stock of research on
polarity in international relations. What do we know about polarity and
the logics of uni-, bi-, multi and non-polarity? Second, to develop the
concept of polarity in order to understand the foreign policy and security
challenges today, including the crisis in the liberal international order.
What are the particular characteristics of international relations today and
how do these characteristics condition the effects of the systemic distri-
bution of power? By answering this question, we translate the logics of
polarity to an international system of rising powers, overlapping climate,
security and health crises and strong regional security dynamics. Third, to
apply our fine-grained understanding(s) of polarity to understand partic-
ular foreign policies. What does polarity tell us about the foreign policies
of great powers and small states and how they address the challenges of a
changing international order?
The two latter aims of the volume inevitably lead to discussions and
analyses of change in and transformation of international relations. As
argued by Ole Wæver in Chapter 2, the concept of polarity is closely
4 N. GRæGER ET AL.
coupled to an even more prominent concept in the study of interna-

tional relations, the balance of power. Students of balance of power
typically claim that “changes in the distribution of power are often
dangerous” (Lobell, 2016: 33). Likewise, power transition theorists argue
that military conflict is most likely when uneven growth rates result in
a dissatisfied challenger that reaches power parity with (or superiority
over) a declining hegemon (Lemke, 2004; Organski, 1958). While some
continue to view this as a compelling logic inevitably leading to a conflict
between a declining United States and a rising China (Mearsheimer,
2014), others warn against self-fulfilling prophecies and seek avenues for
peaceful change (Paul, 2018).
The contemporary debate on the changing nature of the international
system has rearticulated two "traps" of direct importance to system struc-
ture and systemic change. Graham Allison points to the Thucydides trap
(Allison, 2017). Taking his point of departure in ancient Greek historian
and general Thucydides’ observation that “it was the rise of Athens and
the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable”, Allison
identifies a tendency towards war, when a rising power threatens to
replace an existing great power as the most powerful state. Joseph S. Nye
points to the Kindleberger trap (Nye, 2017). Charles P. Kindleberger,
an intellectual architect of the Marshall Plan, argued that the collapse of
international order and stability before World War II was the result of
the United States replacing the United Kingdom as the most powerful
state in the international system but without taking responsibility for the
provision of public goods. Nye’s fear is that as China rises, the United
States will begin to withdraw from international responsibilities, which
already happened during the Trump administration, while China will
remain unable and unwilling to take over. In the last section of this intro-
ductory chapter, we use these two “traps” as prisms for discussing the
future of the liberal international order.
Shared Assumptions and Focal Points

All contributions to this volume depart from three shared assumptions.
First, we begin from the assumption that the state as actor remains
vital for the dynamics and developments of international relations. To be
sure, we do not view international relations as a gladiatorial competition
between the state and other actors for primary importance or assume
that the foreign policy action space of states is unaffected by institu-

tional or normative developments. Rather, the contributors to the volume
explore how and to what extent the effects of polarity on international
order and foreign policy are conditioned upon the nature and role of
norms and institutions and how different types of polarity may obstruct
or facilitate the spread, strengthening and resilience of international insti-
tutions and norms. Second, we share the assumption that challenges and
opportunities of states are conditioned upon the anarchic nature of the
international system and heavily influenced by the distribution of power
within that system, i.e. polarity matters. We explore—theoretically and
empirically—how polarity matters. Third, we all agree that how polarity
matters, varies across time and space. Thus, past lessons from, e.g. the
European Concert, cannot be transferred seamlessly to international rela-
tions today and the great power experience of the United States is not
necessarily directly applicable to that of China. Consequently, the chapters
in this volume contextualize polarity.
These three, shared assumptions serve as analytical anchors rather than
straitjackets. Our aim is not to produce a new “grand theory” of polarity
but an “[i]ntegrative pluralism [which] accepts and preserves the validity
of a wide range of theoretical perspectives and embraces theoretical diver-
sity as a means of providing more comprehensive and multi-dimensional
accounts of complex phenomena” (Dunne et al., 2013: 416). Departing
from the three analytical starting points, contributions vary along two
dimensions. The first dimension is the degree of system focus. Some
contributions emphasize the international system and order, whereas
others focus on geopolitics and regions, or on the foreign policy of specific
states. The second dimension is the degree of materiality, i.e. the extent
to which the effects and implications of a given polarity are a direct result
of the distribution of material power in the international system.
Shared assumptions as well as variations along the two dimensions
reflect that all contributions in the book engage with the work of Birthe
Hansen (1960–2020) to whom this book is dedicated. Starting from
a structural realist—even Waltzian—position, Birthe took the lead in
developing a theory of unipolarity (Hansen, 2011). In addition to the
distribution of power, her theory also included the political project of the
unipole, i.e. the ideational international order promoted by the super-
power. She took a keen interest in security dynamics in the Middle East
and the link between these dynamics and the global distribution of power
(e.g. Hansen, 2001). Her work combined her fundamental structural
6 N. GRæGER ET AL.
assumptions with systemic forces such as globalization and their impact on

regional dynamics (Hansen, 2002), and she unpacked the foreign policy
consequences for losing great powers, middle powers and small states in
an international system with only one superpower (Hansen & Heurlin,
1998; Hansen et al., 2009).
Polarity in Theory and Practice

Polarity is both an analytical concept and a political concept. As noted
by Barry Buzan, it is “one of those rare concepts used frequently in
both the public policy and academic debates” (Buzan, 2004: 36). Analyt-
ically, polarity has been used to understand (part of) international order
since the end of World War II. Harold Lasswell argued in a 1946-
analysis of the emerging post-war international system that “[t]he nature
and timing of world organization depend upon the global correlation of
power with other elements in society” (Lasswell, 1945: 889). Laswell did
not argue that the power structure is determining world order. Rather,
his understanding came close to more recent arguments that the polit-
ical projects (Hansen, 2011) and social systems (Finnemore, 2009) of the
great powers influence the nature and effects of polarity. In 1954, in the
second edition of Politics among Nations, Hans Morgenthau character-
ized the Cold War system as bipolar, i.e. a system with two great powers
so overwhelmingly powerful that alignments between other states could
not upset the balance of power (Morgenthau, 1954: 325–326).
In the 1960s and 1970s, the debate focused more narrowly on the
direct effects of polarity on peace and stability. The debate was initiated by
Morton Kaplan (1957), who argued that multipolar systems were more
stable than bipolar systems, and Kenneth Waltz (1964), who argued that
bipolar systems were more stable than multipolar systems. Waltz stressed
the importance of the combination of capabilities for how powerful a
state is, a position later developed in Theory of International Politics,
when he noted that “[s]tates are not placed in the top rank because
they excel in one way or another. Their rank depends on how they score
on all of the following items: size of population and territory, resource
endowment, economic capability, military strength, political stability and
competence” (Waltz, 1979: 131). John Herz, in International Politics
in the Atomic Age, acknowledged that the United States and the Soviet
Union were in a league of their own, because of their relative power,
but found that the possession of nuclear weapons solidified their position
and predicted that “unit veto” politics would replace traditional balance
of power politics, when more and more states acquired nuclear weapons
(Herz, 1959: 35). Two decades later, in 1981, and again after the Cold
War, Waltz would explore the alleged pacifying effects of nuclear weapons
arguing that nuclear proliferation would make the world safer in both
bi- and multipolarity, because of the fear of mutually assured destruction
(Sagan & Waltz, 1995; Waltz, 1981).
Not everyone viewed either multipolarity or bipolarity as conducive
to peace and stability. Richard Rosecrance argued that both bipolarity
and multipolarity had virtues and pitfalls (Rosecrance, 1966). Rosecrance
agreed with Waltz that there is no periphery in a bipolar world and there-
fore less competition for allies and colonies, and that changes in power
would often have little effect on peace and stability. However, at the same
time, a few changes in the relative power of the great powers are highly
significant in bipolarity, and international relations tend to be crisis-ridden
and highly politicized. In multipolarity, the effects of changes in rela-
tive power are typically difficult to predict. Conflict is more frequent
and unpredictable but with less devastating consequences for the inter-
national system. Consequently, Rosecrance advocated “bi-multipolarity”,
i.e. a system with two major powers regulating conflict in parts of the
international system at the same time as secondary powers mediating
between the two superpowers (Rosecrance, 1966: 322).
From the mid-1960s, not only the logics and consequences of bipo-
larity and multipolarity but also the actual polarity of the international
system became a “major point of contention” (Dean & Vasquez, 1976:
8). Until then there had been a near consensus that the system was
bipolar, but increasingly students of polarity argued that the system was
multipolar or tripolar with China as the third pole (e.g. Copper, 1975;
Nogee & Spanier, 1976; Platte, 1978). The ensuing debate in the 1970s
and 1980s on the nature and consequences of polarity was largely based
on formal and quantitative methods (e.g. Bueno de Mesquita, 1975;
Bueno de Mesquita & Singer, 1973; Deutsch & Singer, 1964; Singer
et al., 1972; Wayman, 1984). Much of the research was related to the
Correlates of War project and the Journal of Conflict Resolution became
a major publication outlet for research results (Zala, 2013: 39–40).
Interestingly, by the end of the Cold War, few contested the assess-
ment that the Cold War system had been bipolar. At the same time,
the collapse of the bipolar order resulted in a return to more founda-
tional debates, less focused on measuring effects and more concerned with
8 N. GRæGER ET AL.
discussing the logic(s) and implications of different types of polarity. John

Mearsheimer’s grim prediction in International Security that as a result
of multipolarity, Europe after the Cold War would resemble the unstable
order of the interwar period resulted in two rounds of reactions from
prominent IR scholars and an edited volume (Lynn-Jones & Miller, 1993;
Mearsheimer, 1990).3 To many observers, the international system was
experiencing a “unipolar moment” (Krauthammer, 1990, 1991), rather
than an enduring system on par with previous bipolar and multipolar
systems, although there was wide disagreement on how long this moment
would last.4 Efforts to understand what was going on in this US domi-
nated international system and what to expect in the future soon resulted
in “a wide array of grand terms such as empire, hegemony, unipolarity,
imperium, and ‘uni-multipolarity’” (Huntington, 1999; Ikenberry et al.,
2009: 3).
Gradually, from the late 1990s, students of unipolarity—“an anarchical
interstate system featuring a sole great power” (Monteiro, 2014: 40)—
sought to identify the nature and effects of this type of international
structure. William Wohlforth, in a seminal article in 1999, documented
the overwhelming and historically unprecedented power of the United
States (Wohlforth, 1999). At the same time, a collection of essays by
prominent IR scholars analysed how the United States and its main coop-
eration partners and competitors had responded to the unipolar structure
during the first decade after the collapse of bipolarity (Kapstein & Mastan-
duno, 1999). The book showed how most states chose to cooperate with
the single superpower in the first decade of unipolarity. At the same time,
they sought to find ways of maintaining their autonomy and make sense
of the—sometimes contradictory—policy choices of the United States.
To an increasing number of analysts, unipolarity was now “a fact, but
one whose meaning is far from clear, as we have neither a powerful
theory nor much evidence about how unipolar systems operate” (Jervis,
2009: 188). The stability of a unipolar world seemed to confirm
Charles Krauthammer’s prediction that it could last for a “generation”
(Krauthammer, 1990, 1991: 24). Taking their point of departure in
Kenneth Waltz’s original structural realist framework Nuno Monteiro
and Birthe Hansen offered theories of unipolar logics. Monteiro, the
more pessimist of the two, argued that unipolarity left the superpower
with a difficult task of calibrating its international engagement. Regional
disengagement could remove incentives for peace and lead to conflict,
but at the same time continued engagement could trigger a violent
response from those states unwilling to accommodate to the unipolar

