ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the rise and decline of US geoeconomic power. The rise, decline and potential revival of US geoeconomic power are surveyed as indicators for both opportunities and challenges in Russia's external environment. America's extensive and increasing militarisation to balance the Soviet Union led to its geoeconomic power regressing towards traditional geopolitics. The US has ample potential to revive its geoeconomic power, which could present both challenges and opportunities to Russia. Realist theory would expect that the US would increasingly abandon containment of Russia since China is the principal geoeconomic rival. The grand strategy of the US has since the early 1900s been offshore balancing along the periphery of the Eurasian continent. The decline of US geoeconomic statecraft during the Cold War had its roots in ideology and a reliance on military power. Ideology diminished rationality as the temporary convergence of US security interests with free trade augmented the authority of the liberal economic theory.
