Searching for Changing Organizational Architecture during Global Transition: Where Is the Post—Cold War Order?

Abstract

As the cold war concluded, President George H.W. Bush proclaimed the end of the old world order, and signaled twice that America would lead in creating a new one:

We stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment & Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective—a new world order—can emerge: a new era—freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, East and West, North and South can prosper and live in harmony & Today that new world is struggling to be born, a world quite different from the one we’ve known.¹ [And a year later] Now, we can see a new world coming into view. A world in which there is the real prospect of a new world order.²

These pronouncements may have been more rhetoric than an indication of strong policy preferences for constructing a new world order, or they may have constituted an initial response to changing circumstances but faded as domestic policy agendas supplanted foreign policy ones (Nye 1992). It is just as likely, however, that the president of the strongest state to emerge out of the cold war was signaling publicly and committing his foreign policy apparatus to the creation of a new international order that would be substantially different from the one just concluded.