Time Running Out for U.S. Power?

From Nikolas Gvosdev, at World Politics Review, "Time Running Out to Rethink American Power?":

One of the strengths of the Naval War College is that it constantly reviews and assesses its curriculum. In support of that effort, I have been reacquainting myself with E. H. Carr's seminal work "The Twenty Years' Crisis," which got me to thinking: Will we look back on the period of time between 1991 and 2011 as another two-decade interregnum marked by crisis and opportunity?

This isn't an entirely original thought. James Goldgeier and Derek Chollet opened this discussion two years ago when they published, "America Between the Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11." But I wanted to focus on the opportunities the United States had to fundamentally shape the global order that emerged after the end of the Cold War and why each attempt hasn't "taken."

The first opportunity came circa 1992, when the United States cast a long shadow over the entire international system, not dissimilar to its position in 1945. The Soviet Union had collapsed; Deng Xiaoping had yet to undertake his famed "southern tour," which started the boom that took China out of its post-Tiananmen Square malaise; the European Union was still in the process of being mid-wifed; and India, Brazil and Indonesia had not yet begun their ascent.

The famed draft of the 1994-99 Defense Policy Guidance drawn up in late 1991, which called for the maintenance of U.S. primacy, was not unrealistic in some of its assessments about the global balance of power at that time. The problem lay in the fact that constructing and maintaining a "new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests" would require an enormous sacrifice from the American people. In a year where the election was dominated by the mantra, "It's the economy, stupid," and at a time when the American people were eagerly awaiting the "peace dividend" that came with the end of the Cold War, there was little enthusiasm among politicians to undertake such a task. And if this was true in the United States, it was even truer in Western Europe, where the existential threat to the European way of life had evaporated along with the threat of Soviet tanks rolling across the Fulda Gap.

More at the link.