american hegemony : a dangerous...

Working Paper 2006/2

American hegemony: A dangerous aspiration

JAMES L. RICHARDSON

Canberra, May 2006

Published by Department of International Relations RSPAS Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 Australia Tel: +61 (2) 6125 2166 Fax: +61 (2) 6125 8010 Email: [email protected] Web: http://rspas.anu.edu.au/ir

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American hegemony : a dangerous aspiration

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©James L. Richardson

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Abstract

The Bush administration’s foreign policies have sparked off a round of new debates on America’s power and its international role. At the core of these debates are ideas of empire and hegemony, but these terms are used in many senses and often interchangeably. The paper first distinguishes among these usages and spells out its own concepts. As understood here, a hegemonic power is one that plays a leading role in shaping and main-taining a certain international order, exercising its dominant power in such a way as to win broad acceptance and legitimacy. It is argued that the discussion of hegemony can best be advanced by distinguishing among the various domains of power: military, economic, ideological and political, to follow Michael Mann’s breakdown. The US is closest to hegemony in the international economic domain, but in each domain its hegemony is at best partial and qualified. Nonetheless, it remains the preponderant power, with aspirations to hegemony and empire. The benefits of American pre-ponderance are widely acclaimed in the West and infrequently questioned in the international relations discipline, but its dangers merit far greater attention than they normally receive. In particular, beyond the short-term context, the specifically American version of liberal ideology renders the US ill-suited to respond to some of the foreseeable challenges of the twenty-first century. Consequently there is a need for others to engage a great deal more actively than heretofore with the construction of a more viable international order.

1

American hegemony: A dangerous aspiration JAMES L. RICHARDSON1

In the course of a few years the idea of an American empire, once tabu in the everyday political discourse, has become commonplace, along with the notion of American hegemony. The terms are often used interchange-ably, and hegemony is often seen as a euphemism: ‘empire with good manners’, it has been said. In scholarly discourse both terms are used in a variety of ways, but it will be suggested that, as a first approximation, it is convenient to use the term ‘empire’ to refer to countries, or at least important sectors of them, controlled by the imperial power, and ‘hegemony’ to refer to the role of the ‘leading’ power in the international order as a whole. Coercion and consent are both present in each case, but in the last analysis an empire is held together by coercion, a hegemonic order by consent.

The purpose of this paper is to examine America’s role in the present international order. Therefore it focuses on hegemony, not empire, but since America’s imperial and hegemonic roles are interconnected, and in practice often difficult to distinguish from one another, it must also take account of America’s imperial activities.

Two main questions will be addressed. First, is the United States indeed hegemonic? Is its international leadership widely accepted as legitimate, or does it merely exercise an uneasy preponderance of power in a world for the time being unipolar? Here, it will be argued, the discussion may be ad-vanced by distinguishing among the domains of power: following Michael Mann’s breakdown, the military, economic, ideological and political.2

The second question is whether America’s role—whether hegemonic or merely preponderant—is conducive to the construction and maintenance of

1 Emeritus Professor, Australian National University. An earlier version of this paper was presented at

the 45th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association (Montreal, March 2004). It has been revised in the light of helpful comments by conference participants, Ursula Vollerthun and the Department of International Relations’ reader.

2 Michael Mann, The sources of social power, Vols 1 and 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986 and 1993); Michael Mann, The incoherent empire (London: Verso, 2003).

2 JAMES L. RICHARDSON

a viable international order. In the international relations discipline it is usually assumed that the American role is beneficent, and indeed indispensable for the maintenance of international order.3 But there is good reason to question whether this is so and—whatever may have been the case in the past—whether it matches up to the needs of the twenty-first century, so far as these can at present be discerned.

Initially, however, the paper will undertake a further discussion of both concepts, empire and hegemony. This is, in the first place, to clarify the present usage of the terms by distinguishing it from other current usages. Second, and more important, discussion of the concepts draws attention to major issues in the current debates which need to be taken into account in seeking answers to the two questions.

CONCEPTS OF EMPIRE AND HEGEMONY The two concepts were readily distinguished in an earlier period, as can be illustrated with reference to nineteenth-century Britain, which is often seen as the precursor of the United States as presumed hegemon. The British empire referred to that part of the world formally subject to British rule and also, as the century advanced, to countries subject to informal British control, of which Egypt may serve as the prototype. British hegemony, on the other hand, referred to Britain’s relationships with the major powers, in particular its leading role in the international economy, where it is seen as maintaining and enforcing the rules of the liberal order which made possible the vast expansion of international economic transactions in that period. However, it is not plausible to ascribe to Britain an overall hegemony extending to all domains of power: notwith-standing Britain’s naval dominance, international security depended on a ‘concert’ of the great powers of the day, or at least a balance of power among them.

There is no such clear-cut understanding of the nature of the American empire, nor so clear a distinction between empire and hegemony. In line

3 See, for example, G. John Ikenberry, ‘Democracy, institutions and American restraint’, in G. John

Ikenberry, ed., America unrivaled: The future of the balance of power (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), pp. 213–38. For a nuanced, but generally positive assessment, see Michael Cox, ‘The empire’s back in town’, Millennium 32(1) 2003, pp. 1–27.

American hegemony: A dangerous aspiration 3

with the traditional American hostility to empires and colonialism, the formal American empire of the earlier twentieth century was short-lived. The most straightforward understanding of the American empire is analogous to Britain’s informal empire, but with a looser or more indirect form of control over subordinated peoples than that exercised by Britain in Egypt. Mann and Chalmers Johnson, for example, both use the term in this sense.

This usage permits a clear distinction between empire and hegemony, the latter being a systemic concept referring to America’s leading role as initiator and enforcer of the system’s rules. Hegemony refers to a relationship with the other major states, extending to the lesser members of the system, whereas empire refers only to certain of the latter. However, in current usage the term ‘empire’ sometimes refers to the system as a whole, blurring this distinction. And theorists in the marxist tradition use the term in yet another sense, viewing American imperialism in terms of the present phase in the development of capitalism.

Empire as informal American control The US has a long tradition of intervening in Central and South America to remove governments whose actions or ideology it found objectionable, replacing them with leaders willing to defer to American interests. This was an indirect form of control. There was no day-to-day regulation of their affairs nor responsibility for their governance, but an enforcing of certain parameters: respect for American property rights, the exclusion of military links with external powers in accordance with the Monroe Doctrine, and the like. The means for asserting control were characteristically imperialist: ‘gunboat diplomacy’.

The Cold War saw variations in the pattern as it was extended beyond America’s traditional sphere of influence into areas where the interests of the Cold War adversaries collided, ensuring that crucial countries remained under Western control. Intervention by the CIA rather than full-scale military assault became the characteristic means for securing US interests, notable instances being Iran in 1953 and Indonesia in the 1960s. South Korea provides a radical variant of the pattern, having been subject to close


American control until its rapid industrialisation permitted its emergence as a formidable Asian ‘tiger’.4

In the post-Cold War era of ‘globalisation’, in the absence of any countervailing sphere of influence, the informal empire extends, potentially, to any part of the world. Johnson’s characterisation—an empire of bases—highlights a feature long present but now, in the ‘unipolar’ world, a much more salient aspect of international politics: a global network of locations that permit rapid American intervention in any trouble spot.5 The bases, enclaves enjoying generous special rights and privileges, are typically supplemented by agreements with the local military concerning arms supplies, training missions and the like.

The ‘war on terror’ provides a context in which a rationale for intervention is readily to hand, in ‘failed states’ unable to control terrorist movements or in ‘rogue states’ deemed to offer them refuge or to violate international norms in other ways. Whereas earlier interventions had provoked relatively limited international protest, the scale of current interventions—extending to war undertaken by the most powerful armed force of all time—and the lack of broad international acceptance of their rationale, has placed the American empire at the centre of international controversy.6 Whereas the rationales for earlier interventions were limited and widely understood, the ‘rogue state’ doctrine appears to license American intervention without limit, at the pleasure of the administration of the day.

