Conclusion
Toward a New Consensus I dread our own power and our own ambition; I dread our being too much dreaded...We may say that we shall not abuse this astonishing and hitherto unheard of power. But every other nation will think we shall abuse it. It is impossible but that, sooner or later, this state of things must produce a combination against us which may end in our ruin. Edmund Burke, “Remarks on the Policy of the Allies with Respect to France,”
Th e i n t e r nat i o na l community, with America at its center, is history’s unfinished masterpiece. It remains a work in progress, both conceptually and practically. And our vacillation over whether to embrace it comes at a critical moment when the rest of the world is watching how well we, the primary authors of the post–Cold War system, negotiate the same divide between sovereign and global interests that they must. The challenge of navigating this divide takes different forms for different countries. For Americans, forging past our founding myths and reaching a national consensus that the global system is in our vital national interestand accepting the vast responsibility this entailsis the main imperative of the twenty-first century. We must get over the idea that our unprecedented power is a panacea. The paradox of being the überpower is that we exist, and always will, on two dimensions, as a nation and as individuals. As a nation, we can oversee global stability from the skies, apart, removed, and nearly omnipotent. But as individuals, we need everyone’s help on the ground, where we are as fragile and vulnerable as other peopleindeed, more so, since we are Americans, and since the system we want to maintain, one of open borders and trade,