Jennifer Lind and Daryl G. Press
42 «¬® ̄°±² ³««³°® ́
nine percent for Germany, and a stag-
gering 14 percent for the Soviet Union.
The U.S. economy accounted for nearly
hal o total world economic output. And
o course, the United States was the only
country that possessed the atomic bomb.
Given the United States’ dominant
position, several American voices called
for a muscular foreign policy to roll
back Soviet inuence and communist
regimes in eastern Europe. But ulti-
mately, U.S. leaders adopted a more
restrained strategy: to help reestablish
democracy and markets in western
Europe, protect those countries from
Soviet expansion, and limit Soviet
inuence around the globe. In the inter-
est o preventing a war, that strategy,
which came to be known as “contain-
ment,” sought to avoid steps that the
Soviet Union would deem unaccept-
able, such as the elimination o commu-
nist buer states in eastern Europe.
Containment was neither modest nor
meek. During the brie postwar period
o primacy and the decades o bipolar-
ity that followed, the United States and
its allies spread their inuence and
battled communism all over the world,
often excessively, engaging in covert
actions and bloody wars. Critically,
however, the strategy respected core
Soviet national interests, especially
communist control o what the Soviets
viewed as their “near abroad.” In the
prescient vision o the diplomat George
Kennan, the architect o containment,
the United States would defeat Moscow
by allowing the Soviet system to col-
lapse from its own internal rot.
The second U.S. experience with
primacy played out dierently. When the
Soviet Union dissolved, the United
States had the world’s largest economy,
the most powerful military, and a roster
o allies that included the world’s
richest, most technologically advanced
countries. At this unipolar moment, a
few voices argued for a strategy o
restraint, calling on the United States
to husband its economic resources,
focus on domestic challenges, and avoid
stumbling into new conicts. But
Washington, unconstrained by the lack
o any peer competitor, rejected this
approach. Russia was on its knees;
China was weak. And potential oppo-
nents o liberalism and free markets were
chasing a dead-end cause. The “end o
history” had arrived.
American leaders chose to promote the
U.S.-led liberal international order. In
concert with its allies, Washington
steadily expanded core Western institu-
tions, above all ²³μ¬ and the European
Union, into eastern Europe. As they did
so, Washington and its partners debated
the appropriate speed o expansion and
the political and economic criteria that
entrants into their order should meet. But
they paid little heed to Russian concerns
about Western encroachment, despite
earlier pledges to the contrary. Russia,
wrote the journalist Julia Ioe, had
become “a place to be mocked rather than
feared”: not a great power any longer but
“Upper Volta with missiles.” And after the
9/11 attacks, Washington embarked on a
project not merely to destroy al Qaeda
but also to transform the Middle East.
Afghanistan and Iraq were just the ¥rst
two targets; the goal was broader: regime
change in Iran, Syria, and elsewhere.
Even at the peak o American power, it
was unwise to disregard the core interests
o potential adversaries. But 30 years after
the end o the Cold War, Washington’s
relative power has dramatically declined.