ABSTRACT
In the aftermath of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the international distribution of power no longer appeared to be bipolar, but unipolar. In reality, these descriptive terms were and are reductive, in that they greatly over-simplify far more complex realities. Nonetheless, the United States did enjoy a unique position. More than two decades later, however, assessments of America's role and of its power have changed dramatically. If descriptions of the United States in the 1990s and the first years of the twenty-first century were often hyperbolic in expressions of awe about the size, power, and capacity of the United States, they have now shifted in the opposite direction, once again exaggerating America's condition and role, but now depicting the country as in a state of fundamental decline at home and receding influence abroad.
