Hegemony or Bust

Novelty has observers rummaging through their inventory of ideas and concepts to find one to fit the new experience. Its application is supposed to provide some rudimentary meaning about the new phenomenon. Many are content with doing just that – however freighted with inappropriate connotations that label might be, however ambiguous its denotation(s). So, it is with concepts like populism, Fascism, and hegemony. All are in vogue; all are so promiscuously employed as to lose whatever capacity for clarification or explanation they could have for explicating the phenomena in question. Let’s look at the last mentioned – Hegemony. The term holds a central place in the present discourse about the United States’ place in the world: what it has been, its sustainability, and alternative ways of formulating the country’s national interests.

Hegemony

Hegemony is the dominance over places, political elites, institutions so as to control what a state does in its own interest. That dominance can vary in scope, in its methods of control, in its degrees of control.  The much discussed American hegemony after WW II was geographically delimited by the Communist bloc outside its ambit. After 1991, it took on a putative global dimension with the aspirational goal to solidify the United States’ primacy and dominion. It remains so today. (It was first enunciated in the notorious Wolfowitz Memorandum in February 1992, which since has become the template American foreign policymaking).^[1] During the earlier period, the United States’ preoccupation was security, the means primarily military – albeit buttressed by a dense network of favorable economic relationships partially institutionalized. Over the ensuing 30-odd years, the emphasis gradually shifted toward the multifaceted, politico-economic strategy of neo-liberalism. That change in the balance between ‘hard’ and ‘semi-soft’ power never eclipsed purely military considerations – as evinced in a) the Pentagon’s publicly stated commitment to broad spectrum military superiority in order to ensure escalation dominance in every region against any imaginable foe, b) the scatter-shot interventions conducted in the name of the Global War On Terror, c) the relentless expansion of NATO.

Washington’s readiness to use force to work its will, now expressed in its aggressive stance toward Russia and China, did not extinguish the idealistic Kantian belief that the spread of constitutional democracy along with the promised tangible rewards of world-wide economic independence, is the surest guarantee of international stability. A stability overseen by a benevolent America. The fulfillment of this presumed teleology, though, dictated the use of hard power to thwart/subdue those who could challenge it.

Today, our political elites find themselves in a position where the goal of global hegemony has become unreachable – by any reasonable standard, for objective reasons. Yet, this logical conclusion is one that they are unwilling – or unable – to accept. That unwillingness is at once intellectual, ideological and emotional. The complex psychology of a declining great power that enjoyed unprecedented respect beyond its borders, that was founded on the belief in an inborn exceptionalness destining it to be the cynosure of ideas that would reshape the world, makes analysis of this behavior daunting. What we can say is that the prospect of diminished status is intolerable – even if the country’s security and welfare face no direct threat. The compulsive quest for an imagined absolute security and natural superiority does not allow Americans to rest content with what they achieved at home and abroad. For what the country aspired to, and felt itself near to accomplishing, is slipping out of our reach. The gap between aspiration and reality widens year by year. Therein lies the rub.

Fading prowess is one of the most difficult things for humans to cope with – whether it be an individual or a nation.  By nature, we prize our strength and competence; we dread decline and its intimations of extinction. This is especially so in the United States where for many the individual and the collective persona are inseparable. No other country tries so relentlessly to live its legend as does the U.S. For many Americans – in the age of anxiety and insecurity – their sense of individual self-esteem and self-worth is grounded on their intimate association with being part of a uniquely endowed and virtuous nation. Today, events are occurring that contradict the American narrative of a nation with an exceptional destiny. That creates cognitive dissonance and unease.^[2]

The remarkable uniformity of thinking among influential members of the political class militates against confronting that dilemma head-on. There is close to zero serious debate about foreign policy ends and means – at least, among those who have any access to the corridors of decision-making power. All observe the same holy writ and sing from the same hymnal. The result: deeply entrenched group-think impervious to contradictory evidence that is ignored or dismissed or twisted to fit preconceptions. That points to a troubling question: should American conduct internationally be understood in terms of a reasoned determination to follow chosen course internationally, however high the odds against achieving its ambitious goal? Or, are we observing compulsive actions rooted in deep-seated emotions and states of mind that are reified in doctrinal hegemony?

