Challenges to US Hegemony

Keynote address to the LIRDS think tank, Georgetown, Guyana*

11 April 2014

W. Andy Knight

Introduction
Good morning. Salutation and all protocols observed. It is a distinct pleasure for me
to be here again in Guyana and to be able to speak to this wonderful audience. It is
particularly heartwarming to see here alumni of the Institute of International Relations
(IIR) who have formed themselves into LIRDS. Given the subject areas you will be
covering as a think tank, I feel that I should be a member of this body, since much of
my research has been devoted to those very same areas Law, International
Relations, Defence and Security.
Today, I want to address the issue of hegemony. Perhaps this will provide the
broad framework within which the rest of the presentations in this workshop can be
placed. For after all, our region of small, vulnerable, developing states must pay
attention to the possibilities of hegemonic shifts in order to know how best to
position ourselves within the international system and to punch above our weight on
the multilateral stage.

Since the early 1970s several scholars and observers of international relations
posited the thesis that the United States of America has either lost its hegemonic
position in the globe or is experiencing a decline in its dominance. The late Susan
Strange used to chide US academics, in particular, for perpetuating this myth of
Americas lost hegemony. She was particularly critical of those US academics who
not only unquestionably accepted the proposition of American hegemonic decline
but also took it upon themselves to spread that myth in such a way that it gained
credence outside the US.1
While I argue here that, despite challenges to its hegemonic status, the US
continues to be a global hegemon, I am cognizant of the very real challenges to US
hegemony and of the need to understand hegemony in the context of the longue dure
of history. Contrary to what Francis Fukuyama would have us believe, history did not
come to an end with the advent of the universalization of Western liberal democracy
once the Cold War had thawed.2 In fact, during the immediate post-Cold War era,
although many states embrace the Western style of liberal democracy and capitalism,
we did not witness a true universalization of Western liberal democracy as a final
form of government. China and Russia may have embraced capitalism and global
markets, but neither of them is liberal or fully capitalist. It is important therefore to
question any thesis that posits the continual superiority and progressiveness of the
West and the perpetual subordination and backwardness of the Rest.3 Similarly, it is
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necessary and imperative to take seriously the critiques of those who question the
notion that US hegemony is here to stay.4 At the same time, this chapter heeds Susan
Stranges caution not to accept blindly the view that the US has lost its hegemonic
status or that US hegemony is waning.
I have divided my talk into four parts. First, the concept of hegemony is
explained and a distinction drawn between hegemony and dominance. Second, a very
brief history of US hegemony/dominance is provided. Third, some of the challenges
to US hegemony are raised, which have been generally used by observers to indicate a
waning of American power. And, finally, a brief conclusion is drawn which raises a
number of questions for you to ponder pertaining to the possibility of moving
towards a post-hegemonic world.
Conceptualizing Hegemony
Before we can begin to determine whether or not US hegemony is waning, or has
been lost, it is important to understand what is meant by hegemony. The simplistic
view of hegemony postulates that hegemons are preeminent powers with material and
coercive ability to control the weak. Donald Puchala notes that much of the literature
on world order treats hegemony as the institutionalization of privilege, consequent
inequality in the distribution of various values, and the injustices inherent in
inequality. In other words, hegemony is generally seen as a condition in human
relations to be resented, rejected, and removed.5 Wallersteins take on hegemony is
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slightly different from Puchalas but attaches similar malevolent qualities to the term.
Wallerstein defines hegemony as that situation in which the ongoing rivalry
between so-called great powers is so unbalanced that one power is truly primus inter
pares; that is, one power can largely impose its rules and its wishes (at the very least by
effective veto power) in the economic, political, military, diplomatic and even cultural
areas).
This malevolent interpretation of hegemony should, therefore, rightly evoke
antihegemonic action, or what Robert Cox refers to as counter-hegemony. But
Puchalas conception of hegemony is a bit more nuanced than those that equate it
with state dominance and preponderance of power. When applied to the
international relations, a hegemon, according to Puchala, arises when a single state
attains preponderant power and elects to use its power to manage the international
system.6 For Puchala, the power of the hegemon can be used in both malevolent and
benevolent ways. Such a position is in conformity with hegemonic stability theory in
that it suggests that the hegemon is a paramount leader or dominant power that has
the ability to shape the norms, rules and institutions of the international system and is
expected to enforce the rules it has established by rewarding compliant states while
punishing the recalcitrant.7
Ian Clark notes that in the international relations literature the term hegemon is
central and associated with a concentration of power. But he also acknowledges
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that hegemony is much richer than the concept of primacy. Whereas primacy focuses
on the accretion of material power, the concept of hegemony most readily
achieves its distinctive identity when it is associated with legitimacy, respect for the
leader and voluntary or non-coercive acquiescence on the part of those being led.8
Robert Cox, building on Gramsci, drills even deeper in an attempt to gain a better
understanding of the concept of hegemony. For him, the term refers to a structure
of values and understandings about the nature of order that permeates a whole system
of states and non-state entities.9 In a world order in which a hegemon is present, the
values and understanding would be relatively stable and ostensibly unquestioned. In
other words, in the order created by the hegemon would be considered by most actors
in the system as the natural order. The structure of values and understandings is
always underpinned by a structure of material power in a system where the hegemon
is present. That material power is what infuses the hegemon with characteristics of
dominance and preponderance. But, as Cox points out, dominance is not sufficient
for hegemony to be exhibited. Hegemony derives from the ways of doing and
thinking of the dominant social strata of the dominant state or states insofar as these
ways of doing and thinking have acquired the acquiescence of the dominant social
strata of other states. To put it another way, it is those social practices and the
ideologies that explain and legitimize them that, in fact, lay the foundation of a
hegemonic order.10

