US Hegemony and Military Primacy
Andres Gannon, UC Berkeley
Definition
• Hegemony is a condition of dominance in the
international system
• Hegemony is not a strategy, it is a goal or the
result of other strategies
Hegemony in international relations
• Goal of the United States and all other powers is
hegemony
• Regional hegemons have always existed
• Arguable about whether or not there has ever
been a global hegemony
How does America do it?
• Example of US Hegemony
Economic Power
• The productive capacity of a state or territory
that it rules over
• What can a state make?
• How efficiently can it do it?
Financial Power
• Distinct from economic power because it is
about how much money a government can raise
and how it manages its funds
• US has had strong financial and economic power
since 1919 due to victory in both world wars
• The US was able to make a lot of equipment and
lend huge amounts of money to our allies
Soft Power
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The cultural appeal of a country
Intangible reputation
How attractive values are to others
Respect for their way of life
Military Power
• The ability to impose your will onto others
• It allows us to quickly defeat adversaries
Relationship between determinants
Economic
Power
Military
Power
Financial
Power
Soft Power
Relationship between determinants
• No one factor can maintain hegemony
• Soviet Union 1980
U.S. National Security Strategy
Grand
Strategy
Military
Strategy
Military
Operations
Tactics
Doctrine
Grand
Strategy
Military
Strategy
Grand Strategy
Military
Operations
Tactics
Doctrine
• Plan to direct all assets at the disposal of our
government towards the broadest ends of
American interest
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Homeland security
International peace
Prevention of global wars
Democracy
Economic prosperity
Human rights
Grand
Strategy
Military
Strategy
Military Strategy
Military
Operations
Tactics
Doctrine
• Military portion of grand strategy
• Where are our military assets deployed
Grand
Strategy
Military
Strategy
Operations
Military
Operations
Tactics
Doctrine
• Only relevant in war-time
• Describes how we fight a series of battles (a
campaign) to fulfill the plans laid down
• Goal of operations is to fulfill strategic goals and
military strategy
Grand
Strategy
Military
Strategy
Tactical
Military
Operations
Tactics
Doctrine
• Methods that units use to achieve specific battle
field tasks
▫ Pinning an enemy by flanking them on both sides
▫ Guerilla warfare tactic
▫ Capturing strategic terrain (hill)
Grand
Strategy
Military
Strategy
Doctrine
Military
Operations
Tactics
Doctrine
• Rules we create to govern the use of force and
methods we use to fight
▫ Counterinsurgency
▫ Counterterrorism
• The way we implement a doctrine in a specific
country is a strategy
World War II Example
Grand Strategy –
Unconditionally
defeat the Axis of Evil
Military Strategy – In
Pacific Ocean, use US power
to crush Japan’s main fleet
and close in until they were
forced to submit
Military Operations – Assault the islands
one by one
Tactical – launching shells from battle ships with a low
level trajectory, destroy Japanese guns and
flamethrowers
Doctrine – use firepower to crush Japanese defenses and then use a
frontal assault on the beaches (amphibious assault)
Military strategy on the topic
• Most affirmatives occur at the level of military
strategy
• How are goals accomplished with the military in
general
• Withdrawing all forces from one country
changes military strategy
Synonyms
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Hegemony
Primacy
Leadership
Global cop
Pax Americana
Unipolarity
Unilateralism
Military dominance
Global superiority
Key Authors
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Khalilzad, Stillgood
Robert Kagan
Lieber and Press
Charles Krauthammer
Thayer
Brooks and Wohlforth
Joseph Nye
Colin Gray
Mandelbaum
Max Boot
Key Sources
• Carnegie Endowment
• Council on Foreign Relations
• Heritage Foundation
Polarity
• Unipolarity – only one great power exists
• Bipolarity – two powerful states that dominate
all the others
• Multipolarity – many states of equivalent power
“-lateralism”
• Unilateralism – acting alone without making
policies dependent on what allies think
• Multilateralism – acting with others and
engaging in cooperation and consultation
• Bilateralism – acting or cooperating with
another power, often of equal power
Balancing
• Offshore Balancing – Withdrawing our foreign
commitments and maintaining our military and
international presence from the mainland
• Counterbalancing – When countries line up
against the United States so that their combined
power matched or exceeds that of the hegemon
• Softbalancing – diplomatic friction against a
hegemon when countries are hesitant to
cooperate or support hegemonic military action
Key Factors
• Economics
▫ Forward deployment, army, navy, tech, free riders
• Counter-balancing
▫ Adversaries who don’t like taking orders
• Decadence
▫ Spirit of sacrifice causes power
▫ 22,000 Central Pacific v 4,000 Iraq
▫ 100,000 British
Key Factors
• Overstretch
▫ Forces get spread thin
• Relative Decline
▫ Rise of other challengers causes multipolarity
▫ Relative power
• History
▫ Rome, Sparta, Athens, Persia, Greece, Aztecs,
Mayans, Chinese, Mongols, Spanish…US?
The Case for Sustainability
• American exceptionalism
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Democratic
Western hemisphere
No counterbalancing
No direct colonization
Geography
• Relative dominance
▫ Spend more on defense than next 10-25 countries
▫ Economy is third globally
▫ Fight 3 wars at a time
The Case for Sustainability
• Absence of peer competitors
▫ China can’t win wars
▫ Russia is poor and can’t win wars either
▫ Europe is internally divided and lazy
• Better than alternatives
▫ China is hated
▫ Russia is crazy
Why Sustainability Matters
• If decline can be avoided (if hegemony is
sustainable) then it is easier to win that it is
desirable
• If decline is inevitable, strategies to maintain it
may be bad and we should shift now to ensure a
stable and peaceful transition
Great Power Wars
• Smaller powers have an incentive to cooperate
with a greater power because the US can punish
them military
• Multipolar systems are problematic because the
margins of power between actors is low
• Europe 1914
Rise of Hostile Competitors
• Strong US can deter others from even trying to
upset the international system
Regional Wars
• US can intervene in wars between weaker states
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Bosnia, 1994
Kosovo, 1998
Gulf War, 1991
North Korea, TBA
India-Pakistan, TBA
China-Taiwan, TBA
Israel-Iran, TBA
Cooperation
• Bandwagoning – when smaller states follow the
lead of a hegemon and support them rather than
counterbalancing
• Encourages cooperation on economic,
environmental, and health issues
Transition Wars
• Regardless of whether hegemony is good or bad,
decline should be avoided because the transition
to a new system will be violent
• Rising powers would lash out to undermine US
standing
• US would lash out to prevent a rising power
from overwhelming us
Power Vacuum
• No one else can fill in causing global
fragmentation (Dark Ages)
• Partial fill in causes spheres of influence
▫ China dominates East Asia
▫ Russia reabsorbs former Soviet states
Multipolarity Solves
• More stable, aggressive posture encourages
hostility when power erodes
• Spheres of influence good
Terrorism
• Causes resentment in the Middle East
▫ Occupation
▫ Hostility
Proliferation
• Causes asymetrical strategies to compete with us
since they can’t compete conventionally
• Nuclear weapons pack a hard punch
Counter-balancing
• Others band together against the US which can
escalate regional wars and disputes
▫ Russia-China
Intervention
• Hegemony makes us more likely to intervene in
conflicts where we don’t belong
▫ Vietnam
▫ Iraq
Key Arguments
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Sustainability
Resentment inevitable
Reintervention
Transition
Fill in
Balancing