{"id":8014,"date":"2020-04-23T08:18:09","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T14:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=8014"},"modified":"2020-04-23T08:18:09","modified_gmt":"2020-04-23T14:18:09","slug":"please-tell-the-establishment-that-u-s-hegemony-is-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=8014","title":{"rendered":"Please Tell The Establishment That U.S. Hegemony Is Over"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daniel Larison<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The core of the book is a survey of three different sources for the unraveling of U.S. hegemony: major powers, weaker states, and transnational \u201ccounter-order\u201d movements. Cooley and Nexon trace how Russia and China have become increasingly effective at wielding influence over many smaller states through patronage and the creation of parallel institutions and projects such as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). They discuss a number of weaker states that have begun hedging their bets by seeking patronage from these major powers as well as the U.S. Where once America had a \u201cnear monopoly\u201d on such patronage, this has ceased to be the case. They also track the role of \u201ccounter-order\u201d movements, especially nationalist and populist groups, in bringing pressure to bear on their national governments and cooperating across borders to challenge international institutions. Finally, they spell out how the U.S. itself has contributed to the erosion of its own position through reckless policies dating back at least to the invasion of Iraq.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The conventional response to the unraveling of America\u2019s hegemony here at home has been either a retreat into nostalgia with simplistic paeans to the wonders of the \u201cliberal international order\u201d that ignore the failures of that earlier era or an intensified commitment to hard-power dominance in the form of ever-increasing military budgets (or some combination of the two). Cooley and Nexon contend that the Trump administration has opted for the second of these responses. Citing the president\u2019s emphasis on maintaining military dominance and his support for exorbitant military spending, they say \u201cit suggests an approach to hegemony more dependent upon military instruments, and thus on the ability (and willingness) of the United States to continue extremely high defense spending. It depends on the wager that the United States both can and should substitute raw military power for its hegemonic infrastructure.\u201d That not only points to what Barry Posen has called \u201cilliberal hegemony,\u201d but also leads to a foreign policy that is even more militarized and unchecked by international law.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cooley and Nexon make a compelling observation about how Trump\u2019s demand for more allied military spending differs from normal calls for burden-sharing. Normally, burden-sharing advocates call on allies to spend more so the U.S. can spend less. But that isn\u2019t Trump\u2019s position at all. His administration pressures allied governments to increase their spending, while showing no desire to curtail the Pentagon budget:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Retrenchment entails some combination of shedding international security commitments and shifting defense burdens onto allies and partners. This allows the retrenching power, in principle, to redirect military spending toward domestic priorities, particularly those critical to long-term productivity and economic growth. In the current American context, this means making long-overdue investments in transportation infrastructure, increasing educational spending to develop human capital, and ramping up support for research and development. This rationale makes substantially less sense if retrenchment policies do not produce reductions in defense spending\u2013which is why Trump\u2019s aggressive, public, and coercive push for burden sharing seems odd. Recall that Trump and his supporters want, and have already implemented, increases in the military budget. There is no indication that the Trump administration would change defense spending if, for example, Germany or South Korea increased their own military spending or more heavily subsidized American bases.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed how misguided our priorities as a nation have been. There is now a chance to change course, but that will require our leaders to shift their thinking. U.S. hegemony is already on its way out; now Americans need to decide what our role in the world will look like afterwards. Warmed-over platitudes about \u201cleadership\u201d won\u2019t suffice and throwing more money at the Pentagon is a dead end. The way forward is a strategy of retrenchment, restraint, and renewal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daniel Larison: The core of the book is a survey of three different sources for the unraveling of U.S. hegemony: major powers, weaker states, and transnational \u201ccounter-order\u201d movements. Cooley and Nexon trace how Russia and China have become increasingly effective at wielding influence over many smaller states through patronage and the creation of parallel institutions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8014"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8014"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8015,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8014\/revisions\/8015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}