The National Interest
Summer 2001

Bad Statesman, Good Prophet

by Michael Mandelbaum

 

. . . A decade after it began, therefore, the central theme of the post-Cold War era is discernible: the plot of international history in the wake of the great East-West conflict is the defense, maintenance and extension of the three parts of the Wilsonian triad. Nor is this simply a detached, lofty perspective on the post-Cold War world far removed from the hurly-burly at ground level. This has been the theme of post-Cold War history in the era's first decade, as those who have been making that history have understood and experienced it.

The more powerful states in the international system have deliberately sought to propagate liberalism. They have propagated it even when they have not consciously been seeking to do so; they have been magnets as well as missionaries. Lesser states, especially those not fully liberal, have been attracted, repelled, exhilarated and offended-but at all events powerfully affected-by liberalism. It is the compass point by which they now take their own bearings. They understand their own politics, economics and foreign policies as responses to the liberal hegemony even if they seek to evade it. . .