Tom Engelhardt asks probably the easiest question possible on American foreign policy:

Almost seven and a half years later, an observer might be pardoned for wondering whether there hadn't been two super losers in the Cold War. Had the Soviet Union, the weaker of the two great powers of the second half of the last century, simply imploded first, while the U.S., enwreathed in a cloud of self-congratulation, was almost unbeknownst to itself also slowly making its way toward an exit?

After both...

The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century by Thomas P.M. Barnett Read more about this book...

...and:

Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph E. Stiglitz Read more about this book...

...criticized American security and financial policy after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this is really a question no ideology owns. Relating America's political demise to oil shocks is mistaking a proximate for an ultimate cause.