order (Monteiro, 2011, 2014). Hansen, on the other hand, argued that
power asymmetry created strong incentives for non-pole states to flock
with the superpower and that the unipole’s stake in the system created
a strong incentive for the unipole to act as a manager and leader of the
international system (Hansen, 2011). The result would be an interna-
tional system with few military conflicts.5 Politics in this international
system would be shaped by the political project of the superpower, in
the US case promotion of liberal democracy and market economy and
non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
However, as noted by Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “unipolarity proved decep-
tive in terms of controlling events in world politics” (Nye, 2019: 68).
The global recession in 2008 and its aftermath highlighted a systemic
economic power shift from West (most notably the United States) to
East (most notably China) and questioned the future economic leader-
ship of the United States (Layne, 2012). The invasions of Afghanistan
and Iraq failed to create democracy and peace, Syria and North Korea
were allowed to defy basic principles of the unipole’s political project,
and China and Russia increasingly defied or challenged the United States
and its allies. Following the election of Donald Trump as US President
even the United States began to question fundamental principles of the
international order, including global trade and US leadership through
multilateral international institutions (Nye, 2019: 70). Trump’s successor
as US President, Joe Biden, promised that “America is back”, but the
United States seemingly continued military retrenchment in the Middle
East including the abandonment of Afghanistan, which was soon taken
over by the Taliban declaring an Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan following
20 years of military engagement by the United States and its allies.
As noted in the introduction to this chapter, the past two decades have
seen an increasing diversity in the interpretation of the polarity of the
international system. However, it is possible to discern distinct phases in
which one narrative or another tends to dominate the academic discourse
on polarity. According to prominent observers, between the late 2000s
and the mid-2010s, a near consensus on US dominance was replaced
by the narrative that “we are currently witnessing a return to the kind
of balance of power politics that characterized the multipolar system of
the 19th and early twentieth centuries” (Flockhart, 2016: 6; Brooks &
Wohlforth, 2015/2016: 7–8). However, judging by the contributions to
this volume, by the early 2020s, there is no agreement among scholars on
10 N. GRæGER ET AL.
the polarity of the international system, although an increasing number

of analysts seem to point to an emerging weak bipolarity with increased
importance of regional and domestic factors.
An increasing number of observers claim that we have “less polarity”.
However, in contrast to the 1970s where such claims usually meant either
that power had decreasing importance, or that power was less aggregate
and cross-issue fungible (Keohane & Nye, 1977), observations about the
changing nature of polarity are today more often made as elaborations
and improvements on polarity analysis. Within polarity analysis it can be
argued that we witness a weakening of the global level and therefore a
shift towards a world with no superpowers, only great powers (Buzan &
Wæver, 2003). Less polarity effect can be explained by polarity theory.
The next section provides an overview of the volume, while the last
section summarizes the main findings of the book and discuss their
implications for policy and research.
Structure of the Volume

The book is organized into three sections. The first section, Theorizing
Polarity, focuses on conceptual and theoretical challenges following from
a focus on polarity. After this introductory chapter, in Chapter 2, concep-
tual history meets IR theory/realism in Ole Wæver’s discussion of how
polarity works its effects. Wæver explores what concepts have to be in play
for power to take the forms assumed by polarity theory. Examining three
concepts—"power", "balance of power" and "polarity"—Wæver argues
that polarity is not what states make of it —it is what they make when they
think in terms of balance of power. In Chapter 3, Kai He engages with
some of the same concepts as Wæver—polarity and balancing—but from
a neoclassical realist perspective. He argues that the interplay between
polarity and threat perception shapes state behaviour as external balancing
or internal balancing, or both. Georg Sørensen, in Chapter 4, highlights
the importance of the domestic level. Sørensen argues that increasing state
fragility (also in the Global North) compels states to prioritize domestic
problems leaving some of the most pressing problems requiring inter-
national cooperation unsolved. To understand the challenges ahead, we
need to draw on several theories and explore how the challenges varies
across different types of states.
The following two chapters both engage with challenges and oppor-
tunities when systemic polarity meets geopolitical location. In Chapter 5,
Øystein Tunsjø argues that a geostructural realist theory that adds geopol-
itics to Waltz’s emphasis on anarchy and distribution of capabilities can
better explain why patterns of behaviour and structural effects differ
between bipolar systems of the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries.
Hans Mouritzen, in Chapter 6, links systemic polarity and geopolitics with
foreign policy in his discussion of states’ external freedom of manoeuvre.
He argues that a state’s freedom of manoeuvre is the missing link between
polarity and its foreign policy and illustrates his argument in an analysis
of the foreign policies of the Nordic countries. Polarity analysis tends
to focus on the great powers: the pole powers and their challengers.
However, in Chapter 7, Revecca Pedi and Anders Wivel provide an
overview of existing knowledge of links between different types of polarity
and the challenges and opportunities of small states and discuss what small
states should do to maximize their interests and influence. They argue
that in a world dominated by US- and China-led bounded orders, small
states must choose their battles wisely, prioritize their resources, and build
networks with like-minded small states.
The American world order and the liberal international order are some-
times used as synonyms, even though the former zooms in on the power
base of the order and the latter’s focus is on the ideological content. In
Chapter 8, Sten Rynning rejects that realism and liberalism are opposites
or can even be detached. In contrast, we should understand realism as an
enduring corrective to liberalism guarding against excess and unbounded
aspirations.
The second section, Polarity and International Security, focuses on
current challenges to international peace. Robert Lieber, in Chapter 9,
provides an overview of how challenges and opportunities have changed
from the end of bipolarity over unipolarity until today. Lieber argues
that the United States remains pivotal for a rule-based international order
promoting democracy, market economy and regional security. According
to Lieber, US domestic developments may prove a greater challenge to
continued US leadership than international challenges. Jennifer Sterling-
Folker, in Chapter 10, zooms in on one of these challenges arguing that
nationalism shapes international behaviour and that this is also the case in
the United States—with important consequences for international rela-
tions, because of the overwhelming power of the United States. André
Ken Jakobsson, in Chapter 11, building on Birthe Hansen’s work, re-
evaluates the relationship between the United States as a unipole and
the political project(s) of post-Cold War US administrations. Jakob-

sson argues that US pursuit of benign hegemony promotes the rise of
balancing powers. He discusses the effect of the policy change under
President Trump and implications for the US-China relationship.
The following chapters focus on this relationship. Andreas Bøje Forsby,
in Chapter 12, uses social identity theory to develop a new structural
logic of identity allowing us to theorize systemic ideological competi-
tion. He explores how to combine the structural logic of identity with
that of power—polarity—to understand US-China great power rivalry.
Camilla Sørensen, in Chapter 13, explores how weakened unipolarity
encourages and enables a more proactive and assertive Chinese foreign
and security policy and discusses the effects on US foreign policy and
peace and stability in East Asia and beyond in a post-unipolar international
system. The wider historical context of East Asian security is the subject
of Peter Toft’s analysis in Chapter 14, explaining realignment patterns in
the region 1945–2020.
In Chapter 15, Eliza Gheorghe explores the logics of nuclear non-
proliferation, a corner stone in the Cold War and post-Cold War orders.
Gheorghe argues that restraint is more effective than interventionism. In
Chapter 16, Rasmus Gjedssø Bertelsen challenges the conventional narra-
tive of the Arctic as an exceptional region. In contrast, Bertelsen argues,
the Arctic has been an integrated part of the international system for
centuries and developments in the region continue to mirror systemic
developments. According to Bertelsen, Russia’s place in US-China bipo-
larity will determine the future of Arctic cooperation. The last two
chapters of the section zoom in on European developments. Barbara
Kunz, in Chapter 17, focuses on the consequences of US-Russian rivalry
for Europe. She argues that Europe cannot escape the US-Russian secu-
rity dilemma but should focus on contributing to managing this dilemma.
Henrik Larsen, in Chapter 18, moves the focus from material power to
security discourse. He shows an interesting disconnect between systemic
US unipolarity and a greater role for the EU in Danish foreign policy
after the Cold War.
The third section, The Future of Polarity and International Order,
concludes the volume with three discussions of the future of polarity
in international relations. Charles Kupchan, in Chapter 19, argues a
pluralistic global order will be a consequence of US retrenchment.
Consequently, the United States will need to operate in a world of
political diversity and competing visions from rising powers. In this post-
Western order, the United States needs to work with both democratic
and non-democratic regimes. Randall Schweller, in Chapter 20, argues
that US-China rivalry differs in important respect from US-Soviet rivalry
during the Cold War. This new bipolarity exerts only weak structural
effects on international relations and is best understood as non-polarity—a
new structure with new requirements for success in international rela-
tions. Finally, in Chapter 21, William Wohlforth returns to the work of
Birthe Hansen, which has informed the volume and many of the analyses.
Focusing on the link between polarity and international order, Wohlforth
argues that neither bipolarity nor multipolarity tells us much about the
future order. Great powers command a smaller share of material power
vis-à-vis the rest of the international system than before. For this reason,
the liberal international order may be more resilient than we would expect
from an exclusive focus on the consequences of polarity.
Conclusions
Two main conclusions, one theoretical and one empirical, follow from
the analyses of this book. Theoretically, the contributions to the volume
question discuss and deconstruct the systemic “this polarity or that”
logic of conventional structural realist polarity analysis. The system may
be characterized as multipolar, bipolar or unipolar, but logics of war,
peace and international order do not follow seamlessly. In general polarity
effects are weaker today than they were for most of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. The analyses of the book point to at least two
reasons for this. First, the texture of international relations has changed.
Due to technological, economic, military and ideational developments,
systemic pole powers can do less than in the past. Consequently, the
international system has become more diverse. Several competing powers
have competing understandings of what international relations is and
competing visions for what it should be, often with a regional rather
than a systemic focus. Second, and closely related, international politics
are now more regional and less systemic than in the past century. This
is a consequence of the reduced ability of systemic pole powers to domi-
nate international politics as well as a backlash against globalization and
interventionism from domestic audiences.
Three implications follow from this conclusion. First, if we want to
know the effects of polarity on international war, peace and order, we
need to explore—theoretically conceptually and empirically—the interac-

