ABSTRACT
A dark secret of the Cold War is that it had two losers, or at least one and a half. While its sudden eclipse marked the beginning of US unipolarity, it also spelled the end of America’s geopolitical free ride.1 No longer would the Soviets be there to enforce “free world” cohesion under US auspices. That inadvertent and unacknowledged gift had given the West, and America in particular, an insurmountable advantage over the “Rest.”2 Had this been more appreciated, Washington might have done less to end the bipolar game.3 But in the euphoria of the moment, triumphalists took unipolarity at face value-i.e., as the unqualified victory that Francis Fukuyama celebrated with his “end of history” thesis, giving no quarter to cultural or political alternatives. A society could still be different, but henceforth it could not be both different and developed.
