Stephen Wertheim20 growth in China and India, on terms
accepted but hardly dened by the United
States. In the same period, however, the
share o income accruing to the wealthi-
est one percent o the world’s population
has steadily climbed, whereas that o the
bottom 50 percent has stagnated. The rest
o the world, including the vast majority
o Americans, has actually lost ground.
Wealth is now concentrated to the point
that an estimated 11.5 percent o global
lies oshore, untaxed and unaccount-
able. The populist revolts o the past few
years were a predictable result. And
American leaders bear direct responsibility
for these outcomes, having spearheaded
an economic order that puts capital rst.
U.S. President Donald Trump often
portrays himsel as breaking with the
basic pattern o recent American foreign
policy. Many o his detractors also see
him that way. In truth, Trump has carried
forward and even intensied the post–
Cold War agenda o his predecessors:
spare no expense for military hegemony,
and nd little to spare for the earth’s
climate or the well-being o anyone who
is not wealthy. Trump stands out chiey
because he describes this agenda as
national aggrandizement rather than
farsighted international leadership. In
this regard, he has a point.
Washington’s post–Cold War strategy
has failed. The United States should
abandon the quest for armed primacy in
favor o protecting the planet and creat-
ing more opportunity for more people. It
needs a grand strategy for the many.THE WAR MACHINE
Both champions and critics o U.S.
grand strategy after the Cold War have
christened the project “liberal hegemony.”
But American objectives and methodswere always more hegemonic than
liberal. Despite diverging over whether
and how to promote liberalism, U.S.
policymakers have for nearly three
decades converged around the premise
that Pentagon planners set forth in
1992: the United States should main-
tain a military superiority so over-
whelming that it would dissuade allies
and rivals alike from challenging
Washington’s authority. That superior-
ity quickly became an end unto itself.
By seeking dominance instead o
merely defense, the strategy o primacy
plunged the United States into a down-
ward a spiral: American actions generated
antagonists and enemies, who in turn
made primacy more dangerous to pursue.
For most o the 1990s, the costs o
this strategy remained somewhat hidden.
With Russia attened and China poor,
the United States could simultaneously
reduce its defense spending and expand
¤ , launch military interventions in
the former Yugoslavia and for the rst
time station tens o thousands o troops
in the Middle East. Yet by the end o the
decade, U.S. dominance had begun to
generate blowback. Osama bin Laden
and his al Qaeda terrorist group de-
clared war on the United States in 1996,
citing the U.S. military’s presence in
Saudi Arabia as their top grievance; two
years later, al Qaeda bombed the U.S.
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania,
killing 224 people. U.S. policymakers,
for their part, were already exaggerat-
ing the threat posed by weak “rogue states”
and gearing up for ambitious military
interventions to promote democracy
and human rights. These pathologies
shaped Washington’s overly militarized
reaction to the 9/11 attacks, as the
United States entered into successive05_Wertheim_pp3_Blues.indd 20 1/20/20 4:24 PM