Do you mean freedom of western military action? This existed even when the USSR was still among us.
States that tax and regulate their economies comparatively little – the "liberal/democratic" States – tend to defeat and expand their territories or their scope of hegemonic control at the expense of less liberal ones.
This explains, for example, why Western Europe came to dominate the rest of the world and not the other way around. More specifically, it explains why it was first the Dutch, then the British, and finally, in the 20th century, the United States, that became the dominant imperial power, and why the United States, domestically one of the most liberal states, led the most aggressive foreign policy in history during the Cold War, while the former Soviet Union, for example, with its totally illiberal (repressive) domestic policies, engaged in a comparatively peaceful and cautious foreign policy. The United States knew that it could militarily defeat any other state; therefore, it was extremely aggressive. In contrast, the Soviet Union knew that it was doomed to lose a military confrontation with any state of substantial size unless it managed to win within a few days or weeks.
The Soviet Union was never an impediment for Americans and Israelis to act.
