A Twenty-First Century Meaning for the American Civil War: A Post-Cold War Reflection

The end of the Cold War did not prove to be the “End of History” as some predicted. Not even the flourishing hyperbole of conservative triumphalism could obscure the fact that after the Cold War’s end the old American marriage of nationalism and liberalism has grown frayed, and maybe even strained. With the common ideological and military opponent seemingly vanquished, the purpose of the liberal nationalist fusion seemed less clear and compelling, and certainly less focused. The chief causes of the fraying ties between American liberalism and nationalism appear to lie in the strong decentralizing currents unleashed when Americans no longer had to nurture unity and promote strength to face down a common enemy of global reach and roughly commensurate military power. In the weakening of centralizing forces, the end of the Cold War has been abetted by other trends that have served to strengthen decentralizing forces just as the Cold War’s demise weakened centralizing ones. Among the most powerful of these decentralizing forces stand the personalization of technology, increasing economic inequality, and the growing dysfunction of intentionally polarized politics. Together, the strength of such decentralizing forces, operating in the absence of the Cold War’s centralizing counterweight, has placed enormous strain on the long-standing American marriage of nationalism and liberalism.