摘要：With the defeat of the Soviet Union, and the consequent victory of the United States in the Cold War, the leading American realist journal, International Security, published a series of articles on the subject of what it termed the ‘unipolar moment’. The concept of the unipolar moment involved the idea that the US was emerging as the only superpower in the international system and one with preponderant power. Realists discussed the extent of its dominance and whether this would inevitably lead to the rise of other states, or coalitions of states, to challenge US dominance. The unipolar moment was used to imply that US dominance was theoretically and, judging from historical experience, temporary. Different writers offered various policy prescriptions either to extend the duration of the moment or to use it to refashion the system to the advantage of longer term US interests. While there are benefits in using the term, particularly its explicit formulation of the existing distribution of power as being a temporary one, a more common term outside US realist circles is that of hegemony. In this conception, a hegemonic power is one that has the traditional attributes of a great power but because of its relative dominance has rule setting capabilities with respect to the system as a whole. This warrants the term hegemonic power. It is not, however, imperial in the meaning of being able to directly control the activities of other political formations in the international system. The usage of hegemonic does, however, create its own problems, insofar as it may be confused with the leftist usage of the term, commonly sourced to Gramsci, involving the notion of ideological dominance of a system of thought by those powerful enough to control it.
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