ABSTRACT
The voluminous literature on American power naturally focuses on the United States as agent, that is, the international order's subject, whose material and material assets are assessed in order to explain its capacity to affect the shape of events almost everywhere outside its borders. The chapter examines that whether imperial or hegemonic, American power cannot be properly calibrated without considering how it is affected for better or for worse by its relationships with its international interlocutors in general but, in particular, by its interconnections with its two contiguous neighbours. The chapter provides a conceptual preamble that explains to what extent it makes sense to talk of the United States' peripheries as a component of its own strength. It considers the evolution of the power relationship between the United States and its two peripheries during the two centuries leading up to the attacks on New York and Washington by Al Qaeda.