Systemic concepts of empire Whereas the concept of empire as informal control refers only to one aspect of American power—a specific mode of exercising power in part of the world—systemic concepts refer to America’s geopolitical role in toto as imperial. In contrast to the former concept, which leaves open the 4 Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The costs and consequences of American empire (New York: Henry

Holt, Metropolitan Books, 2000), pp. 95–118.

5 Chalmers Johnson, The sorrows of empire: Militarism, secrecy, and the end of the republic (New York: Henry Holt, Metropolitan Books, 2004).

6 See, for example, Michael Cox, ‘Empire, imperialism and the Bush doctrine’, Review of International Studies 30(4) 2004, pp. 585–608; Rahul Rao, ‘The empire writes back (to Michael Ignatieff)’, Millennium 33(1) 2004, pp. 145–66.


theoretical question of the explanation of empire, the systemic concepts have built-in theoretical presuppositions, thus can be spelled out only in terms of a prior theory. Realist, liberal and marxist concepts make contrasting assumptions on the way in which the dominant actor exercises power, and even on the identity of that actor. There are variations within each, but in the case of realism and liberalism it suffices to focus on one prominent formulation; marxist concepts, neglected in the current international relations discipline, are outlined more fully.

A realist concept: Most neorealists concur with Kenneth Waltz in arguing that the presence of a dominant power leads to the formation of a countervailing coalition, a balance of power, all the more so if the dom-inant power pursues ambitions of empire.7 A contrary, neoconservative, view is spelled out in an unusually hard-edged formulation by Stephen Rosen, one of the signatories of the Statement of Principles of the Project for the New American Century. The underlying logic remains neorealist. Just as, for Waltz, the balance of power is a structural imperative of bipolarity or multipolarity, for Rosen empire is a structural consequence, or imperative, of unipolarity. ‘Empire’ he defines as ‘rule exercised by one nation over others both to regulate their external behavior and to ensure minimally acceptable forms of internal behavior within the subordinate states’.8

Unipolarity prescribes hierarchy and subordination. There are no longer alliances among equals, ‘but security guarantees offered by the imperial power to subordinates’.9 Alliances are also a means to achieve economy of force, through organising subordinate armed forces to support US military operations. Nuclear non-proliferation, to take another example, is no longer subject to painstaking multilateral negotiations, but is a matter for pre-emptive action by the imperial power. That imperial power is responsible

7 Waltz has recently restated his thesis in a more qualified form. See Kenneth Waltz, ‘Structural

realism after the Cold War’, in Ikenberry, ed., America unrivaled, pp. 29–67. 8 Stephen Peter Rosen, ‘An empire, if you can keep it’, The National Interest 71(Spring) 2003, pp.

51–61, at p. 51. 9 Ibid., p. 57.


for enforcing the rules of the hierarchical order, ‘but is not itself bound by such rules’.10

As in other versions of realist theory, it is taken for granted that other states will accept this logic. Either questions of rights and legitimacy do not arise—the strong do what they can, the weak do what they must—or else the assertion of overwhelming power automatically wins compliance and respect. This particular concept is of interest in that it articulates so clearly the underlying logic of the policies pursued by the first George W. Bush administration.

A liberal concept: Liberal systemic concepts of empire are atypical. Some liberals, while traditionally hostile to the idea of an American empire, have more recently been prepared to use the term, in the sense of informal control, in supporting American intervention on humanitarian grounds, extending to the case of the Iraq war.11 However, one prominent liberal analyst, John Ikenberry, has formulated a systemic concept. Though acknowledging that the analogy with the traditional empire is rather strained, he nonetheless sees the current international system as in some sense imperial:

If empires are coercive systems of domination, the American-centred world order is not an empire. If empires are inclusive systems of order organized around a dominant state—and its laws, economy, military, and political institutions—then the United States has indeed constructed a world democratic-capitalist empire.12

Nonetheless: If the United States is an empire, however, it is like no other before it ... the US-led order is a negotiated system wherein the United States has sought participation by other states on terms that are mutually agreeable.13

10 Ibid., p. 53.

11 See, for example, Michael Ignatieff, Empire lite (London: Vintage, 2003).

12 G. John Ikenberry, ‘American power and the empire of capitalist democracy’, Review of International Studies 27(Special Issue) 2001, pp. 191–212, at p. 192.

13 G. John Ikenberry, ‘Illusions of empire: Defining the new American order’, Foreign Affairs 83(2) 2004, pp. 144–54, at p. 146.


American power is not exercised directly, but through rules and institutions; other states have easy informal access to its decision-making. He refers to the expressions ‘consensual empire’ (Charles Maier) and ‘empire by invitation’ (Geir Lundestad). Here, as elsewhere, he is referring to America’s relations with its allies and economic partners (the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)). His characterisation does not apply to America’s relations with the countries of the informal empire, to which he makes little or no reference. (Here, control may not always be directly coercive, but is never consensual.) His concept is also problematic in other ways. It is closer to the usual understanding of hegemony rather than empire. He does not distinguish clearly between the two concepts, and indeed uses the term ‘hegemony’ more frequently in his discussions of the American system.

Marxist concepts: The foregoing concepts view the international system in terms of relations among states, other actors being relegated to the margins. Thus there is no place in the basic theoretical structure for ‘North–South’ relations or state–society relations, for example. These aspects of current international relations, however, have a central place in the concept of empire employed by theorists in the marxist tradition. Paradoxically, the collapse of the Soviet Union has not led to the decline of marxist theorising, but on the contrary has seen its resurgence. This was already under way earlier, perhaps because the turn to neoliberalism since the 1970s has revived many of the harsher features of capitalism that were the subject of Karl Marx’s original critique.

Current marxist theorising, breaking with earlier orthodoxies, is characterised by a refreshing diversity. The concept of empire figures prominently in some, but not all, of this theorising. For example, those developing the Gramscian strand of marxist theory focus on a transnational coalition of powerful socioeconomic actors, their ideology and the institutions through which they exercise power, rather than on American imperialism, even if the latter is not altogether absent.14

14 See, for example, Stephen Gill, Power and resistance in the new world order (Houndsmills:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).


Nonetheless, it is possible to discern certain common features in this theorising. There is a shared conception of the present international/global system not just as a system of states but in terms of a historical–sociological perspective of the inter-related development of capitalism and the modern states system; the state is not discussed in the abstract but in the context of the socioeconomic order. The traditional ‘basis-superstructure’ model is abandoned in favour of a conception of the inter-relatedness of the economic, social, cultural, political and military dimensions of the system. It may be asked how this differs from theories that are similarly multi-dimensional, such as ‘Weberian’ historical sociology, exemplified by Mann.15 The answer may be that marxist theory sees the various dimensions as closely interconnected, the overall capitalist system governed by a certain logic generating systemic requirements and contradictions, whereas more pluralist-inclined theorists postulate looser interactions, multiple historical trajectories, ‘intertwining’ (Mann) but not governed by any overall systemic logic.

The changing nature and role of the state and its institutions, shaped by struggles among societal actors, provides a focus for much of this theorising. And a critical normative perspective ensures that the forces making for resistance and systemic change are never lost from view. An open-ended perspective on the future has come to replace the deterministic logic that underpinned the traditional doctrine of revolution.

The marxist rethinking of empire and imperialism takes more than one direction. At one extreme is the widely-read study, Empire, by literary theorist Michael Hardt and scholar-activist Antonio Negri, which has been termed both a postmodern theory of revolution and a manifesto for global capitalism.16 An imaginative but tantalising revisioning of the history of imperialism, it has prompted extensive criticism by other marxist scholars exasperated by their inability to discern a coherent line of argument underpinning its cascade of images.

15 Mann, Sources of social power.

16 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000); Michael Rustin, ‘A postmodern theory of revolution’ and Ellen Meiskins Wood, ‘A manifesto for global capitalism?’, both in Gopal Balakrishnan, ed., Debating empire (London: Verso, 2003), pp. 1–18, 61–82.


