Post-Cold War leaders widely assumed durable global harmony

Evidence

The expectation of harmony was widely shared. Political and intellectual leaders elaborated similar views. The Berlin wall had come down, communist regimes had collapsed, the United Nations was to assume a new importance, the former Cold War rivals would engage in “partnership” and a “grand bargain,” peacekeeping and peacemaking would be the order of the day. The President of the world’s leading country proclaimed the “new world order”; the president of, arguably, the world’s leading university vetoed appointment of a professor of security studies because the need had disappeared: “Hallelujah! We study war no more because war is no more.” — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 57

Categorization

• SEED: The Harvard president vetoing a security-studies appointment is a vivid institutional artifact of the post-Cold War harmony delusion.
• CANDY: A great trivia line about how wrong the mood was.
• XREF: connects to: Post-Cold War US-based neocons theorized that a single hegemonic power guarantees global stability