Time magazine's interesting cover article "The End of Cowboy Diplomacy" raises an interesting question. Has the period of American hegemony as the lone global superpower ended after only fifteen years? And has its downfall been precipitated by the overreach of hegemonic power by the Bush administration?

What's the evidence that American hegemony has ended? The evening news. Iran and North Korea openly flout the Western world because they have no fear that American power will be used against them. We have little influence over our historic allies. Russia and China are more likely to exert their will. High oil prices bring wealth and power to states who use that wealth and power to counter American will. Etc.

The groundwork for the New World Order following the Cold War was established by that skilled diplomatic President, George Herbert Walker Bush, and his very capable administration. America would lead through moral and diplomatic influence, exerting its force when necessary with international cooperation and through the established procedures of international law. In effect, finally realizing the dreams of the architects of the post-World War II international order, which dreams had been delayed by 40 plus years of the Cold War.

With that basic groundwork, the world quite successfully saw a series of quick achievements: a rather smooth collapse of the Warsaw Pact, a generally smooth break-up of the Soviet Union, a quick easing of fears of the (at the time) quite controversial reunification of Germany, the creation of an Israeli-Palestinian peace process that began at the Madrid Conference organized by US Secy of State James Baker, and, of course, the ousting of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait by an unparalleled international coalition.

I still think that a seminal moment in this creation of a New World Order went and still goes largely unrecognized. In the winter of 1992 George HW Bush had a summit with Boris Yeltsin. The Soviet Union had come to a quick end in December 1991, so Yeltsin, as the President of the Russian Federation, now found himself the head of state of a new independent country. At this meeting Yeltsin proposed that the two countries shift their nuclear doctrines away from mutually assured destruction to cooperative security. Russia and America should cooperate in their nucelar programs and in a strategic defense initiative (aka Star Wars) to provide security for the democratized world and its allies and protect the world from the threats of the few remaining rogue states. The mutual power of a coalition that would include the US and Russia and all of their historical European allies could surely contain the few remaining aggressors around the globe, as had been demonstrated by their dealing with Hussein.

Now that vision was never realized and saw a series of failures in succeeding years: Somalia, the Balkans, Chechnya, Rwanda, the on-going pain in the ass that Saddam was, the Taliban, and, of course, the rise of al-Qaeda. I still believe that an opportunity was missed in the early nineties to continue creating international structures that would have been able to deal more effectively with these situations. However, the US elected a president who was not experienced in foreign affairs and though he would have achievements later, the window of opportunity was lost. It is also possible that the Bush-Yeltsin vision would not have been able to successfully deal with world events even if it had had a chance to develop. As George Will reminded on This Week on Sunday, what this administration has learned in Iraq is the true lesson of conservatism, government cannot control events.

After 9/11 it appeared that there would be another opportunity to establish a new order of international cooperation. In fact, there was greater mutual good will in the fall of 2001 than there had been ten years before. All that was gone, of course, a year and half later because this administration made the horrible decision to invade Iraq without following the precedent set by the President's father.

Even after the invasion, the American will could still be enforced because we had demonstrated our military might. The insurgency brought that to a halt, as insurgencies have done eventually to every empire that overextended itself from the ancient world to the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 80's. I guess we considered ourselves exempt from world history?

Now our bellicose rhetoric is dying down because our military might is questioned. And we have made a mockery of our own moral authority at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and Haditha. No, we actually did that when we chose to flout international law and invade Iraq in the first place when our original reason for opposing Hussein in 1991 was that he was flouting international law by invading a country and in this new era of global cooperation we weren't going to let that happen.