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79 Foreign Aff. 45 (2000)
Promoting the National Interest

handle is hein.journals/fora79 and id is 51 raw text is: Campaign 2000 Promoting the National Interest Condoleezza Rice LIFE AFTER THE COLD WAR THE UNIT ED STATES has found it exceedingly difficult to define its na- tional interest in the absence of Soviet power. That we do not know how to think about what follows the U.S.-Soviet confrontation is clear from the continued references to the post-Cold War period. Yet such peri- ods of transition are important, because they offer strategic opportunities. During these fluid times, one can affect the shape of the world to come. The enormity of the moment is obvious. The Soviet Union was more than just a traditional global competitor; it strove to lead a universal socialist alternative to markets and democracy. The Soviet Union quaran- tined itself and many often-unwitting captives and clients from the rigors of international capitalism. In the end, it sowed the seeds of its own de- struction, becoming in isolation an economic and technological dinosaur. But this is only part of the story. The Soviet Union's collapse coin- cided with another great revolution. Dramatic changes in information technology and the growth of knowledge-based industries altered CONDOLEEZZA RICE is Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. She is also foreign policy adviser to Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush. Editors' Note: Democratic views will be published in forthcoming issues. [45]