David Forsythe further expands on Coxs take on hegemon by making the

point that great powers do not rely on dominance, coercion and hard power alone.
Also drawing on Gramsci, Forsythe maintains that Great Powers get their way most
effectively by securing voluntary or even unthinking cooperation from others. Thus,
a hegemon does not have to rely on costly coercion to get what it wants.11 It can, as
Joseph Nye suggests, utilize soft power to induce cooperation.12 The intellectual and
moral leadership, framed by the ideational terms of reference, is what separates
hegemony from dominance.
Brief History of US Hegemony/Dominance
According to Immanuel Wallerstein, hegemonic power was exercised three times in
the modern world system. The first time was by the United Provinces in the mid-17th
century. The second was by Britain in the 19th century. And, the third was by the
United States in the 20th century until the present.
When the US assumed the mantle of global leadership from Great Britain, it
initially acted as a dominant power rather than a hegemon. During the interwar
period, the US seemed to have a clear idea of the type of international order that it
wanted to create. Under President Franklin Roosevelt that order was conceived as
having a set of multilateral organizations, starting with a United Nations body that
would replace the defunct League of Nations and an apex organ called the Security
Council (which would include five permanent members with veto power who would
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be responsible for guaranteeing the peace). This vision also called for a number of
new economic institutions -- the Bretton Woods system, which emerged from a
conference in 1944. That system would include the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD or the
World Bank), and the International Trade Organisation (ITO). These organizations
were expected to promote and administer an open, liberal and multilateral world
economy. The US Congress nixed the idea of an International Trade Organization,
but in its place was established a negotiating forum, the General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade (GATT). Immediately after World War II, the international order, as
envisaged by the US, was established based on the Atlantic Charter to maintain the
peace which had eluded the League of Nations. Thus was ushered in the era of Pax
Americana which replaced Pax Britannica.
There is no question that after World War II the US emerged largely unscathed
as arguably the most powerful nation-state the world had known.13 Fareed Zakaria
notes that by 1945, the US GDP was at least ten times that of Great Britain. The US
also took over several British military bases in places like Canada, the Caribbean, the
Indian Ocean and the Pacific.14 Its industrial production outstripped all other nations
and it was able to devise a plan (the Marshall Plan) to rebuild the shattered economies
of Germany and Japan. Furthermore, the US emerged from WWII as the worlds
foremost military power in conventional terms, but it also held a strategic monopoly
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on atomic weapons and used those weapons to devastate Hiroshima and Nagasaki.15
This was clearly a sign that the US was a dominant power, but it was not necessarily
hegemonic. However, as Chandra Muzaffar reminds us, the US was also at the
forefront of science and technology in the immediate post-World War II period. This
gave the US a major advantage over other states with respect to the dissemination of
information and the popularization of American culture.
It is in the pervasiveness of American culture that we see signs of US
hegemony. Aided by the phenomenon of globalization, people around the world have
gravitated voluntarily to American Pop music, Hollywood films and TV programmes,
magazines, urban fashion, art and architecture, and fast foods. Some have referred to
Americas pervasive cultural influence fittingly as the McDonalization of culture.16
But US hegemony has extended well beyond its cultural influences. US hegemony is
also embodied in the countless regimes (principles, norms, rules, and decision-making
processes) that operate in various corners of the globe.

