Conflict among nations for forty-five years after World War II was dominated by the major bipolar struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. With the end of the Cold War, states in differing regions of the world are taking their affairs more into their own hands and working out new arrangements for security that best suit their needs.

This trend toward new "regional orders" is the subject of this book, which seeks both to document the emergence and strengthening of these new regional arrangements and to show how international relations theory needs to be modified to take adequate account of their salience in the world today.

The editors conclude that, in the new world of regional orders, the quest for universal principles of foreign policy by great powers like the United States is chimerical and dangerous. Regional orders differ, and policy must accommodate these differences if it is to succeed.