“ … United States is the only superpower with unchallenged pre-eminence in every domain of power: economic, military, diplomatic, ideological, technological, and cultural.” (Huntington 6)
Recent events, especially those in the post-9/11 era, have erupted a renewed interest in US hegemony. A major change in the US foreign policy has been observed after September 11, which arguably had been used by the then-president George W. Bush administration to use US power assertively to meet political and strategic ends. However, this is not the only impetus to the hegemonic assertions of US foreign policy as there have been instances of the US’s use of power to meet political ends in the 20th century. The debate over US foreign policy, which emphasized greater American values and interests, has been deemed as a self-seeking foreign policy. This has been reinforced when the US attacked Iraq without formal authorization from the UN and objections from the G8 countries. How do we define such an extreme case of American arrogance and complete neglect of the responsibilities towards the rest of the world? Such policy has been said to reinforce American interest as well as formulate a hegemonic policy for the rest of the capitalist states, which was aimed at formulating possible solutions to their contradictions (Sakellaropoulos and Sotiris 208-9).
The US had used its hegemonic power at least thrice in the 20th century – first in 1919, 1945-48, and after the Cold War (Catley 157). An extensive example of US assertion of power and aggressive foreign policy to expand commercialization through other economies has been seen in the case of US-Russian and US-Chinese relations. Therefore, the assertion of US hegemony has been perpetrated through US primacy in the global political, economic, and military policy of the country. There has been positive as well as the negative impact of the same but it is inevitable to negate the existence of such occurrences.
The US has enjoyed the hegemonic power status for a long time. However, how did the country attain such a position and how does it sustain the position is a question that will be answered in this essay. This essay discusses the advent or source of the hegemonic power of the US and how it has been used to control the domestic and foreign policy of foreign countries.
US Hegemony
The concept of hegemony had been introduced by Antonio Gramsci who believed that is comprised of “political and military repression, ideological misrecognition, and material concessions, and offers a better description both of social antagonism and of the hierarchies arising in the international plane.” (Sakellaropoulos and Sotiris 212) It is asserted that hegemony usually leads the case of interest of the ruling bloc and safeguards their interest. Therefore, antagonism towards a hegemonic power is rampant. In the case of America, its foreign policy has aimed at supremacy since 1945 and offered elements of collective strategy towards an imperialist chain, which aimed at “rapid industrialization, “Fordist” accumulation strategies, mass consumerism and individualism, a combination of anticommunism and technocratic ideology.” (Sakellaropoulos and Sotiris 212)
The US has maintained supremacy globally since the downfall of the Soviet bloc. Nevertheless, is the position that of a leader or a hegemony, which fulfills only self-interest, is the question that we aim to answer here? Therefore, the question arises when or how did it all start? We believe that it was done through US economic, political, and military hegemony, which are described in the following sections.
Economic Hegemony
The first probable reason must be the rise of American economic supremacy. American economy improved tremendously in the post-Cold War era. The American economy was almost double the size of German and Japanese economies put together and even bigger than the German, British, Japanese, and French economies put together in the 1990s (Sakellaropoulos and Sotiris 214). This put the US in an economic superpower position that delivered incredible power over the rest of the countries.
The second possible reason for the rise of American hegemony was the downfall of the Soviet bloc and the incapacity of any other country to challenge the US in any manner – be it political, economic, or military. In 2004, the military expenditure f the US was larger than the 30 largest military financiers of the world were (214). However, this was much lower than what was expedited by the US during the Cold War era, as the defense expenditure in Iraq, Afghanistan is accounted to be less than 1 percent, and overall defense expenditure is less than 5 percent of US GDP (Biddle 17).