More representative of marxist thinking is the editors’ introductory chapter to two volumes of The socialist register devoted to the new imperialism.17 The authors cite approvingly liberal-imperialist Thomas Friedman’s dictum: ‘the hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist’—the American armed forces. The American empire is depicted as a three-tier system in which the top tier, the US, dominates the middle tier, the advanced industrialised states, and these two tiers jointly dominate the rest of the world, ensuring that all states conform to the imperatives of the liberal economic order.

American political and economic institutions are seen as especially suited to integrating the other capitalist economies into the American system, thus precluding the violent imperialist rivalries of an earlier era. The authors cite senior European officials on the manner in which the US retains its dominance of the major international economic institutions, a dominance reinforced by the other core states’ dependence on US technology and intelligence in the military domain.18

In contrast to the muted rivalries in the core, the dominance of the core states over the lower tier generates tensions approaching the proportions of crisis. Financial crises are more frequent and more serious, and there is increasing awareness that the current neoliberal strategy for early capitalist development is misguided. Such conditions increase the likelihood of ‘state failure’ and the emergence of ‘rogue states’—providing reasons, or pretexts, for forcible US intervention. When the fist is no longer concealed, however—when it is no longer disguised by liberal rhetoric—acceptance of the American empire is undermined: instead, it is perceived as aggressive and provocative. The open use of force is not a sign of strength but, given the values of this particular empire, of weakness. This may give heart to

17 Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin, ‘Global capitalism and American empire’, in Leo Panitch and Colin

Leys, eds, Socialist register 2004: The new imperial challenge (London: Merlin Press, 2003), pp. 1–41. The second volume referred to is Socialist register 2005: The empire reloaded (London: Merlin Press, 2004).

18 Panitch and Gindin, ‘Global capitalism’, pp. 9–18. Senior officials of the German Bundesbank commented in interviews that ‘even when European or Japanese finance ministers and central bankers propose ... the US Treasury and Federal Reserve dispose’ (p. 15).


opponents of the current order, but the authors refrain from any confident prognosis along these lines.

Much contemporary marxist theorising offers variations on these themes, in particular the role of the military in contemporary American imperialism.19 In general, there is a presumption that it serves the needs of the imperial order. Analysts starting from pluralist assumptions, on the other hand, offer more particularist interpretations of American militarism—for example, in terms of the institutional interests of the military, the inculcation of military values in the society, and the like.20

The marxist three-tier image offers a perspective within which the various concepts of empire may be located. Those that highlight informal American control over particular countries and/or the infrastructure that makes this possible focus on the first and third tiers, the US itself and those countries formerly termed the Third World. The systemic liberal view focuses on the top two tiers, the US and other ‘first-world’ societies, but not the informal empire. The realist/hierarchical view makes no clear distinction between the second and third tiers, the salient factor being the logic of overall dominance by the imperial power. The present paper does not attempt to assess these competing concepts. The purpose of the foregoing discussion is to provide sufficient indication of the current debates so that they may be taken into account as needed in the course of the argument that follows.

THE CONCEPT OF HEGEMONY The term ‘hegemony’ is often used loosely to refer to any kind of predominance. It is sometimes interchangeable with ‘empire’, and indeed during the history of the modern European states system was used to refer to successive bids for dominance (or ‘universal empire’) by the strongest power of the day: the Hapsburg Empire, later France and finally Germany. In the present era, China has used the term in this sense, frequently expressing fears of the hegemonic ambitions of the United States and the former Soviet Union. 19 See, for example, Ellen Meiskins Wood, Empire of capital (London: Verso, 2003), especially pp.

143–68.

20 See, for example, Johnson, Sorrows of empire.


However, it was suggested at the outset that it is now more appropriate to adopt a more precise usage: power that is exercised mainly through consent, with coercion playing a minor role. This is in accordance with the original Greek meaning of hegemon—the leading member of a confederation or league—on the assumption that membership of such an association is voluntary, not achieved through compulsion. It is also in accordance with most current scholarly usage: in the international context, hegemony refers to the role of the leading power in the overall international order or in specific international regimes.

There are two main variants in this scholarly usage. The first relates to the liberal international economic order of the past two centuries in which, as noted earlier, Britain is seen as having a hegemonic role in the nineteenth century and the US since 1945. According to the theory of hegemonic stability, first advanced by Charles Kindleberger circa 1973, and a focus for extensive debate in the 1980s, such an economic order requires a hegemon: an actor enjoying a sufficient edge in economic power to be capable of enforcing the system’s rules, at the same time providing certain ‘public goods’ that are essential for its functioning. These include maintaining open markets, long-term lending, acting in crises as a ‘lender of last resort’ and policing a relatively stable system of exchange rates.21 Needless to say, the hegemon enjoys substantial benefits, for example, through financing international transactions, providing the main reserve currency and through having the main voice in determining the system’s rules. This is essentially a utilitarian version of hegemony, an exchange of benefits: public goods in return for private advantages. By implication, if the hegemon seeks to exploit the situation, offering little in exchange for its privileges, the system would cease to be hegemonic, but would break up unless it could be held together by coercion.

The second variant of the concept, originating in the thought of Antonio Gramsci in the 1920s, elaborates on the distinction between coercive dominance and rule based on consent, initially in the context of class

21 Charles P. Kindleberger, The world in depression, 1929–1937 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987), p.

289. Some of these functions are now carried out through international institutions; stable exchange rates are no longer deemed necessary. See discussion below.


conflict in Europe. A hegemonic class is one whose rule is securely established, not only through a sharing of benefits with the ruled but also through the wide acceptance of its ideology. The emphasis is on the cultural and ideological underpinnings of hegemony. A system of rule sustained by shared values and understandings, it is implied, is more readily accepted as legitimate than one which relies solely on the perception of costs and benefits. Robert Cox, developing the Gramscian approach in the context of international relations, brings out its rich nuances in the following passage:

I use ‘hegemony’ to mean a structure of values and understandings about the nature of order that permeates a whole system of states and non-state entities. In a hegemonic order these values and understandings are relatively stable and unquestioned. They appear to most actors as the natural order. Such a structure of meanings is underpinned by a structure of power, in which most probably one state is dominant but that state’s dominance in itself is not sufficient to create hegemony. 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. These social practices and the ideologies that explain and legitimize them constitute the foundations of hegemonic order.22

Superior power remains a prerequisite, but the more secure the heg-emony, the less the overt assertion of power. However, certain qualifications need to be made in characterising highly complex international situations in terms of this ideal type. Consent is never universal, and legitimacy is never accepted by all. In practice, a regime may be deemed legitimate if there is no politically significant opposition to it. But how is this to be determined? In oppressive regimes opposition tends to be latent; judgrments on whether or not it is politically significant are likely to be contested, and to vary acc-ording to the time frame. Similarly, consent is open to differing interpre-tations. Consent under duress is normally discounted, but what of consent to a disadvantageous proposal because the alternatives appear even worse?

The concept of hegemony thus outlined—highlighting, according to the context, consent, broadly shared benefits, taken-for-granted understandings

22 Robert W. Cox with Timothy Sinclair, Approaches to world order (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1996), p. 151.


or legitimacy—will be used henceforth.23 There will be a certain emphasis on legitimacy, because when hegemony is questioned or contested, this is most frequently in terms of the legitimacy of the hegemon’s actions or claims. Questions of legitimacy are likely to be raised especially acutely if the hegemonic power seeks to change the system’s rules—’hegemonic renewal’, as Chris Reus-Smit terms it—especially if this is prompted by developments whose implications are perceived differently by other actors, as over the appropriate responses to the terrorist strikes of 11 September 2001.24

As was noted above, the theory of hegemonic stability refers to a specific domain of international relations, the economic, leaving open the question whether the hegemon of the economic order also has a hegemonic role in other domains, or in the international order as a whole. And the Gramscian theoretical approach, while couched in more general terms, also has its main application in the political–economic domain. The case of nineteenth-century Britain shows that the international economic hegemon does not necessarily enjoy this kind of primacy in other domains. Much of the discussion of American hegemony, or ‘leadership’, on the other hand, is in the most general terms, appearing to refer to the whole of contemporary international relations. In the discussion of unipolarity, which frequently runs parallel to that of hegemony, it is frequently claimed that the US enjoys superiority in every domain—in the cultural and ideological (‘soft power’) as much as in the military and the economic.

