Primacy and the Unipolar Moment: The Debate over American Power in an Asymmetrical World

Abstract

The debate about the importance of the United States, and whether it is the leader in a unipolar global order, continues to provoke leading thinkers in the world of International Relations. This article explores some of the intellectual positions that have led to current thinking about the United States and its place in an asymmetrical world.

There are few things to stir the intellectual emotions during our time as the United States role in the world. There is wide disagreement about the merit and legitimacy of the recent upsurge in what appears to be unilateralism with attitude. In particular, the US invasion of Iraq has intensified this debate that is less about the actual power of the United States and more about how the United States should use this power for its security and the greater good. Well before 11 September 2001, the world had seen a range of threats to US and global security, including ethnic and national conflict, rogue states seeking and in some cases acquiring weapons of mass destruction, and transnational terrorism, to name but a few. There is little conventional symmetry in this world since the end of the Cold War. Unilateralism and multilateralism in this rather asymmetrical global order are hotly debated, as they should be, and will characterise the conversation about international affairs for some time to come, especially as the United States seems to be providing fewer global public goods’, like security and protection of free markets, while at the same time increasing irritation among allies and other friends through its heavy-handed hegemonic behaviour.¹ Moreover, history has shown, at least since Westphalia, that major powers prefer multilateralism over unilateralism, though it must be conceded that never in this period was there a sole superpower.²

In a 1991 article in Foreign Affairs, Charles Krauthammer described what he called ‘The Unipolar Moment’ of US power. Krauthammer took issue with three basic notions that many observers in the waning days of the Cold War believed would take hold. These assumptions were based upon the supposition that a new multipolar world would replace the old bipolar Cold War world. First, with the Soviet Union becoming defunct, Europe, Japan, and China would quickly rise in the new world order as major powers. Second, US domestic opinion would supposedly welcome this new multipolar world with a new consensus for an internationalist foreign policy. Such a consensus would apparently be possible now that Vietnam and anti-Communist hysteria had been vanquished from the US memory. Finally, the new post-Cold War strategic environment, with its shiny new multipolar world order, would be one in which the threat of war would be ‘dramatically diminished’.³

Writing before the Gulf War had actually taken place, Krauthammer found all three of these assumptions ‘mistaken. Europe, he argued, would take its place not as equal partner but as a vassal attendant of the United States. The US internationalist consensus would quickly fade, if it indeed ever became evident in the first place. An internationalist approach to US foreign policy is historically, after all, much like an independent state of Poland—it has rarely existed. Instead, Krauthammer predicted a conservative approach to foreign affairs would prevail. And instead of a world where the threat of war was lessened, the collapse of the Cold War power dynamic would create a world in which what Krauthammer called ‘small aggressive states’ would seek weapons of mass destruction and fill regional power vacuums left open by the decline of the Soviet-US power dynamic. In such a world, the United States would not be part of a multipolar world, but instead would seek to create a world in which its national security would be secure through maintaining order across the globe, or at least where US security interests, broadly defined, might be threatened. Such a world would be unipolar, as the United States would be a hyperpower, the first one of its kind since the height of the Roman Empire.⁴

The United States as hyperpower. What did this mean? What made it possible? And how would the United States exercise this unprecedented power and how long would this ‘unipolar moment’ actually last? The Gulf crisis of 1990-91 provided a preview of things to come. Europe, and to a lesser extent Great Britain, uncomfortably took a backseat during the crisis and ensuing war, taking its first step towards becoming—as some thought at the time—irrelevant. The Soviet Union could do little to influence this event, as Russia would later do just as little in many others. The Gulf crisis had brought into sharp focus a new world order in which the United States, with its Western allies in tow, was the single pole of power. Only the United States could marshal the diplomatic, military, economic, and political tools from its national security apparatus to involve itself in any situation, any crisis, anywhere in the world, at its own choosing, and do so unilaterally. The Gulf War of 1991 was for the first modern war of choice, the first exercise of overt unilateral US power.

