The Lonely Superpower

By Samuel P. Huntington

THE NEW DIMENSION OF POWER

During the past decade global politics has changed
fundamentally in two ways. First, it has been
substantially reconfigured along cultural and
civilizational lines, as I have highlighted in the pages of
this journal and documented at length in The Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Second,
as argued in that book, global politics is also always
about power and the struggle for power, and today
international relations is changing along that crucial
dimension. The global structure of power in the Cold
War was basically bipolar; the emerging structure is very
different.
There is now only one superpower. But that does not
mean that the world is unipolar. A unipolar system
would have one superpower, no significant major
powers, and many minor powers. As a result, the
superpower could effectively resolve important
international issues alone, and no combination of other
states would have the power to prevent it from doing so.
For several centuries the classical world under Rome,
and at times East Asia under China, approximated this
model. A bipolar system like the Cold War has two
superpowers, and the relations between them are central
to international politics. Each superpower dominates a
coalition of allied states and competes with the other
superpower for influence among nonaligned countries.
A multipolar system has several major powers of
comparable strength that cooperate and compete with
each other in shifting patterns. A coalition of major
states is necessary to resolve important international
issues. European politics approximated this model for
several centuries.
Contemporary international politics does not fit any of
these three models. It is instead a strange hybrid, a uni-
multipolar system with one superpower and several
major powers. The settlement of key international issues
requires action by the single superpower but always with
some combination of other major states; the single
superpower can, however, veto action on key issues by
combinations of other states. The United States, of
course, is the sole state with preeminence in every
domain of power -- economic, military, diplomatic,
ideological, technological, and cultural -- with the reach
and capabilities to promote its interests in virtually
every part of the world. At a second level are major
regional powers that are preeminent in areas of the
world without being able to extend their interests and
capabilities as globally as the United States. They
include the German-French condominium in Europe,
Russia in Eurasia, China and potentially Japan in East
Asia, India in South Asia, Iran in Southwest Asia, Brazil
in Latin America, and South Africa and Nigeria in
Africa. At a third level are secondary regional powers
whose interests often conflict with the more powerful
regional states. These include Britain in relation to the
German-French combination, Ukraine in relation to
Russia, Japan in relation to China, South Korea in
relation to Japan, Pakistan in relation to India, Saudi
Arabia in relation to Iran, and Argentina in relation to
Brazil.
The superpower or hegemon in a unipolar system,
lacking any major powers challenging it, is normally
able to maintain its dominance over minor states for a
long time until it is weakened by internal decay or by
forces from outside the system, both of which happened
to fifth-century Rome and nineteenth-century China. In
a multipolar system, each state might prefer a unipolar
system with itself as the single dominant power but the
other major states will act to prevent that from
happening, as was often the case in European politics. In
the Cold War, each superpower quite explicitly preferred
a unipolar system under its hegemony. However, the
dynamics of the competition and their early awareness
that an effort to create a unipolar system by armed force
would be disastrous for both enabled bipolarity to
endure for four decades until one state no longer could
sustain the rivalry.
In each of these systems, the most powerful actors had
an interest in maintaining the system. In a uni-
multipolar system, this is less true. The United States
would clearly prefer a unipolar system in which it would
be the hegemon and often acts as if such a system
existed. The major powers, on the other hand, would
prefer a multipolar system in which they could pursue
their interests, unilaterally and collectively, without
being subject to constraints, coercion, and pressure by
the stronger superpower. They feel threatened by what
they see as the American pursuit of global hegemony.
American officials feel frustrated by their failure to
achieve that hegemony. None of the principal power-
wielders in world affairs is happy with the status quo.
The superpower's efforts to create a unipolar system
stimulate greater effort by the major powers to move
toward a multipolar one. Virtually all major regional
powers are increasingly asserting themselves to promote
their own distinct interests, which often conflict with
those of the United States. Global politics has thus
moved from the bipolar system of the Cold War through
a unipolar moment -- highlighted by the Gulf War -- and
is now passing through one or two uni-multipolar
decades before it enters a truly multipolar 21st century.
The United States, as Zbigniew Brzezinski has said, will
be the first, last, and only global superpower.
NOT SO BENIGN
American officials quite naturally tend to act as if the
world were unipolar. They boast of American power and
American virtue, hailing the United States as a
benevolent hegemon. They lecture other countries on
the universal validity of American principles, practices,
and institutions. At the 1997 G-7 summit in Denver,
President Clinton boasted about the success of the
American economy as a model for others. Secretary of
State Madeleine K. Albright has called the United States
"the indispensable nation" and said that "we stand tall
and hence see further than other nations." This
statement is true in the narrow sense that the United
States is an indispensable participant in any effort to
tackle major global problems. It is false in also implying
that other nations are dispensable -- the United States
needs the cooperation of some major countries in
handling any issue -- and that American indispensability
is the source of wisdom.
Addressing the problem of foreign perceptions of
American "hegemonism," Deputy Secretary of State
Strobe Talbott set forth this rationale: "In a fashion and
to an extent that is unique in the history of Great
Powers, the United States defines its strength -- indeed,
its very greatness -- not in terms of its ability to achieve
or maintain dominance over others, but in terms of its
ability to work with others in the interests of the
international community as a whole. . . . American
foreign policy is consciously intended to advance
universal values [his italics]." The most concise
statement of the "benign hegemon" syndrome was made
by Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence H.
Summers when he called the United States the "first
nonimperialist superpower" -- a claim that manages in
three words to exalt American uniqueness, American
virtue, and American power.
American foreign policy is in considerable measure
driven by such beliefs. In the past few years the United
States has, among other things, attempted or been
perceived as attempting more or less unilaterally to do
the following: pressure other countries to adopt
American values and practices regarding human rights
and democracy; prevent other countries from acquiring
military capabilities that could counter American
conventional superiority; enforce American law
extraterritorially in other societies; grade countries
according to their adherence to American standards on
human rights, drugs, terrorism, nuclear proliferation,
missile proliferation, and now religious freedom; apply
sanctions against countries that do not meet American
standards on these issues; promote American corporate
interests under the slogans of free trade and open
markets; shape World Bank and International Monetary
Fund policies to serve those same corporate interests;
intervene in local conflicts in which it has relatively little
direct interest; bludgeon other countries to adopt
economic policies and social policies that will benefit
American economic interests; promote American arms
sales abroad while attempting to prevent comparable
sales by other countries; force out one U.N. secretary-
general and dictate the appointment of his successor;
expand NATO initially to include Poland, Hungary, and
the Czech Republic and no one else; undertake military
action against Iraq and later maintain harsh economic
sanctions against the regime; and categorize certain
countries as "rogue states," excluding them from global
institutions because they refuse to kowtow to American
wishes.
In the unipolar moment at the end of the Cold War and
the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States was
often able to impose its will on other countries. That
moment has passed. The two principal tools of coercion
that the United States now attempts to use are economic
sanctions and military intervention. Sanctions work,
however, only when other countries also support them,
and that is decreasingly the case. Hence, the United
States either applies them unilaterally to the detriment
of its economic interests and its relations with its allies,
or it does not enforce them, in which case they become
symbols of American weakness.
At relatively low cost the United States can launch
bombing or cruise missile attacks against its enemies. By
themselves, however, such actions achieve little. More
serious military interventions have to meet three
conditions: They have to be legitimated through some
international organization, such as the United Nations
where they are subject to Russian, Chinese, or French
veto; they also require the participation of allied forces,
which may or may not be forthcoming; and they have to
involve no American casualties and virtually no
"collateral" casualties. Even if the United States meets
all three conditions, it risks stirring up not only criticism
at home but widespread political and popular backlash
abroad.
American officials seem peculiarly blind to the fact that
often the more the United States attacks a foreign
leader, the more his popularity soars among his
countrymen who applaud him for standing tall against
the greatest power on earth. The demonizing of leaders
has so far failed to shorten their tenure in power, from
Fidel Castro (who has survived eight American
presidents) to Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.
Indeed, the best way for a dictator of a small country to
prolong his tenure in power may be to provoke the
United States into denouncing him as the leader of a
"rogue regime" and a threat to global peace.