This kind of claim to universal hegemony, or leadership, it is often noted, has no historical precedent.25 Yet there is little or no explicit theorising of overall/universal hegemony, and most discussion, in practice, focuses on

23 As an instance of variations in emphasis we may note Mann’s highlighting of routine acceptance:

‘An Empire to which the ruled routinely consent is not unusual. This is what we call “hegemony”, a word which indicates that the imperial power establishes the “rules of the game” by which others routinely play. Others may come to approve the rules as well, so that hegemony is also partly legitimate. But the basis of hegemony is more of a matter-of-fact acceptance of things as they are’ (Mann, Incoherent empire, p. 12).

24 Christian Reus-Smit, American power and world order (Cambridge: Polity, 2004).

25 It has become popular to find parallels with the Roman empire, but the contrasts are more striking: beyond Rome’s extensive territories were ‘barbarians’ and remote empires.


one or other specific domain, mainly the economic or the military. Those questioning American hegemony can point to many instances where US leadership was not accepted, but this is by no means conclusive, since hegemony cannot be taken to mean the acceptance of the hegemon’s policies on every issue. Arguably, it refers to the overall system of rule—to authority, norms and practices, not specific policies. But how much policy dissent is compatible with hegemony?

The discussion of American hegemony is likely to be inconclusive if it remains at the level of generality of the everyday political discourse. For a more precise delineation of hegemony and its consequences we may turn to the major domains of power: in accordance with Mann’s breakdown, the security (or military), the economic, the ideological and the political.26

THE SECURITY DOMAIN The term ‘security hegemony’ is preferable to ‘military hegemony’, since it points to a shared goal rather than the means for achieving it. It would signify a security order constructed by the leading power which is broadly acceptable to the other actors, whose rules are enforced by the hegemon, also in ways acceptable to them. There is little explicit theorising about security hegemony, although it is sometimes tacitly equated with hegemony as such. According to a minority school of realist thought, international history is a narrative of successive hegemonic orders, created and maintained by the leading power of the day, punctuated by hegemonic wars when that power is challenged.27 This may be plausible as a general model, but in practice the history of the modern states system followed a different pattern, the hegemonic wars being fought to prevent the strongest power from dominating the system; the great peace treaties, the framework for international law and order following such wars, were multilateral agreements negotiated by the victors, with varying degrees of assent on the part of the vanquished.28

26 Mann, Sources of social power.

27 For a convenient overview of this approach, see Douglas Lemke, Regions of war and peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), chapter 2.

28 The most notable instance of including the vanquished was France in the Congress of Vienna, 1815. On the tradition of resisting attempts at hegemony, Hedley Bull quotes Vattel’s telling formulation of


Nonetheless, it is possible to identify partial hegemonies in the security domain, such as Britain’s naval hegemony in the nineteenth century, which was also partial in the further sense that it did not include the Americas. There were elements of a hegemonic style in Napoleon’s imperial rule insofar as he introduced liberal measures intended to provide broad-based support. But this was opportunistic, and subordinated to his strategic priorities.29 And European colonial rule, established through sheer force, came to have a partially hegemonic character. The most striking example of partial security hegemony is provided by the opposing alliances in the Cold War. The Soviet bloc was hegemonic only in the limited sense that the ruling communist parties accepted Soviet leadership. (Their rule, however, was not hegemonic but imposed from above.) NATO, on the other hand, was genuinely hegemonic. The American ‘nuclear umbrella’ amounted to a highly valued public good, and the hegemon in turn was accorded a leading role in NATO and the other alliances. Deference to the US became the norm; Charles de Gaulle’s challenge to US leadership remained a solitary exception. The goals of the alliance, essentially deterrent and defensive, were shared by all, and NATO in particular achieved an unprecedented degree of integration of its members’ armed forces.30

At the global level, however, the pattern of relations that crystallised in the 1960s and 1970s was not hegemonic. The most striking example was the painstaking negotiation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the outcome of extensive bargaining among many parties, and the prototype for other multilateral arms control agreements. And although the United Nations had only a minor role in the central Cold War conflict, its norms and procedures were quite widely followed in lesser conflicts. The basic UN Charter norm prohibiting the use of force except in self-defence—accepted

the balance of power: ‘a state of affairs such that no one power is in a position where it is preponderant and can lay down the law to the others’. Hedley Bull, The anarchical society: A study of order in world politics (London: Macmillan, 1977), p. 101.

29 Paul W. Schroeder, The transformation of European politics, 1763–1848 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 289–94, 376–83.

30 While France remained a member of the alliance, de Gaulle withdrew its armed forces from NATO’s integrated structures. France’s nuclear strike force was developed in order to achieve independence from the US, whereas the British became increasingly dependent on American support.


in principle by all in reaction to the two disastrous world wars—amounted to a major normative break with the past. Notwithstanding special pleading in particular cases, ‘wars of choice’ were universally condemned.

In its origins and structure the ‘hub and spokes’ system of bilateral alliances which the US assembled piecemeal in East Asia was not hegemonic, but an expression of the preferences of the dominant power. Over time, however, as Japan emerged as an economic superpower, South Korea evolved from occupied protectorate to ‘Asian tiger’, and the whole East Asian region, taking full advantage of the liberal trading order and in particular the vast American market, experienced unprecedented rates of economic growth, the security system increasingly took on the character of hegemony, acceptable to all, indeed preferable to any alternative. It deterred any potential external threat, averted regional rivalries and thus provided the political stability needed to sustain the economic advance.31 Even China, initially perceived as threatening and later as the presumptive future challenger of US hegemony, appeared reconciled to the American system for the time being, perhaps even preferring it to an outbreak of regional rivalries that could disrupt its ambitious development priorities.

The post-Cold War period could be interpreted as an American bid to extend its security hegemony in the West and, at least for the time being, in East Asia, to the world as a whole: that is to say, to organise a regime which would win broad acceptance for US leadership in the security domain. For a short time it appeared that the Gulf War of 1991 might foreshadow such a system. In response to Iraq’s flagrant violation of the basic UN norm of non-aggression, the US was able to form a broad coalition to expel Iraq from Kuwait, with the endorsement of the overwhelming majority of the members of the UN. The few critical voices arguing that the resources of diplomacy had not been exhausted could not find a hearing. However, it soon became clear that this was no more than a hegemonic moment.

The UN does not provide an appropriate organisational structure for the realisation of US security hegemony. Its original design, inspired mainly by 31 For a highly positive interpretation along these lines, see G. John Ikenberry, ‘American hegemony

and east Asian order’, Australian Journal of International Affairs 58(3) 2004, pp. 353–67; for a sceptical comment, Geoff Barker, ‘Asian security: A critical review’, Australian Journal of International Affairs 58(3) 2004, pp. 377–80.


the US as a means for realising the longstanding American vision of a liberal international order, presupposed a multipolar world, with the five permanent members of the Security Council having special rights and responsibilities. The Cold War rapidly undermined this vision, and the UN has never been accorded a major role in US governmental thinking on security policy, nor for that matter in the public’s understanding of ‘national security’. The expanded peacekeeping role of the UN since the end of the Cold War, and the predominant influence of the US in the UN in this context, signify no change in this basic orientation. ‘Lesser’ threats to international security may be conveniently handled by the UN but the US, like the other major powers, is wholly unwilling to accord it a role in decisions perceived as vital to its own security. This normally goes without saying; its public enunciation by the George W. Bush (henceforth Bush) administration, though entirely in character, may be seen as an indication of diplomatic ineptitude.