For Krauthammer, the Gulf crisis ‘inadvertently’ revealed to the world the United States’ unipolar moment. It also exposed the uncomfortable fact that whatever multilateralism that had and currently existed was superficial rather than real. Real multilateralism is based upon some semblance of equal partners acting in concert, in the tradition of the alliance against Napoleon or the Grand Alliance of the Second World War. Superficial or apparent multilateralism is cooperative action that is in essence a pretext or veil for the unipolar actor. The Gulf War of 1991 was certainly an instance of apparent rather than real multilateralism. No multilateral organisation led the way, neither the United Nations nor NATO. Instead, the United Nations Security Council resolutions, the logistical build-up, war planning, and the token military and admittedly in some cases significant economic contributions were all the result of US leadership or prodding.⁵

It should be no surprise that the United States has exercised overt unilateralism and has occasionally disguised its unilateralism in multilateralist clothes, especially when involving use of ferce. Unilateralism has been, after all, a mainstay of the United States diplomatic and national security tradition. The Founding Fathers went out of their way to ensure that the young Republic would not become the vassal state of some European power. They excused the brief alliance with France during the American War for Independence as one of necessity—only when US liberty was directly threatened would an alliance or multilateral approach be taken. Otherwise, it would have to be a one-horse show, lest the Republic be taken advantage of by the belligerent and overbearing European powers. Hoping that the US independent economic potential would appeal more to European states than its potential as part of a European empire, the United States believed that its national security could only be maintained through unilateralism. Witness the Barbary Wars of the early 1800s, the War of 1812, the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, the War with Mexico of 1846-48, and indeed the Civil War itself, where the Confederacy attempted to violate this holy writ by trying to bring Great Britain and France into the conflict. President Abraham Lincoln, in perhaps one of his greatest political triumphs, managed to prevent such an alliance against the Union by simply freeing slaves.⁶

Having a great two-ocean moat to make invading the United States impractical if not impossible made such a unilateralist approach possible for such a young and militarily weak nation. However, by the 1880s, as industrialisation took hold and the modern arms race accelerated with great speed, the United States invited increased vulnerability by indeed becoming an economic heavy-weight and a modernising naval player. Unilateral policies and military action became the norm for a nation that seemed ready to stretch its economic and military legs—the War with Spain in 1898, the Philippine Insurrection, the Punitive Expedition in Mexico, and even the American strategic approach to the Great War, despite Wilsons idealism, were unilateral uses of force. The Boxer Rebellion alone represented an odd foray into the multilateral world, but only locally and only because of necessity rather than choice.

The 1920s and 1930s saw the United States embrace both multilateral and unilateral approaches to its own national security problems and interests. The Washington Naval Treaties of 1922, for example, were designed from a US perspective to safeguard US interests in the Pacific through a multilateral agreement. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff, however, was a decidedly unilateral if not counterproductive protectionist policy. The Second World War brought the great aberration in the US military experience and represents the one time that the United States had to discard its unilateralist tradition for real multilateralism. Not without its problems and far from perfect at the time and as a historical example, the Grand Alliance was indeed a real multilateral effort.

The post-Second World War environment threatened American national security in an entirely new manner. Now a superpower sharing a bipolar world with the Soviet Union, the United States linked its own security to that of the free world. Now, American security required a free world that embraced American values. Faced with a like-minded adversary, however, the United States in turn had to embrace new strategies to obtain this security. The proliferation of multilateral organisations after the Second World War—organisations such as the United Nations, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the South East Asian Treaty Organization, and others—were ultimately superficial multilateral organisations. These organisations and agreements were designed by the United States, for the United States, and were dominated (and arguably still are) by the United States. For the first time in its diplomatic tradition, the United States found multilateralism useful on a broad scale.

American use of force during the Cold War era reflected this. Korea was no more a multilateral operation than was the Gulf War of 1991. Under the guise of the United Nations, the Korean conflict was an American commanded, supplied, and fought war for American interests. The French Indochina War and the Suez Crisis both had an American puppet master. Vietnam was an American model with a SEATO hood ornament. NATO was dominated by American funding, American equipment, and American military doctrine.

But American unilateralism and the nations none too subtle use of multilateralism for its own security goals was palatable to many allies and friends because European and Pacific Rim security had become intertwined with American security. Other nations more or less willingly allowed the United States to conduct such a strategy because it was in their interest to do so. That the United States appeared to be a non-threatening hegemonic power (unusual in the human experience) helped Great Britain, Germany, Japan, even Australia, swallow the bitter pill of playing second fiddle in an American band.