tion of material power asymmetry (polarity) and ideational structures and
status hierarchies such as international pecking orders (Pouliot, 2016).
Second, we need to understand better how polarity effects travel from
the systemic level to the regional level and to domestic audiences and
how the feedback from domestic and regional politics affects both what
polarity is and what polarity does to international relations. This points
to a potentially fruitful dialogue with English School-inspired work on
the co-existence of several orders within the international system and
how this “multi-order world” is likely to change the nature and iden-
tity of international institutions and the liberal international order more
generally (Flockhart, 2016). Finally, this conclusion points to the impor-
tance of rereading and reinterpreting some of the early but now largely
forgotten interpretations of the nature and effects of polarity. Authors
such as Harold Lasswell and Richard Rosecrance provided rich readings
of polarity in the early Cold War pointing to complexities and contra-
dictions in polarity effects that we continue to grapple with today. These
three implications are all in the spirit of Birthe Hansen, who pointed to
the combination of material power and ideological content and compat-
ibility for international order, analysed the effects of systemic polarity on
regional politics in the Middle East and explored the complex interac-
tion between globalization and national interest and between states and
non-state actors such as terrorist organizations.
The empirical conclusion is closely related to these insights. The
United States and China stand out as the strongest powers, but regional
powers and small states seek to navigate US-China rivalry from their own
perspective rather than getting co-opted by one or the other. Russia is
not a pole power, but as the analyses of Europe and the Arctic shows,
Russia remains highly important for peace and security in some regions.
The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has accentuated the importance
of this observation and illustrated Russia’s potential for disruption and
damage, in particular for states that were once part of the Soviet Union.
Even if we are headed for bipolar rivalry, it is unlikely to matter as much
for international relations as the Cold War.
What are the implications for the liberal international order? Graham
Allison’s Thucydides trap has received much attention for highlighting the
risk of a great power war if China threatens to replace the United States as
the most powerful state (Allison, 2017). Will a Chinese order replace the
US-backed liberal international order after a great power war? Based on
the analyses of this volume that would be highly unlikely. China is both
unable (e.g. too far behind technologically) and unwilling to engage in a
military conflict for global hegemony. Furthermore, the United States has
considerable room of manoeuvre for signalling to China that it accepts
a more pluralist international order with regional variations and avoid
confrontation.
While this is likely to avert great power war, it points to a second
more pressing challenge identified by Josef Nye’s Kindleberger trap (Nye,
2017). US and Chinese behaviour seem to confirm Nye’s prediction that
the United States will begin to withdraw from international responsi-
bilities, but China will remain unable and unwilling to take over. US
domestic politics, not the challenge from China, seems to be the biggest
threat to the liberal international order, at least to the extent that liberal
internationalism needs the backing of US power. Even more challenging,
great power cooperation on global challenges such as climate change,
poverty, pandemics and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction will
be difficult if none of the powerful actors are willing to take the lead.
Inward-looking states catering primarily to domestic audiences are likely
to pass the buck and remain inactive—“the structurally stimulated first
choice” (Wæver, 2017: 473).
Notes
1. De Keersmaeker provides a good example of this diversity. In the autumn of
2008, the German journal Internationale Politik published a special issue
on the multipolar international order with contributions from European,
Indian, Brazilian and Chinese scholars. Only a few months later, World
Politics published a special issue with a number of prominent US scholars
based on the premise that the world was unipolar (De Keersmaeker, 2017:
3–4).
2. See, e.g., the roundtable “Rising Powers and International Order” in Ethics
and International Affairs (2018: 15–101), the special section “Making
Liberal Internationalism Great Again?” in International Journal (2019: 5–
134) and the ongoing debate in Foreign Affairs. See also Abrahamsen
et al. (2019) and the discussions in Flockhart (2016), Ikenberry (2018)
and Kristensen (2017).
3. These debates were as usual dominated by North American scholars.
Viewed from Europe, Mearsheimer’s predictions—although allegedly about
Europe—were strangely oblivious to the way European integration
produced a power centre generating regional unipolar dynamics which
defused security competition among especially Germany and France. This

could be theorized from a modified structural realism, although more easily
in Europe than in the United States (Buzan et al., 1990; Wivel 2000,
2021).
4. Charles Krauthammer predicted that unipolarity would last for decades
(despite coining the phrase “unipolar moment”), whereas, e.g. Christo-
pher Layne (1993) and Michael Mastanduno (1997) argued that balance
of power dynamics would lead to a multipolar order before that. Kenneth
Waltz argued that “bipolarity endures, but in an altered state” as “Russia’s
large population, vast resources, and geographic presence in Europe and
Asia” in combination with its nuclear weapons allowed it to “compensate
for its many weaknesses” (Waltz 1993: 52).
5. In Danish scholarly debates, Hansen’s national context, the theory was
often discussed in connection to policy debates over Denmark’s post-Cold
War foreign and security policy, which followed a doctrine of doing “hard
work” in international operations and win the goodwill of the unipole.
Another important theoretical contribution (discussed in Chapters 2 and
6) that was stimulated by the policy situation of European countries was
Hans Mouritzen (1998), who argued that states responded not to systemic
polarity but their bottom-up "environment polarity" (not dissimilar to
Walt’s balance of threat). Could variation among different European states
be explained by their different geopolitical location in the region? What is
the relative importance—and causal connections between—global, systemic
polarity, regional polarity and state-specific polarity situations?
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PART I
Theorizing Polarity
CHAPTER 2
Polarity Is What Power Does When It

Becomes Structure
Ole Wæver
Polarity is not what states make of it. Especially not what they make of
it. Most policy-makers have no concept of polarity. They typically have a
(usually implicit, often repressed) concept of what power is and a more
explicit analysis of the contemporary distribution of power. Polarity is
according to neorealism a structural feature of the system, and changes
of polarity are the most important structural changes we observe in
international politics (Waltz 1979). Thus, polarity is not something we
do, but something the system does to us. However, it does not do
so independently of how we approach power. Polarities only have their
distinct systematic effects in systems where the main actors have specific
conceptions of power and its distribution, but not conditioned on their
conceptions of polarity. If we were to talk in Wendtian terms (Wendt,
O. Wæver (B)
Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen,
Denmark
e-mail: ow@ifs.ku.dk
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23

Switzerland AG 2022
N. Græger et al. (eds.), Polarity in International Relations,
Governance, Security and Development,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05505-8_2
24 O. WæVER
1992), we could almost say: polarity is what states make of power and its
distribution.
The chapter puts forward a meta-argument about the role of analytical
concepts in (broadly) constructivist perspectives and vice-versa: the role
in structural analysis of conceptual variation. It has become important to
make this argument because of a worrying tendency to treat such issues
as either/or, i.e., as something that follows from one’s overall philosophy
rather than from the place of a particular concept in the analysis. It is
common to meet arguments along the lines of “I am a constructivist (or
discourse person) and therefore the concept of x should be approached
by looking at how actors construct it.” Obviously, anyone interested in
discourses or constructions should have centrally in their analysis how
something is constructed and what difference this makes, but nobody
avoids having some analytical concepts in one’s own toolbox, and they are
to be treated as such.1 A discourse analyst talks about ‘discourses’ with the
meaning given to that concept (discourse) by one’s version of discourse
theory, not varying according to what actors hold as their concept of
discourse, if they have heard of the concept. Conversely, a fundamentally
structural analysis often involves assumptions about practices that depend
on certain concepts being in use (as the history of probability in the
history of insurance). Therefore, this article investigates the historically
variable reality of ‘power,’ ‘balance of power,’ and ‘polarity.’ This leads to
an updated understanding of contemporary polarity as global and regional
structure and this structure’s dependence on evolving abstract concepts.2
How does polarity work its effects? Does each type of power structure
as social fact generate its distinct patterns, i.e., does the polarity shape
actors whether or not these actors’ reason in anything like polarity terms?
Or does polarity theory presume some concepts to be socially active for
the mechanisms to unfold? I examine three concepts: ‘power,’ ‘balance of
power’ and ‘polarity.’ The surprising conclusion of the analysis is that
most of the dynamics posited in polarity theory—from Waltz (1979)
to Hansen (2011)—demand the conceptual emergence of ‘abstract’ or
‘aggregate’ power and of ‘balance of power’ as abstraction, but only for
some secondary features do polarity dynamics depend on actors thinking
in terms of ‘polarity.’ Polarity is not what states make of it —it is what
they make when they think in terms of balance of power.
In the first section, I briefly revisit the place of polarity in neorealism:
What is the concept doing? This section serves to clarify the weight placed
2 POLARITY IS WHAT POWER DOES WHEN IT BECOMES STRUCTURE 25
on the concept and thereby sets the parameters for the rest of the anal-
ysis in the sense that it is as analytical concept in the theory (and thereby
endowed with causal powers) that the concept matters, not as a descrip-
tive, observational category in isolation. The next section is the primary
locus of the argument summarized above: how the concepts of power,
balance of power, and polarity emerged historically. In the third section,
I spell out the implications of the preceding argument for the status and
role of polarity in the present international system. Finally, the fourth
section asks when do intentional ‘polarity policies’ matter?
What Polarity Needs to Do

for Structural Realism to Work
In the neorealist theory of international politics, presented primarily
in Kenneth N. Waltz’s Theory of International Politics (Waltz, 1979),
polarity is the most important variable, the one factor that causes change
between different international systems. This might at first sound like
an overblown statement because we commonly talk about the ‘anarchic
structure’ being defining for this theory (sometimes called neorealism,
sometimes structural realism). However, anarchy is an element of the
structure that typically, according to Waltz, does not vary (i.e., does
not change into its one and only possible alternative: hierarchy). There-
fore, international systems are always anarchic. The main differentiation
between different international systems is in terms of polarity. And the
main function of polarity is to channel balance of power behavior into
distinct patterns.
To demonstrate this necessitates a brief recapitulation of the structure
of the structure and the nature of the structure. The structure of struc-
ture in Waltzian neorealism is three-tiered.3 The first tier is the principle
of ordering, anarchic or hierarchic. The second tier is the specification of
functions of differentiated units in the system. In anarchic systems, the
units (states) are functionally alike: No state will give up vital functions
such as defense, because they fear dependency and ultimately annihilation
in the absence of a legitimate monopoly of power. Consequently, only
hierarchic (domestic) systems will see an elaborate division of labor. The
third tier is the distribution of capabilities across units, i.e., polarity. John
G. Ruggie (1983) spelled out that these are successive layers, each contin-
gent on the former. It is not an additive system of two or three kinds of
structure that can modify each other in all directions—it is a sequence:
26 O. WæVER
First systems divide into anarchic or hierarchic, then the hierarchic systems
are defined by the way their functions are defined and allotted, and then
irrespective of what path you have taken through the first two categories
the third part is the distribution of capabilities. This also means that this
power structure influences systems that are already structured as anarchic
or hierarchic-plus-differentiated.
Waltz’s argument that the second tier drops out in international politics
is not uncontroversial,4 but in the present article, I will honor it in order
to stay in tune with Birthe Hansen (2011), and the majority of polarity
theorists.
The first tier is de facto a characterization of the contrast between inter-
national and domestic politics, and therefore as possible systemic change
it only refers to the rather remote possibility of world politics coming
under world government. As a result, the relevant change of system in
international politics is between different polarities.
The message of Waltz’s book could, therefore, be summed up as two
injunctions: The first is to remember that international politics is different
from domestic politics. In one respect, this is what the classical realists
typically had as their key move (Ashley, 1989): Ordinary people are prone
to misunderstand international affairs by treating it as a simple continuity
of domestic politics, but the statesman has the ability and the courage to
look into the radically different world of international politics and manage
those dangers for the national community. In another respect, Waltz’s
first tier of structure is more specific than the classical realist credo that
points more in the direction of a mystical insight held by a particular
kind of hero. Waltz’s message in relation to the first tier of structure is
more specifically saying that international politics has an inner logic struc-
tured around a set of interconnected features: anarchy, self-help, balance
of power. Whenever confronted with any issue in international affairs, one
should start by thinking in this particular rationality. The second message
is that when one has checked all tendencies to think ‘un-internationally’
and gotten ready to analyze the power balancing of security seeking states,
the primary question to ask is: What is the polarity? Only on the basis of
knowing the polarity, do you know what patterns of politics to expect.5
Polarity is not a self-evident operationalization of ‘distribution of capa-
bilities.’ Waltz makes the non-trivial wager that the number of great
powers makes a principled difference in the patterns of power politics.
It is relatively easy to get from anarchy to distribution of capabilities.
The competitive pressures push in the direction of like units. The security
seeking policies generally become similar and the variation that remains
will obviously be that they differ in how much power they have. This
still does not give us polarity. Having reached the point where attention
is guided toward ‘distribution of capabilities,’ most people would say:
Sure, then the question becomes who has most power, China, the US,
or maybe the West, collectively? That surely must make a lot of difference
to world politics. However, neorealists argue that we should not care who
has the power, because we should not assume that different states behave
differently. Still, this does not take us to polarity, because we could still
land on an ‘analogue’ representation of the distribution of power in all
its complexity. We could describe the distribution of power in the format
of “over here we have a very strong power, mostly landlocked, and it
borders on this other almost equally strong power, while a third even
stronger power is separated from them by an ocean, etc.” This would be
in the tradition of classical geopolitics (Mackinder, 1904), but would be
hard to fit into a highly structuralist theory as aspired to by Waltz.6 It
would not really allow for characterizations of systems and the distinction
between changes within a system and changes of system. Waltz wants a
theory where the structure can be named, designated as one of a few
possible types. Enter polarity.
After 1945, most realists and other observers of power politics wrote
relatively unreflectively about polarity as if multipolarity was normal,
natural, and by implication better, whereas the new bipolarity was
problematized as a kind of deformation of the normal set of great
powers, preferably 5–8. Morgenthau in Politics Among Nations offered
some reasoning in terms of ‘inflexibility’ for why bipolarity was nega-
tive (Morgenthau 1948). Simultaneously, quantitative scholars started to
measure the effects of bi- and multipolarity on especially the frequency of
wars. At this point, Waltz’s 1964 article in Dædalus (Waltz 1964) offered
the first systematic theoretical elucidation of the logic of each polarity.
Without introducing psychologizing elements like the polarizing effects of
bipolarity, Waltz deductively unfolded the logic of balance-of-power poli-
tics within each of these polarities. This is not to say that we should not
be attentive in empirical studies to, e.g., the particular polarizing psycho-
logical dynamics of bipolarity or even integrate supplementary theory in
a case study, but the structural theory of neorealism should reserve its
third tier for a specification of how balance-of-power dynamics unfold in
different polarities.
28 O. WæVER
Briefly summarized, Waltz argues that multipolarity entails a politics of

