ABSTRACT
The Gulf War made the United States appear something more than irrelevant; scholars like Robert Keohane appear premature, at the least, in placing America in a period "after hegemony." American society was the basic cause of its unwillingness to assume hegemonic leadership, especially the strength in society and in Congress of the isolationist constituency, focused as it was on the vast American national market and not on the world economy. Over time Germany may come to dominate its historical terrain in Eastern Europe, but it will have many competitors: American, British, French, and Italian investors, not to mention Japanese and South Korean. No economy in the Americas comes close to that of the United States. But Japan and the United States are so interdependent, the American market is so essential to Japan, that cooperation is much more likely than conflict and the emergence of regional blocs.