Why Hegemony?

Every state’s paramount concern is its security. That stems from the intrinsic nature of international affairs. The distinguishing characteristic of that environment is that each entity determines when and how it might use force to achieve its objectives – there is no superior authority setting and enforcing rules of behavior. Hence, the ubiquity of potential conflict situations for which states must prepare themselves. Is the hallmark of international relations. This truism, though, trails some cardinal questions. The circumstance in which any state finds itself is not fixed; there are a multitude of strategic configurations – each with its peculiar traits. Too, there is a range of policies that a state could follow to secure itself under any of those conditions.

Obviously, those theoretical options are limited by relevant parties’ relative strength, domestic resources, degrees of internal cohesion, prevailing ideologies, etc. Nonetheless, alternative ways of setting one’s security needs and formulating strategies for meeting them do exist. That holds even where ‘discretionary response potential’ is limited by objective conditions (See the below outline of a radically different ‘grand strategy’ for the United States).

Determining what constitutes a satisfactory security situation is a function of judgments made by main decision-makers in their country’s peculiar context and history. At one end of the continuum is the quest for absolute security – or, some approximation to it. Even then an assessment should be made of the feasible/preferable timeframe. Absolute security for as far as the strategic eye can see? for this generation? Until some envisaged change in the balance-of-power is expected to register?

Predominant thinking in the United States is located toward that absolutist point on the continuum. In addition, it leans heavily toward the long-term – if not permanency. That is understandable. For its first 130 years or so, the U.S. was secured against threat to its physical cum political integrity by geography. The only exception was the hovering danger posed in its early years by a Britain which harbored hopes of retribution and restoration as became manifest in the War of 1812. For the next century, the Americans engaged in conflict with other states only because of their own ambitions to extend its dominions.  (Against Spain: 1819, 1898; against Mexico: 1848). Those were choices, by no means a necessity. So, too, was entry into World War I. Washington leaders were evidently more comfortable with the pre-war status quo than they were with a Europe dominated by a triumphant Germany. Still, the threat assessment was more abstract than concrete and – such as it was – could not emerge in the near future. Hence, it rightly also should be labelled a ‘war of choice’ rather than a war of security necessity. It was natural, if not preordained, that the U.S. would revert to neo-isolationism during the inter-war period.

The American confidence in its insularity from tangible security threats subsequently was punctured by three events: Pearl Harbor, the Soviet detonation of a nuclear bomb, and 9/11. The last came 10 years after the dissolution of the threat from the USSR. In the intervening decade, the United States’ political elites felt reassured that the country’s near absolute security could be restored. The challenge was to exploit propitious conditions globally to establish a benign American hegemony wherein no threat could possibility materialize. A multiform strategy was in order to extend and deepen American influence, to affirm the allegiance and deference of other states, and to prepare for the use of force where necessary to prevent any prospective military rival from emerging. That is the underlying logic of the Wolfowitz Doctrine.

At present, its rootedness in the minds of the country’s leadership is evinced by our confrontational attitude toward Russia, China, Iran and a slew of less formidable states whom Washington sees as hostile or in some way antagonistic. As Joe Biden pithily pronounced last week: “not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world.” Now, that sounds like hyperbole, but we are the essential nation of the world.” Interpolation: We should be running the entire world – for the world’s sake as well as for our sake.

