The Sole Superpower, and Beyond — From the End of the Cold War to the Present

In the previous episode, America raced through the 1960s while bearing at once the advance of civil rights and the deep wounds left by Vietnam and assassinations. And now the story draws ever closer to just before the ‘present’ in which we live. The long-lasting Cold War ended, and America stood at an unprecedented height as the world’s one and only superpower. But the scene that came into view from that summit was not necessarily a calm one. In this final episode, we trace the path that led from the elation of victory to terror and war, economic crisis, and the division that splits the nation, and bring this long survey of history to a close.

The Wall Fell, the Confrontation Ended

Ronald Reagan, who became president in 1981, upheld the revival of a strong America, building up arms and strengthening his confrontational posture toward the Soviet Union. On the Soviet side, Gorbachev, who became General Secretary in 1985, upheld perestroika (reform) and glasnost (openness), stepping toward the restructuring of a stagnant system and toward an easing of tensions with America.

And in November 1989, the Berlin Wall, the symbol of East-West division, was torn down by the hands of citizens. In December of that year, the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union met on the Mediterranean island of Malta, and the end of a Cold War that had lasted about 40 years was declared. In 1991 the Soviet Union itself was dissolved, and the rival that had vied with America vanished from the earth.

A summit with no rival. The America of the 1990s was wrapped in an atmosphere in which its economy prospered and its own principles seemed to have become the world’s standard. Some commentators even spoke of history having reached a kind of arrival point. But that optimism did not last long.

Into a Clear Sky, Smoke Rose

On the morning of September 11, 2001, hijacked airliners crashed into the World Trade Center in New York and into the Pentagon. The September 11 attacks—said to be an attack by the Islamic extremist organization al-Qaeda—took some 3,000 lives. The shock of the mainland suffering a large-scale attack shook to its very foundations the premise of a superpower’s security.

America declared a ‘war on terror,’ and within that year attacked the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which it held to be harboring al-Qaeda. Furthermore, in 2003, on the grounds that it possessed weapons of mass destruction, it embarked on the Iraq War and overthrew the Hussein regime.

But the weapons of mass destruction made the cause in Iraq are said to have never been found, and the debate over the legitimacy of starting the war continues even now. The fighting in both Afghanistan and Iraq dragged on, bringing many casualties and enormous war costs. Even though one could overthrow a regime with overwhelming military force, the difficulty of building a stable nation afterward—it was a repetition, in a different form, of the lesson once tasted in Vietnam.

A Rift Spreading from Within

While the outside wars became quagmires, the economy at home also wavered greatly. In 2008, from the collapse of financial products surrounding home loans, the major investment bank Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, and the global financial crisis (the Lehman Shock) occurred. In America, the epicenter, many people lost their jobs and homes, and the disparity that had been spreading behind the prosperity erupted into a form visible to everyone.

And in recent years, the word most spoken about regarding America is division. The affluent coasts and the regions left behind, conflicts over race and immigration, the gulf between conservatives and liberals, and the clashes of emotion amplified by social media—it is said that, while living in the same country, people’s rifts have deepened to the point where they cannot even share the same facts. The question ‘who are we?’ that has been repeated since the founding is now once again sharply thrust forward.

As a Story That Does Not End

From the day European settlers landed on the land of the Indigenous peoples who lived in the New World, this story began. The ideal of independence and the contradiction of slavery, the expansion that spread ever westward, and the people sacrificed at its feet. The Civil War that tore the nation apart, the rapid growth into an industrial power, the position of superpower attained through two world wars, and the struggle for freedom and the new trials that awaited after victory—America’s journey has always borne, at once, brilliant achievements and shadows one would rather avert one’s eyes from.

Looking at only one of the two, one cannot understand this nation. Both praise and condemnation are easy. But what history asks of us is, surely, to look directly at both light and shadow, and to consider calmly why things came to be as they are. America still sways even now, between an ideal it has not reached and reality. That very swaying may be proof that this nation’s story is not yet ‘over.’

To you who have stayed with us to the very end of America’s long journey from the New World to superpower, I offer my heartfelt thanks. We do not yet know where this nation’s future is headed. But the answer, surely, lies not within the past, but within the days that are yet to be written. For history is always a ‘midway’ that continues into the present.

【American History: From the New World to Superpower — End】