Twenty years ago, the people of Berlin brought down the wall that had divided their city, not only ending the tragic chapter of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, but also closing the book on post-war American grand strategy. For forty years, the strategy of containment guided American elites of both parties; two decades later, U.S. policymakers are still searching in vain for containment's replacement.
The development of coherent strategies for using American power remains a vital goal in what has become an increasingly complex world. The U.S. military is overstretched thanks to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the U.S. economy remains fragile. Transnational threats are abundant. It's no wonder that a misplaced nostalgia exists for the supposed simplicity of the Cold War, when the United States faced one major enemy.
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