PART 9 Global Capitalism and the End of the American Century, 1980 to the Present

For historians, the recent past can be a challenge to evaluate and assess. Insufficient time has passed for scholars to weigh the significance of events and to determine which developments will have a lasting effect and which are more fleeting. Nevertheless, the period between the early 1980s and our own day has begun to emerge in the minds of historians with some clarity. Scholars generally agree on the era’s three most significant developments: the resurgence of political conservatism, the end of the Cold War, and the globalization of communications and the economy. What Time magazine publisher Henry Luce had named the American Century — in his call for the United States to assume global leadership in the decades after World War II — came decisively to an end in the last quarter of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first. The United States lost its role as the world’s dominant economy, faced rising competition from a united Europe and a surging China, and experienced a wide-ranging and divisive internal debate over its own values and priorities. Part 9 remains necessarily a work-in-progress as events continue to unfold; however, through equal parts conflict, struggle, and ingenuity, Americans collectively created a new era in national history after the 1980s, which we consider in terms of the aforementioned three developments: