As the US enters yet another election cycle (though it is hard to say whether the US is
ever not in election mode these days), it is worth interrogating the current state of the
world’s unipolar hyperpower – and of the foreign policy, red in tooth and claw, that
affects us all. ---- The first thing that is important to recognise about the foreign
policy of the United States of America is that it has a very specific history, or rather a
national mythology that distinguishes it from other countries by the explicit nature of
its revolutionary aims. The Revolutionary War established a unique republican state in the
West, a reflection in part of the values of the French Revolution, but, isolated by the
vast Atlantic, destined to pursue a path of its own.

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