4. From the end of the cold war to a new world dis-order?

This chapter provides a broad overview of the international system between the end of the cold war— when many claimed that liberalism and the West had triumphed— through to the second decade of the twenty-first century, when the West itself and the liberal economic order it had hitherto promoted appeared to be coming under increased pressure from political forces at home and new challenges abroad. But before we turn to the present, the chapter will look at some of the key developments since 1989—including the Clinton presidency, the George W. Bush administration’s foreign policy following the attacks of 9/11, the 2008 financial crash, the crisis in Europe, the transitions taking place in the global South, the origins of the upheavals now reshaping the Middle East, the political shift from Barack Obama to Donald Trump, the emergence of Asia, and the rise of China. The chapter then concludes by examining two big questions: first, is power now shifting away from the West, and second, to what extent does the current wave of populism in the West threaten globalization and the liberal order?

Global versus National

This chapter describes the efforts of various Republican presidents and congressional leaders to strike balances between nationalist and internationalist priorities between the 1960s and 2015. Barry Goldwater championed a hawkish Sunbelt conservatism that in the long run helped remake the Republican Party. President Nixon pursued a foreign policy based upon assumptions of great-power politics and realpolitik. President Reagan led an ideologically charged effort at anti-Communist rollback, although he was careful not to overextend the United States in any large-scale wars on the ground. Republicans during the Clinton presidency struggled to reformulate conservative foreign policy assumptions in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse. George W. Bush remade conservative foreign policy into a war on terror, aiming at the democratization of the Greater Middle East. Finally, during the presidency of Barack Obama, Republican foreign policy factions once again splintered, paving the way for a conservative nationalist resurgence.

“It’s the Economy, Stupid”

During the Clinton presidency, international and domestic conditions drove changes within the CIA and DoD that affected their partnership. The CIA and the DoD had been established during the Cold War, so a significant amount of their energy had been focused on the Soviet Union. After the Soviet fall, both organizations wrestled with their roles in a multipolar world, while policy makers slashed budgets and looked for ways to reorient both organizations. Various national and institutional issues influenced the DoD/CIA partnership in the 1990s. These seemingly separate issues merged to shape the organizations and therefore influenced how the DoD/CIA relationship evolved during the 1990s.

Election Interference: The Real Harm and The Only Solution

Although politicians and intelligence analysts have criticized Russian interference in the 2016 and 2018 elections, international lawyers seem to be at a loss for how to understand the particular harm posed by this interference. In addition to the hacking of email accounts and disclosure of private information, the most salient aspect of the interference was the use of social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook, to sow division and heighten nativist tendencies within the electorate. Strictly speaking, the goal of the 2016 interference was to delegitimize a potential Clinton presidency or to help elect Donald Trump as president. But far more important was the method used to accomplish these goals: the impersonation of American citizens during participation in the political process. This latter development points to the real harm of election interference, which has less to do with sovereignty and more to do with the collective right of self- determination. Foreign interference is a violation of the membership rules for political decision-making, i.e., the idea that only members of a polity should participate in elections—not only with regard to voting but also with regard to financial contributions and other forms of electoral participation. Outsiders are free to express their opinions but covertly representing themselves as insiders constitutes a violation of these political norms, which are constitutive of the notion of self- determination, just as much as covertly funneling foreign money to one candidate. The only solution to this form of election interference is transparency, i.e., to expose such interventions for what they are: attempts by foreigners to make political statements while pretending to be Americans. This article ends by cataloguing the mistakes of the Obama Administration in failing to expose this interference in real time—which is the only way to nullify its insidious impact. Ex post investigations, prosecutions, and counter-measures designed to deter future misbehavior are all insufficient to nullify the impact of electoral interference. However, recent efforts by the Justice Department and the FBI, including a new policy codified in the US Attorneys Manual, and contemporaneous indictments of Russians for interference in the 2018 election, suggest that some government actors finally understand that transparency is the only solution to election interference.