Neither the Clinton administration nor Congress nor the
public is willing to pay the costs and accept the risks of
unilateral global leadership. Some advocates of
American leadership argue for increasing defense
expenditures by 50 percent, but that is a nonstarter. The
American public clearly sees no need to expend effort
and resources to achieve American hegemony. In one
1997 poll, only 13 percent said they preferred a
preeminent role for the United States in world affairs,
while 74 percent said they wanted the United States to
share power with other countries. Other polls have
produced similar results. Public disinterest in
international affairs is pervasive, abetted by the
drastically shrinking media coverage of foreign events.
Majorities of 55 to 66 percent of the public say that what
happens in western Europe, Asia, Mexico, and Canada
has little or no impact on their lives. However much
foreign policy elites may ignore or deplore it, the United
States lacks the domestic political base to create a
unipolar world. American leaders repeatedly make
threats, promise action, and fail to deliver. The result is
a foreign policy of "rhetoric and retreat" and a growing
reputation as a "hollow hegemon."
THE ROGUE SUPERPOWER
In acting as if this were a unipolar world, the United
States is also becoming increasingly alone in the world.
American leaders constantly claim to be speaking on
behalf of "the international community." But whom do
they have in mind? China? Russia? India? Pakistan?
Iran? The Arab world? The Association of Southeast
Asian Nations? Africa? Latin America? France? Do any
of these countries or regions see the United States as the
spokesman for a community of which they are a part?
The community for which the United States speaks
includes, at best, its Anglo-Saxon cousins (Britain,
Canada, Australia, New Zealand) on most issues,
Germany and some smaller European democracies on
many issues, Israel on some Middle Eastern questions,
and Japan on the implementation of U.N. resolutions.
These are important states, but they fall far short of
being the global international community.
On issue after issue, the United States has found itself
increasingly alone, with one or a few partners, opposing
most of the rest of the world's states and peoples. These
issues include U.N. dues; sanctions against Cuba, Iran,
Iraq, and Libya; the land mines treaty; global warming;
an international war crimes tribunal; the Middle East;
the use of force against Iraq and Yugoslavia; and the
targeting of 35 countries with new economic sanctions
between 1993 and 1996. On these and other issues,
much of the international community is on one side and
the United States is on the other. The circle of
governments who see their interests coinciding with
American interests is shrinking. This is manifest, among
other ways, in the central lineup among the permanent
members of the U.N. Security Council. During the first
decades of the Cold War, it was 4:1 -- the United States,
the United Kingdom, France, and China against the
Soviet Union. After Mao's communist government took
China's seat, the lineup became 3:1:1, with China in a
shifting middle position. Now it is 2:1:2, with the United
States and the United Kingdom opposing China and
Russia, and France in the middle spot.
While the United States regularly denounces various
countries as "rogue states," in the eyes of many
countries it is becoming the rogue superpower. One of
Japan's most distinguished diplomats, Ambassador
Hisashi Owada, has argued that after World War II, the
United States pursued a policy of "unilateral globalism,"
providing public goods in the form of security,
opposition to communism, an open global economy, aid
for economic development, and stronger international
institutions. Now it is pursuing a policy of "global
unilateralism," promoting its own particular interests
with little reference to those of others. The United States
is unlikely to become an isolationist country,
withdrawing from the world. But it could become an
isolated country, out of step with much of the world.
If a unipolar world were unavoidable, many countries
might prefer the United States as the hegemon. But this
is mostly because it is distant from them and hence
unlikely to attempt to acquire any of their territory.
American power is also valued by the secondary regional
states as a constraint on the dominance of other major
regional states. Benign hegemony, however, is in the eye
of the hegemon. "One reads about the world's desire for
American leadership only in the United States," one
British diplomat observed. "Everywhere else one reads
about American arrogance and unilateralism."
Political and intellectual leaders in most countries
strongly resist the prospect of a unipolar world and
favor the emergence of true multipolarity. At a 1997
Harvard conference, scholars reported that the elites of
countries comprising at least two-thirds of the world's
people -- Chinese, Russians, Indians, Arabs, Muslims,
and Africans -- see the United States as the single
greatest external threat to their societies. They do not
regard America as a military threat but as a menace to
their integrity, autonomy, prosperity, and freedom of
action. They view the United States as intrusive,
interventionist, exploitative, unilateralist, hegemonic,
hypocritical, and applying double standards, engaging in
what they label "financial imperialism" and "intellectual
colonialism," with a foreign policy driven
overwhelmingly by domestic politics. For Indian elites,
an Indian scholar reported, "the United States
represents the major diplomatic and political threat. On
virtually every issue of concern to India, the United
States has 'veto' or mobilizational power, whether it is
on nuclear, technological, economic, environmental, or
political matters. That is, the United States can deny
India its objectives and can rally others to join it in
punishing India." Its sins are "power, hubris, and
greed." From the Russian perspective, a Moscow
participant said, the United States pursues a policy of
"coercive cooperation." All Russians oppose "a world
based on a dominant U.S. leadership which would
border on hegemony." In similar terms, the Beijing
participant said Chinese leaders believe that the
principal threats to peace, stability, and China are
"hegemonism and power politics," meaning U.S.
