The Great Transformation and the Failure of Illiberal Hegemony - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 168

more acceptable and legitimate to other states. Power disparities were tempered by institu-
tionalized and reciprocal processes of doing business. The United States did provide some
public goods, such as alliance security, protection of the flow of oil, markets, and a willing-
ness to use its good offices to help settle regional disputes. It was the chief sponsor of rules
and institutions of the system, and it more or less operated within that consensual and loosely
arrayed governance system. In all these ways, the United States seemed to be uniquely posi-
tioned to keep world politics on a stable and cooperative course. 34
In the last years of the Clinton administration, however, worry about how the United
States would exercise unipolar power was already spreading. The American-led NATO
bombing of Serbia in 1999 provided a revealing glimpse of the new patterns of world politics
in the post-Cold War era: despotic states and hostile regimes in peripheral regions generate
threats that challenge the old rules and institutions of the postwar Western order and pro-
voke the controversial use of American military force. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
described America as the “indispensable nation”—the only global power that could provide
enlightened and forceful leadership across regions and realms of world politics. 35 But others
around the world worried, such as French Foreign Minister Hubert Verdrine, who described
the United States as a “hyperpower.” When asked in an interview with L'Express about what
could be done to resist the overbearing power of the United States, Verdrine said: “Through
steady and persevering work in favor of real multilateralism against unilateralism, for bal-
anced multipolarism against unipolarism, for cultural diversity against uniformity.” 36
Even without American policies and pronouncements that might aggravate the situation,
the shift from Cold War bipolarity to American unipolarity carried with it risks and uncertain-
ties—and a decade after the Cold War, it triggered a global geopolitical adjustment process
that continues today. As discussed in chapter 4 , the first implication of a shift to unipolarity is
that it enhances the power position of the United States. This is true for several reasons. The
unipolar state has more discretionary resources—more unspent power—than before because
it no longer faces a peer competitor. Likewise, the absence of a great-power coalition balan-
cing against it also reduces the external constraints on American power. Weaker and smaller
states have fewer exit options. Overall, the unipolar state has a more encompassing impact
on the global system. If there is to be order and the provision of international public goods,
the United States will need to lead the way.
But the disappearance of the Cold War threat also removes some leverage for the unipolar
state. Weaker states—and long-standing alliance partners—are no longer threatened by a
rival global power. Some countries—such as Japan—still build their security around tight
alliance ties with the United States, but America's global role as security provider is not as
uniformly felt or widely appreciated as it was during the Cold War. The centralizing security
problem of the Cold War—manifest in the bipolar competitive struggle—is gone, and secur-
ity problems have inevitably decentralized into regional ones. The United States continues to