Challenges to US Hegemony
Muzaffar has argued, quite convincingly, that US hegemony was never really global or
total. 17 Despite the fact that America exhibited a concentration of overwhelming
military power, political power, economic power, scientific and technological power

and information and cultural power in the post-World War II period, there have been
at least five major challenges to the US hegemonic ambition.
First, the Soviet Union posed a challenge to US hegemony almost immediately
after WWII. Although both the US and the USSR were allies during the war, the
ideological differences between capitalist US and communist USSR were too massive
to overcome in the immediate postwar period. This period, known as the Cold War,
dating from 1945 to roughly 1991, was characterized by bipolarity and a precarious
balance of power. US President Harry Truman devised the Truman Doctrine in 1947
as a means of checking communist advances. Germany was divided into the German
Federal Republic (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East
Germany) and the US established a military alliance -- the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) -- to protect Western Europe from a possible Soviet security
threat. Meanwhile, the Soviets countered with the creation of the Warsaw Pact in
1955 in order to protect its European satellites from a possible US threat. What
resulted was a bitter ideological confrontation between the two superpowers which
was played out by proxies in different parts of the globe and within the UN Security
Council as well. This Cold War climate, it is argued, placed a check on US hegemony.
Second, in 1949, the US-backed Kuomintang regime in Beijing was overthrown
by Mao Tse-Tung in a popular revolution. Although China was an ally of the US
during WWII, it decided under Mao to embrace the communist ideology and to split
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with the US. China therefore posed a challenge to US hegemony by rejecting liberal
capitalism. North Korea also posed a challenge to US hegemony when it separated
from South Korea as a result of the Korean War (1950-53), and embraced
communism. Vietnam, which suffered huge casualties during its war with the US, also
rejected liberal capitalism. Cuba, in the American backyard, chose to align itself
ideologically with the Soviets rather than the Americans. These developments can be
said to have countered US global hegemony with respect to its spread of the liberal
capitalist ideology.
The third development which stymied the Americans in their quest for global
and total hegemony occurred during the 1950s and 1960s was the significant growth
in nationalism, which led to a large number of states from Africa, Asia and the
Caribbean opting for independence from their colonial masters. Some of these states
decided to align themselves with the US, but a large number of them preferred to
stake out an independent path that would put them neither in the Soviet nor
American ambit. Those non-aligned states attempted to use the UN General
Assembly as a forum to resist Westernization and particularly Americanization. They
adopted resolutions that were intended to create a New International Economic
Order (NIEO) and a New International Information Order (NIIO) as a counter to
the US liberal capitalism and the Western dominated global media. But by the early

