Trend US security strategy shifts from unipolar hegemony toward selective engagement

Summary

For roughly eighty years after the Second World War the United States shaped the security environment of every region, and Korea and Japan tied their strategies to it through alliances formed in the 1950s. After some thirty years of post-Cold War unipolar dominance, a decade-by-decade run of shocks and the rise of revisionist China and Russia have made global security provision far costlier for Washington. Heavy military spending, widening deficits and growing public opposition to global intervention have added to that pressure. The report expects US strategy over the next two decades to differ clearly from the unipolar era, pairing economic renewal with a selective effort to keep leadership through larger allied contributions and limited bargaining with adversaries. Even a future Democratic administration is expected to retain parts of this America-first approach unless the economic base of US hegemony recovers.