Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
ebb. Russia became a quasi-member of the West, and China was a “strategic partner” with
Washington. Existing institutions were strengthened and new ones were built. Alliances
were reaffirmed and extended. The European Union was launched and its membership ex-
panded. Newly market-oriented developing countries—what was termed “emerging mar-
kets”—became increasingly integrated into the world economy. Championed by the United
States, a neoliberal approach, or “Washington consensus,” favoring financial deregulation
and market integration, grew in influence and spread worldwide.
The first post-Cold War impulse of the George H. W. Bush administration in the early
1990s was in fact to build on this logic of Western order. Across security and economic areas,
the United States sought to build and expand regional and global institutions. In relations
toward Europe, State Department officials articulated a set of institutional steps: the evolu-
tion of NATO to include associate relations with countries to the east, the creation of more
formal institutional relations with the European Community, and an expanded role for the
Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). In the aftermath of the collapse
of East Germany, negotiations ensued between West Germany and Soviet, French, British,
and American leaders. Alternative pathways for a united Germany were proposed, including
a German federation that would exist outside of NATO and the reintegration of Germany
within a wider pan-European security structure that would also include the Soviet Union. In
the diplomatic pulling and hauling that followed, the Western structures proved most use-
ful to the search by all the major states for mechanisms of restraint, reassurance, and integ-
ration. The Bush administration championed this logic, as in a Berlin speech by Secretary
of State James Baker, declaring that the three great institutions of Europe—NATO, the EC,
and CSCE—should be adapted to provide the multilevel framework to absorb the coming
European Community, and the wider international liberal order that shaped and facilitated the
flow of events—creating a foundation for the integration of Germany and countries within
the former Soviet bloc.
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In the Western hemisphere, the Bush administration pushed for NAFTA and closer eco-
nomic ties with South America. In East Asia, APEC was a way to create more institutional
links to the region, demonstrating American commitment to the region and ensuring that Asi-
an regionalism moved in a trans-Pacific direction. These post-Cold War regional trade initi-
atives were envisaged as steps that would reinforce the expansion, liberalization, and contin-
ued openness of the world economy.
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This strategy of building on the logic of the existing order—and expanding and integrating
countries into it—was continued during the Clinton years. The idea was to use multilateral
institutions as mechanisms to stabilize and integrate the new and emerging market democra-
cies into the Western democratic world. In an early statement of this “enlargement doctrine,”
National Security Advisor Anthony Lake argued that the strategy was to “strengthen the com-
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