The new world (dis)order and the search for an enemy: the United States foreign policy after the cold war

Abstract

The years of the Cold War were characterized by a clear US strategy: the containment of Soviet power. Once it was over, the United States emerged as the only superpower, with a great military capacity. With the collapse of USSR, though, America was left without a clear enemy and therefore without a clear strategy for its foreign policy. Therefore, if the United States did not want to go back to the isolationism that characterized its first centuries, it needed to find a new rationale for its international engagement. Nevertheless, the world after Cold War had a much wider agenda. New challenges such as the threat of terrorism and the risk of cultural clashes put in danger the stability of the Western order. Besides that, the idea of the democratic peace started to be developed. Without the contradictions of the Cold War, the United States could justify its internationalism by presenting the spread of democracy as its duty as the hegemon in the post-Cold War era. This view of the US role was consolidated during President Clinton`s mandate and is yet dominant in the country`s foreign policy. This essay will argue that the end of the Cold War left the United States with a great military capacity and means to continue its internationalist foreign policy but also without clear objectives. The route chosen by American foreign policy makers was to keep the global stability and the democratic values worldwide. Therefore, its new enemies became every actor – state or not – that defied this new world order, characterized by democracy, free trade and stability.