‘Our sake’ implies a need. What sort of need? It is not an overt security need since there exists no manifest threat to the territorial integrity or political integrity. Nor is there such a threat to our principal allies/partners – the confected delusion about Putin being another Hitler and equally fanciful notion of a diabolical Chinese plot to replace us as the global supremo, notwithstanding. What is threatened is American hegemony as conceived a la Wolfowitz. That hegemony is needed not for security reasons, but rather to confirm United States’ entitlement to its exceptionalism and paramountcy embedded in the national psyche and its national creed.

That was the state-of-affairs when the Biden team of neo-cons and hardline nationalists came to power. They felt a sense of urgency. Trump had been too erratic in his dealings with Moscow and Beijing – a battery of sanctions notwithstanding. While he ‘dithered,’ China and Russia grew in strength, a progression that demanded swift action lest it get out of control. They were ready to take the bit between their teeth; they had a plan. The main players shared a clear – if unidimensional – cognitive map of the global environment, the goal was inscribed in granite, and their belief in the efficacy of American power unqualified. The main components were these. Russia was to be neutralized as a major power either by enticing it to shelter under the West’s wing so as to protect itself from the voracious ‘Yellow Peril” on its border OR gravely weakened by a combination of NATO expansion and economic sanctions – with the hope of that leading to Putin’s replacement by a more accommodating leadership. Joe Biden in March 2022: ‘That man just has to go!” China was to be contained by the formation a ring-fence of American-led alliances in Asia coupled to measures designed to restrict its access to Western markets, technology and finance. In addition, concrete steps would be taken to promote Taiwan’s independence while building up its defenses. The Bidens’ expected that such a strategy would mean stagnation of China’s economy with commensurate debilitation of its influence internationally. As for the other hostile parties. They could be dealt with by mobilizing America’s arsenal of coercion weapons against them.

This far-reaching strategy implied a basic change in not just objectives but in risk calculations as well. During the Cold War standoff with the USSR, Washington’s were tempered by prudence. No more. An historian of antiquity characterized the relations between the two great empires of Rome and Parthia this way: “Each empire needed to show respect to the other’s sensibilities. Pushing too hard risked bring on a far more serious war which neither side wanted.”^[3]  Today’s hard-driving American leaders view that attitude as a quaint remembrance from a past epoch.

The common features of Washington’s plans for Russia and China were 1) their being grounded on profound ignorance of both countries, and 2) a gross overestimation of the West’s power relative to its postulated rivals. The stark demonstration by the Ukraine debacle and China’s economic resilience that all of Washington’s assumptions were misplaced has yet to be assimilated by the American foreign affairs community.

 The obvious truth is that the Sino-Russian bloc’s growing strength makes the achievement of the hegemonic goal an impossibility. Indeed, the current trajectory points to an inexorable shift in the loci of international power and interaction toward a bifurcated (if still interdependent world system). Multi-nodal – to use Chas Freeman’s apt term.

America’s exalted sense of self is the principal obstacle to its coming to terms with this discomforting reality.  It has sparked the impulse to prove to ourselves (and to the rest of the world) that we remain the global paladin by launching a series of enterprises intended to repel foes and rivals with reinvigorating the bonds with vassals and retainers. That  foredoomed, audacious ambition to secure global dominance does not represent cool strategic judgment. Rather, it is the materializing of fantasies spawned deep in the collective American psyche. It is the go-for-broke strategy of a country suffering from a profound cognitive dissonance compounded by a collective identity crisis.

The United States has locked itself onto a course that permits no deviation, no adaptation, no deceleration.  All or nothing:  Hegemony or Armageddon. That steely determination blinds them to developments that are shifting the odds on that outcome. They are occurring not only in the BRICS part of the world. America’s disgraceful performance as an accomplice to the heinous crimes against the Palestinians has dissolved the United States’ standing in the world as a moral force, as a country with integrity and decent intention. The end of soft power as it had existed. Of course, Washington’s wishes are still taken as authoritative commands by its coterie of denatured vassals whose collective degree over control over their own affairs, as well as the words, is shrinking even faster even that that of their seigneur.

