Description: Rethinking the 1990s provides a timely, thought-provoking retrospective on a decade of world-historical importance. In an era of intensifying geopolitical rivalry, economic nationalism, and ideological extremism, this wide-ranging analysis explores the great hopes and expectations that inspired Western policymakers in the decade after the Cold War. Providing much-needed historical perspective, it offers new insight into the strategic choices, political trade-offs, and missed opportunities that have brought the world to this unsettled moment. Written in a highly accessible style, these engaging essays by leading experts will make it attractive to students and the educated reading public as well as essential reading for scholars of world politics.
Review Quotes: "As we strive to understand the profound upheaval in the international order, it makes sense to go back to the 1990s, a time when liberalism seemed triumphant and ask if its decline was inevitable. To tackle this question, Ikenberry and Trubowitz have assembled a dream team of political scientists and historians, who walk us through topics ranging from economic and financial hegemony to NATO's march eastward, to the emergence of a global human rights regime. In the end, the rich scholarship in this book provides us with no easy answer and instead urges us to unpack our long-standing assumptions about the source of the order's expansion and the origins of its current challenges. It is a critical read at this uncertain moment." -- Stacie E. Goddard, Wellesley College, Betty Freyhof Johnson '44 Professor of Political Science, Associate Provost, Wellesley in the World
"Coming off the success of the Cold War, the 1990s were a breakthrough moment for the American international liberal project. Yet, in retrospect, the seeds of backlash and opposition both inside the West and beyond were being sown. This masterful collaborative volume brings leading IR thinkers together to assess the legacies, positive and negative alike, of this fateful decade." -- Daniel Deudney, Johns Hopkins University"Rethinking the 1990s is the best book available on how the world tried to get to grips with the sudden end of the Cold War. If the 1990s is the crucial decade for understanding our times, this book provides an excellent way of grasping what its key issues actually were." -- O. A. Westad, Yale University, author of The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Lessons from History"The past endlessly changes as it is rethought in the present and its relevance in the creation of the latter is rethought. And so, as this excellent volume shows, very much with the 1990s. ..a very valuable collection that deserves attention." -- Jeremy Black, The Critic"...the book is highly recommended to anyone engaged in the study of international relations or tracing the path from the fall of the Soviet Union to the present." -- D. W. Bath, CHOICE