Before appreciating the “unprecedented changes” of our time, we need to ask what qualifies as change, and what is the measure of significance. This paper recognizes the need to de- velop a middle ground between those who claim that the character of contemporary inter- national politics has changed fundamentally, and those who maintain that nothing signifi- cant at all has happened. A first step is to realize that notions of change and continuity constitute each other as the variable pace of political time. Change is not uniform: processes of integration are aligned with disintegration, globalization with regionalization, etc. A se- cond claim is the proposition that significance is a matter of interpretation and understand- ing. This paper takes the study of political change to be essentially a study of ideas and patterns of thought, the ways in which change is conceived. Against the common claim that realism fails to address change, I maintain that classical realism largely is about significant change, and how to come to terms with an environment in flux. A discussion of the smart power discourse serves to illustrate the enduring impact of classical realist thought on the analysis of international change.