maneuver among several great powers, which makes it dynamic but also
prone to misunderstandings as well as vulnerable to entrapment by the
great powers into the agendas of minor allies. Consequently, the system
is dynamic, but policies become rigid. Bipolarity in contrast is much more
predictable and simple, because the superpowers focus predominantly on
each other and do not depend on their allies who are furthermore rarely
able to change sides. In a crisis, the main actors are therefore more flexible
in their adjustment of policies and able to avoid war. As a result, bipolar
systems are more stable in terms of war-avoidance, whereas they might
be less stable in the sense of remaining bipolar (Waltz 1979: 162).7 In
the original theory, both tripolarity and unipolarity were seen as inher-
ently unstable at least in the sense of system reproduction, i.e., likely to
shift into another polarity, and probably also unstable in the sense of
war-avoidance. As discussed in several other chapters in this book, this
deductive logic came under pressure from the policy driven desire for
making unipolarity a viable option when the US suddenly in the early
1990s saw this systemic condition as either manifested or within reach.8
In sum, the concept of polarity is a theoretical concept determined by
its place in the structure of the theory (neorealism). Polarity is placed as
the third tier of a structure, following from the deep structure of anarchy
with its ensuing balance-of-power policies.
The nature of the structure is important too. In particular, the impor-
tance of keeping structure separate from unit characteristics (in Waltzian
terminology: to avoid reductionism). In relation to polarity, this primarily
translates into a demand to keep it separate from polarization. States
might group themselves more and more tightly into two camps, and this
increases polarization, but it does not change polarity which is defined in
terms of the distribution of capabilities (Goldmann, 1974).
The History of Power, Balance

of Power, and Polarity
Waltz is quite explicit that the content of his theory is what might be
called the Realpolitik tradition or balance-of-power policies. What drives
states we know already, he says—what we need is a theory that places
the engine of this in the right place, in the structure of the international
system. Therefore, it is necessary for the current analysis to look closely
at the history of the key concept in this tradition, the balance of power.
After ‘the balance of power,’ I will more briefly add a few comments
on the (huge theme of the) concept of power and finally spell out the
consequences for the concept of polarity.
A string of philosophers and historians have studied the emergence and
evolution of the concept (or idea) of a balance of power, including Hume,
Ranke, Meinecke, Heeren, Dehio, Gulick, Wight, and Butterfield. With
varying degrees of clarity (and in my view culminating with Butterfield),
they argue that the historical emergence of ‘the balance of power’ should
not be conflated with the dating of ‘power balancing.’ A political unit
(be that a state, empire, or city-state) surely started doing something that
we would designate as ‘balancing’ as soon as a multitude of units got
into mutual contact: threatened by another unit, you amass power by
internal (own) or external (allied) means to hold off the power of the
other. However, the actual dynamic becomes very different as soon as you
start to act through an understanding based on the concept of ‘balance of
power.’ In the latter case, you apply a specific abstraction (or concept, or
idea) to the understanding of your security situation and you strategize
in terms of how your acts influence that ‘balance of power’ and what this
means for your security.
To simplify a little, we might distinguish between three levels of reflex-
ivity regarding ‘balancing.’ The first is to react to power. If A is threatened
by the power of B, A will look around for allies and might therefore
end up ‘balancing’ B. The second is to think about the system having a
power structure—a balance, which might be ‘out of balance’—and there-
fore, it is typically in the interest of any state capable of so to throw
their weight on the weakest side, because their security will be threatened
by one power becoming too powerful. A third level is to construct the
balance of power as an institution in a more far-reaching sense, possibly
linked to “the idea of Europe,” civilization, or “international society.”
In other contexts, it could be the third level that interests us (Boer,
1995; Gulick, 1955; Wæver, 1998a), but in the present context, I want
to zoom in on the boundary between the first and second level. This has
sometimes been confused by a discussion of the third level. For instance,
many scholars have read the difference between Morgenthau, and Waltz
as being a difference between treating the balance of power as an “insti-
tution” to be cultivated (Morgenthau) or a natural law (Waltz). This
ignores Morgenthau’s emphatic “We say ‘of necessity’ advisedly” about
his opening sentence in the chapter on The Balance of Power: “The aspi-
ration for power on the part of several nations, each trying either to
30 O. WæVER
maintain or overthrow the status quo, leads of necessity to a configuration

that is called the balance of power and to policies that aim at preserving
it” (Morgenthau 1978: 173). The third level should really be about situ-
ations where actors invest so much in the international order that their
national interest becomes re-defined in terms of upholding this systemic
interest. This is the case when ‘raison de systeme’ starts to seriously impact
‘raison d’État’ (Watson, 1992), or (if that is the part of the world we look
at) a “European identity” becomes a significant part of national identity
(Wæver, 1998b), where the balance has attained a moral quality in itself.
Less will do. For our present purpose, the boundary between one and
two is more important than three. Do actors hold ‘the balance of power’
as a systemic quality to be real, which then enters their calculation of
their national interest—this is distinctively less demanding that making
it a separate object of value, per se. Partly because of the attention to
the 2nd/3rd boundary, the 1st/2nd one has been overlooked. There is
a fundamental and principled difference between ‘balancing’ immediate
threats and conceptualizing the international system in terms of a ‘balance
of power,’ even if you do not invest value in that balance, only recognize
it as real.
David Hume’s famous 1752 essay ‘Of the balance of power’ pays much
attention to ancient Greece. IR scholars are most prone to citing this
passage: “the maxim of preserving the balance of power is founded so
much in common sense and obvious reasoning, that it is impossible it
could altogether have escaped antiquity, where we find in other particu-
lars, so many marks of deep penetration and discernment” (Hume, 1793:
98). It sounds very much like Hume saying that the balance of power is
obvious to any smart observer (which the ancient Greeks were, he adds)
and thus it is in practice something close to an “objective reality.” Reading
the lines that follow or the pages that preceded gives a different meaning
to this passage. The central word is “altogether.” The Greeks did miss it
most of the time, but not all of it. Hume cites Xenophon, for instance, as
an example of a reasoning that might look like ‘balance of power’ but does
not actually demonstrate a systemic conception of a balance of power,
only an immediate reaction to the power that threatens oneself. Hume
tries to locate the boundary between what I called first and second level of
balancing. He claims to have found a real concept of ‘balance of power’ in
Thucydides, because here “the Athenians (as well as many other republics)
always threw themselves into the lighter scale, and endeavored to preserve
the balance.” Hume begins the investigation of the right question because
he notices how some earlier arguments (Xenophon, for instance) look like
it but do not in the end qualify because they are just ‘balancing,’ which
does not prove the existence of a concept of ‘balance of power.’ The
question is whether Thucydides qualifies. Wight says about Thucydides:
“There is nothing much here for a theory of the balance of power. If
Thucydides does not provide one, it is because the Greeks did not possess
one” (Wight, 1977: 66). Wight goes beyond isolated quotes to charac-
terize the nature of the states-system of Hellas during different phases. Up
until the Persian invasion, the Greek system was basically a succession of
political hegemonies even with instances of “a predominant power orga-
nizing its hegemony through an alliance,” which as he notes appears odd
in modern European terms. Also, he notes the absence of a concept of
great powers. According to Wight, it is only in the Hellenistic period that
we really get glimmerings of the doctrine of the balance of power. He
offers a compelling quote from Polybus, describing the policy of Hiero
of Syracuse (Wight, 1977: 67), whom Hume also quoted (Hume, 1793:
97–98). Most other scholars have followed Hume in reading Thucydides
and others as advocating that you should always throw yourself in the
lighter scale.
Actually, the question is more important than the answer in our
context. Both Hume and Wight are looking for a boundary, and
that is what matters—more than its exact location. Parsing the differ-
ences among their respective readings of Xenophon, Thucydides, and
Herodotus could be extremely valuable to IR. For the argument in
this short article, it is more important that they are trying to answer
the same question: When did political actors and observers move from
just advocating the checking of others’ power to actually employing
balance-of-power logic?
The second focal point in historical debates on the balance of power is
renaissance Italy.9 As often observed, Machiavelli did not use the concept,
but Guicciardini did. In his History of Italy (1537–1540) he does indeed
provide “the first vivid picture of the balance of power” (Butterfield,
1966: 136). It is a colorful and evocative image of powers perched in a
fragile constellation of mutual jealousy and alert to react to disturbances
of the balance. However, as Butterfield observes, this is “an interesting
scene,” a particular situation, not a general theory of balance of power.
The Italian powers had managed to construct an arrangement with these
qualities. What we could be tempted to read into this picture—because
of later times—but which is actually not there is “the notion of a general
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te branden stonden in rosse gloeiing, verzwevend en wisselend,
soms oplaaiend in dampend rood, dan verflauwend plots, met
opdoeming van schaduw-schimmen wonder-wild en fantomig uit
schemerstraatje. Telkens als smidsjongen trok, aan blaasbalg, ijlde
’n metaalgloed als brandende oker over de huisjeskrommingen, heet
roodgoud neerschroeiend op ’n vuil-kronkelig gangpoortje. En
telkens stapten menschen, nu donkere straatfiguren, uit
zijweggetjes, in den lichtgloed, als magisch éven beschenen, met
opglanzing fèl, van rooie koppen, lachend en satanisch, onbewust
[61]van hun rossige kleur-huivering, die wonder-diep en vizioenig
gezichten en handen, vergroeien liet in vreemd avond-goud; alles
rondom, dan plots donkerend verdween in zijweggetjes buiten
brand-kaatsing. Het verweerde poortje stond even dan in gloed, als
burcht-ingang, geheimzinnig vergroot, met achter zich, spitsen en
tinnen in duisteren glimsels. En van overal kropen in rosse schijnsels
de straatkrotjes bijéén, fel in vuurlijn afgestreept tusschen hevige
schaduwen op kei en grond, angstig en ontzaglijk van geheim-
kleurig duister.… Tot plots de smidse stil uithijgde en voor ’n poosje ’t
straatje weer te droef-schemeren lag, stil en nietig, met z’n vuile
mosdakige schemerdroeve krotjes.
Guurt kon niet afzien van den rossigen brand, die telkens op den
vuur-verwilderden kop van den smid vóórop uitschoot, als de balg
aan ’t laaien ging. Ze hoorde àchter ’t hok-raampje, het getemperde
geluid van z’n hameringen op de gloei-lichtende wielen en hoepels.
—Met pret in ’r, zag ze ’t vonke-sterren, de vuurspatten om de
donkere hoofden en rompen van andere werkers dans-kringen en
zweven, en alles weer heelemaal wegduisteren als de smidse tot
rust kwam. Dan zocht ze in den zwakken zwaveligen nastroom van
den gloed, hun hoofden, maar zag niets dan vage vormen van
travaille, wiel-bonken en donkere karbrokken, groote hoefbogen,
ijzerrommel en walsen, die als vergramd in de halve werkplaats-
duistering zwarten uitlijnden.—Vrouw Hassel zag niets, zat met ’r
donker hoofd maar te staren in schemerstraatje, tot plots
vlammengloed van overkant haar kwam bebloeden, en wilden angst
gaf aan ’r suffe hoofd met ’r magere hand aan d’r mond gekneld.
Guurtje, tegenover haar, in ros-gouën schijn, begloeid als in
tooverballet, het fijne hoofd, met die weeke trekken, als ’n Elsa,
omlicht alleen, het gezicht en haardos. En plots weer schimden de
vrouwenhoofden weg, met stilte tusschen de lichamen. ’t Was als ’n
visioen van monsterachtige leelijkheid en vreemde sage-fijne
schoonheid, dat koppenleven der vrouwen, weggezonken in het
diepe zwart van kamertjes-donkerte. En zwaar tikte achter het hout
beschot, door de stilte, de staartklok, [62]langzaam, als wou ze
telkens blijven staan. Tot plots weer, het raam in gloed òpschoot en
de lichtkoppen uit de droomrige donkering van ’t kamertje
opdoemden, het star-oogende, grauw-rossige bevende kakement,
met den vertrokken breeden angst-mond, bevende skelet-hand van
vrouw Hassel en de zoekende oogen volgevloeid van rood licht;
daartegenover het sage-grillige prachthoofd van Guurt, in magischen
haarbrand tegen de rosgouën raampjesruit, enkel hoofd en buste
met verdonkering van lijf. Telkens en telkens zoo, verzinking van
gezichten in donkre kamertjes-diepte, als de smidsevlam kromp, en
vaag de halfduistere smeden weer heel gewoon te zien waren,
peuterend onder kleine gasvlammetjes op donkere draaibanken.
Moeder Hassel was vandaag nog stiller dan anders, en toch kon ze
helderder iets afdenken.… Nu juist voelde ze haar vreeslijk leed,
zwaar alléén-leed, dat niemand van ’r begreep. Ze was altijd een
gezonde vrouw geweest en, hoewel nooit heel slim, toch zuinige
huismoeder. Tot ze, voor twee jaar inéén zoo’n rare knellende
verdoffing in ’t hoofd had gevoeld, alsof er kruisbanden om ’r schedel
gingen striemen en telkens gloeiingen er tusschen door, heete
opstijgingen van iets naar ’t hoofd. Zoo, inéén, was ze zenuwachtig
bang en huilerig geworden. En dan àlles vergeten, vergeten. Soms
had ze de grootste moeite om te weten wat er in haar eigen
huishouen omging. En niemand geloofde of begreep hoeveel smart
ze had, hoeveel pijniging en marteling. Guurt was ’n meid die alleen
aan d’r zelf dacht, dat voelde ze nog wel. En de jonges, ruwe
kwinkkwanken die ’r afbluften.… Maar haar man was de ergste. Die
was opschrikkend woest tegen ’r, duivelig, venijnig. Die porde en
mepte ’r veel, altijd in ’t geniep. Dan kneep ie, maar valsch-bang, dat
anderen iets merken zouden. En nou, wist ze zelf niet wat ’r met ’r
gebeuren ging. Meestal kon ze niets denken, was ’t ’r dik en zwaar in
’r hoofd, watterig en benauwd.… Zoo zat ze nou weer te mijmeren.…
Nou.… wa’ mos ze nou puur van denke?.… da ha je’t,.. kwait!.…