While Krauthammer did not get it all right, he assuredly did not get it all wrong. By the end of the 1990s, the United States was in a definite unipolar moment, with Europe seeking relevancy, Japanese economic strength on the wane, and Russia wallowing in its own self-created political and economic mess. China advanced, but remained so far behind the United States that, at least it appeared at the end of the 1990s, it might take decades for China to catch up to the United States even if the United States stood still. Rogue states seeking increased WMD capability (Libya, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, etc.), however, made the world a dangerous place, as did transnational, non-state actors, like al-Qaeda, and ethnic and national movements in the wake of the collapse of the Cold War world, such as in the Balkans and several former Soviet Republics, not to mention Africa. Krauthammer had to confess that the United States, however, had not experienced a resurgence of isolationism; rather a sort of post-Second World War need for engagement had taken hold.⁷

11 September 2001 only added more authority to US unipolarity. Krauthammer maintained that 11 September ‘heightened the asymmetry’ in three profound ways. First, US military power, used unilaterally, was revealed in all its might for the world to see. The 1999 air campaign over Kosovo and Serbia had hinted at the great technological gulf between the United States and military capabilities of Europe, Russia and China. To destroy the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001 in only a matter weeks, at a distance of several thousand miles, with only minimal casualties was clear and unquestionable evidence to the world of the capabilities of US military might and political will. What the world had suspected to exist had now been exposed in all its ‘fury’. Second, September 11 showed the ‘recuperative powers’ of the US economy and political processes. Despite being shut down for days, US stock exchanges rebounded. Despite being physically attacked, the Department of Defense, the Congress, and the Presidency responded without a hitch. Last, September 11 forced a realignment of other powers. Pakistan, India, Russia, and others showed support in a variety of ways for the US War on Terror. Historically, other powers tend to band together to counterbalance the hegemon, but in 2001 they banded together to support the hegemon.⁸

Not all are convinced by Krauthammer’s unipolar concept. Writing in 1999, Samuel Huntington used the time-honoured framework that global politics is ‘about power and the struggle for power’ to describe the emerging post-Cold War world order. Huntington freely accepted that the United States was the sole superpower, but disagreed with the idea that this fact made the world unipolar. For Huntington, bipolar and multipolar models also fell short in describing the new order. Instead, he proposed a uni-multipolar system of a single superpower and several regional major powers. Under this system, all major international issues and crises demand action by the superpower and some combination of the major powers. However, action taken by combinations of major powers can be summarily rejected by the superpower.

The United States, with its global reach and pre-eminence in all categories of power, is the superpower, of course. The major powers are categorised thus because although they enjoy regional pre-eminence, they do not have global reach economically, diplomatically, or militarily as the United States does. These major powers include the German-French combination in Europe, Russia in Eurasia, China in East Asia, India in South Asia, Iran in Southwest Asia, Brazil or perhaps now Venezuela in Latin America, and Nigeria in Africa. Among secondary powers, Huntington includes Great Britain, Ukraine, Japan, South Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Argentina. Obviously the list is debatable, but Huntington’s categories hold merit.

As in all world systems, great powers have an interest in maintaining the system. Under this uni-multipolar system, the United States would prefer a unipolar approach and often behaves as though the system was indeed unipolar. According to Huntington, the major powers would prefer a multipolar system in which interests could be pursued both unilaterally and multilaterally without interference or oversight from the hegemonic superpower, and the major powers increasingly assert their own interests despite sometimes being at odds with US interests. Major powers perceive the US pursuit of unipolarism as a threat to their ability to act regionally, while the United States experiences frustration at not being able to achieve true unipolar hegemony. The dilemma for both is that as the United States tries harder to achieve a unipolar system, the major powers try harder to create a true multipolar system. For Huntington, the United States passed through the bipolar world of the Cold War, into a brief unipolar moment during the Gulf Crisis of 1990-91, and then entered a uni-multipolar phase before ultimately reaching a true multipolar world system sometime in the twenty-first century.

If Huntington’s model has merit, and I think it does, then September 11 only intensified unipolar-multipolar competition. The dynamic was well in place before that day, as the first Bush and Clinton administrations both boasted of US economic might and military prowess, implying that while the United States welcomes friends and allies, it could, if it had to, go it alone. Multilateralism if needed, unilateralism if necessary.