If the US were to achieve a hegemonic status in the security domain, its preferred organisational structure would be its central Cold War alliance, NATO, whose expansion to the East must rank as the most significant security initiative of Bill Clinton’s administration. This has not merely brought most of the former members of the Warsaw Pact into the Western security community, but the function of NATO has been changed radically, from a purely deterrent and defensive role to rapid deployment ‘out of area’ to forestall threats to the security of alliance members—’security’ being generously interpreted to include their economic wellbeing and access to crucial resources, in particular oil. Since 11 September 2001, there has been a highlighting of potential threats from states harbouring terrorist movements. It is clear, however, that while there may be a degree of solidarity in relation to a regime openly harbouring terrorists, such as the Taliban, there is no general acceptance of intervention by NATO as the ultimate guarantor of a worldwide security community. Indeed, non-Western states reject any general legitimising of military intervention. Thus it cannot be claimed that there is tacit consent to the extension of US security hegemony from the expanded ‘West’ to the world as a whole. In the case of Russia, indeed, it cannot be claimed that it consented to NATO


enlargement; rather, it acquiesced for want of the capacity to sustain its original resistance to it.32

The issue of security hegemony may also be approached by way of changes in international law proposed by a prominent school of thought in the US. Theorists of this school seek to legitimise intervention by according a general priority to respect for human rights over state sovereignty and also by reference to an ‘emerging right to democratic governance’.33 According to this doctrine the UN Charter norms of non-intervention and restricting the legitimate use of force to the right of self-defence would be overridden in the case of flagrant violations of human rights or the imposition of dictatorial rule. These doctrines remain controversial in the US, have only limited support in Europe, and are rejected outside the West. Thus they have little prospect of becoming accepted as norms of a hegemonic order. Indeed, from a non-Western standpoint American aspirations in the security domain are so far from winning broad acceptance that they should be placed in the category ‘empire’, not ‘hegemony’.34

The Clinton administration made no claim to security hegemony, even though the extension of NATO could be seen as preparing the way for such a claim. Its priorities were economic, and its other military initiatives were mainly improvised in response to emergencies. The Bush administration, on the other hand, reacted to 11 September by adopting a stance that was less hegemonic than imperial. Beyond seeking the support of a few key states in the ‘war on terror’, it made no effort to win assent for its policies. Rather, they were informed by the kind of crude imperial logic that was articulated by Rosen, above. The imperial power could change the rules but would not

32 The US security system in East Asia, being essentially a balance among the major states in that

region, did not lend itself to extension in the same way as NATO.

33 On the priority of human rights see, for example, Fernando R. Tesón, ‘The liberal case for humanitarian intervention’, in J. L. Holzgrefe and Robert O. Keohane, eds, Humanitarian intervention: Ethical, legal and political dilemmas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 93–129. The volume conveys well the interventionist trend in Western liberal scholarship. On the ‘democratic entitlement’ see, for example, Thomas M. Franck, ‘The emerging right to democratic governance’, American Journal of International Law 86(1) 1992, pp. 46–91, and for discussion of this issue, Gregory H. Fox and Brad R. Roth, eds, Democratic governance and international law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

34 See, for example, Rao, ‘The empire writes back’.


be restricted by old or new rules. Traditional allies were no longer treated as partners, but as subordinates expected to offer loyal support. And non-proliferation, no longer subject to multilateral diplomacy, would now be imposed by the imperial power, by force if necessary.

Neither the new strategic doctrine nor its application in Iraq won broad international support. The strategy authorised ‘pre-emptive strikes’ against ‘rogue states’ deemed close to acquiring ‘weapons of mass destruction’, even though they might not constitute the clear and present danger that traditionally marked the distinction between pre-emptive and preventive war. This implied a rewriting of the international law of war—an issue not addressed by the administration but taken up by a few commentators.35 The strategy rested on weak foundations. Why would a state with a rudimentary nuclear capability engage in the suicidal action of attacking the US or one of its allies, or the equally suicidal act of making the weapons available to terrorists?36

Moreover, the category ‘rogue state’ is little more than a term of opprobrium, convenient for justifying costly military programs but signifying no more than a state that has antagonised the US—often a former close associate.37 Such states, it is reasonable to assume, see nuclear weapons as a safeguard against enforced regime change.38 War justified in these terms won little international support, even before the failure to find evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction or links to al-Qaeda thoroughly discredited this, the war’s original rationale.

35 See, for example, Michael J. Glennon, ‘Why the Security Council failed’, Foreign Affairs 82(3)

2003, pp. 16–35; Adam Roberts, ‘Law and the use of force after Iraq’, Survival 45(2) 2003, pp. 31–56.

36 For an early formulation of the doctrine in question, see Charles Krauthammer, ‘The unipolar moment’, Foreign Affairs 70(1) 1991, pp. 23–33.

37 For a discussion of the rogue state doctrine in the context of post-Cold War US military programs, see Michael Klare, Rogue states and nuclear outlaws: America’s search for a new foreign policy (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995).

38 Since the outset of the attempt to restrict nuclear proliferation in the 1960s, security and/or status have been seen as the primary motives for acquiring nuclear weapons. Experience suggests that, apart from the major powers, insecurity, often compounded by isolation, has been the driving force in cases such as Pakistan, Israel, apartheid South Africa, and more recently North Korea and Iran.


The Bush administration’s diplomatic style was even more strikingly imperial, indeed imperious. There was no attempt to build consensus for its new strategy. Its contemptuous attitude towards the UN—declaring the Security Council irrelevant unless it supported the US, later insisting on war before the UN inspectors had completed their task—was remarkably provocative. The administration, it seems clear, drew no distinction between empire and hegemony. In line with neoconservative thinking, it appeared to assume that the sheer assertion of overwhelming force in a cause which it saw as self-evidently just would automatically be regarded as legitimate. That many others might hold strongly opposed views on the justice of this particular war did not appear to occur to it, or was regarded as unimportant.39

The import of the change of diplomatic style at the outset of Bush’s second administration was a matter of keen speculation. But along with the new willingness to consult with allies there was a unilateral change in the agenda: no longer a war on terror, but a struggle against tyranny. But did the rhetoric of freedom and democracy point to a hidden agenda of forcible regime change? This prospect receded in the light of developments in Iraq, but the situation there remained volatile.

It may be concluded that neither the Clinton nor the Bush administrations have offered a plausible design for security hegemony, nor seriously sought to achieve it. The imperial order to which the Bush administration aspired appears out of reach. The security issues worldwide are too heterogeneous, and the norms that guide policies too diverse, to permit anything more than a hybrid, patchwork security order at the global level. Something akin to classical power balancing occurs in East Asia but not elsewhere. UN peacekeeping may have become over-extended in the 1990s but is likely to remain indispensable. Ad hoc military interventions by Western states, singly or through NATO, may be accepted, but there will be no rewriting of international law in favour of a general Western interventionism. The informal American empire will sometimes maintain a certain kind of order, but cannot be indefinitely extended. US military preponderance makes for a strong capacity to deter and veto, but not to shape political or economic 39 For an extensive discussion of neoconservative thinking on these issues, see Reus-Smit, American

power and world order.


developments. As in the past, the idea of security hegemony may be a plausible model, but it is far out of reach in the present international system.

The most uncertain factor may well be whether or not American security hegemony in the West, exercised through NATO, will remain part of any future security order. During the Cold War this rested securely on a common perception of the threat, the American nuclear guarantee and European deference to American leadership. The extended NATO faces no overriding threat; the dangers and the appropriateness of military responses to them are matters of interpretation. Indeed, inappropriate military responses may promote insecurity. Moreover, NATO’s adoption of an ‘out of area’ interventionist role may prove hollow, due to European governments’ reluctance to undertake the major expenditures it would require. On the other hand, there is strong support for uncritical solidarity with the US on the political Right and in the former communist countries. And, given the extent of US military preponderance, it may not need very much in the way of military contributions, as distinct from political and symbolic support. However, this would amount to something less than security hegemony.

Implications for international order Although there is no prospect of America’s achieving security hegemony, its military preponderance is currently beyond challenge. It is in a position to intervene worldwide, and no other state is in a position to serve as a counterweight. This is likely to remain the case for some decades, thanks to the formidable US lead in military technology, its overall economic power and public support for maintaining its military strength.40 What are the consequences for international order of the presence of such a power, moreover one with imperial inclinations and hegemonic ambitions?

