Audacious Titan

Abstract

A hegemon that experiences a deciine in irs economic capacity to protect rhe international System, and as a result tries to restmcture it, musu con- lend with the tension and uncertainly these developments generale both abroad and at home. Other states in the international arena, both aliies and adversaries, unsure as ro the intentions and capabiliries of rhe hege- monic State, will increasingly contest its autbority. If the hegemonic State is bomid by dornestic political and economic Systems that are open and competitive, its leaders will be forced to cope with the contradictory demands and proposals emanating from competing dornest ic groups. For a nuinber of years alter the end of the Vietnam War, U.S. leaders were unable to persuade the American pcople, and its aliies and adversaries, that the United States possessed the capability and the will both to create a less tense and costly international System and to lead it. In 1983.. how- ever, the United States altered its course. Troubled by several foreign pol- icy mishaps and by the belief that the Soviel Union had reneged on many of irs international aecords, rhe American people elected as president in late 1980 an individual who promised that he would reinvigorate the United States’s economy and reclaim its standing as the world’s leader.