There is another, radically different alternative grounded on the belief that it is feasible to fashion a long-term strategy of nurturing ties of cooperation with Russia and China.

---

The Alternative:  
Egnagement, Negotiation, and the Concert

There is another, radical alternative grounded on the belief that it is feasible to fashion a long-term strategy of nurturing cordial ties with Russia and China and fostering areas of cooperation. Its foundation would be a common recognition that a mutual commitment to the maintenance of political stability and fashioning mechanisms for conflict avoidance best serves their long-term interests. This is by no means as farfetched as first glance might suggest – in concept.  

The idea of great power concert comes to mind. However, we should envisage an arrangement quite different from the historic Concert of Europe that emerged at the Conference of Vienna in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars. One, the objective would be more than a buttressing of the status quo by the dual strategy of refraining from armed conflict among the underwriting states, and suppressing revolutionary movements that could endanger existing regimes. That concert’s attendant features were: the concentration of custodial power in the Big 5 co-managers of the system; the stifling of political reform across Europe; and the disregard of forces appearing outside their purview. 

By contrast, a contemporary concert among the major powers would presume a responsibility for taking the lead in designing a global system based on the mutually reinforcing tenets of openness, sovereign equality, and the promotion of policies that deliver plus-sum outcomes. Rather than rule by a directorate, international affairs would be structured by a) international institutions modified in terms of philosophy, multilateral decision-making and a measure of devolution that empowers regional bodies; b) an established pattern of consultation among those governments whose economic weight and military capacity quite naturally should be expected to play an informal role in performing system maintenance functions; c) steps to regularize the involvement of other states. The aim would not be to eliminate conflict entirely, but rather to modulate it and to reduce both frequency and intensity by fostering ‘rules of the road.’ Legitimacy? To be established through conduct and performance. The drastic fall in respect for American world leadership will facilitate that process – as the BRICs’ successes already demonstrate.

The crucial starting point for such a project is a meeting of the minds among Washington, Beijing, and Moscow – accompanied by dialogue with New Delhi, Brasilia et al. There is reason to believe that conditions, objectively speaking, have been conducive to an undertaking of this order for several years. However, it was never recognized in the West, much less seriously considered – an historic opportunity lost.

The most significant sufficient factor is the temper of Chinese and Russian leadership. Xi and Putin are rare leaders. They are sober, rational, intelligent, very well informed, capable of broad vision, and while dedicated to the securing their national interests – above all the well-being of their peoples, they do not harbor imperial ambitions. Moreover, they have long tenures as heads of state. They have the political capital to invest in a project of this magnitude and prospective. Washington, unfortunately, has not had leaders of similar character and talents. 

Summit meetings by Bush, Obama, Trump or Biden always have concentrated on either small-bore issues or instruction on what their opposite number should be doing so as to conform to the American view of the world. Both are wastes of precious time insofar as the imperative to foster a long term, common global perspective is concerned. The sensible approach to inaugurate a serious dialogue might be a President with statesmanlike qualities to sit down alone with Putin and XI and introduce an open-ended session by putting to him the question: ‘What do you want, President Putin/President XI? How do you see the world 20 years from now and your country’s place in it?”  Would they be prepared to expound an articulate response?  Putin certainly would. That is exactly what he has been proposing since 2007 – on numerous occasions vocally or in his writings.  Instead, he was stonewalled, and the – since 2014 – treated as a menacing pariah to be defamed and personally insulted. 

Here is Barack Obama’s take: The Russian President is a “physically unremarkable” man, likened to “the tough, street-smart ward bosses who used to run the Chicago machine.” This comment from Obama’s first volume of his published memoirs (The Promised Land) says more about his own inflated yet vulnerable ego than Putin’s character. In fact, it was the Chicago machine along with money and encouragement from the Pritzker network that made Obama what he became. Contrast: when Bismarck met Disraeli at the 1878 Berlin Conference – going so far as to invite him, a Jew, home twice for meals – he did not nag the British Prime Minister about trade restrictions on German exports of textiles and metallurgical goods – or about the systematic British abuse of tea plantation laborers in Assam. Nor did he comment on the man’s physique. Bismarck was a serious statesman, unlike the people in whose custody we place the security and well-being of our nations. 

