Charles Krauthammer

THE UNIPOLAR MOMENT

Charles Krauthamer in his paper argue that the most striking feature of the post-Cold War
world is its unipolarity. Also he mentioned that economic power is a necessary condition for
great power status. But it certainly is not sufficient, in case of Germany and Japan. Also crisis in
the Persian Gulf again illustrate that "Europe" does not yet qualify even as a player on the world
stage. Meanwhile American preeminence is based on the fact that it is the only country with the
military, diplomatic, political and economic assets to be a decisive player in any conflict in
whatever part of the world it chooses to involve itself. In the Persian Gulf, for example, it was
the United States, acting unilaterally and with extraordinary speed, that in August 1990
prevented Iraq from taking effective control of the entire Arabian Peninsula. Iraq, having
inadvertently revealed the unipolar structure.
The author asks himself can America long sustain its unipolar preeminence? and also
respond that It is, of course, true that if America succeeds in running its economy into the
ground, it will not be able to retain its unipolar role for long. In which case the unipolar moment
will be brief indeed (one decade, perhaps, rather than, say, three or four).
An American collapse to second-rank status will be not for foreign but for domestic reasons
because here mentioned America's low savings rate, poor educational system, stagnant pro
ductivity, declining work habits, rising demand for welfare state entitlements and new taste for
ecological luxuries have nothing at all to do with engagement in Europe, Central America or the
Middle East and also America's insatiable desire for yet higher standards of living without
paying any of the cost.
Author support the American isolationism policy first, because of its popular appeal and,
second, because of its natural appeal . Isolationists say rather unobjectionably that America
should confine its attentions in the world to defending vital national interests. But the more
extreme isolationists define vital national interests to mean the physical security of the United
States, and the more elusive isolationists take care never to define them at all, but not
isolationism but realism, the school that insists that American foreign policy be guided solely by
interests and that generally defines these interests in a narrow and national manner.
Krauthamer highlighted that international stability is never a given and it is never the norm. The
international stability can be achieved by the self-conscious action by the great powers, and most
particularly of the greatest power, which now is the United States.
If America wants stability, it will have to create it but also there are new threats disturbing
Americans peace. So threats are the emergence of a new strategic environment marked by the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Modern technology has shrunk the world. But the

obvious corollary, that in a shrunken world the divide between regional superpowers and great
powers. Missiles shrink distance. Nuclear (or chemical or biological) devices multiply power.
Both can be bought at market. In the paper Iraq is presented as the new strategic, what might be
called the "Weapon State." The post-Cold War era is better called the era of weapons of mass
destruction. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery will
constitute the greatest single threat to world security.
Author proposed some solution that are based on three elements denying, disarming, and
defending. First, we will have to develop a new regime, similar to cocom (Coordinating
Committee on Export Controls) to deny yet more high technology to such states. Second, those
states that acquire such weapons anyway will have to submit to strict outside control or risk
being physically disarmed. A final element must be the development of antiballistic missile and
air defense systems to defend against those weapons that do escape Western control or
preemption. Other kind of threats for example the rise, of intolerant aggressive nationalism in a
disintegrating communist bloc.
The author ends his work on an optimistic note saying that our best hope for safety in such
times, as in difficult times past, is in American strength and will the strength and will to lead a
unipolar world, unashamedly laying down the rules of world order and being prepared to enforce
them.
A Unique and Extraordinary Moment
Gorbachev, Reagan, Bush, and the End of the Cold War, 19811991
When Reagan became President he had only one well-defined foreign policy goal: containing
the Soviet Union, or the "evil empire" as he once referred to it. He primarily wanted to stop the
USSR from growing larger (as it tried to do when it invaded Afghanistan in 1979) and to keep
other non-Communist countries from becoming Communist. He disliked the decade-long
Detente begun by President Nixon Reagan firmly believed that the USSR was using Dtente and
the SALT talks to take advantage of the United States. The "window of vulnerability" was fast
approaching, Reagan insisted, when Moscow would be able to launch a preemptive first strike
against Washington and destroy the US nuclear defensive systems.
For this reason, Reagan reasoned that the US needed to prepare its military defense systems
for this onslaught. He believed that only through military preparedness could the world achieve a
stable peace. His Secretaries of State, General Alexander Haig and George Schultz, as well as his
Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, among others, assisted Reagan in developing this Cold
War strategy. During Reagan's two administrations, the US military increased to unprecedented
peacetime levels. The administration also spent billions of dollars on defense contracts to