kwait.… [63]
Wá’ kwait.…? Nou, kwam ’t er niks opàn.… Ze kon nie.… nie.…?

wá’ nie?.… Main kristus.… Skande!.… skande.… wácht.… wá’ had
ze ’t nou over?.. Stil,.… da gong ’t weer.… weg.… gut.… ja.… wacht
nou há’ s’m.—Dá’ ze t’met niks onthouwe ken.… wacht se mos sich
nou moar puur inprate da’t van selvers betert gong.… Zoo te
mijmeren zat ze, met heete knelling in ’r doffe hersens, te grienen in
het donk’re kamerke, voelde ze weer drukkende neveligheid in ’t
hoofd, vergat ze weer wat ze zoo voor ’n paar tellen nog bedacht,
kwam er licht gesnik in ’r keel, maar dàt hield ze in, uit angst,
instinktief al, voor geschreeuw, wetend dat ze d’r uitscholden en
snauwden als ’t gemerkt werd. Toch zat ze altijd in angst. Ze wachtte
altijd achter, naast ’r, ’n roep, ’n krijsch, ’n stoot of woede-slag. Die
wachtte ze nòu, uit ’t donker op ’r suffe kop, zoo pàl op ’r af, dat ze
schrok als ’r heelemaal niets was en ze uit ’r doffe staar tot
herinnering kwam, èven heel kort. Maar dan kwam indommeling
weer, bewusteloos en toch hoorend, als even vóór den slaap. In die
suizelige dommeling bleef ze voelen knaag-smart van iets dat ze niet
begreep van’r zelf, vooruit wetend, dat ze toch alles weer vergeten
ging, dat alles er door verkeerd zou gaan, maar zij ’t niet verhelpen
kon. ’t Bangst was ze voor de snauw-giftige duwen van Guurt, en
nog banger voor de driftige venijnige uitbarstingen van den Ouë. Zoo
opgejaagd, niet wetend wat te doen, wachtte ze weer op nieuwe
snauwen, voelde ze grimmiger aandreiging van vreeslijke rampen,
zoo vlak tegen haar lijf. Dàt gevoel vergat ze weer als feit, maar
bleef dan nog in nawerkenden vagen weedom, angstig zenuw-
spannend, eng ingekerkerd tusschen angst-gevoelens, in ’r
grommen. In haar week-watterig-dichtgestopt hoofd, spande en
ònrustte ’t, als knaging van ’n woord dat men kent, maar dat niet wil
invallen, toch door de ooren klankt, brandend op tongepunt. Al ’n
paar jaar leefde ze in zoo’n martelende angst-spanning, zich erger,
benauwder voelend, van maand tot maand, duizeliger, en doezeliger
achter in ’t hoofd, al sterker vergetend, stommer smart uitsnikkend,
van dingen die ze niet wist te [64]zeggen. De dokter was er bij
geroepen, had hooge rekeningen gestuurd, drankjes, drankjes uit
eigen apotheek, zonder eind, ook de jonge arts werd er bij gehaald
en in potjeslatijn hadden ze uitgemaakt dat ze ’r beide niks van
snapten. Alleen de jongste mompelde iets van.… dementie.…
hersenverweeking.… Toen ouë Gerrit ’m vroeg, wat ’t was, had ie z’n
schouders opgehaald en alleen gezegd: „maar geduld hebben.” In
dien tijd had zij alle moeite gedaan om er van af te komen, zonder
drankjes. Want eerst dacht ze ook dat ’t aan haar zelf lag. Toen wou
ze, wou ze onthouen, iets dat ’r eenmaal inzat. Ze groef ’t in ’r hoofd,
metselde ’t in ’r geheugen, met drift. Dan begon ze te zweeten, te
zwellen in onrust, in benauwing en lag ze in stille worsteling met de
dingen die ze hoorde en wist.. Ja.. ja, nou had ze ’t nog.. ’t bleef.. ’t
bleef.. nog.. nòg!.. Maar dan, heel zachtjes, kwam er verslapping,
was ze vreemd-ver afgedwaald van wat ze moest, wilde weten, ging
’r de heele boel ontglippen.… Dan wist ze plots niet waarvoor ze zich
toch zoo inspande. Er begon raar, wezenloos gedoezel in ’r hoofd te
broeien, gedruk en iets heet-suizends kwam in ’r opstijgen.. Eindelijk
dofte alles uit, ontspande en dommelde tegelijk wèg haar wil; begon
weer dat stille smart-geknaag, zonder dat ze wist waarom. Plots dan,
in het duister van ’r indommelen hoorde ze ’n schreeuw, zag ’n
woedegezicht, rammelde ’n vloek boven ’r hoofd, drong ’n vuist op ’r
aan;—nou hoorde ze stemmen van ’r zoons, ’r man, dat ze dat weer
en dit weer vergeten had. Niks meer kon ze zich herinneren.—Alles
klonk weer nieuw voor haar, en kort, heel kort dan, begreep ze, dat
ze weer die dingen vergeten mòest hebben. Dàt pijnigde ’r erger.
Sterker drong bij tijen de angst op ’r aan wàt ze beginnen moest, als
dat zoo door ging. Onder hun hoon, hun schimp bleef ze radeloos,
staar-bleek voor zich uitzien als levenlooze, omdat ze niet zeggen
kòn, met geen woord, tegen die woedende gezichten, wàt er in ’r
gebeurde. In die oogenblikken, dat ze om ’r heen dreigden in woest
gekrijsch met woede-gebaar, voelde ze, onder haar eigen staren of
ze stikken ging, dichtsnoering van ’r keel, met net nog ’n heel klein
beetje [65]lucht om te ademen. Bij elk nieuw verwijt sidderde ze,
voelde ze in zich ’n angst van ’n rat die achter traliewerk wordt
opgejaagd, wou ze zich ergens aan vastgrijpen, waaraan ook.
Vanmiddag zat ze in ’r donker hoekje, stil schemeruurtje, rustiger,

nou ze geen verwijt-stemmen hoorde, veiliger zich voelend omdat ’r
duisternis om ’r heenlag. Vandaag was alles weer beter gegaan. Ze
had veel meer onthouden, voelde zich ook vrijer in ’t hoofd, ruimer,
en stiekem had ze zich voorgenomen af te zien van ’n nieuw
doktersbezoek, omdat van zelf de boel wel zou beteren. Heel even
blij zat ze in ’t donker, dat ze nou wat minder gespan om ’r schedel
voelde, dat ze weer veel gemaklijker op de namen van de menschen
kon komen, beter op ’t eten had gelet, weer veel van ’r huishouding
zag.
’n Adem-zware stemmings-stilte suisde door ’t warme achterend,

paffig-warm en pik-duister. De smidse stond stil aan overkant. Dirk
en Piet ronkten lichtelijk tegen muur-duister aan. Guurt zat roerloos,
denkende aan ’n stoeipartij met ’n paar heertjes van de sekretarie,
kale ventjes, die in hun heerige poenigheid diepen indruk op haar
maakten. In d’r berekend verzet tegen hààr rijke, waarop zij loerde,
die doodelijk van ’r was, had ze afspraakjes gemaakt, voor donkere
laantjes-wandelingen om de tuinderijen. Maar zij wist wat ze deed,
bleef zonder hartstocht. Ze zou zich daar niet te grabbel gooien,
zooals zooveel meiden van de plaats, voor en zonder geld. Alles
was fijn spel bij ’r, berekend op prikkeling, nou es naar de
Wierelandsche Harmonie, dàn naar de kemedie. Daarvoor gebruikte
ze àllen, loerend toch op één. Al was heel Wiereland nijdig op ’r,
scholden ze ’r uit voor scharrelaarster, ’t liet ’r koud, ze wist wat ze
deed.
Ouë Gerrit was uit den dorsch naar den stal gesjokkerd.
—Heé Guurt, ’t lampie!.… schreeuwde ie zwaar-hol uit den grooten

