ABSTRACf: The Cold War Balancel of Terror has been replaced by the balance of

unpredictability. Protracted conflicts have wound down with the withdrawal of U.S. and/or Soviet support, and peace negotiations have begun in the Middle East. On the other hand. the Soviet Center's coUapse and devolution elsewhere in the world keeps the conflict pot boiling. The geopolitical changes that we are witnessing are the inevitable consequences of a world system that is foUowing the development process an entering a high stage of specialized integration. Three characteristics of the system are: entropic lines of imbalance among the parts, the potential network of emerging gateway stateways, and a new balance in U.S. European-Russian/Soviet relations. These all have spatial dimensions. As entopic imbalances are redressed. as gateways become world mini-hubs, and as the U.s. finds a world strategy for NATO that strengthens the European partnership and invites Soviet cooperation in addressing regional inequities and conflict, the world system will achieve a new equilibrium of accommodation. The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the beginning of a major new period of dynamic global equilibrium. The Cold War Balance of Terror has been replaced by the imbalance of unpredictability. Only last spring the world's attention was rivetted upon the Persian/Arabian GuH and its aftershocks. Now it has turned to war in Yugoslavia, the dismemberment of the Soviet Center, upheavals in Haiti and Zaire, and Middle East Peace Negotiations. While there is indeed the danger that the tides of national state devolution may be plunging the international system into deep chaos, other world events give promise of long-term stability