ABSTRACT
The events of September 11 provided the United States, and indeed the international community as a whole, with a unique opportunity to begin to shape a new world order to enhance global security. What in the 1990s had been framed primarily as a moral imperative of humanitarian intervention to deal with a growing list of “failed states” was now a strategic issue in which the security of the core was linked to the periphery via the ability of al-Qa’ida to establish a foothold in Afghanistan and Iraq. Unfortunately, the Bush administration has not taken that opportunity. Whether it still exists remains an open question, but there is little doubt that the window is closing fast. This chapter elaborates the distinction between core and periphery that
was a central metaphor for the post-Cold War period among many commentators. Building on this distinction, the chapter examines how since September 11 the United States has recognized a link between its security and “failed states” but has failed to respond effectively to the challenge that they represent. Indeed, its military strategy in both Afghanistan and Iraq has exacerbated these countries’ existing problems. Finally, I suggest that the key failing of this change in American grand strategy is not only the substitution of multilateralism and containment with allegedly novel forms of unilateralism and military pre-emption (Gaddis 2004). Rather, its fundamental flaw lies in the United States’ simultaneous and contradictory support for cheap military victories, nation-building, and a neoliberal foreign economic policy designed explicitly to weaken the state in the periphery.
