The Unipolar Moment Revisited Charles Krauthammer multipolarity. The declinist school, led by It has been assumed that the old bipolar Paul Kennedy, held that America, suffering world would beget a multipolar world with from “imperial overstretch”, was already in power dispersed to new centers in Japan, relative decline. The Asian enthusiasm, Germany (and/or “Europe”), China and a popularized by (among others) James diminished Soviet Union/Russia. [This is] Fallows, saw the second coming of the mistaken. The immediate post-Cold War Rising Sun. The conventional wisdom was world is not multipolar. It is unipolar. The best captured by Senator Paul Tsongas: center of world power is an unchallenged “The Cold War is over; Japan won.” superpower, the United States, attended by its They were wrong, and no one has Western allies. put it more forcefully than Paul “The Unipolar Moment”, 19901 Kennedy himself in a classic recantation published earlier this year. “Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of N LATE 1990, shortly before the power; nothing”, he said of America’s collapse of the Soviet Union, it position today. “Charlemagne’s empire I was clear that the world we had was merely western European in its known for half a century was disappearing. reach. The Roman empire stretched The question was what would succeed it. I farther afield, but there was another suggested then that we had already great empire in Persia, and a larger one entered the “unipolar moment.” The gap in China. There is, therefore, no com- in power between the leading nation and parison.”2 Not everyone is convinced. all the others was so unprecedented as to Samuel Huntington argued in 1999 that yield an international structure unique to we had entered not a unipolar world but modern history: unipolarity. At the time, this thesis was generally 1Editor’s note: This quotation, and all subsequent seen as either wild optimism or simple boxed quotations in this essay, are from American arrogance. The conventional Charles Krauthammer, “The Unipolar wisdom was that with the demise of the Moment”, Foreign Affairs: America and the Soviet empire the bipolarity of the second World (1990/91), which introduced the idea of half of the 20th century would yield to American unipolarity. That essay was adapted from the first annual Henry M. Jackson Charles Krauthammer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize Memorial Lecture, September 18, 1990. for commentary, is a syndicated columnist for 2Kennedy, “The Eagle has Landed”, Financial the Washington Post and an essayist for Time. Times, February 2, 2002. The National Interest—Winter 2002/03 5 a “uni-multipolar world.”3 Tony Judt the eve of history’s first war over weapons writes mockingly of the “loud boasts of of mass destruction. unipolarity and hegemony” heard in Washington today.4 But as Stephen The true geopolitical structure of the post- Brooks and William Wohlforth argue in Cold War world . [is] a single pole of world a recent review of the subject, those power that consists of the United States at the denying unipolarity can do so only by apex of the industrial West. Perhaps it is more applying a ridiculous standard: that accurate to say the United States and behind it America be able to achieve all its goals the West. everywhere all by itself. This is a stan- “The Unipolar Moment”, 1990 dard not for unipolarity but for divinity. Among mortals, and in the context of Unipolarity After September 11, 2001 the last half millennium of history, the current structure of the international HERE IS LITTLE need to system is clear: “If today’s American pri- rehearse the acceleration of macy does not constitute unipolarity, unipolarity in the 1990s. 5 T then nothing ever will.” Japan, whose claim to power rested exclu- A second feature of this new post- sively on economics, went into economic Cold War world, I ventured, would be a decline. Germany stagnated. The Soviet resurgent American isolationism. I was Union ceased to exist, contracting into a wrong. It turns out that the new norm for smaller, radically weakened Russia. The America is not post-World War I with- European Union turned inward toward drawal but post-World War II engage- the great project of integration and built a ment. In the 1990s, Pat Buchanan gave strong social infrastructure at the expense 1930s isolationism a run. He ended up of military capacity. Only China grew in carrying Palm Beach. strength, but coming from so far behind it Finally, I suggested that a third fea- will be decades before it can challenge ture of this new unipolar world would be American primacy—and that assumes that an increase rather than a decrease in the its current growth continues unabated. threat of war, and that it would come The result is the dominance of a single from a new source: weapons of mass power unlike anything