The reordering of the international system has deepened asymmetries and allowed the East-West dispute to continue in terms of a North-South or center-periphery axis. The new geostrategic order is overwhelmingly unilateral. U.S. conceptions of security and economiccommercial policy constitute an integrated geostrategic whole; the expansion of global commerce is part of the security strategy of the United States. Latin America is an essential area for the United States because of the importance of its "great southern border. " Although there is no concerted regional strategy for avoiding the imposition of unilateralism, countertrends are arising and new forms of interaction and collaboration are emerging. The challenge for regional politics is to entertain the possibility of prioritizing common problems and interests and making what unites Latin America and the Caribbean prevail.The events of 9/11 have been considered a watershed for the international order and, consequently, for U.S. policy, but a more integrated and long-term view requires a more comprehensive perspective. The current international order has its own dynamic. Without minimizing their consequences and antecedents, the events of 9/11 are only a single very propitious and decisive moment in the U.S. hegemonic project. The reordering of the international system from the point of view of the balance of power and the projection of U.S. policy corresponds with the remarkable recovery of capitalism and the dismemberment of the socialist experiment in Europe. It is in this framework that we can best understand the meaning of its changes of strategy. An analysis from this angle facilitates examination of the contemporary capitalist process, the trends of the new U.S. hegemony, and their political and geopolitical implications for Latin America. FROM PARITY TO STRATEGIC DISPARITYThe major changes in the global correlation of forces after the end of the cold war did not constitute an "end of ideologies" or an "end of history" as has been suggested from the intellectual trenches of the victors. Capitalism's neoconservative politics was not lacking in reasons to proclaim its victory over socialism. That victory encompassed all fields from the economic to the political, its most forceful though not necessarily definitive Darío Salinas Figueredo is a professor and researcher at the Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City. He is grateful to the members of the U.S. Studies

AIt is no longer possible, not even in the strictly theoretical sense, to speak of governability in the abstract. The spectrum of problems presented by the current Latin American reality constitutes the antipodal context in which Huntington's conception of governability was formulated. In analysing the recent political and economic experience in the region, a set of emergent tendencies can be observed which form part of a changing matrix of problems and challenges shared in common. The consolidation of neoliberalism became associated with the formation of restrained democracies. Nevertheless, political events since the 1990s have yielded counter-systemic tendencies and corresponding advances in the sphere of progressive politics. These changes suggest the incubation of new development strategies and an unfolding tendency towards the creation of new forms of democracy.

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