ABSTRACT
The US and the Future of Arms Control 49 Ambassador Ronald F. Lehman II Director, United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Washington DC
The End of Traditional Arms Control and the New American Role in International Security 62 Dr Andrei Kortunov Head of Department, Institute of the. USA and Canada, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow
The US and Regional Conflicts: Paper I 73 Dr Susan Kaufman Purcell Vice-President for Latin American Affairs, The Americas Society, New York
America's Role in New Security Architectures 98 Jean-Marie Guehenno Head of Analysis and Forecast Centre, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Paris
America's Role in New Security Architectures: A Commentary 111 Robert E. Hunter Vice President for Regional Programs and Director of European Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC
For several reasons, it is difficult for me to discuss what has made the United States unique or at least distinctive as a great power since World War II. I devoted a large part of a very long book to this subject more than 20 years ago, and see no reason either to repeat or to repudiate an analysis that stressed the combination of a quite separate historical experience, of a set of deeply held principles, and of a peculiar modus operandi, a kind of engineering pragmatism.1 Moreover, it is difficult to disentangle, in America's behaviour as a superpower, what was determined or dictated by the structure of the international system, by the imperatives of power, and what was shaped by America's specific conceptions and habits. Finally, it is equally difficult to disconnect a discussion of American specificity from the current debate on whether or not the US is in decline – although the way in which this debate is being held tells us a few things about distinctive American features. What I will try to do in this essay is, first, to describe these features, particularly as they appeared in the period of American predominance; secondly, I will examine the extent to which they have changed, and I will end with some remarks about the present debates on the future of America's role in the world.
