The unipolar moment: America at the apex

The domination of the United States over the international order in the 1990s constituted, according to many observers, a ‘unipolar moment'. In contrast to the decades of the Cold War when America was involved in a fearsome rivalry with the Soviet Union (and to some extent the PRC), the United States during the last years of the twentieth century had no serious rival within the international system.

People's Republic of China (PRC)

The official name of communist or mainland China. The PRC came into existence in 1949 under the leadership of Mao Zedong.

Dow Jones Industrial

Average (DJIA)

The statistical tool used to measure the performance of the New York Stock Exchange.

globalization

The cultural, social and economic changes caused by the growth of international trade, the rapid transfer of investment capital and the development of high-speed global communications.

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) An international agreement arising out of the Bretton Woods conference covering tariff levels and codes of conduct for international trade. The progressive lowering of tariffs took place in a succession of negotiating rounds. In 1995 it passed its work on to the World Trade Organization.

the Clinton administration’s most significant initiatives may well have been the deregulation of the World Wide Web, which quickly became a virtual marketplace in its own right. In the late 1990s, the American stock market began a rapid rise and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) passed what many considered the ‘magic’ 10,000 mark.

Fittingly, the United States projected its economic power into the wider world, driving forward the process of globalization. In regard to international trade, Washington played a key role in sponsoring the metamorphosis of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1995 into a permanent institution, the World Trade Organization (WTO), that would work for the progressive lowering of tariffs. In addition, it laboured to persuade the newly industrializing countries, such as those in South-East Asia, to liberalize their economies and open themselves up to international investment. Behind this transformation of the global economy was the sense that the American victory in the Cold War had proved the superiority of its neo-liberal capitalist model of economic develop­ment. Indeed, so dominant did the mixture of neo-liberalism and democracy appear to be that some enthusiasts proclaimed an end to the twentieth century’s perpetual competition between different social systems: the world had come to the ‘end of history’. Such hubris was soon to look foolish.

By contrast, the new Russia of the 1990s was a nation hampered by a series of economic and political crises. Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the new inde­pendent Russian Federation, faced a plethora of insurmountable challenges. In the economic sphere, Russia tried to move towards Western practices: prices were deregulated, a number of state enterprises were privatized and the Russian Federation tried to boost foreign trade.

The chaotic state of the Russian economy was reflected in the country’s chronic political instability. Given the lack of a democratic tradition, a con­stitution dating to the Soviet era and a parliament elected in 1990, the power struggle between the president and an aggressive legislature culminated in October 1993 when Yeltsin finally managed to disband the Congress of People's Deputies. The December 1993 parliamentary elections, however, resulted in a virtual parliamentary deadlock, as right-wing nationalists and other populist parties gained large numbers of seats in the legislature (Vladimir Zhirinovsky's far-right party won the most votes of any single party). Two years later, the parliamentary elections resulted in an even more surprising outcome when the supposedly defunct communists edged Zhirinovsky and his supporters from the top spot. Equally worrying to outside observers was Boris Yeltsin's deteriorating health. Moreover, although he won the 1996 presidential election (which was marred by extensive corruption) and remained the dominant politician in the country, Yeltsin's declining physical condition exacerbated the continuing political and economic uncertainty in Russia.

The obvious internal weakness and instability of the new Russian Federation undoubtedly enhanced the relative position of the United States as the sole remain­ing superpower. Yet the persistent lack of central authority and the economic weakness of Russia created numerous challenges and potential security threats. Concerns about the fate of its large nuclear arsenal, its possession of other weapons of mass destruction (such as chemical and biological weapons) and the necessity to incorporate the post-communist state into the growing global economy were but some of the most obvious challenges facing not only Russia but also the United States and the wider Western community.

