The United States and China in Power Transition - Strategic Studies ...

aftermath of World War I. President Woodrow Wilson
put forward the American vision of a new world order
to the warring states of the “Old World (Europe)”:
“the United States possessed the world’s best system
of government, and that the rest of mankind could attain
peace and prosperity by abandoning traditional
diplomacy and adopting America’s reverence for international
law and democracy.” 15 Unfortunately, Wilson
was confronted with skepticism in the Old World
and constrained by isolationism at home. His plan for
the new U.S.-led international order slipped away.
The second opportunity came at the end of World
War II. The United States was more powerful and mature
this time. It almost single-handedly established
a new world order that included the United Nations
(UN), an improvement on President Woodrow Wilson’s
idea for the League of Nations, the Breton Woods
system of international monetary management, and
the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)
for international trade. Unfortunately, while this new
world order was still in its infancy, the Soviet Union
came to challenge the American design. It carved out
its own sphere of influence (the communist camp),
put in place the communist way of government and
economics, and staged a Cold War against the United
States. The confrontation between the two superpowers
practically put the American dream on hold for the
next 4 decades.
The Cold War eventually came to an end. With the
disappearance of its arch enemy, the United States
for the third time saw the opportunity to reform the
world based on its values. Regrettably, as Kissinger
writes, while the United States was the most powerful
nation in the world, it could not prevent the titanic
shift of power from the Atlantic to the Asia-Pacific and
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