The Unipolar Fantasy

David P. Calleo

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511806742.002

1 - The Unipolar Fantasy

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012

David P. Calleo

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David P. Calleo: Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University

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America's Dysfunctional World View

This book appears just as the United States has installed a new president, Barack Obama. His victory has triggered a remarkable burst of enthusiasm and good will not only across a wide spectrum of the American public, but around the world. He takes office at a moment of severe crisis in America's policies. Since World War II, our foreign policy has never been so bereft of foreign support. The economy is in shambles that recalls the 1930s. In effect, the United States, which professes to lead the world, has grown deeply out of tune with it.

It is tempting to see Obama's election as a great turning point – the moment when the United States will begin to regain its geopolitical footing and economic success. Undoubtedly, the new administration has assembled an impressive array of intellectual and administrative talent, but the new may not be as different from the old as we expect. Foreign policies are formulated and conducted by elites whose fundamental ideas often change very little from one administration to the next. What the present situation calls for is not merely a more expert and refined application of familiar ideas, but accommodation to a different way of looking at the world.

For the past two decades, the American political imagination has been possessed by what has become a hazardous geopolitical vision. In it the United States is defined as the dominant power in a closely integrated and “unipolar” international system.

Type: Chapter
Information: Follies of Power
America's Unipolar Fantasy
, pp. 3 - 21

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511806742.002 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2009

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