PROSPECTS AND CHALLENGES OF THE US HEGEMONY: AN OUTLOOK FOR THE 21ST CENTURY (original) (raw)
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Neorealism predicts that because of the anarchic order in international politics, balances of power recurrently form to check and prevent any potential hegemon from becoming a real one. But this rule does not hold any more in the contemporary world. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has become the only superpower in the world and U.S. hegemony has gone unchecked since then. This dissertation is intended to find the answer to this question in looking at the very core element of neorealist theory, i.e. the structure of the international system. By differentiating itself functionally from other countries, the United States has gone beyond the self-help principle of international politics to provide essential values to other major powers. It is able and willing to care about not only its security and economic prosperity but also those of other major powers. This makes the United States a legitimate and necessary hegemon to the world and balancing against the United States extremely costly. Overexpansion is the internal reason which could lead to American decline and might operate in two forms: self-encirclement (through soft balancing), and imperial overstretch. If the United States is to maintain its hegemonic position and delay the return of multipolarity, it should avoid engaging in those overexpansionist policies.
United States: A Halved Hegemonic Power
In this short undergraduate paper, I study the role of the United States as the world hegemonic power. I used Antonio Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony and the fundamental work of Joseph Nye, "Bound to Lead", in order to support my thesis: the United States is a halved hegemonic power, due to the fact that both from the material (economics and military) and the cultural (democracy and capitalism) point of view it is only partially hegemonic in the world.
The Future of US Global Power, 2013
Evidence for US primacy used to be less contestable. Financial and strategic support from the US notwithstanding, Europe and Japan required decades to rebound from the devastation of World War II. Their later economic "challenge" eventually would succumb to the US revolution in information and communication technology (ICT), in the one case, and a protracted economic stagnation in the other. While sleeping giants India and China had self-selected out of global capitalism, US-headquartered transnational corporations roamed the world uncontested even as US manufacturing exports boomed. Systemic defects spelled, first, implosion, then dissolution, for the US's main strategic rival, the former Soviet Union. As long as a looming threat from Islamist extremism remained beneath the radar, the Western state-centered international system appeared unassailable. The US seemed to straddle this world like a colossus-militarily, economically, politically and culturally. Yet the world, and the US's position within it, looks rather different today compared to 1950, 1991 and 2001. Do recent shifts in the global system's tectonic plates augur secular decline for the world's preeminent power? The rest of this chapter is organized as follows. To help situate the perspective advanced in this book, the section "The popular literature on 'decline' " provides an overview of today's controversy over US decline. The section "Globalization and global power" discusses the relationship between global power and globalization, and its implications for the nature and scope of US power today. Against this analytical and historical backdrop, the section "Maintaining primacy in a turbulent era" introduces the basic contours of the argument advanced in the book. The section "Structure of the book" concludes with a brief overview of the remaining chapters. The popular literature on US "decline" National "decline" for a preeminent global power refers to a (composite) reduction in economic dynamism, military prowess, political-cumdiplomatic clout and cultural impact. 1 Influencing the argument in this 11
USA and the World: Hegemonic Dominance or Liberal Global Order
Journal of Historical Studies, 2023
The United States of America emerged as a superpower after the Second World War with a proclaimed liberal ideology and a will to global dominance. For this purpose, USA employed not only military might to control and assert influence on its allies but also soft power and subtle means of culture at its disposal. Hence the US by means of military, culture and economy emerged as a hegemonic power at the end of the cold war. The paper aims to take an overview of the US military presence across the continents. The United States is leader of military coalition of powerful states. The USA have approximately 750 military bases with instalments in 80 nations and its major ally the United Kingdom has 145. Its present-day contenders Russia and China are way behind the USA and other states of NATO as Russia has 36 and China has so far one military base in Djibouti at Horn of Africa. These military bases serve the economic purpose as well and provides safe, protected passage to trade ships carrying goods across the globe; as free trade is an important component of a world order conceived with liberal ideology. Though critics of the global liberal order perceive it as the economic dominance of developed states and trade as a means of exploitation, with a mask of liberty, freedom, individualism and free marketing. Besides US military and economic power in the guise of Liberalism, another contributing factor of US hegemony is culture. US through cultural lebensraum and soft power of its consumer products and Hollywood movies create consent across the globe and presents it as a just power not only trading but also protecting humanity from a multitude of threats. By taking an overview of US military, economic and cultural lebensraum, the paper aims to answer how US military preponderance across continents and states along with economic and cultural powers gives it a hegemonic status in the world. Employing content analysis on secondary data one of the major findings of the paper is that despite claims of waning US and rising China, the claim is a far cry not rooted in reality and United States actions are derived by hegemonic interest and are cloaked in the guise of liberalism.
The article explores the controversial thesis that the United States strategically and consistently maneuvers against the emergence of regional hegemons across the globe. Whether it is Russia in the former Soviet space, China across the South China Sea, the United States works to disallow the expression of regional hegemonic power despite its own continued reliance on its global hegemony being accepted. The author goes to the heart of power positioning and exploitation in the 21 st century: is the emergence of regional hegemons disruptive to the global system or benefi cial?
US Hegemony in 21st Century: A New Approach
Even though many leading political annalists and economists have stated that the age of the US political and economic hegemony in the World is over, the life and ongoing global developments stand as milestones to prove the vice versa. The economic growth of several developing countries or emerging global powers (particularly China and Russia) is usually perceived as the challenge for the US political and economic global dominance. However, the crisis in the Eastern Ukraine, the Western-imposed economic sanctions towards Russia, the recent historical progress in the Iranian Nuclear Talks, as well as the 2014 Asian Tour of President Obama tempt to indicate that the US is still alive, both as political and economic global hegemon.
American Hegemony and the Rise of Emerging Powers
American Hegemony and the Rise of Emerging Powers
Book Description Over the last decade, the United States' position as the world's most powerful state has appeared increasingly unstable. The US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, non-traditional security threats, global economic instability, the apparent spread of authoritarianism and illiberal politics, together with the rise of emerging powers from the Global South have led many to predict the end of western dominance on the global stage. American Hegemony and the Rise of Emerging Powers brings together scholars from international relations, economics, history, sociology and area studies in order to debate the future of US leadership in the international system. The book provides a multidisciplinary space for critical analysis of the the past, present, and future of US hegemony in various key regions of the world, particularly in the Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Middle East, Europe, and Africa-while also examining the dynamic interactions of US hegemony with other established, rising, and reemerging powers such as
U.S. Hegemony, A Distinct World Order
The present era has become enchanted by the concepts of globalization and global order. The idea that economies, societies, and cultures are becoming deeply and intricately interwoven has led to a paradox in the perception of its implications. Will globalization result in one extreme: a borderless world of peace and international citizenry? Or will globalization result in a more Kafkaesque reality evoking images of multinational corporations and hegemons asserting dominance over the world? What is the role of the nation in the context of this interconnected world? This research analyzes the history of the United States’ foreign policy which elucidates a distinct nationalism founded in the pursuit of global hegemony. Beginning with America’s founding principles and tracing turning points in American foreign policy, this research reveals that the U.S. has actively created and shaped a distinct world order based on free-trade. Furthermore, this research asserts that the U.S. has believed, at least latently, in hegemonic stability theory as a world order view for foreign policy. While scholars have studied the theoretical intricacies of hegemonic stability theory this research seeks to illuminate the manifestation of this theory through the history of U.S. foreign policy. It is valuable to study the history of America’s perception of global order, so that we might understand the foundation of globalization and the many ways this order contradicts and shapes current geo-political and nationalist developments.