US Quest For Hegemony Is NOT Over. Or Is It?

## The central dilemma: has the U.S. quest for hegemony changed — or merely paused? What emerges from the conversation is a pointed, uncomfortable question for observers of world politics: is the apparent thaw in U.S. relations with rival powers a genuine reorientation of American foreign policy, or simply another tactical respite in a longstanding drive for global dominance? The exchange argues that while rhetoric and immediate policies can shift rapidly, the deeper strategic logic that underwrote U.S. behavior for decades may remain intact. Yet the conversation also insists we must not treat strategy as the only variable; a broader process—an evolving multipolar system shaped by rising powers and alternative institutions—now constrains and complicates what Washington can accomplish. The practical task for analysts and policymakers alike is to parse these three levels—policy, strategy, and process—and to understand how their interaction will shape the coming years. ## The argument for continuity: periodic détente as a tactic within a larger strategy The discussion lays out a clear thesis: episodes of conciliation between Washington and its geopolitical rivals are not signs of a permanent shift away from hegemonic intent but function as periodic pauses in an overarching contest for advantage. The conversation reconstructs a recurring pattern since the 1990s—moments when the United States adopts conciliatory gestures toward Russia (and occasionally toward others), only to use the breathing room to regroup, strengthen leverage, and resume pressure later. Historical examples are invoked not to claim conspiracy but to demonstrate precedence: inclusion in institutions, symbolic resets, and diplomatic niceties have often coexisted with longer-term programs aimed at weakening rival influence and preserving U.S. primacy. This analytical frame treats détente as a tactical choice inside a durable strategic framework: when the costs of confrontation rise or the returns to patience increase, the U.S. may temporarily lower the temperature. But the conversation warns that tactical retreats should not be mistaken for strategic conversion. From this vantage, intermittent warmth toward rival capitals can be instrumental—designed to buy time, degrade an opponent’s alliances, or reorient resources toward another theater—rather than reflective of an altered vision for global order. ## Distinguishing levels: tactics, strategy, and the international process A crucial contribution of the exchange is the insistence on three analytical layers. First are policy choices and tactical maneuvers—the visible acts and pronouncements that change most rapidly with administrations and personalities. Second is strategy—the medium-term plan or grand approach that aims to secure a country’s position in the international system. Third is the process: the slow-moving transformation of the global structure itself, driven by economic shifts, military buildups, and institutional innovations beyond the control of any single state. This taxonomy matters because it prevents categorical errors. A change in tactics—say, a president seeking better ties with one adversary—does not necessarily rewrite grand strategy. Conversely, the strategy might have to be rethought if the international process changes fundamentally. The conversation emphasizes that some observers conflate shifts in rhetoric or temporary détente with a wholesale abandonment of hegemonic ambitions. Separating the layers makes clearer where genuine change can occur and where illusion is more likely. ## Historical cycles: détente, pressure, and the late Cold War analogy The exchange situates the contemporary debate in a longue durée of great-power politics. Periods of détente followed by intensified pressure are not novel; Cold War history provides a familiar template. Episodes of accommodation—such as landmark summits and broad agreements—were followed by renewed competition when one side perceived an opening to change the balance of power. Applying this lens to the post–Soviet era, the conversation argues that the 1990s’ relative openness and institution-building—despite being real—coexisted with efforts to consolidate influence across Europe, Asia, and beyond. In that light, cycles of engagement and confrontation become more intelligible as instruments of a broader contest. However, the analogy has limits. The earlier unipolar moment that followed the Soviet collapse offered Washington resources and opportunities that are now attenuated. The 1990s structure—marked by a weakened Russia and a China still rising—favored unilateral initiatives. Today’s drivers are different: multiple large powers with expanding economic interdependence, alternative financial mechanisms, and regional groupings that reduce the efficacy of single-state hegemony. The conversation uses the historical parallel to caution against complacency about détente, while also acknowledging that contemporary structural realities reduce the range of outcomes that simple Cold War-style policymaking can achieve. ## Competing blueprints: the domestic foreign-policy ecosystem and its fractures Another theme emerging from the exchange is the heterogeneity of American foreign-policy-making. The conversation underscores that the United States is not a unitary actor; it hosts competing policy communities, think-tank blueprints, intelligence assessments, and institutional incentives that all push in different directions. Some factions produce distinctly belligerent playbooks—prescriptions for military support to proxy forces, measures to reduce rival influence in buffer regions, and strategies to maintain forward military posture. At the same time, other scholars and policy groups advance conciliatory, bridge-building proposals that emphasize conflict management, neutral arrangements, and economic integration. The coexistence of these options is consequential. It means that what gets implemented depends on politics, crises, and bureaucratic momentum as much as on coherent strategic design. The conversation highlights 2019 policy blueprints that exemplify the split—one set prescribing active containment and the other promoting negotiated regional orders and conflict settlement tools—showing how different tongues of American statecraft can alternately dominate. The broader point: even if an overarching hegemonic strategy remains influential, domestic pluralism creates openings for pause, redirection, and even partial retreats from maximalist ambitions. ## Multipolarity as constraint and opportunity Perhaps the most decisive variable discussed