In the 1990s there were numerous attempts to minimize the risk of nuclear war and the possibility that the former Soviet Union's vast nuclear arsenals might fall into the ‘wrong' hands. The United States and Russia continued to negotiate bilateral nuclear arms reduction treaties. In July 1991 they signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) agreement in which the two countries pledged to halve the number of nuclear warheads (to about 6,000) by 1998. When the Soviet Union ceased to exist only five months later, START was supplemented by the Lisbon Agreement of March 1992 in which three of the successor states, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, agreed to eliminate nuclear weapons from their respective territories. Early in 1993 the START II agreement further reduced the number ofAmerican and Russian nuclear weapons to approximately 3,000—3,500 on each side. A potentially important moment in limiting the proliferation of nuclear weapons was reached in 1995 when the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was made permanent and the United States, Russia and the United Kingdom committed themselves to a moratorium on nuclear testing.

Indeed, by the end of the millennium it was evident that, while the danger and prospect of nuclear war might have changed, it had hardly disappeared. To be sure, the prospect of an American-Russian nuclear exchange was more remote

Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START)

Begun in 1982, after the failed ratification of the SALT II Agreement, the START negotiations between the United States and the USSR led first to the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear forces. In 1991 START I committed both sides to additional reductions in American and Soviet nuclear arsenals as well as on-site inspections. This was followed in 1993 by START II which called for a reduction in nuclear warheads by two- thirds by 2003. START also provided a framework for the nuclear disarmament of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

Proposed by the USSR and the United States in 1968, and subsequently approved by the UNGA, the treaty prohibits the proliferation of nuclear weaponry to ‘new’ countries. It has been ratified by more than 180 nations but has not prevented some states from either openly or secretly acquiring a nuclear weapons capability.

missile defence programme Or missile defence initiative, or national missile defence. A futuristic plan to provide the United States (and possibly other countries) with a missile shield against potential attacks.

than it had ever been, but what concerned the established nuclear powers was the spectre that some of the so-called ‘rogue states', or even a terrorist organization, might acquire a nuclear weapons capability. Accordingly, the United States continued with the experiments it had begun in the 1980s to develop a national missile defence programme that would make it immune to attack.

While successive American administrations agonized over the transfer of nuclear weapons technology from the former Soviet Union to ‘rogue states' and terrorist organizations, the West in general worried about the prospects for the new Russia, and the consequences of its political and economic instability. The general question was seemingly straightforward: how to incorporate Russia into a new security and economic system dominated by countries that had, by and large, been its adversaries for the past seven decades. In the security area the first major initiative was the so-called Partnership for Peace (PfP), which was established in January 1994 to provide some degree of defence co-operation between NATO and Russia. In the long run, however, the PfP failed to become a major agent of security in Europe, owing to problems over NATO expansion and the proliferation of other multilateral security organizations, such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Western European Union (WEU), vying for a central role.

Group of 7 (G-7)

The Group of 7 was the organization of the seven most advanced capitalist economies — the United States, Japan, Canada, Germany, France, Italy and Britain — founded in 1976. The G-7 held and continues to hold annual summit meetings where the leaders of these countries discuss economic and political issues.

In the economic and political field, the major effort to anchor Russia into its new Western orientation was its inclusion in the G-7 organization of leading industrial powers, which thus became the G-8 (or G-7 + 1). This probably meant more on the psychological than the economic level, for in reality Russia's economy was far smaller than that of any of the original G-7 members. Indeed, many argued that according respectability to Russia, in effect, compromised Western democ­racies, making them partners with what remained a ‘semi-democratic' country willing to use armed force against rebellious minorities (such as the Chechens). In its post-Soviet life span, Russia also practised highly questionable and even dangerous policies in the eyes of many observers (the sale of nuclear technology to Iran being one example). Yet, given the sheer size of Russia, its still considerable military capability, and its geopolitical significance and economic potential, there appeared to be few alternatives available for Western democracies than continued ‘peaceful engagement' with the (semi-democratic and semi-capitalist) successor state of their Cold War nemesis. In the early twenty-first century, with a rapid boom in energy prices boosting Russia's economic standing, it would gradually start once again to become a force to be reckoned with.