stal, ’t achterend in, waar z’n stem geweldig in het duister kamerke
stortte, tusschen de schemermenschen, in de pafrust. Gauw had
Guurt je ’n lampje op schouwrand boven den stalhaard geschoven,
haastig weer in ’t donker terugwijkend. Ze zat zoo lekker, zoo lekker
d’r kansen te berekenen. [66]De Ouë sukkelde en bonkte nog wat
aan den haard, die vlak bij den stal rookte, op steenmiddenwegje,
naar achterend. Met den vuurlepel rammelde ie dof en bonkend
tegen den beugel, waar boven, zwart verbrande buik van konkelpot
glimmerde.—Knetterend speelde er blauwig gevlam tusschen
takkenhout. Duister-ruim schemerde de stal, en ronde ruitjes, hoog,
als wilde oogen-sperring, in den bleekvuilen muur, staarden, nog
doorlatend schemer-avond van buiten, groenig schemerlicht dat in
valen schijn tegen de oograampjes opzweefde. In dàt licht, lijnden
nog even donker op, takkronkels, stronken en schors-bulten van
boomen op erf, bij brokken te zien door de starre-oogen van
raampjesrond, uitkrampend in avondlijk schemergroen.
Ouë Gerrit moest melken, de eenige vaste arbeid ’s avonds aan hem
overgelaten. Uit den duisteren hoogen dorsch, waar kouë vocht van
de hooge dak-welving afvloeide, donker en griezelig-vreemd, midden
in, hooiberg-gevaarte opsteeg, had ie luk-raak uit den hoek een arm
vol hooi gegrepen, op den tast, en het in den stal-voorgang onder de
donkere koe-koppen gesmeten. Ellendig vond ie ’t in den dorsch.
Daar was ie altijd onrustig, in die zwarte ruimtekilte. Dan was ’t
lekkerder in den broeiwarmen stal. Zware urinelucht en meststank
zoog er doorheen, met bijtenden ammoniakgeur, verzwevend door
het donker. Heel achteraan, in ’n hoek, stonden de twee koeien op
hoogtetje.—Guurt kwam brommend uit het donkere achterend, waar
de jongens nog ronkten, en moeder te suffen lag, het kleine
petroleumlampje nadragen.
Voorzichtig zette ze ’t neer op ronde raampjesrichel. Hol klonk

gestap van Guurt op steenen groep, en dof-schimmig onhoorbaar
sloop Hassel op z’n paars-wollen kousen, door de leegte, dwars
tusschen kleur-schimmige rempalen heen. Uitgestorven donkerde de
stal, die gebouwd was voor twintig koeien. Zooveel had ie ’r vroeger
bezeten. Nou maar, in verarming twee, die ie niet eens houen kon op
de wei.—
Dirk kwam loom uit ’t achterend, de stal in, gapen uitstootend die hol
vergalmden in de halve duistering. Met z’n handen, [67]diep
weggefrommeld in z’n groote zakken, bleef ie, lijzig koeiig kijkend,
om den Ouë heen en weer drentelen.
—Hâ je nog wà’ vangst op vailing Ouë, vroeg Dirk.
—Hoho!.… ho.… ho.… niks te meer.… smeer’ge boel.… allegaer

els.… saa’k moar segge.… els.… vier en vaif en nie g’nog.…
skorumsootje.…
—Zoo, bromde Dirk, zich uitrekkend, onder heviger

gaapuitstootingen.—Toen, kijkend naar de beesten, leunde ie tegen
den muur, onder het lampje, in geel-schemerig stallicht verdoezeld,
bij een van de oog-starende raampjes.
Guurt scharrelde rond bij de pomp, op steenen middenwegje, naast
den haard, klompklotsend. Ring.. ring.. ring.. ring.., stompte ’t uit
donkeren hoek daar, met knarsingen van overhalenden slinger
tusschen geweld-klettering van waterstroom in emmer. Even lichtte
rossig òp soms ’n hand, ’n brok gezicht, ’n rokpunt, als ze overbukte
dicht bij den haard. In den hoek, vóór de groep, schemerde ’t zwak-
geel lampschijnsel op koei-kruisen en schonken, die heuvelig
afschaduwden tegen beschot áán en op dwarsmuur, als
drommedarisbulten, vaal-zwart. In de stank-uitwasemende groep lag
koevuil te dampen, om den kruiwagen, die nog vol mest, beklonterd
achter de beesten, op achtergang stond. Plots viel er stilte, toen de
pomp uitgeklaterd had, en de dreunende ring-rings stomden. Overal
door den groot en hollen stal, ging kruip’rig schaduwspel over
steenen vloer en muurhoeken. De Ouë had eindelijk, lijzig, ’t
melkblok op de stalstoep gelegd. Zacht op de koebil patsend, schoof
ie ’t blok tusschen de warm-wasemende snoffelende dierlijven. In
licht vreugdegeloei dat zacht-bazuinig en weemoedig-zangerig
verhuilde in den stalschemer, draaide één koe d’r kop naar ’m toe,
zich loswringend van ’t touw dat vastgesnoerd zat aan de groen- en
blauw beverfde rempalen. Met z’n smoel duwde de andere koe, de
loeiende terug. Wolkerig woelde op ’t hooi, dat de beesten uit
vóórgang van den een naar den anderen kant trokken en scherp
sneed door de stilte, hun grissend grazen en kauwen, [68]hield soms
plots even op, druischte dan weer ààn, als vloeide ’t zeis-geruisch
van ’n maaier door ’t donker heen.
Lijzig nog bond de Ouë ’t spantouw om de achterpooten van ’t dier,

voor ie melken ging, en lijziger ging ie zitten op ’n melkblok, als ’n
stratenmaker op éénpootig krukje, met de melkketel tusschen z’n
knieën gekneld, èven òpgelicht, van zich af. Z’n handen eerst nat-
sabbelend in z’n mond kneep en trok ie tegelijk in maatgang aan de
spenen. Zacht-regenend in bleeke straaltjes, spoot sis-scherp ’t
melk-zoet den emmer in. Piet was ook ingeloopen, rugde naast Dirk
tegen den muur. Hij hield er van zoo na ’t melken ’n paar lauwe
glazen in te slaan. Daar loerde ie nu al op, gulzig maar stil. Dichter
had hij ’t lampje naar z’n vader geschoven. Het profiel van ouë Gerrit
kwam nu zwart-fijn en scherp op het inslinkende onderkruis van de
koe schaduwen, fijn boerenprofiel met lokkenhang, puntig, dat
lichtelijk mee-trilde met huid-siddering van koebeest. Maar telkens
doezelde schaduwprofiel weg, of verwrong in woeste karikatuur op
zwarte dijplekken tusschen huidwit in, als de Ouë, stram voorover
bukte op melkblok, naar andere uiers, den emmer in schuineren
stand knelde om de straaltjes beter te vangen. Dàn donkerde z’n
ingebogen lichaam schaduw-bevracht wèg, tusschen de zwak-
belichte schoften van het andere warme koebeest, dat tegen ’m
aangedrongen stond, zacht loeide, in wellust om ook gemolken te
worden.
—Wa bliksems mooie makelai hep ie tug, heé Ouë, stem-zong Piet.
—Oftie.… huhu.… huhu!.… dofte beklemd stem van Gerrit tusschen

flanken-inknelling van de beesten uit.—Onrustig bewoog de
wachtende koe z’n achterpooten, drong nauwer òp tegen den Ouë,
zacht zwiepend met staart, die opgebonden kronkelde, aan ’t
bindtouw. Urinelucht zoog zwaarder door den stal, en het koevuil
plompte vet en zwaar-dampend in de groep, vlak voor de kou-
uitrookende monden der loom-kijkende kerels.
Telkens vielen er bonkende geluiden in de stal-stilte uit het

achterend, en als de koeien met hun ringen schoven waarmee [69]ze
vastgetouwd snoerden aan rempaal, echo’de het gebonk doffer door
de licht-schemering.
Wemelende reuze-gestalten schaduwden door elkaar, toen de Ouë

opstond, strammig van z’n melkblok, z’n vette vuile vingers
beschuimd afdoopte in de ketels, Dirk en Piet vlak voor het lampje
elkaar over groep en achtergang speelsch-woest heentrokken.
Scherp-zwarte profielen, dàn klein omgetrokken en zuiver-gelijkend,
dan grof-vage, achteruit verbleekende monsterlijke boerentronies
onkenbaar, vervluchtigend ijl, op vuil-wittigen kalkmuur. Koppen
braken of zwollen, als de kerels in wilden stoei vooruitsprongen, in
vlakke, verdeukte schedelbobbels, tegen bruin-morsig beschot.
Groote neuzen, flauw, en zware goliath-handen, ijlden schimmig
over den wand, boven bultige silhouet-schonken van koe-beesten.
Zoo holde, warrelend en wemelend, een donker spel van schimmen
op vale muurbleekte, en de kerels zèlf, zwak-geel belicht, met
verduisterde tronies, grof-knuisterig, adem-ingeperst, hijgden uit, in
de stal-duistering, stoeiend over de dampende groep.
—Jullie làikt kinders, driftte midden in de Ouë,—neem jai mestkep

en kuil wat àn.… ’t loopt er ’tmet over.… eenmoal.… andermoal.
In de voorgang stond Piet te gichelen tegen Guurtje die zenuwachtig

haastig doende was in keuken en achterend.
—F’rslik je ’r nie an, Dirk.… de Ouë sòanikt.… hep puur tait tut
mur’ge.… nou.… mi stróói-oàfend!.…
Vlak op den kruiwagen liep ie aan, z’n adem, als gouën stoom, fel
beschenen door lamplichtstraaltje, tegen achterlijven van koeien
opblazend. Z’n gladde komieke kop rimpelde wreed en zijn mond,
donker open, boorde duistere schaterlachen, snorkend door den
stal. Een narocheling van lol, barstte z’n strot uit. Danserig sprong
weer z’n grof-komiekige boerentronie in scherp silhouet op vuilen
muur. Dirk bleef staan, lijzig, lachloos.
—Hep tait tut murrige, schaterde Piet weer, krullend met z’n lippen
als ’n nijdige aap.
—Daa’s net, terug-deunde met luie stem Dirk.

—Daa’s nèt, bauwde Piet na.… je suster.… [70]
Guurt was juist weer met pompstraal ringkinkend, ingedreund. En

weer holde Piet speelsch op Dirk aan, vlak bij ’t lampje springend,
dat z’n kop scherp-zwart weer troniede op den lichtschemermuur.
Plots gaf Dirk onder jolig geschater van Piet en Guurt, z’n broer ’n
fellen tik op z’n schoften, dat die woest achteruit sprong, met z’n
gezicht naar de stalraampjes, en z’n hoofd-silhouet weg-reusde als
angstige goliath-kop. Maar méé trok Dirk, die lui zich sleideren liet
met z’n beenen in mestvuil, naar ’t hoekje van Guurt toe, waar ze
zingend en lach-schaterend, bek-af, met geweld neerstommelden.
Guurt had aldoor èven gekeken, was met ’r hoofd, voorover bukkend
in boen en emmergeploeter, tegen blauw-rood van steenen
voorgang, soms net te zien geweest in zwak schijnsel, schimde dan
plots weg, klomp-klepperend naar keuken, om met nieuwen
boenrommel in ’r handen, weer den stal in te donkeren,—want ’t
liefst was ze bij lolligen Piet. Piet, ongedurig, jongen van negentien
met botten van rijpen kerel, wou alles aanraken, belollen.
Als ze niet werkten de kerels, zoo in den wintermiddag al, wisten ze

met hun leege handen geen raad. Dan stonden ze, uren achtereen,
te gapen, te rekken, te smoken, de lange winteravonden verzeurend,
tegemoet; avonden, die, als ze niet kaartten of dronken, slakkerig-
langzaam over hen heenkropen. Maar stoeilol kwam meestal los in
broeiend warmen stal, met dien prikkelenden ammoniak-geur, ’t
zoetige hooigeurige onder den heeten diepen stank van
uitwasemende dieren.
’t Was onbewust, alsof eigen natuurdrift losgromde, in geilen

vechtlust, als voor hen, de opene natuurlijkheid der koeien in vreten
en ontladen, zich schaamteloos opgulzigde en weer uitplompte.—
—Seg, skarreloarster, hai je t’met je vraier op sterk woater zet, ’k
hep ie sien.… f’rdomd.… met die blaike stadsmuil van ’t staa’thuijs.
—Daa’s jokkes, stem-gilde Guurt uit hoek-donkerte de stal in, onder

zwaar geboen, uit ’t duister te hooren, op rinkelige emmers. [71]
—F’rdomd.…
—Daa’s jokkes, ikke daan niks.… niks daan ’k.…
—Nou stuif nie soo.… jai hep-er t’met an ieder vinger ein..
—Tog hep-ie main nie sien.… jài nie—.. en niement nie..