ever seen. Even at destruction wielded by rogue states. This its height Britain could always be seriously would constitute a revolution in interna- challenged by the next greatest powers. tional relations, given that in the past it Britain had a smaller army than the land was great powers who presented the prin- powers of Europe and its navy was equaled cipal threats to world peace. Where are we twelve years later? The 3Huntington, “The Lonely Superpower”, Foreign two defining features of the new post- Affairs (March/April 1999). By uni-multipolar Cold War world remain: unipolarity and Huntington means a system with a pre-emi- rogue states with weapons of mass nent state whose sole participation is insuffi- destruction. Indeed, these characteristics cient for the resolution of international issues. have grown even more pronounced. The superpower can still serve as a veto player, Contrary to expectation, the United States but requires other powers to achieve its ends. has not regressed to the mean; rather, its 4Judt, “Its Own Worst Enemy”, New York Review of dominance has dramatically increased. Books, August 15, 2002. And during our holiday from history in 5Brooks and Wohlforth, “American Primacy in the 1990s, the rogue state/WMD problem Perspective”, Foreign Affairs (July/August grew more acute. Indeed, we are now on 2002). 6 The National Interest—Winter 2002/03 by the next two navies combined. Today, and pointed out the bin Laden issue to them. American military spending exceeds that of They wrung their hands so helplessly and the next twenty countries combined. Its said, ‘the Taliban are not turning him over, navy, air force and space power are unri- what can one do?’ I remember I was sur- valed. Its technology is irresistible. It is prised: If they are not turning him over, one dominant by every measure: military, eco- has to think and do something.6 nomic, technological, diplomatic, cultural, even linguistic, with a myriad of countries Nothing was done. President Clinton trying to fend off the inexorable march of and others in his administration have Internet-fueled MTV English. protested that nothing could have been American dominance has not gone done, that even the 1998 African unnoticed. During the 1990s, it was mainly embassy bombings were not enough to China and Russia that denounced unipo- mobilize the American people to strike larity in their occasional joint commu- back seriously against terrorism. The niqués. As the new century dawned it was new Bush Administration, too, did not on everyone’s lips. A French foreign minis- give the prospect of mass-casualty terror- ter dubbed the United States not a super- ism (and the recommendations of the power but a hyperpower. The dominant Hart-Rudman Commission) the priority concern of foreign policy establishments it deserved. Without September 11, the everywhere became understanding and liv- giant would surely have slept longer. The ing with the 800-pound American gorilla. world would have been aware of And then September 11 heightened the America’s size and potential, but not its asymmetry. It did so in three ways. First, ferocity or its full capacities. (Paul and most obviously, it led to a demonstra- Kennedy’s homage to American power, tion of heretofore latent American military for example, was offered in the wake of power. Kosovo, the first war ever fought the Afghan campaign.) and won exclusively from the air, had given Second, September 11 demonstrated a hint of America’s quantum leap in mili- a new form of American strength. The tary power (and the enormous gap that center of its economy was struck, its avia- had developed between American and tion shut down, Congress brought to a European military capabilities). But it took halt, the government sent underground, September 11 for the United States to the country paralyzed and fearful. Yet unleash with concentrated fury a fuller dis- within days the markets reopened, the play of its power in Afghanistan. Being a economy began its recovery, the president relatively pacific, commercial republic, the mobilized the nation, and a united United States does not go around looking Congress immediately underwrote a huge for demonstration wars. This one was new worldwide campaign against terror. thrust upon it. In response, America The Pentagon started planning the U.S. showed that at a range of 7,000 miles and military response even as its demolished with but a handful of losses, it could western façade still smoldered. destroy within weeks a hardened, fanatical America had long been perceived as regime favored by geography and climate invulnerable. That illusion was shattered in the “graveyard of empires.” on September 11, 2001. But with a Such power might have been demon- demonstration of its recuperative powers— strated earlier, but it was not. “I talked with the previous U.S.