The main advantage that is claimed for so great an imbalance in military power is that it rules out war among the major powers—thus marking a

40 Support for maintaining, and indeed enhancing, the strength of the armed forces is far more robust

than support for major intervention which, as the case of Vietnam made clear, may be undermined by a costly failure. For the way in which support for maintaining armed strength was promoted after the end of the Cold War, see, for example, Klare, Rogue states and nuclear outlaws; for a critical discussion of contemporary American militarism, Johnson, Sorrows of empire, pp. 55–65, 97–130.


radical departure from preceding international systems. But this is unconvincing. First, there are many other reasons for regarding major war as unlikely at the present time, including nuclear deterrence, globalisation and the spread of democracy. Even so, and notwithstanding US preponder-ance, war between major powers remains quite conceivable. It suffices to note the case of Taiwan, where China is committed to use force to prevent it from achieving independent statehood, and the US is committed to defend Taiwan against attack. Even if both powers wished to limit the extent of hostilities, such a contingency would raise the question of the feasibility of limited war between nuclear-armed adversaries, which was a major concern of strategic analysts during the Cold War.

In other respects US military preponderance has not been conducive to the establishment of a more equitable international order, nor for that matter to the extension of liberal democracy. In Central America, the clearest case of informal American empire, the many interventions have led neither to the creation of liberal democracies nor to the general betterment of the conditions of life. In the case of the Middle East, the American goal of promoting freedom and democracy in the region will be viewed in the light of half a century of American involvement. The intervention in Iran in 1953 to install a dependent regime, precluding the normal course of indigenous political development, produced its eventual backlash in the form of a bitterly anti-American clerical regime. US support assisted Saddam Hussein to consolidate his rule in Iraq and to maintain his war of aggression against Iran. More recently the political cost of the heavy military presence in Saudi Arabia has become clear and, whatever the eventual outcome in Iraq, that country is paying a high price for American intervention. With respect to Israel, American aid has led to a military imbalance in the region comparable to that between the US and the rest of the world, while the US has not restrained Israel from constantly expanding its settlements in Palestinian territory, thus rendering a political settlement increasingly remote.

If these are the consequences of a gross imbalance of military power—and there has been no significant counterweight to the US in that region since the 1970s—then the traditional apprehensions over the costs of unbalanced power appear to be amply borne out. A power imbalance may also make for overconfidence, especially if the dominant power is imbued with a sense of its own righteousness, uninformed about the circumstances of lesser countries and insensitive to their values and concerns. While these


may be normal attributes of great powers, they are present in the US to an unusual degree.

The military domain of power is potentially the most volatile. Conceivably, in the light of experience in Iraq, the US armed forces might in future remain in the background, serving as a deterrent against international adventures. Such a stance, however, goes against the grain of the American temperament and would be difficult to sustain in internal politics. The ‘national security’ culture makes for over-reliance on military responses, and thus tends to enhance international tensions in unpredictable ways. In the worst case, if NATO retains its interventionist bias, the West as a whole could be drawn into conflicts which extremists on both sides would hasten to depict as a clash of civilisations. This would signify a monumental failure of diplomacy, but diplomatic skills, already atrophied during the Cold War, are under-valued in an era of hectic summit-level diplomacy conducted by leaders preoccupied with the short term and the manipulation of the media. Any firm prognosis with respect to the security domain would be out of place; the task of the analyst can only be to identify the range of potentialities.

Prior to the present administration it was arguable that, on balance, the effects of American military preponderance were positive: while the accompanying rhetoric could be unsettling, US conduct was generally characterised by prudence informed by an awareness of the awesome responsibilities of nuclear superpowerhood. The style as much as the substance of the policies of Bush’s first administration shattered this image, and the character of his second administration’s policies remains unclear. However, too much should not be made of the specific case. So long as the US retains preponderant power, its leaders will be exposed to pressure from ardent advocates of empire as well as multilateral hegemonists, and even the latter may be prone to over-confident activism. The new ‘unipolar’ systemic context poses a novel challenge to America’s allies: to find ways of moderating the potentially disruptive tendencies in American security policy. The traditional allied deference serves merely to amplify them.


THE ECONOMIC DOMAIN As we have seen, the modern international economy is said to have a hegemon when one state is sufficiently preponderant to be able to provide key ‘public goods’ and to shape and enforce the system’s rules. This role is sometimes ascribed to Holland at the time of its commercial supremacy, but the first clear instance is nineteenth-century Britain. While it never enjoyed overall economic preponderance, Britain’s role is well characterised by Mann as ‘specialised near-hegemony’.41 For most of the nineteenth century it had the most advanced industry and the greatest volume of trade; it sponsored the gold standard, sterling was widely used as a reserve currency, and the City of London became the main centre for financial transactions. On the other hand, while Britain could promote free trade for a time, it could not prevent other states from returning to protection in the later decades of the century.

The US after 1945 is a clearer case. Initially preponderant in terms of virtually all economic indices, it provided the essential design for the postwar international economic order: liberal trading norms, the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates with the dollar as a reserve currency pegged to a fixed price of gold, and new international financial institutions (the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank) intended to stabilise the system. Britain was a partner in negotiating this new order but the US determined the limits of compromise in the direction of national autonomy and ‘embedded’ social liberalism. From the US perspective these were compromises, to be revised as further ‘liberalisation’ became feasible. For the US the later shift from ‘embedded’ to ‘neo’liberalism was not so fundamental as for the rest of the world.

It is noteworthy that from the outset certain important functions of the hegemon, as defined by Kindleberger above, were not performed directly by the United States but were delegated to international organisations in which the US retained essential control. Thus the IMF took over the function of lender of last resort, and the World Bank that of long-term lending. The US organised the system such that the functions were carried out while the cost of supplying the public goods was shared with others.

41 Mann, Sources of social power, Vol. 2, pp. 264–6, 283–7.


The 1970s saw a more radical departure from the role of the hegemon as envisaged by Kindleberger, when Washington abandoned the convertibility of the dollar into gold—the essential underpinning of the Bretton Woods system of stable exchange rates. This step, coinciding with financial difficulties in the US and surging growth of the West German and Japanese economies, prompted many US political economists to proclaim the end of American hegemony (i.e., the requisite capacity to exercise hegemonic leadership). However, the US was subsequently able to prevail over both countries in having the new international monetary system based on floating exchange rates instead of a regulated system which would have shared the hegemon’s task of maintaining stable exchange rates among the leading economic powers. This task was now left to the market, in accordance with the theory that now prevailed in Washington. Susan Strange’s then dissenting view that American financial and ‘structural’ power signified continuing hegemony has gained in persuasiveness over time.42 In the 1990s the American economy grew far more rapidly than the German or the Japanese; it was exceptionally dynamic in the high technology sector, and the American economic ‘model’ was flourishing while Germany and Japan, losing confidence in their own models, attempted painful adjustments along American lines.

Since the early 1980s the US has utilised its predominance to restructure the international economy in accordance with its economic ideology, now generally termed neoliberalism.43 The post-1945 balance between state and market gave way to the empowering of ‘market forces’. The traditional liberal commitment to free trade was now augmented by an array of measures—the free movement of capital, deregulation, privatisation, tax reductions, the removal of subsidies—supposedly the only route to growth and prosperity but also reflecting a certain social philosophy.

42 Susan Strange, ‘The persistent myth of lost hegemony’, International Organization 41(4) 1987, pp.

551–74.

43 The intellectual origins of the ideology were European (Friedrich Hayek) as much as American (Milton Friedman). Even so, it obtained a following in the US (the Chicago School) much more readily than in Europe. For a wide-ranging account of the political and economic consequences of neoliberalism, see David Harvey, A brief history of neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).


