The Great Transformation and the Failure of Illiberal Hegemony - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 158

ics. But this strategy of unipolar governance was unsustainable, generating opposition and
resistance both abroad and at home.
The shifting character of power, sovereignty, and interdependence in the global system
has made the American system of liberal order problematic. This is true, ironically, even
though in many respects the transformations are ones that have been encouraged or made pos-
sible through the American-centered postwar liberal order. It has been America's preemin-
ence—manifest after the Cold War as unipolarity—not its weakness or failure as the leading
state that has unsettled the system. Moreover, the inside Cold War-era liberal order turned in-
to the outside global liberal order precisely because of the attractions of that liberal order and
its capacities for expansion and integration beyond its Western core. The erosion of norms of
state sovereignty is the result of many forces, but not least among them are the human rights
and liberal interventionist aspirations of the United States and other liberal democratic states.
In these various ways, American liberal hegemonic order may be at an impasse, but it is an
impasse at least partially of its own making and one that flows from the success of the liber-
al project. This chapter provides an account of these shifts and explores the implications for
American liberal hegemonic order.
The End of the Cold War
The Cold War was not a war as such but a sustained period of bipolar rivalry—a militarized
geopolitical standoff. It ended peacefully when, in effect, the leaders of the Soviet bloc called
a halt to the competition. This began initially with President Mikhail Gorbachev's articulation
of “new thinking” in Soviet foreign policy aimed at relaxing East-West tensions and creating
political space for domestic reforms. “Gorbachev cooperated to end the Cold War because he
knew that the Soviet Union could not be reformed if the Cold War continued,” argues Amer-
ica's last ambassador to the Soviet Union. 1 At the end of 1988, Gorbachev ordered a unilater-
al reduction of five hundred thousand Soviet troops, half coming from Eastern Europe and the
Western parts of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev also signaled a new Soviet tolerance of politic-
al change within Eastern Europe itself, declaring that the “use of force” cannot be and should
not be used as an “instrument of foreign policy,” and that “freedom of choice” was a univer-
sal principle that applied to both capitalist and socialist systems. This statement amounted to
a de facto repeal of the Brezhnev Doctrine, which had declared it a Soviet right and respons-
ibility to intervene in Eastern Europe to safeguard socialism. In the following year, Soviet
forces were withdrawn from Afghanistan. To the United States, Gorbachev offered a vision
of partnyorstvo , or partnership, that entailed replacing the Cold War's “negative peace” with
cooperation between the superpowers in pursuit of joint interests. The ideological basis of the
Cold War was fast disappearing.