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1980s, both movements lost steam, that new envisioned order never materialized, and
resistance to US hegemony was weakened.18
The fourth challenge to American hegemony comes from its own imperial
overstretch. Paul Kennedy, in his book on The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers,
predicted that the US would go the way of previous great powers by overextending
itself abroad.19 Today, the US has a network of about 737 military bases and other
installations in more than 130 countries. Since the early 1990s, the US has been
involved in a number of wars which have drained its resources. Examples include the
1990 war with Iraq with the declared objective of liberating Kuwait from the tentacles
of Saddam Hussein; the failed invasion of Somalia; the illegal invasion and occupation
of Iraq after the 9-11 terrorist attacks on US soil; the failed and on-going military
expedition in Afghanistan; and the so-called global war on terror. In each case, the
financial and personnel costs have sapped the strength of the US economy and
challenged US hegemony.20 Earl Fry bluntly states that U.S. global military
commitments are unsustainable over a long period of time when placed within the
context of debilitating U.S. domestic problems and growing competition from
abroad.21
Finally, the fifth challenge to US hegemony is the rise of competing nations and
blocs. The advent of the European Union (EU) and the economic integration of
countries in Europe posed a slight challenge to US hegemony. For instance, the
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adoption of the Euro by almost all the members of the EU has provided competition
for the US dollar. The US trade deficit with Europe has further contributed to
weakening the US dollar. The rise of China as an economic power and the fact that
Chinese manufacturing companies are out-producing US companies is another reason
for concern. China is expected to surpass the US as the worlds largest manufacturer
by 202022 and it is predicted to become the worlds largest economy in dollar-based
GDP by 2041, according to Goldman Sachs. The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China,
and South Africa) are also expected to out-produce the US, the UK, France,
Germany, Japan and Italy combined by 2039.23 In Latin America, a number of states
have joined together to resist the hegemonic pressure from the US. The Bolivarian
Alternative of the Americas (ALBA), the brainchild of the Venezuelan President
Chavez, was established in 2004 to counter the hegemonic idea of a Free Trade Area
of the Americas (FTAA) which would have perpetuated US hegemony over Latin
America and the Caribbean.24
Clearly, there have been challenges to the US hegemonic position during the
Cold War era and beyond. I have highlight only four prominent ones. There have
been many more. But have these challenges resulted in the demise of the hegemon?

Conclusion: Towards a Post-Hegemonic World?

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It is certainly likely, as Earl Fry predicted, that by 2040 the US will no longer be a
global hegemon and the so-called unipolar moment will be drawn to a close.
Indeed, we may be moving towards a post-hegemonic world in which there will be no
single overarching dominant power.25 The era of Pax Americana that was ushered in
after World War II placed the US in the unenviable position of being the worlds
policeman and shouldering the brunt of the economic costs of establishing norms and
regional and multilateral institutions to sustain its global hegemonic position.26 Being
a global hegemon has meant that the US was pivotal to the construction of the post
WWII world order. It did so at a time when British hegemony was waning and when
an alternative, potentially hegemonic, actor the USSR -- was emerging to challenge
the US hegemonic position. Despite the superpower rivalry and bipolar environment
of the Cold War period, the US nevertheless was able to maintain a position of
dominance, if not hegemony, within the international system.
When the Cold War ended in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, it
became clear that the US was indeed the foremost superpower in history the most
powerful nation-state to have ever existed27 -- and America experienced what some
observers called a unipolar moment. During the immediate post-Cold War era,
many historians and political scientists were forced to acknowledge that Henry Luce
was right when he forecasted in Life Magazine, published on the 17 February 1941,
that the 20th century would be known as the American Century. Despite the recent
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challenges to its hegemonic position, posed by the rising states of China, India, Brazil,
and a resurgent Russia, the US continues to maintain a hegemonic position in the
globe. But as Henry Kissinger warned after the first Gulf War, Americans preeminence cannot last. While the US is still pre-eminent with respect to military might,
it does not have the economic resources to truly dominate the globe any longer.28
Evidence of this fact reared its head after the first Gulf war when it was revealed that
the war was financed to the tune of $37 billion by Arab states and $17 billion by
Germany and Japan. As the Economist put it back then, the US knows that it no
longer has the economic clout to run a hegemony.29
A major question for observers of international politics then is whether or not
the US, as a global hegemon, has created a post-hegemonic world that can no longer
be dominated by any single state or its cultural fruits?30 Another important question
we have to ask ourselves is: are we moving towards a multipolar system with key
actors that include the US, China, Japan, India, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, and the
EU? But perhaps the most important question we need to address is: will the US be
content simply to be primus inter pares among that leading group of countries? One
thing is certain, while it would be a mistake to prophesy the imminent decline of US
hegemony, it would be just as erroneous to engage in American triumphalism.31

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*A version of this address was published as US Hegemony, in Thomas G. Weiss & Rorden
Wilkinson (eds.), International Organization and Global Governance (Routledge, 2014).
1