It is true that others share these American preferences, in particular the ideology’s chief beneficiaries—a transnational coalition of corporations and financial institutions oriented to the global market, supported by major media proprietors and most of the economics profession.44 Neoliberalism is as much the ideology of this coalition as of the US. But the US played a crucial role in initiating the neoliberal offensive, in particular through its insistence on floating exchange rates and Ronald Reagan’s administration’s deregulation and tax cuts. Margaret Thatcher’s Britain was an enthusiastic supporter and part-initiator, but only the US had the weight to pressure the rest of the world into line.45

America took the lead, for example, in pressing the international financial institutions to adopt the neoliberal doctrine—significantly termed the Washington consensus—and in staffing them accordingly. Instead of being viewed pragmatically as a new theory subject to trial and error, neoliberalism became an article of faith among those empowered to shape the policies of all those ‘developing’ countries dependent on the international financial institutions (thanks to the debt crisis, the great majority of them). In practice, most notoriously with respect to agriculture, the US and other Western states make generous exceptions for themselves in implementing the neoliberal prescriptions, a luxury not available to those dependent on the IMF. Here, too, exceptions and delays are also not uncommon, but these are permitted only reluctantly by the international financial institutions, which all the while maintain pressure for further ‘liberalisation’.

A further dimension of American influence is provided by the major credit rating agencies, which determine the level of credit risk, and thus the 44 For the transnational coalition, see, for example, Robert W. Cox, Production, power and world

order: Social forces in the making of history (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), especially pp. 358–68. While the economics profession is not monolithic, and some prominent economists reject neoliberal doctrine, those in government and in the international financial institutions, and most of those cited as authorities in the media, support neoliberalism. James L. Richardson, Contending liberalisms in world politics: Ideology and power (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2001), pp. 155–63, and on the World Bank, Susan George and Fabrizio Sabelli, Faith and credit: The World Bank’s secular empire (Boulder: Westview, 1994).

45 ‘Market forces’ alone, including the pressure exerted by the transnational coalition, might eventually have brought about a turn to neoliberalism, but not necessarily its present dominance. Governments might have resisted, instead of reinforcing, the neoliberal offensive.


rate of interest to be demanded, for governments and firms worldwide. With respect to corporate organisation, and even the organisation of public authorities, it is the American consulting firm McKinsey which is most frequently called upon. It is true, as Mann and others insist, that there are limits to American economic power.46 The US cannot control the economic policies of other states, not even those dependent on its aid, nor does it always prevail in economic negotiations or trade disputes. But hegemony cannot be taken to mean that the hegemon is always fully in control: it is sufficient that it exercises preponderant power, and thus can normally expect to achieve outcomes that it finds satisfactory.

The rapid increase in the US external deficit under the Bush administration is often seen as pointing to a more serious limit to American economic power. Its economic primacy would be undermined if it were to become subject to constraints imposed by its (mainly East Asian) creditors. However, the extent of the deficit is not preordained, but results from policy choices. Should its consequences become sufficiently painful, a future administration could be expected to take steps to bring it under control. On the other hand, the mounting deficit could precipitate a sudden financial crisis which, given the central US role in the international economy, could threaten the economic order as a whole. While this cannot be entirely ruled out, it is evident that the major governments and financial institutions have accumulated a great deal of experience in ‘managing’ financial crises and limiting their repercussions. Short of a systemic breakdown of 1930s proportions, then, the US may be expected to remain preponderant within a system of its own devising.

But is this preponderance to be equated with hegemony? At the govern-mental level and in the business and financial worlds the answer must be affirmative. For the global elites, neoliberal ideology provides un-complicated formulae for managing corporations and economies in ways that redistribute benefits upwards, and risks and burdens downwards. Reassuring the elites of the legitimacy of their privileged position it is, in Mann’s typology, an ideology which serves to promote the solidarity of the

46 Mann, Incoherent empire, pp. 49–79.


ruling stratum.47 The economic ‘expert’ provides the necessary authen-tication, in former times conferred by a priesthood. This would once have sufficed to accord the ideology and its sponsor the general acceptance and legitimacy of a hegemon.

But in the present era this is no longer the case. Notwithstanding the excessive claims often made for democracy, it has become the touchstone for political legitimacy; mass protests, sufferings and demands cannot simply be suppressed or disregarded. As recent elections in Latin America have shown, peoples are not willing to acquiesce in whatever deprivations the elites may decree. Some of the ensuing claims may pass unheeded, but others are taken up by intellectuals, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and eventually by politicians. The intellectual case for neoliberalism has been contested from the outset but now, along with increasing experience of its negative consequences, it is subject to mounting criticism from authoritative quarters. The critique of former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz cannot be brushed aside so readily as the writings, however well informed, of journalists, activists and scholars in less authoritative disciplines.48

The image of the World Bank and the IMF was tarnished by the East Asian financial crisis of 1997–98, which they failed to anticipate, and their orthodox neoliberal responses met with unfamiliar resistance, most notably from Malaysia. More recently, the elected governments of Brazil and Argentina have been seeking to extend the limits of what is permissible within the constraints of the present financial order. And the meetings of the World Social Forum have begun to provide a counterweight to those of the World Economic Forum (often named after its regular meeting place, Davos). It seems clear that, while neoliberal ideology is accepted at the elite level, this is not the case at the societal level, nor on the part of certain governments in a position to represent societal concerns. Where the US-preferred economic order is perceived not as beneficial but as damaging or

47 Mann, Sources of social power, Vol. 1, pp. 24, 235–6.

48 Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and its discontents (London: Penguin, 2002), for his critique of the IMF; Joseph Stiglitz, The roaring nineties: Seeds of destruction (London: Allen Lane, 2003) on the excesses of neoliberalism in practice in the US.


exploitative, America’s role is perceived not as hegemony, but as sheer dominance.

This suggests that the international economic order might be depicted in terms of the three-tier image discussed earlier: American hegemony vis-à-vis the advanced industrial states, the world of the OECD, but empire in the rest of the world, with the obvious exception of major independent states, in particular China, India and Russia. This would be a very rough approximation, but would highlight an important contrast. Although the neoliberal model, even in the West, has been imposed from above and lacks the consensual character of the previous social–liberal order, in the West it is supported by relatively broad social strata that are advantaged or can easily adapt to it, and is presented in the mass media as the natural order of things. Elsewhere it is imposed from outside as well as from above, the advantaged constitute a relatively narrow elite, and the ideology is alien. These are hallmarks of an imperial rather then a hegemonic order.

However, certain qualifications are in order. First, this is not an informal empire as defined above: political control maintained coercively. It is, rather, a system of rules and constraints which ensures access for foreign (not just American) investors and corporations, and defines the parameters of permissible economic policy. For countries indebted or in financial difficulties there is close supervision by the IMF and the World Bank. That is to say, Western-controlled institutions regulate the conditions of everyday life in much of the non-Western world. For marxist theorists this is the current version of the type of imperialism that characterises the industrial era, but non-marxists can also regard this kind of subordination as imperial, and as having deeper societal effects than political control alone.

Second, as has been noted in passing, this is a system of order maintained by the West as a whole, not just the US. Nonetheless, as we have seen, the US is in a position of primacy among Western states—as the designer of the system, originator of its current ideology and the actor which tends to prevail in the more important policy issues. It is a three-tier system of a specific kind: hegemony between the upper and middle tiers, empire in the relationship of both to the lower tier.

Finally, in an economic order so strongly hierarchical the question of the role of armed force in sustaining it invites discussion—a question avoided


by most liberal analysts but a focus of marxist theorising. Does the hidden hand of the market indeed depend on the hidden fist, and is this the reason for the magnitude of the US defence effort?

On first examination this might appear not to be the case. The current economic order appears to be self-sustaining through its allocation of incentives—for states as well as for individuals and social strata—such that the strongest actors are well rewarded, the upwardly mobile are attracted by the prospect of gains, and most others are constrained to conform in the interests of sheer survival. The disadvantaged are fragmented, poorly organised and lack a coherent ideology—thus are too weak politically to threaten the system.

Moreover, most current wars are not, primarily, challenges to the neoliberal order, even though neoliberal policies may well exacerbate longstanding tensions that occasion them. The ensuing armed conflicts are fought mainly by local forces, not infrequently with outside intervention, but disturbances on this scale do not establish a requirement for massive American armed force in order to maintain the economic order. Still less do protests against neoliberal measures—for example, privatisations or the displacement of peoples. Heavy coercion is often involved, but this is applied by local forces.

