The United States emerged as the world’s sole superpower from the embers of the Cold War’s end, without, however, a wholesale reformulation of the principles and tools used to execute US grand strategy. This was particularly true in Europe, where the United States remained engaged politically, economically, and military; retained significant numbers of forward-deployed forces; and orchestrated the continuation and eventual expansion of NATO. For the United States, and for many Europeans, continued American dominance after 1991 of the continent’s security through NATO was a logical outgrowth of what Washington had provided in the West after 1945. Even within the context of America’s leadership of NATO, alternative strategies to the ultimate path of NATO’s post-1999 enlargement were possible. These included the Partnership for Peace, initially seen as an alternative to NATO enlargement formulated by the Pentagon; some enlargement of NATO to the east, but not as much as occurred; and a concrete path for Russia to join the alliance. This chapter considers the pros and cons of each of these alternatives to the NATO enlargement policy chosen by the United States and its partners in order to provide a more detailed assessment of the policy than has existed previously.

What will be the contours of the “post-post-Cold War” world? This chapter takes up that question by examining the defining international and domestic characteristics of this new age and assessing their similarities with previous eras. We begin by identifying three defining attributes of the Cold War: ideological clash, limited economic exchange, and nuclear arms racing between the American and Soviet-led blocs. Next, we explore the central feature of the post-Cold War era - namely, American primacy. We then examine the trends that have eroded primacy's material underpinnings and produced new domestic and International conditions — global power shifts, technological change, and sociopolitical fragmentation -- then project forward how those trends are likely to evolve over the next ten to fifteen years. Finally, we examine the extent to which those trends are distinct from, or continuous with, the conditions facing the United States during the Cold War and post-Cold War eras, and find that some important continuities remain even as meaningful discontinuities will disrupt existing patterns of international order. The chapter concludes by arguing that the post-post-Cold War world requires a new strategic approach for the United States — one guided by a principle of openness, rather than Cold War-style containment or post-Cold War-style liberal universalism.

The Cold War’s denouement not only saw profound political changes throughout Eurasia, but an unprecedented power shift resulting from the Soviet Union’s decline that ultimately ushered in the United States’ “unipolar era.” Nevertheless, the United States’ response to the late Cold War power shift remains underexplored. This chapter fills the gap by examining the processes by which the United States recognized the power shift underway and adapted its foreign policy. I make three arguments. First, American policymakers in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations acknowledged that Soviet decline rebounded to the United States’ geopolitical advantage. Second, American policymakers responded by exploiting Soviet problems, driven by recognition that Soviet decline allowed for American gains, yet worried that the window for gains would soon close. Third, this effort altered European security, as the United States undercut the Soviet Union as a challenger while fostering conditions that could allow it to dominate European security irrespective of whether Soviet problems continued. Put simply, the United States used the Soviet decline to reify American advantages in Europe, garnering oversight over a region that had long been the cockpit of geopolitical contestation. The result meant that unipolarity also translated into American near-hegemony in Europe.

This chapter examines the English East India Company’s (EIC’s) rise to dominance in South Asia from the mid-eighteenth century onwards. The EIC followed Asian precedents by forging its empire through reliance on strategies of define and conquer and define and rule. Company officials first curated indigenous identities to mobilize a uniquely competitive multicultural conquest coalition. They then stabilized their rule through a diversity regime of ecumenical incorporation, which reified religious difference as the primary cleavage on which colonial divide and rule logics would rest. The chapter proceeds in six sections. The first charts the onset of competitive state-building in South Asia following the Mughal Empire’s decline. The second section recounts the EIC’s expansion, before critiquing existing explanations for this. The third to fifth sections advance my substantive explanation for the rise of the ‘Company Raj’. The discussion conforms to the template of emergence, institutionalization, legitimization and consolidation established earlier to explain the rise of the Mughals and the Manchus. The sixth section sums up the chapter’s findings and teases out its broader implications.

This chapter presents the book’s research design and central argument. I begin by considering accounts of the ‘rise of the West’ that explain Western expansion through reference to European exceptionalism, global logics of uneven and combined development, or the facilitating role of local networks and patterns of collective identity in enabling colonial conquest. Having critiqued these accounts, I then advocate an alternative Eurasia-centric approach that stresses the vital parallels and interconnections between ‘barbarian’ Mughal, British and Manchu conquests in early modern South and East Asia. A combination of military, economic, cultural and administrative developments across Eurasia made it easier for ‘barbarians’ to conquer and preserve empires on a subcontinental scale. After 1500, formerly stigmatized outsiders from Eurasia’s steppe, sea and forest frontiers capitalized on these opportunities to carve out the empires that eventually crystallized into the modern post-imperial states of India and China. These empires emerged from ‘barbarian’ efforts to overcome similar challenges, and yielded strikingly similar incorporative ideologies and models of imperial governance.

This chapter recapitulates the book’s arguments, before teasing out its larger implications both for International Relations scholars interested in the comparative evolution of international systems, and also for debates within the social sciences more broadly about the origins and character of global early modernity.