Making the unipolar moment: U.S. foreign policy and the rise of the post-Cold War order

Abstract

In today's political climate, debates around the nature, shape and reality of America's global decline are part of the Zeitgeist. Indeed, a considerable amount of ink has been spilt publishing a voluminous amount of material on this subject. The same can also be said of the many publications on the Cold War era. Given this, it is somewhat difficult to make a distinctive, or especially exciting, contribution that can speak directly to these two large debates. Yet Hal Brands's new book not only does this, but also exceeds high expectations with its depth, nuance and clarity that are further enhanced by a stimulating and readable style. Brands's central thesis is that to better understand the rise of the unipolar moment in the 1990s, it is necessary to trace America's rise back to historical phenomena in the 1970s. For Brands, the 1970s set the stage for the Soviet Union's irreversible decline, the onset of globalization regenerating America's global advantage in free trade, and the mobilization of the transnational human rights movement coinciding with the third wave of democratization. Yet unlike other volumes, this book does not see the rise of the unipolar moment as simply a structural phenomenon, an accident of history, or ‘something that just happened’. Rather, Brands sets out a methodological platform that challenges both structural and agent-centred accounts of this period in history, further adding to the distinctiveness of the volume.