Making the Unipolar Moment U.S. Foreign Policy and the Rise of the Post-Cold War Order

Description

In the late 1970s, the United States often seemed to be a superpower in decline. Battered by crises and setbacks around the globe, its post–World War II international leadership appeared to be draining steadily away. Yet just over a decade later, by the early 1990s, America’s global primacy had been reasserted in dramatic fashion. The Cold War had ended with Washington and its allies triumphant; democracy and free markets were spreading like never before. The United States was now enjoying its "unipolar moment"—an era in which Washington faced no near-term rivals for global power and influence, and one in which the defining feature of international politics was American dominance. How did this remarkable turnaround occur, and what role did U.S. foreign policy play in causing it? In this important book, Hal Brands uses recently declassified archival materials to tell the story of American resurgence. Brands weaves together the key threads of global change and U.S. policy from the late 1970s through the early 1990s, examining the Cold War struggle with Moscow, the rise of a more integrated and globalized world economy, the rapid advance of human rights and democracy, and the emergence of new global challenges like Islamic extremism and international terrorism. Brands reveals how deep structural changes in the international system interacted with strategies pursued by Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush to usher in an era of reinvigorated and in many ways unprecedented American primacy. Making the Unipolar Moment provides an indispensable account of how the post–Cold War order that we still inhabit came to be. MAKING THE UNIPOLAR MOMENT......Page 1 Contents......Page 6 Acknowledgments......Page 10 Introduction: Structure, Strategy, and American Resurgence......Page 14 1. Roots of Resurgence......Page 27 The 1970s and the Crisis of American Power......Page 30 The Paradoxical Cold War......Page 42 Human Rights and the Democratic Revolution......Page 52 Globalization and Economic Renewal......Page 66 Conclusion......Page 80 2. The Reagan Offensive and the Transformation of the Cold War......Page 81 Reagan, American Prospects, and the Cold War......Page 83 Taking the Offensive......Page 87 Success, Failure, and Adaptation......Page 101 Reagan and Gorbachev......Page 110 Blowback......Page 126 Conclusion......Page 130 3. American Statecraft and the Democratic Revolution......Page 132 Reagan’s Democratic Evolution......Page 134 Anticommunism and Democracy in Central America......Page 143 A Historic Opening in Latin America......Page 155 From Authoritarian to Democratic Stability in East Asia......Page 163 Constructive Engagement and South Africa......Page 173 Conclusion......Page 181 4. Toward the Neoliberal Order......Page 185 Reaganomics at Home and Abroad......Page 187 Trade, Finance, and Policy Coordination in the Western World......Page 195 Debt, Leverage, and Neoliberal Ascendancy in the Third World......Page 211 The Market and the Middle Kingdom......Page 229 Conclusion......Page 234 5. Structure versus Strategy in the Greater Middle East......Page 237 The Iranian Revolution and the Three Challenges......Page 238 Persian Gulf Security and the Iran-Iraq War......Page 247 The Travails of Counterterrorism......Page 255 Radical Islam and the Afghan Jihad......Page 268 Iran-Contra and After......Page 273 Conclusion......Page 285 6. The Dawn of the Unipolar Moment......Page 287 The Bush Administration on the Eve of Unipolarity......Page 289 German Reunification and the Shaping of Post–Cold War Europe......Page 292 The Persian Gulf War and the Unveiling of Unipolarity......Page 311 Primacy and Post–Cold War Strategy......Page 330 Conclusion......Page 347 Conclusion: Understanding the Arc of American Power......Page 349 Key Themes and Conclusions......Page 351 American Power and Policy in the Post–Cold War Era......Page 360 Notes......Page 376 Index......Page 472