ABSTRACT
Statesmen, for all of their here-and-now practicality, are fantastic vi-sionaries. One commonly hears or reads about some representative of state holding forth a vision-a fantasy-about an ideal international political order.2 While the content of the fantasy invariably differs from statesman to statesman, state to state, the general aspiration is the same: to construct the relationships among states so that they are guided by particular expectations and behaviors that will bolster one’s own perceived national interests. Of course, during the Cold War, such fantasies were considered foolish. One could speak of containing threats or of managing particular international interactions, but to speak of shaping, building, or establishing the whole of international order in the manner that George W.Bush or Jiang Zemin freely have was implausible. Since the end of the Cold War, however, fantasizing about how to order international politics-and openly talking about it-has come very much into style.3 In fact, in the more powerful states, particularly the United States, the trend is toward actively trying to translate fantasy into reality; it is toward implementing policies geared toward ordering international politics in the desired fashion.
