ABSTRACT
On 20 January 1997, America’s forty-second President, William Jefferson Clinton, used his second inaugural address to proclaim that ‘America stands alone as the world’s indispensable nation’.1 Calling attention to United States centrality to the post-Cold War order, Clinton’s assertion also hinted at the recognition of the evolving nature of power and influence in the emerging international environment. With the bipolarity of the Cold War giving way to a more complex distribution of power in which traditional forms and levers of power are complicated by the complexities of an increasingly globalised and interconnected world, the United States (and all major Powers) face new challenges and constraints. For the United States, the shift to greater multipolarity and the relative rise of major Powers like China, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, India, Brazil, and perhaps others, complicate the status of the United States as the sole global Power able to extend its reach around the world. Moreover, the increasingly important role of non-state and transnational actors in international politics muddies traditional conceptions of national power and national interests. All of these combine to establish a complex international environment in which major Powers, middle Powers, developing Powers, and non-state and transnational actors interact. As Clinton’s assertion suggests, the United States may occupy a central and privileged place in this order, but ‘indispensability’ is a far cry from ‘dominance’.
