Global Inscription: How Foreign Policy Constitutes the United States

The demise of the Cold War has been much heralded. But the meaning and implications of this political rupture (assuming its veracity) are much debated. For some, these developments are evidence that global life has consisted of a linear trajectory moving inexorably toward the final realization of freedom in the state and reason in history. In this context, the dramatic changes in the international order currently underway are to be understood as a victory of one idea over others, the ascendance of liberal democracy and consumer electronics to the mantle of a universal homogenous state, in which the major political conflicts and alternative understandings of history are no more.1 While others would not doubt the potentially radical nature of the current historical juncture, their understanding of the impetus behind the upheavalsdoubtful that history has come to an end focuses on the long-standing commitment of dissident and marginal forces to social, economic, and cultural struggle.2 For yet others, the proclamation that we have reached the end of history can only be made if one ignores the majority of humanity.3 In this understanding, the well-established ethnocentrism of global politics has not been altered; there is no concomitant transformation in the qualitative nature of North-South relations comparable to the new detente.4