Balance of Power?

[WarriorMonk]

A question for everyone here:

How much do you believe in the balance of world power?

Should there be pretty much one or two superpowers like the US today or the times of the Cold War? And with that, encourage states to strike out on their own nationalistic tendencies, acting in their own self-interest and security, with no international authority above states regulating their interactions; (states must arrive at relations with other states on their own)?

Or should world power and influence be balanced for all nations? Checks and balances for each nation abound in an international forum, with no one nation gaining a whole lot of power?

Choose the path of a unipolar world, and you have the chance of gaining glory for a nation, competing against other states, but run the risk of having totalitarian regimes come to power...

Take the multipolar route and see how a world can easily work together, but look carefully at some cultural disagreements hampering those work efforts, and perhaps worse, that the international forum is also corruptible - as anything else in this world is, and you may face the erosion of sovereign states...

Choose carefully...

[Herrmannek]

When I hear in random contexts about blanace we must protect I want to puke..

[ViktorNavorski]

The Political Science community, well around my part of the wood, can be simplify as such:

Ranking, from most stable to least stable:

Bipolar: Granted you are both looking at the business end of each others gun barrel, but it is predictable, you pick this side or the other side, your or me, good or evil, communist or democracy, etc.
Unipolar: What we got now, the problem is less predictability and everybody competing and wanting to bring down whoever is the "uni" in the polar one way or another. This lead to formalization of factions which lead to the next "polar."
Multipolar: Least predictability or none at all, it is like high school, there are a multitude of cliques competing against each others for their own agenda and ideal. Chaotic, chaotic and chaotic with high potential for all hell break loose (Examples: World War I and II being the historical end results of such a polarize world).