research and develop new weapons and military technology. The military increased production
of nuclear arms and deployed them throughout the Western world. The exorbitant amount of
money Reagan spent on defense contributed to the enormous national deficit during the 1980s.
The most notorious of the programs Reagan invested in was the Strategic Defense Initiative
(SDI), more commonly known as the Star Wars program in reference to the popular 1980s
science fiction film trilogy. The SDI was designed to be a national defense network of missiles
that could target and destroy any incoming enemy missiles before they reached the United States.
Unfortunately, Star Wars was mostly a fantasyprototypes of the seek-and- destroy technology
often failed the trial runs miserably.
Worse still, SDI's estimated price tag totaled nearly $1 trillion dollars, a figure that concerned
many Democrats and American citizens during a decade of recession. Reagan initiated START,
or the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks, with the Soviet Union in mid 1982. Not surprisingly,
these talks quickly failed because the language of the talks demanded that the USSR
significantly reduce its nuclear arsenal, but allow the US to continue building its arsenal. In the
1980s, US relations with many states in the Middle East were contentious at best, primarily
because Reagan continued to pledge support for the fledgling Jewish state of Israel at the
expense of the many Muslim Palestinians living in the region. Almost every other Middle
Eastern state opposed the existence of Israel and supported the Palestinian Liberation
Organization, or PLO, headed by Yasir Arafat. When Israel attacked the PLO headquarters in
Beirut, Lebanon, in 1982, President Reagan dispatched several thousand US Marines to the
country to serve as peacekeepers.
In retaliation, a pro-Palestinian suicide terrorist bombed the US Embassy in Beirut and killed
239 Marines. The US immediately retreated. President Reagan did not back down from the
Libyan terrorist attack on US forces in Germany, however. Libya, too, disliked American
involvement in the Middle East and funded many terrorist organizations that pledged to destroy
the United States. After learning of the attack in Germany, Reagan launched a missile campaign
on Libya, and even bombed the personal residence of Libya's ruler, Muammar Qaddafi. Qaddafi
survived the attack, but backed away from anti-American terrorist movements.
Reagan's primary concern in Latin America, though, was Nicaragua. In 1979, President Carter
had supported the Socialist Sandinista movement when it overthrew Nicaragua's dictator.
Reagan, however, vehemently opposed the Sandinistas's claim to power and the organization's
Communist ties. In 1981, Reagan authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to train an army of
10,000 Nicaraguan "freedom fighters," or Contras, to fight the Sandinistas.
Congress quickly became outraged and worried that Reagan might inadvertently lead the US into
another horrible anti-Communist war in Nicaragua as Kennedy and Johnson had in Vietnam.

Congress passed the Boland Amendment to ban US assistance to the Contras for the next several
years. Nevertheless, the Reagan administration ignored the order and secretly continued to
support the Nicaraguan Contras. The US Navy mined the harbors surrounding Nicaragua and
destroyed the nation's oil reserves. Had Reagan left office in 1987, his presidency would have
gone down a failure, the victim of his own inattention and mismanagement so starkly manifested
in Iran-Contra.
The surprise did come in 1985, though, when Mikhail Gorbechev became the leader of the
Soviet Union and actively sought both political and economic reform in the USSR as well as an
easing of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. For the first time since the
beginning of the Cold War, a Soviet leader approached the United States to seriously discuss a
possible peace. This initiative took the Reagan administration completely by surprise, but
Reagan quickly responded in kind. Numerous summits between top Soviet and American
officials were held during Reagan's second term. Eventually, even Gorbechev and President
Reagan themselves sat together in both Washington and Moscow on a number of occasions to
hammer out agreements. Many concessions were made on both sides: in 1987 Gorbechev agreed
to withdraw most of its nuclear arsenal and troops from the Soviet-controlled states in Eastern
Europe and to withdraw from Afghanistan while Reagan eventually abandoned his Star Wars
plans and agreed to reduce the number of American nuclear weapons.
A key focus of Bushs presidency was foreign policy. He began his time in the White House as
Germany was in the process of reunifying, the Soviet Union was collapsing and the Cold War
was ending. Bush would be credited with helping to improve U.S.-Soviet relations. He met with
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and in July 1991, the two men signed the Strategic Arms
Reduction Treaty.
Bush also authorized military operations in Panama and the Persian Gulf. In December 1989,
the United States invaded Panama and overthrew the nations corrupt dictator, Manuel Noriega,
who was threatening the security of Americans who lived there and trafficking drugs to the
United States.
Then, after Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (1937-2006) launched an invasion and occupation of
Kuwait in August 1990 and threatened to invade Saudi Arabia, Bush organized a military
coalition of more than 30 countries who began a U.S.-led air assault against Iraq in mid-January
1991. After five weeks of the air offensive and 100 hours of a ground offensive, Operation
Desert Storm ended in late February with Iraqs defeat and Kuwaits liberation. Ronald Reagan
and George Bush presided over one of the most remarkable periods of change in world history:
the liberation of Eastern Europe; the end of the Cold War; and the collapse of the Soviet Union.