Given that America was in a position of enjoying imperialistic hegemonic power, what was the country doing to maintain it? To maintain its hegemony, the US implemented neoliberal economic agenda both internally and in foreign countries. This implied letting lose the destructive tendencies associated with the capitalist system. This system led to the closure of on-performing units, increased unemployment, massive layoffs, etc. in the post-seventies, which facilitated the capitalist restructuring of production systems towards a more flexible production system. This is also seen as a new “phase of capitalist accumulation, characterized by the restructuring of capitalist production, neoliberal deregulation and intense internationalization of capital” (Sakellaropoulos and Sotiris 215). This is supposed to be the ingredients for US imperialist hegemony. Therefore, if the capital accumulation of the capitalists is a stance taken for the greater social good, then it can be dubbed that a new capitalist tendency is a form of class balance of forces in favor of the capitalist powers.
US alliance with international institutions like IMF and World Bank was crucial as they helped in the establishment of neoliberal economies throughout the world. These international institutions always helped in lowering trade and investment barriers between countries. Of equal importance were the GATT negotiations and the implementation of the WTO structure. This friendly relation and power over the international trade regulatory bodies helped American firms to expand their activities internationally. This strategy aimed at gaining the national interest of establishing the real American interest, which was to establish the dollar as the global money (Beeson and Higgott 1175; Sakellaropoulos and Sotiris 216). This strategy led to the development of US-led financial institutions to be the main medium of the flow of money so they could control the financial market. Therefore, there was an instance of complete institutionalization of the spread of hegemonic power throughout the world. This was termed to be “globalization” which is often dubbed as US rhetoric.
The US-led globalization rhetoric endorsed aggressive capitalist policies, which led to a restructuring of capitalist production, free trade, an attack against welfare states, etc. Which was a means of reinstating the power of capital over labor globally was an indispensable part of the hegemonic role played by the US. This policy was not restricted to the domestic policy of the country, rather was extended to an extensive internationalization of capital, which formed the basis of imperialism in the modern sense. This US foreign policy has deliberately perpetuated international deregulation to imbibe neoliberal policies in foreign countries to enhance its hegemonic power. Therefore, these organizations did not only lower trade barriers but rather also helped in removing the protections that were aimed at safeguarding less developed economies from international competition. This explains why hegemonic forces applied by the US along with its institutionalized agencies had put greater pressure on these economies and made them dependent on America. Therefore, there was an evident use of institutionalized power to establish free-market strategy, sanctioning the American policy, and enabling full compliance of the American strategy was achieved to enhance the hegemonic influence of the US on socialist states.
Therefore, the perpetrating of American economic ideology into the veins of other countries had been the core of the American strategy to gain control over the global financial system. Their alliance with institutions along with their growing economy had been overpowering for most nations and they succumbed to the neoliberal policy of the US.
Political Hegemony
To further its agenda of neoliberalism, the US extended it beyond economic considerations. This was also seen as an ideological agenda by the US. It is believed that the US along with the conservative governments in the UK helped in redefining the bourgeois ideologies (Sakellaropoulos and Sotiris 217). This was more in the form of rejection of Keynesian “statism” and the redistributive measure was attacked by this bloc. They emphasized entrepreneurial practices that helped in transforming the American as well as major capitalist societies. This helped the re-emergence of the US as the “leading ideological force, after the ideological crisis of “Americanism” in the 1960s and 1970s” (217).
How the political hegemony was perpetrated? Simply put, the US had to ensure that no nation or institution could surpass or undermine US supremacy after the Cold War. This implied that all projects related to non-NATO collective security arrangements, or the instance of a complete political union of the European countries. There were also efforts made by the US to make NATO the sole international organization for collective security (Huntington 6-7). This has been observed in the case of Yugoslavia in 1999 when the US almost aggressively attacked the country as a means of perpetrating this end (Sakellaropoulos and Sotiris 218). In another instance, the US has strategically tried to keep Russia unable to question American supremacy was done through destabilizing many areas under Russian influence (e.g. Chechnya) and supporting the so-called “velvet revolution” in countries important to Russia like Georgia, Ukraine, and Kirgizia.