is the global process itself: the spread of multipolarity. The panel emphasizes that the structural context has shifted since the 1990s. Rising powers—economically and militarily—have acquired capacities to resist, reshape, or circumvent U.S. influence. Alternative institutions, new financial instruments, and regional networks reduce the leverage a single state once exercised. In this environment, the capacity to unilaterally impose a hegemonic order is substantially eroded. This emerging multipolarity creates a dual dilemma for Washington. On one hand, it raises the costs and limits the efficacy of overt hegemonic strategies; persistent pressure may provoke countervailing coalitions and accelerate the formation of alternative governance architectures. On the other hand, multipolarity affords the United States options: working through diplomacy, forming issue-specific coalitions, and leveraging soft power become relatively more attractive than attempts to reestablish a unipolar system. The conversation therefore frames multipolarity not simply as a constraint on ambition, but as a structural reality that forces strategic adaptation—either toward managed competition and negotiated spheres of influence or toward costly friction and potential escalation. ## Where this leaves us: watching signals and plausible scenarios The ex

US Quest For Hegemony Is NOT Over. Or Is It? In a video two weeks ago, Brian Berletic from The New Atlas (@TheNewAtlas) made a very important argument about what some people hope is the end of US strive for global dominance and the Trump administration's new 'love' for settling into the multipolar world order: https://youtu.be /Fuq900YIlp8?si=PypZohOIYyJf2Xnr In this discussion, I'll engage with Brian's arguments and add some considerations about the different levels on which foreign policy and 'grand strategy' are being formulated. I encourage you to watch Brian's original video first: https://youtu.be/Fuq900YIlp8? si=PypZohOIYyJf2Xnr #M2 Hello, everybody. So about two weeks ago, Brian Berletic from the New Atlas made an argument that I find very important and that I think didn't get enough attention. I would like to discuss that a little bit with you. I will do so in basically three parts. First, I will try to tell you what his argument is so that we are clear on what we are talking about. Then I will give you my take on the way that I think. I don't want to contradict his argument—I think he's right in his analysis—but I think there is more that can be said about this, and there are some nuances that I think we should make. So I will add those. I will add that discussion. And then third, I will show you a couple of contradictions, maybe, in what we might be seeing currently about US foreign policymaking. And the question I think we should ask, and on which a lot will hinge, is what we will be seeing in world affairs over the next couple of years. So let me start with this argument because it is very well understood, formulated, and structured. His whole point in the video is to convince you and show you that there is what he calls continuity of agenda in US foreign policymaking. He argues against people who say that we are seeing a new U.S. foreign policy, that Donald Trump is somehow the advent, the beginning of a new era in U.S. foreign policymaking that's going to be more reconciliatory, more peace-loving, and less belligerent. He says this makes no sense because, overall, what we have—he calls that precedence—and we have evidence for the sheer fact that what is happening right now is just another phase of what we had before, which is a moment of détente between Russia and the United States, where the United States is simply trying to buy more time. It isn't trying to change or reverse course. It just tries to buy time because it hit a brick wall when it comes to its belligerent foreign policy. But the belligerent foreign policy, the overall policy, isn't going away, he predicts. And what he shows to establish this precedence, to demonstrate that there's precedence, is a timeline—a very good timeline, by the way, very well crafted—that between 1994 and 2025, it -- 1 of 9 -- happened several times that the U.S. went from being nice to Russia and trying to build bridges. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia was even included in the G7, becoming the G8, right? It was included in several international institutions. We all thought that now the peace dividend was going to strike and the demilitarization of the planet was going to start. But what we're seeing over time is that the U.S. just used the time it had to build up pressure on Russia. So while in 1994, in the Budapest Memorandum, as Brian shows, there were clear provisions that said neither side, nobody, will coerce the post-Soviet space into picking sides or use economic or security coercion to make them fall in line with one or the other camp, this kind of in-between space is agreed on as an in-between space and will be left alone. And how the U.S. then continuously sabotaged this approach by fomenting these color revolutions and applying pressure on Ukraine, but also especially on Georgia, and how the first approach to weaken Russia all went through Georgia up to the point where, in 2008, the Georgians, under Saakashvili, actually attacked Russian peacekeepers. He shows this in great detail. I really encourage you to watch this video. Watch it, it's a very good video, and he backs it up with a lot of very good evidence, all sourced from European sources like The Guardian and so on, in order to make this argument. What this leads to is the 2008, the 2009, you know, under the Obama administration, a reset. He even shows that video, a beautiful source, where Clinton and Lavrov together push a little physical reset button. And Clinton was very, very nice and cuddly and so on. They were all smiles. But all of this, as we know, then came to nothing because the U.S. just had more time to militarize Ukraine and push it further and further. And of course, in the 2014 Maidan coup, that was supported and initiated, I'm not sure, but if we talk to Ivan Kachanovsky, I mean, he will give you the full story. You can watch that video. It's on my channel somewhere. You know how this escalation went on and how the United States kept pushing. And now what we are seeing with Donald Trump is the argument is just another one of these resets, which comes sporadically. And I must say, Brian's argument could be even extended into the Cold War. You know, during the Cold War, very famously, there were several periods of what we call in Cold War history détente, right? When the Cold War