schreeuwde Guurt, die nu met boender in d’r hand en losfladderende
haren van ’t bukken, naast Piet in scheem’ring kwam staan, één arm
in heup-zwaarte gedrukt. En hijg-zacht naar adem, woedde ze uit.…
—Neenet Pietje, dà’ hai je mis.… glad en al mis.… main sien

niement.… je sel Annie sien heppe.… daa’s puur ’n lekkere.… daa’s
’n kreng.… daa’s s’n kwinkkwanker.… mo je hoore.… nou binne se
in ’n f’raasderantie.… sel ’k moar segge.… en nou sait sain.… Nou
dat de Ouë.… die laileke suipert.…
—Dà’ kenne wai.… onderbrak Piet grimmig.… Maar Guurt vertelde

door, afgevend op ’r vriendin Annie. Piet keek telkens schuin naar
den Ouë en Dirk stond roerloos, vadsig, tegen den muur geleund.—
Guurt lach-praatte, telkens haar adem-stoom even beschenen, van ’t
donker hoekje uit naar schemeringslicht waarin Piet stond, opjagend
de kerels. Hol brokkelde haar hooge vrouwestem af, in wije,
klankende stalruimte, gelende schemerdiepte,waar de
woordplonsjes instortten, uit niet-zichtbaren menschenmond. Ze had
uitgerateld en Piet begon weer of ze niets gezegd had.
—Nou skarrel jai moar roak, se weite ’t.… je bint t’r ’n dunne!.… jai
mi je faine snuut.… Kaik, daa’s nou main weut! moar.… jai jài.…
kraigt nooit ’n man.… mit je witte lintjen goan jai de kist in.… beduuf’l
jai nog moar soveul.… jai knikkert mit je vraiers.…
—Dà’ lieg je.… heftigde Guurt weer, uit donker hoekje op ’m

afspringend van ’r bukkig hijgend geboen.
—Louw.… allegoar louw.… die tochtige maide.… an ieder vinger d’r

éin.… en allegoar moak je hullie dààs.… Jesis Dirk.… wa trek jai
roar smoel.… aas ’n bunsem op de sprenkel.… gierde Piet’s stem.
—Hait puur lol, bromde Dirk goeiig, onverschillig even [72]met z’n
schoften schurkend tegen den muur,.… suinigies an.… suinigies
àn.… goan se gangetje.… se gangetje.…
Ouë Gerrit was heelemaal klaar met melken, ’t viel ’m nog mee. Niks
meer noodig, voor se aige ’n paar kan, en de rest veur de venter.
Nou g’n zorg meer an z’n kop.… ’t potloodje zat er.… stilletjes.—
Twee koebeesten was genog, tege Maart moste ze tug weer weg.…
Met woede-woelingen boorden de koeien hun snoeten in ’t hooi,

zoekend naar lijnkoek, die komen moest. Dirk had er al ’n paar uit
den dorsch gehaald, waar ze half lagen te broeien naast de
voerbieten, op ’n berg. Vóór de drinkgang zat ouë Gerrit op z’n knie,
naast ’m ’t lampje, tusschen beschot en voor-loop, nauw
opgedrongen. De grillig vlekkerige koekoppen sloegen wilder hun
ringen tegen de rempalen dat ’t echo-bonkte. Zwaar-woest en gretig
stonden hun oogbollen, donker, vol lust, en van uit hun geketenden
neergedrukten stands wrongen de koppen zich òp, in wild geronk
besnuffelend de halfduistere handen van den Ouë.—
In brokken duwde ie de lijnkoeken in hun vadsige, lebberende

kwijlbekken, of liet ze vallen tusschen het hooi. Woelig omwolkten de
beesten dan den dorren stapel, in woest gesnuffel. Toen de koek op
was sneed de Ouë de bieten in groote blanke plakken, ze tusschen
het voer werpend. Gretiger gulzigden de donkere koppen in rauw-
raspend geslik. Lijf-wasem sloeg overal van de beesten af, en hun
bekken dampten zwaar. Vocht droppelde langs het beschot, warm-
broeiend, tot vèr van de dieren àf. Woest bleven ze omlekken de
donkere handen van den Ouë, die in z’n hoek, geknield, suffig ze zat
te bekijken, niet meer denkend om z’n beesten, alleen, stil-zalig, en
roezerig na-genietend, om wat ie weer zou te zien krijgen vannacht.
En nou, in die warmte, oog-soezend in ’t dunne licht-straaltje, viel ’m
ineen in, ’t heele tooneel. Hoe hij had gestaan, de notaris, en hoe
raak z’n greep was geweest, met al dat zand en die rotte bladeren.
Guurt kwam de melktesten aansjouwen, die in hun lichtig [73]glazuur,

steen-bruin glanzerden in het scheemrig lamplichtje. Sieperend
zeefde ze melk uit den ketel in de testen. Poesje, was zacht
aangeslopen en geestig-fijn, tast-sluipend met z’n kopje in de test,
bleef ’t in drinkbuiging, zacht ingehouen, met z’n bedonsde pootjes
op testrand staan, schuchter, terugkrimpend in z’n blank poes-dons,
bij elk stal-geluid, bàng dat ze ’m snappen zouen in z’n snoep. En
fijner nu, herhaalde ’t z’n snoep-beweeg, vlak bij het lampje dat op
steenen kleurgrond lichtte. Fijner schaduwde z’n kopjes-rond,
snorlijntjes en punt-oortjes tegen beschot, en in schuchteren snoep-
stand, boog méé, scherp zwart silhouetje, gratielijk met staart en
sluippootjes.
[Inhoud]
III.
Het half-zesje stond klaar in de woonkamer. Vrouw Hassel en Guurt
hadden hompen brood met kaas en roggebrood, zoo maar, op kale
tafel klaar gesneden. De koffie stond te bakken op petroleumlichtje
dat knepperde en stonk. Zwaar stoelgestommel rumoerde voor allen
rustig zaten en gebeden hadden. Met handpalmen verkreukten en
trokken ze hun brood af. Moeder Hassel schonk koffie.… koffie was
haar eenige troost. De dokter had gezegd, dat ze ’t niet moest
drinken, maar ze vergat ’t. Vroeger al had haar hevige
drinkhartstocht elk bezwaar overrompeld. Ze mòest drinken. Den
heelen dag dronk ze, dronk ze, spoelde ze iets weg in ’r, door dien
heet-zoetigen smaak. Wel dertig kommetjes sloeg ze in. Dat was ’t
eenige dat ’r staande hield, en ’r verdriet verdoofde. Daarom stond ’t
wit-steenen koffiepotje, koud en bruin-besopt aan alle kanten, roetig-
ingebrand bij den bodem, den heelen dag op ’t stinkende
petroleumpitje. Bakken mòest ze. Water bij eerste treksel, water bij
tweede treksel, al slapper, valer, viezer sop, klonteriger en grondiger;
daarop weer nieuw gedrop. Zoo klieterde heel Wiereland bij de
koffie. Overal in de tuinders- en werkmanskrotjes stonden de
bemorste petroleumstelletjes, duffig en roetig-vies; stond vaal-bruin
blad met grauw-steenen kopjes, [74]uitgeschulpt en bepuist, naast ’n
nikkel komfoortje, vuil-verbrand of pracht-blinkend.
—Skenk main nog wa’ leut, snorkte Piet tegen Guurt, met ’n bons z’n
kopje op tafel dreunend.
—Nou, lachte Guurt, jai hep t’met ’n dam lait.… se kenne d’r puur ’n
spaiker op je moag glaikkloppe.… wat ’n pens!..
—Kaik die, waa’t hekkepunter.… wat ’n bemoeial, sou je d’r nie ’n

druil om d’r hoet ketse?.…
Vlug, lacherig nog om Piet’s vraatzucht, schonk Guurt in. Stil

gesmak zoog door ’t kamerke, dat sufte in z’n dof-geel lamp-
schijnsel, waarin de staartklok alléén, met z’n koperslagwerk, zacht
òpglimmerde in lichte, schichtige glans-veegjes. Telkens nog
bonkten ringrukken van de koeien uit den stal, of het snikken even
van ’n herkauwende, zuchtte tegen de half-opene kamerdeur. Bij
nieuwe broodhompen sperden wijer open de kaken, lebberden de
monden, lui en vadsig in de broeiige kachel-warmte en loom tiktakte
de friesche, met iets van winterigen slaaplust in z’n slingergang.
Vrouw Hassel zat jammerlijk stil en verlaten te kijk-suffen onder het

scheefhangende lampje, met z’n geel-rood vuil vlammetje en
naargeestig schijnsel. Half afgezakt van haar stoel zat ze, in ’r vettig
bruinige huisjapon, die bochelde op ’r rug. Haar afgeleefd
rimpelgezicht leek grauw-zwart. D’r grijzig groezel-haar, dat flodderig
los uitslonsde onder de smerige, bij de ooren gepunt-kruide
steekmuts, die schedel-naakte gleuven door het gaas schemeren
liet, overhuifde zwaar en donker ’r klein monsterlijk gezicht. Telkens
gulzigde ze ’n slok koffie in, dat ’r magere keelkrop er van natrilde en
beet dan weer op de punt van ’r vettig schortje.
Tranen pinkelden plots in ’r brandende oogen die gloeiden, alsof er

kalk ingewaaid was. Om ’r breed-dunnen kwijl-mond, waar op
afzakte, pappig wangvleesch, dat als los vel zwabberde op
kakement, in teistering doorgroefd, doolden trekken van
verlammenden angst, spanning om te willen volgen wat om ’r heen
gebeurde, vast te houen wat ze dof hoorde. [75]Even na ’t
schemeruur hadden ze d’r weer geknauwd, waren, ze ’r weer op ’t lijf
gevallen met vergeet-dingen.
En Guurt had ’t hardst meegekrijscht, blind voor d’r smart, zelf zich
lekker, sterk, frisch, jong voelend. Nou was vrouw Hassel weer uit
haar beetje opgeleefde vreugd gestooten. In één zag, hoorde ze
weer alles veel slechter, vatte ze niets, ging ’r ’n lijm’rige verbinding
van woorden door ’t hoofd, suizelde en spande ’t overal in ’r, hoorde
ze geruisch, verdoffend om ’r héén, van stemmen en àldoor
achteréén, fluiterig gegil door de hersens diep in ’r ooren. En telkens
slokte ze gulziger ’r koffie-vocht lekker, warm, smakkend en
opzuigend de zoetige vuilheid, die ’r niks zei, niks verweet, niet aan ’t
schrikken maakte.
Paf-rust loomde ’r weer in ’t kamerke, waarin de dingen, boers-knus

