Structure, Strategy, and American Power: Insights from America’s Last Geopolitical Resurgence (Hal Brands, FPRI)

1979 was a bad year for U.S. foreign policy. At home, the country was being battered by stagflation and the second oil shock, developments that raised fundamental questions about the economic underpinnings of American power. Abroad, the United States was suffering a seemingly unending series of setbacks and humiliations. From the revolutions in Iran and Nicaragua, to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the collapse of détente, to the taking of dozens of American hostages in Tehran, signs of U.S. impotence and decline abounded. The United States was “entering the decade of the 1980s as a wounded, demoralized colossus,” Business Week noted—a country that no longer controlled events but was at the mercy of them.

http://www.fpri.org/articles/2016/02/structure-strategy-and-american-power-insights-americas-last-geopolitical-resurgence