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

by Hal Brands

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."

Genres: Politics, History, International Relations, Nonfiction, American History, Military Fiction, Economics

432 pages, Hardcover

First published June 14, 2016

Reviews

[Darren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Where is the United States going? Is it ascending, declining or just treading water. Its foreign policy continues to play an important role in the country, whether right or wrong. Does it suit the U.S. to have an enemy? The Cold War is over, the “War on Terror” has replaced it. The country now faces a so-called unipolar moment, something where there are no near-term rivals for global power and influence.

Is this good, and how did U.S. foreign policy play a role in shaping this situation? This book takes a look at this, using recently declassified archive material to link together global change, U.S. policy and geopolitics to great effect. The author contends that this was not an accidental effect, far from it, yet it might be equally difficult to suggest it was a deliberate plan.

The author has produced a very comprehensive work that is quite a fascinating read. It can be a little difficult to fathom at times, at least to a lay reader, yet if you need to skip ahead a bit every so often you can still follow broadly with the story. U.S. Presidents helped shape global change, reading the runes as it were, leading the massive U.S. political-military machine to refocus its global beam.

It won’t appeal to everyone (the book that is, the concept certainly won’t) yet it can be an appealing, different and valuable read in any case, especially for those who need this sort of material or just the plain curious.

[Yannick M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating book. Brands arrives at many of the same point a leftist scholar of US hegemony would. This convergence indicates that they are probably unto something.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Examination of the US rise in international relations from the 1970s to the 1990s. Something of an apologia for the Reagan and Bush administration - you can see clearly the author feels invested in the choices of those administrations - but an interesting perspective if taken with a grain of salt.

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

A challenging and incredible thorough history of US foreign policy from the mid 70's to the end of the Cold War. The basic thesis is that between the "malaise" of the 1970's and early 1990's US leaders designed policies that took advantage of global trends in US favor to create a unipolar system. Brands applies this thesis convincingly to geopolitics, but he also applies it to global economic and political models. He has 2 great chapters the rise of the liberal economic order and the democratic surge of the 1980's that showed that the unipolar moment was also one of ideological and economic hegemony. One key theme in the book is that even though things looked bad in the 1970's for US global power and prosperity, the long term trends of global politics, ideas, and economics were in the US favor. When you peel back the surface, as Brands does, you see, for example, that the US economic system was far readier to adjust to economic globalization and technological advances than a staid, centralized system like that of the USSR. He gives a lot of credit to all 3 presidents in this period for not believing the declinist hype (sorry Nixon and Kissinger-y'all come out looking pretty bad in this book) and adopting policies to make sure the US takes full advantage of those global trends.

Readers well-versed in USFP history will find themselves treading familiar ground from time to time, although the author uses very up to date sources and thereby sheds some new light on old stories. I also admire the balanced and impartial nature of this work. The author offers some important correctives to ideas about, say, Reagan's foreign policy or neoliberal reforms, two topics on which many historians get carried away in a negative sense. You can always trust that he's giving you all sides of a given story. So while this book is a bit dense for a general reader, I'd strongly recommend it to scholars and practitioners of US foreign policy as an interesting history and a solid antidote to the all too easy claim that the US is in decline. Certainly, if this book has a lesson, it's that we need to think about deep structural forces rather than headlines when we ask if a country is in decline.

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perceptions of the US in decline was rampant in the 1970s. Despair turned into hope in the 1980s and the collapse of the USSR left America as the sole superpower in 1990. Brands looks at the events and decisions that lead to this about face.

Why I started this book: Found another professional title in audio format.

Why I finished it: Long flights home when you can't sleep are the perfect time for long audio books. Historians frequently debate the power/importance of the leading political figures in shaping history, how much would have happened anyway and how much was because of key figure's decisions. Brand argues that it was Regan and Bush that lead to the turn around, while admitting several times that it was policies started by Carter that lead to various shifts.... interesting book and a good reminder that the political status of America as Unipolar was a historical anomaly and not the permanent status quo of Republican presidents.