These pro-western and anti-Russian movements largely are financed by the US or US-backed organizations. (Sakellaropoulos and Sotiris 218) These kinds of solid political stands against regional forces were also observed in the case of Iraq, Syria, and Iran to the point of preventive aggression against the countries. This stand had been taken by the neoconservative bloc in the US who believe that some sort of global political dominance is necessary to retain balance.
To maintain its political hegemony US reformulated its military agenda, assumed the role of savior of the free market and “freedom” globally, formed, and extended military bases throughout the world. This was also seen in the increasing US tendency to intervene in a local and regional crisis.
Military Hegemony
Until the Cold War ended, there were no instances of explicit intervention of foreign nations in domestic affairs of other nation-states. However, after the Cold War, the international intervention was legitimized by the ideological excuse to protect human rights, which directly refutes the UN Charter (Sakellaropoulos and Sotiris 220). Ideologically there has arrived an international citizenry and love of democracy, which strategically implies that non-democracies do not have the same right to sovereignty. This is the new form of interventionism, which has been wrapped in an ideological blanket. However, it must be noted here that humanitarian conflicts usually lead to the rise of conflicts and makes the peaceful solution a greater difficult (Chomsky 40). This is due to the desire of all sides of the conflict to escalate the conflict to be in a more favorable position when there is international intervention.
There has been an argument to support intervention from the US bloc – first was in case of 1991 Iraq, when there was a need to establish international peace, and in the post-9/11 attack, in the case of Afghanistan and Iraq, there was a need to support the ideological justification to end the tyrannical rule and fight terrorism to maintain international security. Here, justification is being given for the aggressive military attack on other nation-states. In the case of the second attack on Iraq, there was no support even from the institutional supporters of the US like NATO or the UN. However, due to the US hegemony, the right to attack the so-called “rogue states” was legitimized (Sakellaropoulos and Sotiris 222).
Terrorism and human rights have become the newest pretext to balk any domestic or foreign policy of a state. Any country which and questioned the US hegemony has been labeled as the terrorist harboring nations or countries where human rights were rampantly flouted and required international intervention to safeguard the people and bring international security. This has led to a leader-follower relation of the US with many Asian countries (Camroux and Okfen 164). This is more evidently observed in US interventions in India-Pakistan relations.
Therefore, there has been extensive pressure and use of ideological reasoning for advancing military forces into foreign lands. These reasons have dwelt around human rights, freedom, international security, and tyrannical rule. This kind of aggression against foreign countries may be duly summed as military hegemony on part of the US.
US hegemony has been continuing since the end of the Cold War, which has led to increased animosity among nations. The US has increased its power throughout the world through massive economic power which has led to the dominance of the dollar as the international financial currency and the US-led financial institutions as the controllers of the financial system of the world. This whole has been based on establishing a neoliberal economy in all nations to ensure free trade and development of the US companies. US political and military regime has also been based on the neoliberal ideology, which has been extended to establishing freedom. Further, the US has tried to increase its hegemonic power in the name of human rights and terrorism. Thus, the US has influenced the domestic policies of many countries through their hegemonic power to meet their own ideological goals.
Works Cited
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Biddle, Stephen D. “American Grand Strategy After 9/11: An Assessment.” 2005. Strategic Studies Institue. Web.
Camroux, David and Nuria Okfen. “9/11 and US–Asian relations: towards a new ‘New World Order’?” The Pacific Review, Vol. 17 No. 2 (2004): 163–177.
Catley, Bob. “Hegemonic America: The Arrogance of Power.” Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International & Strategic Affairs vol. 21 no. 2 (1999): 157.
Chomsky, Noam. Rogue states: the rule of force in world affairs. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000.
Huntington, Samuel. “Culture, Power and Democracy.” Plattner, Marc and Aleksander Smolar. Globalization, Power and Democracy. London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. 3-13.
Sakellaropoulos, Spyros and Panagiotis Sotiris. “American Foreign Policy as Modern Imperialism: From Armed Humanitarianism to Preemptive War.” Science and Society Vol. 72, No. 2 (2008): 208–235.