Why Is Washington Acting Like a Revisionist Power?

The Sept. 11 attacks crystallized a certain then-contemporary anxiety that had not previously translated into policy—the idea that threats to the United States’ post-Cold War global primacy were gathering and that an aggressive approach was warranted to head them off.

Not long after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, a European friend asked me: Why is the United States behaving like a revisionist power when it so clearly benefits from the status quo? The only answer that I could offer was that, rightly or wrongly, American leaders no longer viewed the status quo as beneficial following the 9/11 attacks.

Not long after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, a European friend asked me: Why is the United States behaving like a revisionist power when it so clearly benefits from the status quo? The only answer that I could offer was that, rightly or wrongly, American leaders no longer viewed the status quo as beneficial following the 9/11 attacks.

The Sept. 11 attacks crystallized a certain then-contemporary anxiety that had not previously translated into policy—the idea that threats to the United States’ post-Cold War global primacy were gathering and that an aggressive approach was warranted to head them off.

Since then, U.S. preeminence has remained surprisingly stable, and we have not seen a catalyzing incident of comparable significance to 9/11. And yet revisionist temptations remain. The United States is never quite satisfied, and perhaps great powers are inherently unsatisfiable.