HOW WAS THE COLD WAR WON?

摘要

Americans of various intellectual and political persuasions have given considerable attention to the end of the Cold War, the most dramatic alteration of world politics since World War II. This is understandable but in some ways curious, or even ironic, because the historic event changed the United States so little. Unipolarity and willing policy makers ensured that the U.S. military remained the world's unrivaled military power and global police force. This unchecked power entailed all sorts of martial and imperial temptations even in the 1990s, to be fully indulged after September 11, 2001. Cold War style politics shallow and dysfunctional partisan carping over who was weak or strong on national security, and the tug of war between a parochial Congress and a still-imperial president did not abate. America embraced its role as the world's unrivaled arms dealer. The U.S. military budget is at its highest point since World War II and accounts for half of the world's total military expenditures. The nation is involved in two protracted wars, the costs of which long ago eclipsed any conceivable benefits. And Washington is still spending considerable funds on ballistic missile defense. It is a good thing there are significantly fewer deployed U.S. offensive nuclear weapons today; otherwise, one might be hard pressed to name a single enduring, positive consequence for the United States more than twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.