Route 1 polarity = distribution of power → statement is neorealist → Cold War appears to prove it → set the test: the structure, or the weapons the poles carried?

Route 2 1945–91: no great-power war → 1914 and 1939: multipolar systems collapsed into war → record looks decisive → but ask what actually held the peace

Waltz (1979): bipolarity most stable — national interests align with bloc interests, two powers leave little room for miscalculation → Mearsheimer puts it in reverse: “back to the future” after 1991, both World Wars grew from multipolar systems, fluid balances let ambitious powers expand → Gaddis: the result was the “Long Peace”

classical realists read the same record differently → Morgenthau + Carr: multipolarity more stable — alliances balance, limited wars threaten no one directly → two rigid blocs make every dispute zero-sum → Berlin, Cuba: that calm could turn nuclear

Route 1 Waltz himself credits nuclear weapons with keeping the war cold → discipline came from deterrence and crisis management → no structure supplies that alone → bipolarity narrows conflict; peace still has to be managed

Route 2 true as description (fewer war-triggers), weak as a law of peace → today’s US–China “new bipolarity” carries deep interdependence and behaves nothing like the first → stability follows statecraft, not the count of poles