policies, which they say are designed to undermine and
create disunity in the socialist states and developing
countries. Arab elites see the United States as an evil
force in world affairs, while the Japanese public rated in
1997 the United States as a threat to Japan second only
to North Korea.
Such reactions are to be expected. American leaders
believe that the world's business is their business. Other
countries believe that what happens in their part of the
world is their business, not America's, and quite
explicitly respond. As Nelson Mandela said, his country
rejects another state's having "the arrogance to tell us
where we should go or which countries should be our
friends. . . . We cannot accept that a state assumes the
role of the world's policeman." In a bipolar world, many
countries welcomed the United States as their protector
against the other superpower. In a uni-multipolar world,
in contrast, the world's only superpower is automatically
a threat to other major powers. One by one, the major
regional powers are making it clear that they do not
want the United States messing around in regions where
their interests are predominant. Iran, for instance,
strongly opposes the U.S. military presence in the
Persian Gulf. The current bad relations between the
United States and Iran are the product of the Iranian
revolution. If, however, the Shah or his son now ruled
Iran, those relations would probably be deteriorating
because Iran would see the American presence in the
Gulf as a threat to its own hegemony there.
FLEXIBLE RESPONSES
Countries respond in various ways to American
superpowerdom. At a relatively low level are widespread
feelings of fear, resentment, and envy. These ensure that
when at some point the United States suffers a
humiliating rebuff from a Saddam or a Milosevic, many
countries will think, "They finally got what they had
coming to them!" At a somewhat higher level,
resentment may turn into dissent, with other countries,
including allies, refusing to cooperate with the United
States on the Persian Gulf, Cuba, Libya, Iran,
extraterritoriality, nuclear proliferation, human rights,
trade policies, and other issues. In a few cases, dissent
has turned into outright opposition as countries attempt
to defeat U.S. policy. The highest level of response would
be the formation of an antihegemonic coalition
involving several major powers. Such a grouping is
impossible in a unipolar world because the other states
are too weak to mount it. It appears in a multipolar
world only when one state begins to become strong and
troublesome enough to provoke it. It would, however,
appear to be a natural phenomenon in a uni-multipolar
world. Throughout history, major powers have tended to
balance against the attempted domination by the
strongest among them.
Some antihegemonic cooperation has occurred.
Relations among non-Western societies are in general
improving. Gatherings occur from which the United
States is conspicuously absent, ranging from the
Moscow meeting of the leaders of Germany, France, and
Russia (which also excluded America's closest ally,
Britain) to the bilateral meetings of China and Russia
and of China and India. There have been recent
rapprochements between Iran and Saudi Arabia and
Iran and Iraq. The highly successful meeting of the
Organization of the Islamic Conference hosted by Iran
coincided with the disastrous Qatar meeting on Middle
Eastern economic development sponsored by the United
States. Russian Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov has
promoted Russia, China, and India as a "strategic
triangle" to counterbalance the United States, and the
"Primakov doctrine" reportedly enjoys substantial
support across the entire Russian political spectrum.
Undoubtedly the single most important move toward an
antihegemonic coalition, however, antedates the end of
the Cold War: the formation of the European Union and
the creation of a common European currency. As French
Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine has said, Europe must
come together on its own and create a counterweight to
stop the United States from dominating a multipolar
world. Clearly the euro could pose an important
challenge to the hegemony of the dollar in global
finance.
Despite all these antihegemonic rumblings, however, a
more broad-based, active, and formal anti-American
coalition has yet to emerge. Several possible
explanations come to mind.