At the heart of this struggle between a desired unipolar world on the one hand and a multipolar world on the other is the global perception of US hegemony. The United States prefers to see itself as a benign hegemon or a non-imperialist superpower, one which believes that its values are world values, and thus it strives to promote those values through a variety of standards: US concepts of rule of law, and democracy; US military power; and US rather than international principles on human rights, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction proliferation, religious freedom, environmentalism, and international criminal and war crimes courts. Those that fail to ‘drink the Kool Aid’ are punished through a variety of means: economic sanctions; control of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund; foreign aid with many strings attached; unilaterally ostracising rogue states and disagreeable transnational organisations; and controlling the leadership appointments of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and other supposed multilateral organisations.

For Huntington, the United States has two overwhelmingly powerful tools at its disposal, and diplomacy is not one of them. Economic sanctions and military intervention, rather, give the United States unprecedented unilateral capability to ensure its security and defend its national interests around the globe. However, bringing to bear these powerful weapons upon a dictator, rogue state, or terrorist organisation can have, and often has had, the unintended consequence of making these regimes and organisations even more popular among followers and occasionally non-followers alike.

Interestingly, Huntington notes that Americans themselves do not want a unipolar role and cites several polls to that effect. Unlike Krauthammer, who sees an internationalist consensus, Huntington maintains that ‘the United States lacks a domestic political base to create a unipolar world’. Thus, while US leaders can posture ad nauseam on the international stage, the representative nature of the US political system has the potential to restrain unipolar desires. Similarly, when US leaders say they speak on behalf of the international community, increasingly few of the major powers desire to be included in that catch-all phrase. So, it seems Joe and Betty Citizen in the heartland of America have something in common with Russia, China, France, Germany, and several other nation-states: all are leery of American unipolarism.

So, if the United States does not speak for the international community even though it says it does, is not then the United States a rogue state? Or, as Huntington suggests, a rogue superpower? While many would not consider the United States a military threat to their national existence, they do see the United States, in Huntington’s words, as ‘a menace to their integrity, autonomy, prosperity, and freedom of action. The major powers view the United States as ‘intrusive, interventionist, exploitive, unilateralist, hegemonic, hypocritical, and applying double standards’, and using financial, cultural, and intellectual imperialism to pursue its own goals while stifling those of the major powers. The worlds business is US business. Thus, for a major power like India, the United States has the capability to veto or at least bring together enough international pressure to prevent India from pursuing any number of regional and international strategies. For India, the United States is a political and diplomatic threat, as it is for China, Russia, Japan, and the regional powers of the Middle East.⁹

Around the same time as Huntington proposed the uni-multipolar system as a more accurate view of the new world order, Coral Bell took Krauthammer’s unipolar concept even further, suggesting that the ‘unipolar moment’ of American power will last at least another four decades—much longer than a ‘moment’ For Bell, the gap that US peer competitors had to overcome to transform the unipolar system into a multipolar system is currently insurmountable. For a major power such as China, Russia, or Europe to challenge American supremacy, many diverse obstacles would have to be overcome. In fact, for Bell, multipolarism may not be the best option in the long run. A return to a bipolar system with either China or Russia as the balancing superpower is much more likely.

Like Krauthammer, Bell points to the United States preference for apparent multilateralism in the way the United States approaches its unipolar vision: ‘The unipolar world should be run as if it were a concert of powers’. The post-Second World War, US-made organisations now must be used to at least give the appearance of multilateralism and legitimacy to US action. Witness using the United Nations Security Council to impose sanctions or condemn the action of another major power. It helps ease the burden of the unilateralist impulse to use multilateral organisations to put the stamp of international legitimacy on US-desired action. Thus, the United States uses the pretence of concert as part of its unipolar strategy. Lately, the United States seems to be doing this quite poorly.

