The fundamental remaking of the post-World War II settlement—American supremacy in the capitalist world, Soviet domination of the state socialist one, and China’s radical rise after a century of crisis—began to unravel five decades ago, a process that is now completing. But, in Slavoj Žižek’s poetic gloss of Antonio Gramsci, “The old world is not yet dead, the new world is not yet born. It is a time of monsters.”  Professors Blecher and Suny will sketch some of the major tectonic forces at play, both within each pole and also among them on the international chessboard, and explore the implications.