THE ARTICLE suggests that, with the victory of the United States in the Cold War, its expansion acquired an easier and more vigorous dynamics. The notion of "primacy" entered into the vocabulary of the analysis of the new context. However, it became obvious that the reality of primacy required legitimacy. Clinton's government was a well-succeeded experience of "primacy". By contrast, the foreign policy of George W. Bush implies a retrocession, because of its military policies, its "arrogance of power" and its internal repressive consequences. It is an extremism: the american elite will not tolerate it for a long time.