The idea of a Pax America, or Britannica died when the US chose poorly after the Cold War ended. The key moment to integrate Russia was right after the Budapest agreement which denuclearized the Ukraine. Former Clinton Defense Secretary wrote a interesting book about those decisions called My Journey at the Nuclear Brink. He argued, the US was working closely with Yeltsin on dismantling nuclear weapons together. Both our militaries were working to ratchet down tension from fall of the Soviet Union and that these gains were then squandered more as a result of US than Russian actions. His words from a 2016 Guardian event.
William Perry has an admirable record from his days in the Defense Dept. He was active during the Carter and Clinton administrations. As such, his book must be regarded as memoirs from someone who was directly involved in a major event. He might be right, and he just
might have an axe to grind. At best, such books can provide insight as to what he and others were thinking at the time. His book should not be considered as a definitive analysis of that time.
History is said to be written in at least three stages. The first stage is news reporting, written as events happen. The main concern is to record the known events as they occur, or as soon as possible. Little or no analysis is done.
The second stage consists of memoirs written years later by people who were principle actors at the time. Such as William Perry's book. Sometimes – but not always – these memoir writers try to rewrite history to defend their own failed actions. These have become known as 'Revisionist History'. I can think of several examples, long debunked, where authors looked to blame the attack on Pearl Harbor on US president Franklin Roosevelt. Another example was the book claiming that the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not used to end the war, but to intimidate the USSR. These books were controversial at the time of publication, but were rather quickly forgotten because little or no evidence ever appeared to support their ideas. I can't think of any more recent examples. I never read Tricky Dicky's book, mainly because I thought he also had reason to write Revisionist History.
The third stage of history usually doesn't get written until major political or military actors are gone. It's done by younger historians who weren't alive during the events. And more importantly, they don't have an axe to grind. They become the first serious analyses of a period in history. The first 3rd stage histories of WW2 didn't appear until the 1980s. Many wartime secrets had to be declassified before the 3rd stage could begin. For example, declassified accounts showed how intercepted and decrypted Japanese Army and Navy communications were critical to many Allied victories. Prior to that revelation, Douglas MacArthur (or his wartime staff) claimed that his genius alone was responsible for defeating Japan. It took many years before the true extent of US, Australian, and British intelligence was revealed.
The definitive analyses of the immediate decade after the collapse of the USSR have not yet been written. The same is true for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They will almost certainly be written in the future by historians without a political reason to defend their actions.
As far as the Russian invasion of Ukraine goes, we're still in the early days of stage one.