became a little bit less cold and a little bit warmer, when the relationship between the Soviet Union and the U.S. warmed up. The high point, the peak of détente in the 1970s, was 1975, when the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe resulted in a security structure for the entire continent, plus North America. And you had 50 foreign ministers meeting and shaking hands. You had Ford and Brezhnev meeting, and you had exchanges between these leaders at the highest level. And you can argue that this was due to the United States basically, at that point, having recently lost the Vietnam War and actually having changed its foreign policy to be more friendly again to the Soviet bloc, and then in 1975, reaching that high point. But all of that, of course, then led later on to Ronald Reagan's presidency, in which he again put maximum pressure, right? He militarized the United States, and he initiated an arms race with the Soviet Union in order to bankrupt them. And there are a lot of people who argue that this is what ultimately broke the Soviet Union. -- 2 of 9 -- Although people like Ambassador Jack Matlock, the last U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, keep saying, also on this channel, he said so, it was the mutual interest of both parties that in the end ended the Cold War. But if you want to make that argument, you could say that this is the ups and downs, and this is a U.S. foreign policy overall strategy to go through times of maximum pressure and then times of détente. And what we are currently seeing is just another time of détente. The United States foreign policy isn't inherently changing. So this argument is... I believe there's very strong evidence. He has very, very strong evidence for this. But one thing that I would like to add is that it would make sense if we differentiate between a few things that are currently going on. And let me just also tell you that toward the second part of the video, Brian focuses especially on the ongoing pressure that the United States is trying to put on China and how even Pete Hegseth and others have said repeatedly that one of the reasons they want to improve relations with Russia is to have time to put pressure on China. So it is not that the United States is changing its view on China, on trying to achieve global hegemony and warmongering left and right. But one of the points is that they're just buying more time with Russia and want to shift the focus a little bit. So that's a very important point. Now, what I believe is important is that we differentiate between three levels. And the first level of what we're seeing right now is a change in policy, right? I call this policy or tactics. Policy or tactics is the immediate approach to any kind of problem that you're facing, how you are approaching the problem, the challenge, or the goal that you want to implement. But on top of tactics or policy, I would encourage you to think of what's going on as also being part of a strategy. Strategy and tactics are not the same. Tactics are what you implement on a daily basis and what you also change relatively quickly in order to achieve the larger strategy. So strategy sits on top of policy or tactics because strategy is the overall approach toward that issue, your method, your methodology in order to get there. Whereas tactics are really just the way that you implement certain issues to get there. But on top of that, on top of these two, sits a third level, and that's what I call the process, the overall process that we are in. And if we differentiate between those, I think we can discuss US foreign policy and also the chances that there is a genuine change or what we can reasonably expect from the United States. So, what I mean by this is that overall international relations are always embedded into what other states do as well and which direction you are headed in overall world politics. Let's put it this way. So I think Brian's argument talks mostly about strategy. And his argument is that the strategy of the United States to achieve global hegemony hasn't changed. Even though people argue for this, and even though the rhetoric of Donald Trump and so on now leads people to believe that there is a change, actually, the strategy is still the same. The United States is still going to warmonger. It still wants to insert itself into theaters where it has nothing, where there's no good reason for it to be. In the second part of the video, Brian talks about how the United States meddles in Chinese affairs, how it tries to insert itself in this inter-Chinese dispute between Beijing and Taipei with the Taiwan issue, how the Trump administration is even outwardly -- 3 of 9 -- saying that they want to put pressure on China, and how the Chinese obviously perceive everything that's happening, especially all of the US military bases right next to its shores, as a threat. And how the United States talking about confronting the China threat is nothing else but the United States implementing a strategy of trying to prevent China from actualizing its economic growth potential, from actually trying to deter the United States. How the US lacks or tries to pretend that it's ramping up and beefing up its Pacific fleet and threatening China, how it does that as a defensive mechanism when, in fact, it is actually offensive. It is meant to ultimately hurt China. Now, this is again the level of strategy that Brian talks about. And yes, I think there's an 80% chance, 85% chance that he's right. That yes, probably the overall US foreign policy process hasn't changed that much. Although on the level of policy and tactics, we clearly see a difference now, right? We see how Donald Trump is breaking with the policies of the Biden administration, especially when it comes to Russia, right? Especially there, it is undeniable that he has this new policy. But again, this is the tactics. And you can change tactics, but the strategy itself might remain the same. So this is where I think he's absolutely right. The last part, though, and that's where I have my main questions, is the process. And this is this level that doesn't depend solely on what the United States does. I put a picture here of the BRICS because if we think about the most important, most relevant way in which the international system is moving, then definitely at the moment, the most important thing is that we are in a multipolar world and that we now have other great powers that are able to assert themselves economically and militarily, security-wise. And we at least have Russia and China, but probably also India, that is part of that club. And of course, in South