STRATEGIC

From Triumph to Stalemate: The Loss of American Consensus 23
The post–Cold War era was an unusually sunny period for the
West. Despite a range of emerging problems—nuclear proliferation
in North Korea, Pakistan, and then Iran; the horrors in the Balkans,
Rwanda, and then Darfur; the emergence of jihadist movements; and
even the messy attempts to contain Saddam Hussein after the first
Gulf War—the U.S. homeland and its citizens were largely untroubled
by foreign affairs. The institutions that the United States helped build
after World War II fostered a liberal international order that promoted
free trade, democratic governance, the rule of law, global health, arms
control agreements, human rights conventions, and a host of other
norms and institutions that promoted peaceful global integration.
The liberal order seemed to be living up to its Wilsonian promise
as a time of global peace. 11 The order was opened to all who wanted to
participate, and most did: About 3.5 billion people joined the global
economy from the previously closed economies of the former Soviet
Union, India, and China. Incomes soared, extreme poverty eroded,
and the benefits of science, technology, and medicine reached millions
who had been left out. A global middle class was born. It was one of
the greatest periods of social and economic progress in human history.
Democracy was also on the march. The number of countries
deemed “fully free” nearly doubled from 44 in 1973 to 76 in 1992
because of decolonization and the breakup of the Soviet Union,
and peaked at 90 in 2007–2008 before falling back to 86 in 2016. 12
The percentage of the global population living in countries that were
free or partly free also surged (see Figure 2.4). Beginning in 2006,
however, the degree of freedom in many emerging and some estabsion
in Côte d’Ivoire in 2004, but after fighting broke out over a disputed election in 2010,
it authorized a mission specifically to fulfill R2P duties. See United Nations Security Council
Resolution 1975, on Cote D’Ivoire, March 30, 2011. However, R2P was not invoked under
somewhat similar circumstances in Congo. See United Nations Regional Information Centre
for Western Europe, “Responsibility to Protect: Two Case Studies with Alex Vines,” web page,
undated.
11 Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the
World, New York: Taylor and Francis Group, 2009.
12 Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2016: Anxious Dictators, Wavering Democracies,
Washington, D.C., 2016a.