Susan Strange, The Persistent Myth of Lost Hegemony, International Organization,

vol.41, no.4 (Autumn 1987), p.552.
2
Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (Free Press, 1992.)
3
On this point see Mojtaba Mahdavi & W. Andy Knight, Towards The Dignity of
Difference? Neither End of History Nor Clash of Civilizations, in Mojtaba
Mahdavi & W. Andy Knight (eds.), Towards the Dignity of Difference? Neither End of
History nor Clash of Civilizations (Surrey: Ashgate, 2012), p. 8.
4
See, for example, Earl H. Fry, The Decline of the American Superpower, The
Forum, Vol.5, Issue 2 (2007) and Chandra Muzaffer, The Decline of US Helmed
Global Hegemony: The Emergence of a more equitable pattern of International
Relations, World Public Forum Dialogue of Civilizations (4 October 2012),
http://www.wpfdc.org/politics/999-the-decline-of-us-helmed-global-hegemony-theemergence-of-a-more-equitable-pattern-of-international-relations, accessed on 14
January 2013.
5
Donald J. Puchala, World Hegemony and the United Nations, International Studies
Review (2005) 7, p. 571.
6
Donald J. Puchala, Ibid., p. 572
7
Donald J. Puchala, Ibid., p. 572.
8
See Ian Clark, China and the United States: a succession of hegemonies?
International Affairs 87: 1 (2011), pp. 14-28.
9
Robert W. Cox (with Timothy J. Sinclair), Approaches to World Order (Cambridge
University Press, 1996), p. 151.
10
Robert W. Cox, Ibid., p. 151.
11
David P. Forsythe, The U.S. and Trans-Atlantic Relations: On the Difference
between Dominance and Hegemony, DIIS Working Paper no. 2005/16, p. 4.
12
Joseph S. Nye, jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public
Affairs, 2004).
13
Bruce Russett, Americas Continuing Strengths, International Organization 39
(Spring 1985), pp.213-214.
14
Fareed Zakaria, The Future of American Power: How America can Survive the
Rise of the Rest, Foreign Affairs (May/June 2008).
15
Earl H. Fry, The Decline of the American Superpower, The Forum, Vol.5, Issue 2
(2007), p. 1.
16
See Zafar Bangash, McDonaldization of culture: Americas pervasive influence
globally, Ummah Forum, found at
15

http://www.ummah.com/forum/showthread.php?260883-McDonaldization-ofculture-America-s-pervasive-influence-globally, accessed on 14 January 2013.

17
Chandra Muzaffer, The Decline of US Helmed Global Hegemony: The
Emergence of a more equitable pattern of International Relations, World Public
Forum Dialogue of Civilizations (4 October 2012), found at
http://www.wpfdc.org/politics/999-the-decline-of-us-helmed-global-hegemony-theemergence-of-a-more-equitable-pattern-of-international-relations, accessed on 14
January 2013 .
18
Chandra Muzaffer, Ibid.
19
Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House,
1987).
20
Chandra Muzaffer, Op. cit.
21
Earl H. Fry, Op.cit., p.17.
22
Peter Marsh, US to lose role as Worlds top manufacturer by 2020, Financial Times
(24 May 2007).
23
Dominic Wilson & Roopa Purushothaman, Goldman Sachs Global Economy
Paper No. 99: Dreaming with BRICs: The Path to 2050 (October 2003).
24
See W. Andy Knight, Julian Castro-Rea & Hamid Ghany (eds.), Remapping the
Americas: Trends in Region-Making (London: Ashgate 2014).
25
Earl H. Fry, The Decline of the American Superpower, The Forum, vol.5, issue 2
(2007), pp. 1-22.
26
Peter Jenkins, The Perils of Pax Americana, The Independent (6 February 1991).
27
On this point see Bruce Russett, Americas Continuing Strengths, International
Organization, 39 (Spring 1985), pp. 213-214.
28
Henry Kissinger, America cannot Police the World forever, The Times (London),
12 March 1991.
29
The World Order Changeth, The Economist (22 June 1991).
30
J. Agnew, Hegemony: The new shape of global power (Philadelphia, PA: Temple
University Press, 2005), p. viii.
31
Paul MacDonald, Rebalancing American Foreign Policy, Daedalus (Spring 2009),
p.124.

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