Although the East Asian economies had by then been growing at a steady pace, the strategic picture was becoming uncertain. China was opening up its economy amid domestic political disturbances, while the Soviet Union was collapsing. This left the United States as the only great power, defining the global order for the next decade. 

The 1990s thus emerged as a decade of American military intervention from the Balkans to the Middle East. In the Libyan and Syrian conflicts in the 2010s, however, war-weary America was hard-pressed to pursue the interventionist role it once assumed. It was Russia, and not the US, that most overtly intervened in Syria. 

America’s strategic fatigue is another power’s vigor. While America was then busy in the Middle East, China began challenging American superiority in the Pacific. What began as China’s search for prosperity has now become a search for security. 

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