In some ways, what Bell suggests is more akin to Huntington. For the United States to avoid appearing unipolar it must use multilateral organisations and enlist the support of the major powers of the uni-multipolar system. Finally, for Bell, the policy of containment during the Cold War created the unipolar moment for the United States, which is unprecedented. This moment will in turn alter the international system over the next decades. And with no counterbalance to US hegemony on the horizon, at least in Bell’s opinion, the next step in this evolution is difficult to discern.¹⁰

How then do major powers bring about a multipolar system or at least begin to balance US hegemonic power? After all, it is an ‘ironclad rule of international history that hegemons always provoke, and are defeated by, the counter-hegemonic balancing of other great powers’.¹¹ Hard-power, or military force, counter-balancing seems out of the question, considering the disparity between US military power and that of its distant military rivals. Moreover, the risk-reward calculus of such a strategy of counter-balancing would favour none of the potential challengers. Some argue that soft-balancing strategies that are non-military in nature, like diplomacy, international law, multilateral international institutions, or transnational organisations, can limit hegemonic, or in this case US, behaviour. Such a peaceful approach does not overtly threaten or unnecessarily provoke the superpower. While this might be good on paper, such approaches have not had much success in recent years in counter-balancing US hegemony, mainly because of the impotency of international institutions.¹²

Christopher Layne offers an intriguing alternative to hard-power and soft-power counter-balancing. In what he terms ‘leash-slipping’, Layne suggests that US hard-power is a ‘nonexistential’ threat to the autonomy and interest of other powers. Other powers see US hegemony as a real threat to their security interests. Moreover, Layne holds that traditional balance-of-power politics is still alive and well, and because of this other powers will act to counter-balance the hegemon regardless of the nature of the hegemonic threat. In order to obtain the ability to act independent of the United States to pursue security objectives, other powers must build up military capabilities to act regionally without the need or behest of the United States. As more states attain such capability, they can more easily ‘slip free of the hegemons leash-like grip and compel the United States to respect their foreign policy interests’. For Layne, ‘leash-slipping’ is not a hard-power counter to US power because it is does not counter an existential’ threat. Layne argues that successful ‘leash-slipping’ would restore a multipolar system and bring the brief American unipolar moment to an end. However, the United States can stave off this counter-balancing by adopting ‘an offshore strategy of self restraint’. In order to lessen the fear of American power, the United States will have to restrain its use of military force, accommodate the ‘rise of new great powers, and abandon the myth that American national security is dependent upon a globalised image of itself for the traditional metrics of great power grand strategy’ Thus, accepting a multipolar system, unilaterally practicing ideological restraint, and depending less upon unilateral use of force—offshore balancing—will perhaps ensure US primacy in a more accommodating multipolar system.¹³

There are dozens of other variations on the above arguments, many of which are just as compelling. John Van Oudenaren argues that just because the United States is in a unipolar moment does not imply that it must act unilaterally. The problem, for Oudenaren, is that ‘multilateralism is itself up for grabs in the international system, with both the leading and aspirant powers seeking to define it and use it in ways that serve their interests’. Perhaps US unipolar leadership in multilateral approaches would help better define multilateralism by giving multilateral institutions more strength and thus more legitimacy.¹⁴ Frank C Schuller and Thomas D Grant go beyond redefining multilateralism to suggest that unilateralism and multilateralism have outlived their usefulness as a dichotomy to categorise approaches to international affairs. Executive diplomacy, using consensus and integration, might be a better model for the modern ‘management of power’.¹⁵

Either way, G John Ikenberry maintains that the United States must operate within an ‘international order organized around rules and institutional cooperation, otherwise the United States cannot fully achieve its security goals.¹⁶ The current state of the United Nations is a case in point. According to Stephen John Stedman, the United States has been and is transforming the United Nations into an effective outlet for its own interests, while other powers, notably Europe, if faced with a choice would rather see the United Nations remain dysfunctional rather than the unwitting promoter of US designs.¹⁷

Unipolar or uni-multipolar or multipolar? Unilateral or multilateral? Hard-power or soft-power? Of course, the answer to each of these is not black and white and is intensely debated. The fact is that the United States is a superpower in a world of lesser powers and to defend its interests will have to act unilaterally, especially when multilateral institutions seem unwilling or incapable of acting instead. But it is a two-way street—Europe, for example, needs to ‘matter’ again and assert itself in world affairs, especially with its advantage in soft-power approaches.¹⁸ However, the United States would do well among the other powers to engage in real multilateralism, especially in dealing with regional crises and issues. Moreover, the United States needs to lessen its reliance on the use of force and allow the soft-power tools in its national security tool kit a true opportunity to sort things out before reaching for the hard-power hammer.¹⁹ US power carries with it great responsibilities and privileges, as this power obviously does affect the broader world. Thus, the United States cannot be too narrow in its security pursuits in order to be mindful of the ‘general welfare’. Policies like unilateral preemption outlined in the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States can, if poorly managed, do so much more harm than good.²⁰ Iraq, unfortunately, is proving to be a grand example.