First, it may be too soon. Over time the response to
American hegemony may escalate from resentment and
dissent to opposition and collective counteraction. The
American hegemonic threat is less immediate and more
diffuse than the prospect of imminent military conquest
posed by European hegemons in the past. Hence, other
powers can be more relaxed about forming a coalition to
counter American dominance.
Second, while countries may resent U.S. power and
wealth, they also want to benefit from them. The United
States rewards countries that follow its leadership with
access to the American market, foreign aid, military
assistance, exemption from sanctions, silence about
deviations from U.S. norms (as with Saudi human rights
abuses and Israeli nuclear weapons), support for
membership in international organizations, and bribes
and White House visits for political leaders. Each major
regional power also has an interest in securing U.S.
support in conflicts with other regional powers. Given
the benefits that the United States can distribute, the
sensible course for other countries may well be, in
international-relations lingo, not to "balance" against
the United States but to "bandwagon" with it. Over time,
however, as U.S. power declines, the benefits to be
gained by cooperating with the United States will also
decline, as will the costs of opposing it. Hence, this
factor reinforces the possibility that an antihegemonic
coalition could emerge in the future.
Third, the international-relations theory that predicts
balancing under the current circumstances is a theory
developed in the context of the European Westphalian
system established in 1648. All the countries in that
system shared a common European culture that
distinguished them sharply from the Ottoman Turks and
other peoples. They also took the nation-state as the
basic unit in international relations and accepted the
legal and theoretical equality of states despite their
obvious differences in size, wealth, and power. Cultural
commonality and legal equality thus facilitated the
operation of a balance-of-power system to counter the
emergence of a single hegemon, and even then it often
operated quite imperfectly.
Global politics is now multicivilizational. France, Russia,
and China may well have common interests in
challenging U.S. hegemony, but their very different
cultures are likely to make it difficult for them to
organize an effective coalition. In addition, the idea of
the sovereign legal equality of nation-states has not
played a significant role in relations among non-
Western societies, which see hierarchy rather than
equality as the natural relation among peoples. The
central questions in a relationship are: who is number
one? who is number two? At least one factor that led to
the breakup of the Sino-Soviet alliance at the end of the
1950s was Mao Zedong's unwillingness to play second
fiddle to Stalin's successors in the Kremlin. Similarly, an
obstacle to an anti-U.S. coalition between China and
Russia now is Russian reluctance to be the junior
partner of a much more populous and economically
dynamic China. Cultural differences, jealousies, and
rivalries may thwart the major powers from coalescing
against the superpower.
Fourth, the principal source of contention between the
superpower and the major regional powers is the
former's intervention to limit, counter, or shape the
actions of the latter. For the secondary regional powers,
on the other hand, superpower intervention is a
resource that they potentially can mobilize against their
region's major power. The superpower and the
secondary regional powers will thus often, although not
always, share converging interests against major
regional powers, and secondary regional powers will
have little incentive to join in a coalition against the
superpower.
THE LONELY SHERIFF
The interplay of power and culture will decisively mold
patterns of alliance and antagonism among states in the
coming years. In terms of culture, cooperation is more
likely between countries with cultural commonalties;
antagonism is more likely between countries with widely
different cultures. In terms of power, the United States
and the secondary regional powers have common
interests in limiting the dominance of the major states in
their regions. Thus the United States has warned China
by strengthening its military alliance with Japan and
supporting the modest extension of Japanese military
capabilities. The U.S. special relationship with Britain
provides leverage against the emerging power of a
united Europe. America is working to develop close
relations with Ukraine to counter any expansion of
Russian power. With the emergence of Brazil as the
dominant state in Latin America, U.S. relations with
Argentina have greatly improved and the United States
has designated Argentina a non-NATO military ally. The
United States cooperates closely with Saudi Arabia to
counter Iran's power in the Gulf and, less successfully,
has worked with Pakistan to balance India in South
Asia. In all these cases, cooperation serves mutual
interests in containing the influence of the major
regional power.
This interplay of power and culture suggests that the
United States is likely to have difficult relations with the
major regional powers, though less so with the
European Union and Brazil than with the others. On the
other hand, the United States should have reasonably
cooperative relations with all the secondary regional
powers, but have closer relations with the secondary
regional powers that have similar cultures (Britain,
Argentina, and possibly Ukraine) than those that have
different cultures (Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia,
Pakistan). Finally, relations between major and
secondary regional powers of the same civilization (the
EU and Britain, Russia and Ukraine, Brazil and
Argentina, Iran and Saudi Arabia) should be less
antagonistic than those between countries of different
civilizations (China and Japan; Japan and Korea; India
and Pakistan; Israel and the Arab states).
WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS OF A UNI-
MULTIPOLAR WORLD FOR AMERICAN POLICY?
First, it would behoove Americans to stop acting and
talking as if this were a unipolar world. It is not. To deal
with any major global issue, the United States needs the
cooperation of at least some major powers. Unilateral
sanctions and interventions are recipes for foreign
policy disasters. Second, American leaders should
abandon the benign-hegemon illusion that a natural
congruity exists between their interests and values and
those of the rest of the world. It does not. At times,
American actions may promote public goods and serve
more widely accepted ends. But often they will not, in
part because of the unique moralistic component in
American policy but also simply because America is the
only superpower, and hence its interests necessarily
differ from those of other countries. This makes America
unique but not benign in the eyes of those countries.
Third, while the United States cannot create a unipolar
world, it is in U.S. interests to take advantage of its
position as the only superpower in the existing
international order and to use its resources to elicit
cooperation from other countries to deal with global
issues in ways that satisfy American interests. This
would essentially involve the Bismarckian strategy
recommended by Josef Joffe, but it would also require
Bismarckian talents to carry out, and, in any event,
cannot be maintained indefinitely.
Fourth, the interaction of power and culture has special
relevance for European-American relations. The
dynamics of power encourage rivalry; cultural
commonalities facilitate cooperation. The achievement
of almost any major American goal depends on the
triumph of the latter over the former. The relation with
Europe is central to the success of American foreign
policy, and given the pro- and anti-American outlooks of
Britain and France, respectively, America's relations
with Germany are central to its relations with Europe.
Healthy cooperation with Europe is the prime antidote
for the loneliness of American superpowerdom.
Richard N. Haass has argued that the United States
should act as a global sheriff, rounding up "posses" of
other states to handle major international issues as they
arise. Haass handled Persian Gulf matters at the White
House in the Bush administration, and this proposal
reflects the experience and success of that
administration in putting together a heterogeneous
global posse to force Saddam out of Kuwait. But that
was then, in the unipolar moment. What happened then
contrasts dramatically with the Iraqi crisis in the winter
of 1998, when France, Russia, and China opposed the
use of force and America assembled an Anglo-Saxon
posse, not a global one. In December 1998 support for
U.S. and British air strikes against Saddam was also
limited and criticism widespread. Most strikingly, no
Arab government, including Kuwait, endorsed the
action. Saudi Arabia refused to allow the United States
to use its fighter planes based there. Efforts at rallying
future posses are far more likely to resemble what
happened in 1998 than what happened in 1990-91. Most
of the world, as Mandela said, does not want the United
States to be its policeman.
As a multipolar system emerges, the appropriate
replacement for a global sheriff is community policing,
with the major regional powers assuming primary
responsibility for order in their own regions. Haass
criticizes this suggestion on the grounds that the other
states in a region, which I have called the secondary
regional powers, will object to being policed by the
leading regional powers. As I have indicated, their
interests often do conflict. But the same tension is likely
to hold in the relationship between the United States
and major regional powers. There is no reason why
Americans should take responsibility for maintaining
order if it can be done locally. While geography does not
coincide exactly with culture, there is considerable
overlap between regions and civilizations. For the
reasons I set forth in my book, the core state of a
civilization can better maintain order among the
members of its extended family than can someone
outside the family. There are also signs in some regions
such as Africa, Southeast Asia, and perhaps even the
Balkans that countries are beginning to develop
collective means to maintain security. American
intervention could then be restricted to those situations
of potential violence, such as the Middle East and South
Asia, involving major states of different civilizations.
In the multipolar world of the 21st century, the major
powers will inevitably compete, clash, and coalesce with
each other in various permutations and combinations.
Such a world, however, will lack the tension and conflict
between the superpower and the major regional powers
that are the defining characteristic of a uni-multipolar
world. For that reason, the United States could find life
as a major power in a multipolar world less demanding,
less contentious, and more rewarding than it was as the
world's only superpower.