by Bill O’Grady

In this final installment of our four-part series on The New World Order, we will examine how, in light of winning the Cold War, policymakers have been unable to settle on a set of key priorities and offer what we see as “glimpses” of a new policy emerging.  In a sense, the U.S. never really wanted to be a superpower; the nation’s founding story is one of wresting independence away from a colonial power.  Americans were willing to put up with the economic and political distortions that came from becoming a superpower in order to defeat communism.  Now that this existential threat has ended, the political class has struggled to create a foreign policy that can simultaneously provide the required hegemonic global public goods and create a working economic policy and political coalition that will build domestic harmony.

In this report, we will recap why the current policy mix is unsustainable and yet, why the U.S. remains indispensable for world peace and global growth.  And so, if the U.S. cannot be replaced anytime soon, American policymakers need to create a solution that will allow the U.S. to fulfill at least some of the hegemon’s responsibilities and also create a sustainable domestic economy and political coalition.  We will conclude with a broad examination of the potential long-term market effects from this evolving New World Order.

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