The upshot is that Putin and Xi seem puzzled as how to treat with their feckless Western counterparts who disregard the elementary precepts of diplomacy. That should be a concern of ours as well – unless, of course, we intend to conduct our ‘war’ in a linear manner that pays little attention to the thinking of other parties.  

The vitriol that is thrown at Putin with such vehemence by his Western counterparts is something of a puzzle. It manifestly disproportionate to anything that he has done or said by any reasonable measure – even if one distorts the underlying story of Ukraine. Obama’s condescension suggests an answer. At its core, their attitude reflects envy. Envy in the sense that he subconsciously recognized in Putin somebody who is clearly superior in attributes of intelligence, knowledge of contemporary issues and history, articulateness, political savvy and – most certainly – diplomatic skill. Try to imagine any of our headmen emulating Putin’s performance in holding 3-hour open Q & A sessions with the international press corps, or with citizens of all stripes – responding directly, in detail, coherently and with good grace. Biden? Trudeau? Scholz? Starmer? Macron? Von der Leyen? Kaja Kallis? Even Barack Obama from whom we’d get canned sermons cast in high-minded language that distills into very little. That’s why the West’s political class assiduously avoids paying attention to Putin’s speeches and press conferences – out of sight, out of mind.

These days, in the Ukraine era, the rigid Washington consensus is that Vladimir Putin is the quintessential brutal dictator – power mad, ruthless and with only a tenuous grip on reality. Indeed, it has become commonplace to equate him with Hitler – as done by such leading lights of America’s stellar power elite as Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi – as well as ‘opinion makers’ galore. Even 203 Noble Nobels lend their collective brains and celebrity credentials to an ‘open letter’ whose first sentence pairs Russia’s attack on Ukraine with Hitler’s assault on Poland in September 1939. 

Sadly, the argument that those who make crucial foreign policy decisions should bother to know what they are talking about is widely deemed as radical if not subversive. In regard to Putin, there is absolutely no excuse for such painful ignorance. He has presented his views on how Russia visualizes its place in the world, relations with the West and the contours/rules of a desired international system more comprehensively, historically informed, and coherently than has any national leader I know of. Shouted declarations “we’re number ONE and always will be – you better believe it” (Obama) are not his style. The point is that you may be troubled by his conclusions, question his sincerity, suspect hidden strands of thought, or denounce certain actions. However, doing so has no credibility unless one has engaged the man based on what is available – not on cartoon caricatures. So, too, should we recognize that Russia is not a one-man show. that it behooves us to consider the more complex reality that is Russian governance and politics.

President Xi of China has escaped the personal vilification thrown at Putin – so far.  But Washington has made no greater effort to engage him in the sort of discourse about the future shape of Sino-American relations and the world system for which they are destined to be primary joint custodians. Xi is more elusive than Putin. He is far less forthright, more guarded, and embodies a political culture very different from that of the United States or Europe. Still, he is no dogmatic ideologue or power-mad imperialist. Cultural differences too easily can become an excuse for avoiding the study, the pondering and the exercise in strategic imagination that is called for.

The approach outlined above is worth the effort – and low costs it entails. For it is the understandings among the three leaders (and their senior colleagues) that are of the utmost importance. That is to say, agreed understandings as to how they view the shape and structure of world affairs, where their interests clash or converge, and how to meet the dual challenge of 1) handling those points of friction that may arise, and 2) working together to perform ‘system maintenance’ functions in both the economic and security realms.

