ABSTRACT
The startling implosion of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War revolutionised the context in which US foreign policy had to be developed. Presidents were no longer guaranteed congressional support for intervention overseas and faced public demand for a peace dividend and long overdue redress of domestic problems. Bipolar stability was supplanted by a disorientating and potentially dangerous nascent multipolarity. And containment was suddenly obsolete. This meant both that after 45 years the US had to redefine its foreign policy objectives and that the subsequent prosecution of its interests would be far more difficult. American leaders could no longer use the communist threat to justify almost any action, however blatantly self-interested or immoral, that they cared to take.
