The American strategy has drawn the US into the Eastern Hemisphere at seemingly random intervals since the Cold War. Here, it discovered a paradox and a limit to its power. The United States has the power to destroy any conventional military force. It does not have the ability to occupy and pacify countries. Put differently, it could deal with threats but not stabilize the countries, as it did with West Germany and Japan.
The threat that emerged was not naval power, but terrorism. This is a lesser, yet still painful strategic problem that the United States must deal with today. It cannot tolerate potential hegemons like Russia and can effectively destroy their military capacity. However, it cannot deal with the consequences of its actions.
Hmm. This was doing about as well as a thousand-word history of the US can do, until here. I submit: a) our fear was that "minor regional hegemons" which is to say China and maaaybe India would challenge us through capitalism, not geopolitics; b) he mentions the Balkans in the next breath but by no means did we only begin interfering in countries/wars beneath our notice after the Wall fell; c) his oversimplification is a little bit too tidy. I am fully behind his idea that if you look with hindsight at every foreign policy action this country has taken since the French and Indian War, it becomes pretty fucking obvious that Manifest Destiny did not stop at the Sierra Nevada. But if there's a paragraph which he's stretching it's this one.
Worth noting that terrorism isn't much of a threat, it turns out. Global irrelevance is, and the neocons fear it. Hell, so do the progressives in a very different way.
Great article -- now I see it's Friedman. Of course.