aanglinsterden. Klein-stijf stond in ’n dwarshoek, schuintjes, ’n
pronkschoorsteentje, zelf-getimmerd plankje, omspannen met
vaalrood lapje, koper-bepend. Om de lakzwarte glimkachel lag
morsvuil, ingetrapt kolengruis en ’t plaatje dofte blikkig. Glanzerig
van politoer-lichtvleksel, in rood-bruine gladheid stond er tegenover
mahoniehout linnenkastje, parmantig-stijf, op klein-breed poot werk,
aan hoeken versierd met poppetjes-spul, fel-kleurig steen, en tegen
het blom-grof, geel behang, hingen los-opgehaarspelde gore
haarwerkjes en kleur-stervende chromo’s, koningen met pelzen en
Zwitsersch meer-blauwsel. Alles bakte en loomde ’r vergeten in
boerenknusheid. De grof-rooie stoelen, met hevig geel bies-
streepsel stonden te drenzen in den doffen lampschijn. Alleen de
kwikzilverige vaasjes, buikig-rustig, op het mahonie-kastje,
vroolijkten met breed-mondige lichtstreepjes. Naast de kachel,
achter vuilen kolenbak, pronkte rijk-ongedeerd, koperen standaard,
met schep, koperen tang en pook, sierlijk gebogen en zacht-
beflonkerd, smetteloos voornaam lachend tegen den vuil-roetigen
pook die ernaast op ’n stoel lag. In ’n anderen hoek van laag-
balkend kamerke wemelde ’t van portretten, op klein tafeltje met
goor-stijf-krullig haakwerk belooperd. En vlak achter vrouw Hassel
donkerde ’n korf met tortelduifje, dat uit z’n beduisterd kamerhoekje
klagelijk koekeroede. [76]
Tusschen stemgepraat en eetgesmak, bij stilte-poozen,

weemoedigde ’t duifje, uit ’t licht geschoven, in z’n korfje, op ’n
voetstuk van gebroken bloemstandaardje, dat sidderde als ’t diertje
sprong. Zacht klagelijk koekeroede z’n zwel-kropje, als ’n kindje, dat
ergens ver, zacht te schreien en te snikken lag. Plots trok Guurt ’t
meer in den lichtkring, toen ’t juist, wil-venijnig zich-zelf in z’n
veertjes zat te snavelen, hals verdraaiend diep. Bij ’t geschuif, plots
vooruit, in ’t licht nu, dat z’n korfje inschemerde, dook z’n kopje
onder de veeren weg, begon ie stil te loeren voor zich uit, stil, als
luisterend naar wat gezegd werd door Guurt. Dan weer keek ie bijzij
àf met z’n donkere karmijn-oogjes, die kniploos stonden, staàr, stil.
In één weer kropte dan, uit teeder donsborstje klagelijk
kindergekreun, heel zacht en als van ver, koekeroekoe,
koekeroekoe, melancholiek in de paffende, scheemrige kamerke-
rust. Guurt, met dikken vinger, krauwde z’n nekje, door korf-tralie
heen onder staal-blauw glans-kraagje vol violette weerschijntjes en
groenige schubbetjes. En geestig, onder ’t krauwen, vonkten donker,
z’n rooie gloed-oogjes van lekkerheid, ging dommig-dwars z’n teer
kopje als om te luisteren, weemoedden weer z’n koekeroe’s klagelijk
kamerke in.
Plots gaf Guurt ’t korfje weer ’n duw achteruit, dat tortelduifje

wegdonkerde in ’n hoek, en schrik in z’n wijnrooie oogjes stolde.
Ouë Gerrit had Guurt wat gevraagd, die lijmerend onverstaanbaar
antwoordde met vollen mond.
—Nou joa.… sel ’k moar segge.… fa’n koniggin Fillemientje.… hai je

nog wat lese kenne.… eenmoal.… andermoal.…
Klank van groote onderdanigheid was er in z’n stem gaan beven, en

met vreemd-rilligen eerbied sprak ie den naam van Wilhelmina uit.
Dirk schoof stil Guurt z’n koppie toe.—Kijkend naar d’r vader, schonk
ze gedachteloos in, gansch bevangen door het denken aan de rijke
almachtige koningin.…
—Hée doedelsak, lachte Piet, haar tegen den arm stootend, genog,
je skinkt t’r snof’rjenne noast.…
—Aa’s se nouw t’met trouwe goat Ouë, schokkerde Guurt, [77]alsof
ze niets gehoord had, door,.… aa’s sai nouw trouwe goat de
koniggin.… hep sai dan d’r femilje.… en magge die d’r na kaike?.…
Ouë Gerrit schaamde zich altijd ’n beetje voor de groote kerels en

z’n meid dat ie d’r niks van wist, en dat tie nie lezen kon. Brutaal,
lukraak stootte ie ’r maar uit:
—Wel joa.… sel d’r ommirs puur niks.… skele kenne.. dà moak niks,
loa se kaike!.… je hep ’r ven dit.… en ven dàt.… op soo’n dag.…
hoho.… ho.… se komme uit de hooge!.… sel ’k moar segge.… en
mit hoarlie pakkies àn.… afain.… fiere en vaife en nie genog.…
enne.…
—Nou joa, hield Guurt vol, die nog niets wijzer was.
—Toe maid, gromde Dirk, die nauwelijks wist dat ’r ’n koningin

bestond, skenk in, je skenkt t’r noast.…
—Nee, jokkes, verdedigde Guurt, maar nog niet loslatend haar

vader:
—Moar .… enne.… nou.… aas d’r puur hooge.…
—Kaik tug veur je.… doedelsak, je skenkt op main poote, helhoak.…
—Main kristus, waâ jokkes.…
—Nou grinnikte Piet, skeelt t’met gain koe.… skeelt t’met gain koe.
—Jesses wà’ kerels.… wa hep jai smoor in.… en jullie.. jullie.… wete
d’r ook gain snars van.… weet jai ’t moeder?.…
Ze schrok op, vrouw Hassel. Niemand vroeg haar ooit wat over zulk
soort dingen.
—Gut.… schokte ze stemhaperend.… da wee’k nie.… al t’met.…
Schuw brak ze af, gejaagd, want nou, waarachtig, nou wist ze niet
eens meer waarover ’t ging, wàt Guurt gevraagd had. Haar leerig
gezichtsvel fronste samen in monsterlijke rimpeling, en haar grijs-
grauwe brauwen dottigden krampend. Vergeten, vergeten, smartte ’t
stil in ’r, met ’n snikhuil, maar uiterlijk bleef schrei-loos haar gelaat.
Alleen lichtelijk sidderden haar kaken. Plots sprong Dirk woest op,
bonkte z’n [78]stoel tegen den muur dat duifkorfje trilde en vrouw
Hassel opschokte van ’r zitje.
Met rumoer ging ie den stal in, achteruit op straat. Guurt was gretig
in Wierelandsch krantje gaan koekeloeren of ze ook iets van de
koningin lezen kon, van wie ze boven haar slaapstoel twintig
beeltenissen had hangen, in al andere standen en leeftijden. In ’r
egoïstische voorstellingen, waan-zeker en achterhoeksch-bedompt,
wemelde ’t van licht, goud en juweel, als ze aan de koningin dacht.
En hoog, op ’r verheven stoel zag ze Wilhelmientje zitten. Van de
kranten-berichten begreep ze niet veel; uit ’n behoorlijken zin kon ze
juist niet wijs worden.… Als t’r zoo stond, in die deftige krantentaal,
voelde ze zich kregel, ’t verwarde hààr voorstellingen, want die
alleen leefden voor haar. ’n Paar dingen maar, licht, juweelen en
goud, overal goud en ’n hooge stoel, ’n troon,—dat alles omgedraaid
en omgedraaid in allerlei variaties, bedacht en bekeken met haar
achterhoekschen weelde-hartstocht, dat ’t sterde en fonkelde voor
d’r oogen. En nou die kranten! Maar half lezen had ze geleerd. Dirk
voelde heelemaal niets voor ’t feest; wist niet eens waar Den Haag
lag. Toch zou ze doorlezen. Knusserig schonk ze zich nog ’n kopje
leut in, en naast ’r, schoof bevend-gulzig, de blauw-doorpeeste
grauwige beef-hand van ’r moeder, die ook weer hebben wou. Plots
kwam Dirk weer in, plompte zich weer neer bij de kachel. Guurt
frommelde ’t krantje op zij. Niks snapte ze ’r van. De Ouë zat met
ingezakt lijf in z’n op schoot gedrukt en tabakspot te morrelen,

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Polarity in International Relations: Past,

Present, Future Nina Græger

Ole Wæver Anders Wivel

ISSN 2945-7815 ISSN 2945-7823 (electronic)

Cover illustration: © Evengii_Bobrov/iStock/Getty Images Plus

beginning, and an anonymous peer reviewer, who challenged us to signif-

Copenhagen, Denmark Nina Græger

1 Introduction: Understanding Polarity in Theory

Part I Theorizing Polarity

7 What Future for Small States After Unipolarity?

Part II Polarity and International Security

18 The Discourse on the US/NATO and the EU

Part III The Future of Polarity and International Order

Bertelsen Rasmus Gjedssø Department of Social Sciences, UiT The

Larsen Henrik Department of Political Science, University of Copen-

Fig. 4.1 A framework for understanding world order 69

Table 14.1 Number of East Asian states pursuing realignment

Introduction: Understanding Polarity

Nina Græger, Bertel Heurlin, Ole Wæver, and Anders Wivel

Current debates on international politics seem to agree on one thing:

N. Græger · B. Heurlin · O. Wæver · A. Wivel (B)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

general, necessitating a fundamental rethinking of concepts and theories

the unipole and other states as a consequence of systemic changes such as

coupled to an even more prominent concept in the study of interna-

Shared Assumptions and Focal Points

that the foreign policy action space of states is unaffected by institu-

assumptions with systemic forces such as globalization and their impact on

Polarity in Theory and Practice

discussing the logic(s) and implications of different types of polarity. John

response from those states unwilling to accommodate to the unipolar

the polarity of the international system, although an increasing number

Structure of the Volume

the political project(s) of post-Cold War US administrations. Jakob-

need to explore—theoretically conceptually and empirically—the interac-

defused security competition among especially Germany and France. This

Ikenberry, G. J. (2018). The end of liberal international order? International

Monteiro, N. P. (2011). Unrest assured: Why unipolarity is not peaceful.

Wayman, F. W. (1984). Bipolarity and war: The role of capability concentra-

Polarity Is What Power Does When It

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23

What Polarity Needs to Do

Briefly summarized, Waltz argues that multipolarity entails a politics of

The History of Power, Balance

maintain or overthrow the status quo, leads of necessity to a configuration

Nou.… wa’ mos ze nou puur van denke?.… da ha je’t,.. kwait!.…

Wá’ kwait.…? Nou, kwam ’t er niks opàn.… Ze kon nie.… nie.…?

Vanmiddag zat ze in ’r donker hoekje, stil schemeruurtje, rustiger,

’n Adem-zware stemmings-stilte suisde door ’t warme achterend,

—Heé Guurt, ’t lampie!.… schreeuwde ie zwaar-hol uit den grooten

Voorzichtig zette ze ’t neer op ronde raampjesrichel. Hol klonk

—Hâ je nog wà’ vangst op vailing Ouë, vroeg Dirk.

—Hoho!.… ho.… ho.… niks te meer.… smeer’ge boel.… allegaer

—Zoo, bromde Dirk, zich uitrekkend, onder heviger

Lijzig nog bond de Ouë ’t spantouw om de achterpooten van ’t dier,

—Oftie.… huhu.… huhu!.… dofte beklemd stem van Gerrit tusschen

Telkens vielen er bonkende geluiden in de stal-stilte uit het

Wemelende reuze-gestalten schaduwden door elkaar, toen de Ouë

—Jullie làikt kinders, driftte midden in de Ouë,—neem jai mestkep

In de voorgang stond Piet te gichelen tegen Guurtje die zenuwachtig

—Daa’s net, terug-deunde met luie stem Dirk.

Guurt was juist weer met pompstraal ringkinkend, ingedreund. En

Als ze niet werkten de kerels, zoo in den wintermiddag al, wisten ze