When the Soviet Union did eventually collapse, the next generation of neocons developed a vision for the post–Cold War world that was premised on the notion of American dominance in a unipolar world. Charles Krauthammer, a nationally syndicated journalist best known for his writing in the Washington Post, articulated this position in a 1990 piece titled “The Unipolar Moment” published in the preeminent foreign policy journal Foreign Affairs. Krauthammer argued that the end of the Cold War had created a “single pole of world power.” This single superpower, the United States, could therefore intervene anywhere it wanted around the world and set the terms of world politics. In order to realize this vision, Krauthammer continued, it was necessary to marginalize the arguments of the realists and the isolationists in the policy establishment, who did not realize how important it was for one hegemonic power to rule in order for there to be global stability.

XREF: Connects to the broader history of American foreign policy and neoconservatism, particularly how unipolarity shaped subsequent interventions.

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 382