At the moment, there is no chance that American leaders can muster the gumption, or have the vision, to set out on this course. Neither Biden and his team, nor their Republican rivals are up to it. In truth, American leaders are psychologically and intellectually not capable of thinking seriously about the terms for sharing power with China, with Russia or with anybody else – and developing mechanisms for doing so over different timeframes. Washington is too preoccupied with parsing the naval balance in East Asia to reflect on broad strategies. Its leaders are too complacent about the deep faults in our economic structures, and too wasteful in dissipating trillions on chimerical ventures aimed at exorcising a mythical enemy to position ourselves for a diplomatic undertaking of the sort that a self-centered America never before has faced.

We are close to a condition that approximates what the psychologists call “dissociation.”  It is marked by an inability to see and to accept actualities as they are for deep seated emotional reasons. The tension generated for a nation so constituted when encountering objective reality does not force heightened self-awareness or a change in behavior if the dominant feature of that reality is the attitudes and expressed opinions of others who share that underlying delusion.

---

^[1] The Wolfowitz Credo animates almost all: the Classic neo-cons, the macho neo-cons, and the raw neo-imperialists. The few non-believers are irrelevant to America’s foreign policy discourse. If you urge engagement with Tehran and dialogue with Putin, you are shunned as a heretic – like the Gnostics, and then Catars, except that the latter at least acknowledged Christ (American exceptionalism) and Satan (Putin/Khamenei) before they were administered their just punishment. This historical narrative brings to the fore two quite remarkable features of the present elite consensus that bears the imprint of the Neo-Con/Wolfowitz template. First, its near total conquest of the American mind succeeded despite an unmatched record of failure – in analysis and in action. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Somalia, Mali, Belarus, Venezuela, Bolivia – capped by the catastrophe in Ukraine that we choreographed (including that fatal misreading of Russia). 

Second, the Biden administration has all but officially announced that we are now committed to a comprehensive hybrid war against a Sino-Russian bloc – a powerful rival that has come into existence because we did everything conceivable to encourage it. Yet, the foreign policy elite, the political class and the public have received the news of this titanic struggle with hardly a blink of the eye.  The country has set itself on a fateful course in a state of mindlessness induced by a willful coterie of true believers inspired by dogma wreathed in ignorance and pursued in stunning incompetence.

^[2] At the psychological level, this approach is understandable since it plays to the United States’ strength: overweening self-confidence coupled to material strength – thereby perpetuating the national myths of being destined to remain the world’s No. 1 forever, and of being in a position to shape the world system according to American principles and interests. President Obama declaimed: “Let me tell you something.  The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth.  Period.  It’s not even close. Period.  It’s not even close.  It’s not even close!”  So?  Is this meant as a revelation? What is the message? To whom?  Is it any different than someone shouting: “ALLAH AKBAR!” Words that are neither a prelude to action nor inspire others to act – nor even impart information – are just puffs of wind.  As such, they are yet another avoidance device – a flight from reality. They fail on receptive ears in London, Brussels, Berlin and Canberra. At NATO and G-7 summits, one hears the choral recitation of the ‘Shahada’: “there is only one God – Uncle Sam; and Wolfowitz is his prophet.” Yet, no President dares to repeat Obama’s exclamation in Moscow, Beijing, New Delhi, Brasilia, Riyadh, Brasilia, Jakarta ….

The tension associated with a nation so constituted encountering objective reality does not force heightened self-awareness or a change in behavior if the dominant feature of that reality is the attitudes and expressed opinions of others who share the underlying delusions. 

Accompanying it is the growing apprehension in the country that the United States’ supremacy in the world is slipping away, the sensation of losing national prowess, of its mastery in jeopardy. Together, they generate a predilection for seeking clear-cut outcomes in a relatively brief timeframe that reassure by confirming the optimistic belief in American exceptionalism.   

^[3] Adrian Goldsworthy Rome and Persia: The Seven Hundred Year Rivalry (Basic Books, 2023).

Photo by Simone Pellegrini on Unsplash