Superpowerless

Why the United States can't do as much as you think in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, April 7, 2011, at 10:50 AM ET

It's clear now to even the wildest-eyed optimist that the recent Middle Eastern uprisings might not augur a spree of democratic revolution. Where they will lead is uncharted territory, but one thing they seem to signify, for now, is a further breakdown of the world order, a fracturing of global power into still more jutting and jagged shards, another round of the unraveling that started when the Cold War ended.

There is room for hope here. Disorder can be a positive force. The newly toppled dictators deserved their toppling. The societies they helped keep stagnant were in need of upheaval. And the Cold War, whose demise unfroze the tides of history, was of course a time of dread.