A short essay in @FPRI Orbis on the 30 year crisis we find ourselves in led to a much longer set of ruminations in @TheNatlInterest ... (written prior to 2/22/22) 1/ nationalinterest.org/feature/can-am…
"we are reaching the end of a thirty-year cycle in world events, where geopolitical, economic, and technological shifts are rewriting the source code of international affairs. Whereas the start of the cycle was marked by a series of dramatic events that heralded the triumph ...2/
of the U.S.-led liberal democratic system--... the terminus of this post-Cold War era and the birth pangs of a new and yet-unnamed epoch could not be more different. It has been marked by the slow-motion trainwreck of a global pandemic and the termination of the 20-year effort,3/
following the September 11 attacks, to prove that American power ... could remake Afghanistan (and by extension, other societies) in a liberal-democratic image. We are now entering the 2020s, where the familiar landmarks and lodestones are eroding, 4/
with growing uncertainty as to what will replace them—and the extent to which a new era will be shaped by Washington." 5/ As I noted, this essay finalized before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but not clear whether this represents the close of the post-Cold War era, or the 5/
start of something new. And so I stand by this: "Even before the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed, a serious process was already underway within the U.S. national security community, especially work done by the late Colin Powell, to consider the impact ... 6/
of possible major changes in the international system and the implications for how U.S. national security ought to be configured to meet these new conditions. The agility of the U.S. defense, diplomatic, and developmental communities allowed the United States to quickly 7/
take advantage of the window of opportunities in Central and Eastern Europe to move ahead with a vision of a Europe “whole and free.” Conditions are changing once again, but we need to recapture that sense of agility and innovation—rather than attempt to recreate a past age." 8/
I understand that the process of completing the U.S. national security strategy has been interrupted by the Russian invasion, and reconsidering core assumptions, but it is critical that the strategy not be reactive to short-term events only and grapple with the implications of 9/
the new era we've entered. [And here is the initial short essay that spawned the larger piece.] END sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
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