The order may, however, be vulnerable in a different sense: might not a predatory state destroy or seize control over key components of the intricate networks of resources, production and communication which constitute the global economy? The fear that Saddam Hussein, if unopposed in Kuwait, might have invaded Saudi Arabia, can serve to illustrate the point. This suggests that there is a systemic need for armed force sufficient to over-power any such predator, that is to say, for overwhelming force at the disposal of the power, or powers, responsible for maintaining the security of the economic order.

The US could achieve this, however, at much lower levels of expenditure and without its current massive investment in new technologies and weapons systems. These relate to a different kind of systemic motive: to maintain a sufficient margin of superiority that no other power can hope to challenge it. This geopolitical ambition, openly proclaimed by the Bush administration, corresponds to the logic of an imperial view of unipolarity, but is by no means an imperative of the international economic order.


Implications for international order What are the consequences of this part-hegemonic, part-imperial neo-liberal system for international order—its normative character and its viability? First, how serious are its normative deficiencies, and what are the countervailing benefits? Second, even if opposition does not endanger the system at this point, is a neoliberal order politically viable in the long run? And is it sustainable in ecological/environmental terms? A full discussion of the latter question would require a separate paper, but a provisional answer may be attempted.

The foregoing questions relate to the US-preferred neoliberal order, which should not be equated with American economic hegemony as such. The US was no less hegemonic in the preceding, ‘embedded liberal’ order; its hegemony could outlast neoliberalism. The paper will not enter into speculation raised by this possibility, but will limit itself to the current, i.e. neoliberal, order.

The negative consequences of the neoliberal decades are by now well documented, more especially in relation to the ‘developing’ world, where increasing inequality signifies the continuing absolute deprivation of the many hundreds of millions of people who lack access to clean water and/or to health services or basic education, and who suffer from chronic malnourishment and vulnerability to epidemics.49 Lacking the wherewithal to compete in the global market, they receive only marginal relief from international programs responding—often too late—to emergencies—insofar as these attract the attention of the international media. The claim that neoliberal policies would open the way to economic development has by now been proved illusory: experience has amply demonstrated that neoliberalism has little to offer, especially in the earlier stages of development; rather, it closes off relevant options.

In the West, the increasing inequality which is the hallmark of neoliberalism does not signify absolute deprivation of basic material needs, but the relative deprivation occasioned by poverty should not be minimised.

49 See, for example, the annual reports of the United Nations Development Programme; for a resumé,

Richardson, Contending liberalisms, pp. 113–15.


Here it signifies the stunting of opportunities and loss of self-esteem: in individualist liberal societies increasingly oriented to monetary values it is coming to be recognised as a major social ill.50

The main positive consequence that is claimed for neoliberalism is that it is only through following its norms that countries can achieve economic growth. But this is manifestly incorrect. Historically, most countries that experienced economic growth followed other policies, and overall rates of growth were higher in the social–liberal decades after 1945 than in the subsequent neoliberal era. It is true that some East Asian countries achieved exceptional rates of growth during those decades—at least until the financial crisis—but this began earlier and owed much to the kind of state initiatives rejected by the neoliberals. The most that can be claimed is that a more selective liberalisation, tailored to specific circumstances, tends to promote growth, but the more general neoliberal claim has no foundation.

It is also claimed that increasing inequality such as has been characteristic of the neoliberal era is a normal, or even necessary, feature of economic growth, but once again the historical record shows this to be incorrect. The most rapid growth, in East Asia, has been associated with relatively low levels of inequality, whereas high levels, as in Latin America, are associated with uneven, intermittent growth. And since 1980 all Western countries have seen a marked increase in inequality along with varying and uneven growth. Thus it has not been shown that there are indeed substantial benefits that need to be weighed against neoliberalism’s normative deficiencies.

Are these deficiencies sufficient to threaten the system’s survival in the longer run? It lacks the consensual acceptance of a fully hegemonic order, but the diversity of viewpoints of its adversaries—as evident, for example, in the World Social Forum—shows that they are far from presenting a unified political challenge. Neoliberal elites may be more disconcerted by the critiques of leading economists, but can render them politically ineffective by declining to engage with their arguments. The new assertiveness of major non-Western states in the World Trade Organization,

50 See, for example, Richard G. Wilkinson, The impact of inequality: How to make sick societies

healthier (London: Routledge, 2005).


for example, may be more effective, but it is not directed against the neoliberal order as such, but against the Western states’ exempting themselves from some of its norms. Other indications of stress in the system include the loss of prestige of the IMF and World Bank occasioned by the Asian financial crisis and the exposure of extensive high-level corruption in major Western corporations. Thanks to their influence over the media, however, the neoliberal powerholders have been able to shrug off embarrassments such as these.

Nonetheless, under pressure from development-oriented NGOs, Western governments are adopting more pragmatic, ‘softer’ versions of neoliberalism. After long hesitation the G8 (Group of Eight) have agreed on substantial relief for heavily indebted poor countries and the declining trend in development assistance has, rather surprisingly, been reversed.51 There is a new focus on African development and greater awareness of the magnitude of the AIDS problem, although practice lags far behind the rhetoric. The World Bank has become open to dialogue with NGOs, and even the IMF engages in self-criticism.

However, the structures of power and the basic tenets of neoliberal ideology remain intact. The drive for privatisation, even of such basic services as water, remains unrelenting, and increasing business involvement in development assistance under the rubric ‘corporate social responsibility’ may well enhance Western business priorities in the whole developmental process.52 And insofar as dialogue with NGOs weakens the voices of opposition, the more pragmatic approach tends to strengthen the neoliberal order.

Environmental sustainability is likely to pose a more serious challenge. The problems presented by climate change, resource depletion (for example, oil) and scarcity (water), threats to fragile ecosystems, the loss of

51 The French and German governments, faced with severe budgetary difficulties, express interest in

new, international, means for funding development, for example, a tax on international air travel and even on international financial transactions (the ‘Tobin tax’, previously shunned by governments).

52 Michael Blowfield, ‘Corporate social responsibility: Reinventing the meaning of development?’, International Affairs 81(3) 2005, pp. 515–24, and other contributions to the special issue, ‘Critical perspectives on corporate social responsibility’.


diversity, and in all probability other hazards not yet so familiar, are unlikely to be resolved by relying on market forces, i.e. the short-term calculations of corporations and financial institutions. A rebalancing of the roles of political and economic actors appears inevitable, but is blocked by the present power structures.

Most inquiries into the prospects for systemic change in the economic domain have focused on counter-hegemonic movements in ‘international civil society’—that is to say, a coalition of those disadvantaged in the present order. However, given the heterogeneity of those movements and the distance between a global network of the disaffected and a major political force, a transformation along these lines appears remote.53 An alternative school of thought on social and political transformation places the emphasis on dissension at the elite level.54 Arguably, the construction and remodelling of the liberal international economic order has always been elite-driven, always accompanied by claims that the envisaged order would promote the general good. If the 1945 order may be seen as a high point of elite responsiveness to broad-based societal expectations, the turn to neoliberalism amounted to a bold move by certain elites to utilise specific problems experienced in that order, not to repair it but to transform it in accordance with their ideology.

This system could in turn be restructured by elites responsive to the needs of the disadvantaged and the demands of environmental sustainability. This would require a change in the ruling ideology, the ingredients for which have long been present; it need not take the form of a new ideological manifesto, any more than it did in the case of the neoliberal ideological revision. It is often claimed that an ideological and systemic change of this kind could come about only if the existing system experiences a major crisis, perhaps of the magnitude of the Great Depression of the 1930s. But this is not necessarily the case. Ideological 53 For a more positive assessment of the potential role of ‘international civil society’, see Robert W.

Cox, ‘Civil society at the turn of the millennium: Prospects for an alternative world order’, Review of International Studies 25(1) 1999, pp. 3–28.

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