What the United States needs is something that it has not had since the end of the Cold War—strategic vision.²¹ More soft-power and more multilateral approaches may or may not transition the world system from unipolar to multipolar, but it will serve the United States untold fortune in good will among the rest of the world, and make it easier for the United States to pursue its national security goals without trampling on the national security goals of others.

Endnotes

1     G John Ikenberry, ‘The Strange Triumph of Unilateralism’, Current History, Vol. 104, Iss. 686, December 2005, pp. 414–15.

2     Renato Corbetta and William J Dixon, ‘Multilateralism, Major Powers, and Militarized Disputes’, Political Science Research Quarterly, Vol. 57, Iss. 1, March 2004, pp. 5–14.

3     Charles Krauthammer, ‘The Unipolar Moment,’ Foreign Affairs, Vol. 70, Iss. 1, 1990/1991, p.23.

4     Krauthammer, ‘The Unipolar Moment’, pp. 23–4.

5     Krauthammer, ‘The Unipolar Moment’, pp. 25–33.

6     Walter McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World, Mariner Books, New York, 1994.

7     Charles Krauthammer, ‘The Unipolar Moment Revisited’, National Interest, Iss. 70, Winter 2002/2003, pp. 5–6.

8     Krauthammer, ‘The Unipolar Moment Revisited’, pp. 7–8.

9     Sammuel P Huntington, ‘The Lonely Superpower’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 78, Iss. 2, March/April 2003, pp. 35–43.

10    Coral Bell, ‘American Ascendency and the Pretense of Concert’, The National Interest, Iss. 57, Fall 1999, pp. 55–63.

11    Christopher Layne, ‘The Unipolar Illusion Revisited: The Coming of the End of the United States’ Unipolar Moment’, International Security, Vol. 31, Iss. 2, Fall 2006, p. 7.

12    Robert A Pape, ‘Soft Balancing against the United States’, International Security, Vol. 30, Iss. 1, Summer 2005, pp. 7–45; T V Paul, ‘Soft Balancing in the Age of U.S. Primacy’, International Security, Vol. 30, Iss. 1, Summer 2005, pp. 46–71; Stephen G Brooks and William C Wohlforth, ‘Hard Times for Soft Balancing’, International Security, Vol. 30, Iss. 1, Summer 2005, pp. 72–108.

13    Layne, ‘The Unipolar Illusion Revisited’, pp. 8–41.

14    John Van Oudenaren, ‘Unipolar versus Unilateral’, Policy Review, Iss. 124, April/May 2004, pp. 72–4.

15    Frank C Schuller and Thomas D Grant, ‘Executive Diplomacy: Multilateralism, Unilateralism, and Managing American Power’, International Affairs, Vol. 79, Iss. 1, 2003, pp. 37–51.

16    G John Ikenberry, ‘America and the Ambivalence of Power’, Current History, Vol. 102, Iss. 667, November 2003, p. 382.

17    Stephen John Stedman, ‘U.N. Transformation in an Era of Soft Balancing’, International Affairs, Vol.85, Iss. 3, October 2007, pp. 933–44.

18    Fotios Moustakis and Rudra Chaudhuri, ‘The Transatlantic Alliance Revisited: Does America Still Need “Old Europe”?’, Defense and Security Analysis, Vol. 21, Iss. 4, December 2005, pp. 387–98; Franz Oswald, ‘Soft Balancing between Friends: Transforming Transatlantic Relations’, Debatte: Review of Contemporary German Affairs, Vol. 14, Iss. 2, August 2006, pp. 145–60.

19    Joseph Nye, ‘When Hard Power Undermines Soft Power’, New Perspectives Quarterly, Vol.21, Iss. 3, Summer 2004, pp. 13–15; See also Joseph Nye, The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002; and Andrew J Bacevich, The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War, Oxford University Press, New York, 2005.

20    Stewart Patrick, ‘Beyond Coalitions of the Willing: Assessing U.S. Multilateralism’, Ethics and International Affairs, Vol. 17, Iss. 1, 2003, p. 54.

21        Robert E Harkavy, ‘Images of the Coming International System’, Orbis, Vol.41, Iss. 4, Fall 1997, pp. 569–90.