Hegemony Updates
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Hegemony is Bad
Heg: Doesn’t Work .................................................................................................................................................................................. 2
Heg: Declining- Economy/Military Overstretch ................................................................................................................................... 3
Heg: Decline- Empirical Cycles .............................................................................................................................................................. 4
Heg: the End is Near- the best collapse card ......................................................................................................................................... 5
Heg: Decline by 2020 ............................................................................................................................................................................... 6
Heg: Decline- Multipolarity on the Way ................................................................................................................................................ 7
Heg: Collapse Imminent Due to Globalization ...................................................................................................................................... 8
Heg: Will be Inneffective in the Future ................................................................................................................................................. 9
Heg: Collapse Coming ........................................................................................................................................................................... 10
Heg: Decline- Generic (1/2) ................................................................................................................................................................... 11
Heg: Decline- Generic (2/2) ................................................................................................................................................................... 12
Heg: Multipolarity ................................................................................................................................................................................. 13
Heg: Unsustainable/Counterbalancing ................................................................................................................................................ 14
Heg: Obama Can’t Solve ....................................................................................................................................................................... 15
Heg Turns: Terrorism ........................................................................................................................................................................... 16
Heg Turns: China Relations ................................................................................................................................................................. 17
Heg Turns: Prolif ................................................................................................................................................................................... 18
Heg Turns: Economic Collapse (1/2) .................................................................................................................................................... 19
Heg Turns: Economic Collapse (2/2) .................................................................................................................................................... 20
If you smell a delicious, crispy smell after the race, it's not your tailpipe. It's just a little of Shake...and Bake!
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Hegemony Updates
ENDI 4-Week
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Heg: Doesn’t Work
Hegemony doesn’t deter “rogue” states
Dr. Bill- 01 professor of government and director emeritus of the Reves Center for International Studies at the College of William
and Mary (James A, ,The Politics of Hegemony: The United States and Iran”, Middle East Policy Council, Volume 8, Number 3, p.97-99)
In its attempt to protect and expand its hegemonic power, the United States has pursued policies designed to weaken regional
powers such as Iran and China. The pressures applied by the global hegemon often have unintended, counterproductive
consequences. U.S. pressure, for example, acts as a catalyst strengthening and solidifying relations between and among dominant
regional hegemons. Figure 1 indicates how two regional hegemons, Iran and China, have come to form a fundamental crossregional alliance. U.S. condemnation has resulted in both intraregional and interregional alliances featuring Iran and China at the
center of concentric circles of countries that resent and resist U.S. interventionary hegemony. In the Middle East and East Asia
these nation-states include Syria and North Korea respectively.
The global hegemon seeks to anchor its foreign policy in military might. Despite a huge defense budget and sophisticated
armaments, however, the United States has discovered that its power is not unlimited, as the confrontation with Iraq has
demonstrated. Billions of dollars in U.S. military expenditures have not altered Saddam Hussein's behavior. Over the last decade,
the United States has unleashed more than 700 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a cost of nearly $1 billion against Iraq and targets in
Sudan and Afghanistan. Washington is beginning to understand that delicate social and political problems cannot be bombed out
of existence. (Nonetheless, the George W. Bush administration has plans to pursue the expensive missile defense system, a system
that is strongly opposed by Europe, Russia and China.)
The policy of the global hegemon differs with respect to the particular region or regime. These differences can be explained by the differing worldviews that mark other cultures and civilizations. In this context, leading
regional hegemons such as Iran, North Korea and China represent cultures that seem particularly alien to the United States. China is often viewed as a huge backward nation of inscrutable drones who live in poverty and
ignorance. North Korea is accused of "capricious and whimsical behavior" and, in the words of one observer: "There is enough that is weird about North Korea to gobsmack you." Iran is considered to be a nation of
cats, caviar and carpets, where religious fanaticism triumphs over rational discourse and where little value is placed on human life. After a long article analyzing Iranian politics and the elections of June 2001, an
American journalist inexplicably ends her analysis by claiming that President Muhammad Khatami planned to conclude his electioneering at a breakfast "where he will serve up an Iranian specialty -- stewed sheep
brains."6
CONCLUSIONS
As global hegemon, the United States is in an excellent position to take the initiative in pursuing a new Iran policy. The At lantic Council report recommends that the current stalemate be broken because it is in the U.S.
national interest to do so. Given Iran's regional power position and its great hydrocarbon wealth and large population, the United States must one day soon develop relations with the Islamic Republic. The Atlantic
Council study provides compelling reasons for this détente. It is also important, however, that any rapprochement also be in the national interest of the Islamic Republic. Iran is interested but is unlikely to approach the
United States formally and publicly. President Khatami has asked that the United States indicate its good will through deeds and not only through words. If the United States were to lift the embargo, for example, Iran is
likely to respond positively and constructively.
The heavy military presence of the global hegemon in the Persian Gulf is a matter of grave concern to Iran, the dominant regional hegemon. At the same time, U.S. activities in the Gulf are proving to be very costly to
the United States – both economically and politically. One important consequence of a U.S.-Iran rapprochement would be for the Islamic Republic to take on some of the local political responsibilities. Iran is the natural
balance wheel against Iraq. It would be in the interests of the global hegemon to slowly disengage from its day to day confrontation with Iraq and allow the dominant regional hegemon, Iran, to take on its historic role.
As the global hegemon begins to rethink its policy and place in the world, there are six recommendations that might be considered. First, allow regional powers to pursue their goals while maintaining their own
independence and dignity. Confronting them and referring to them as rogues and renegades only drives them into one another's arms. The result is the establishment of alliances between countries like Iran and China or
Iran and Russia. From the very beginning, these alliances take on an anti-American flavor.
Second, develop a strategic plan that will help guide it in a world caught in the midst of fundamental transformation. Iran, for example, will have a population of over 100 million in 25 years. Whether the leader of Iran
wears a turban, a military helmet or a baseball cap, Iran will have a major presence and power in the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabian leaders have come to recognize this fact and, beginning in earnest in 1996, have
established and strengthened Saudi relations with the Islamic Republic.
Third, the United States as sole global hegemon carries moral responsibilities along with its military and political responsibilities. It is in the American interest, for example, to promote human rights and political
development fairly across the world. It is not acceptable for the global hegemon to single out regional hegemons such as Iran, Syria and Libya for special condemnation while overlooking the transgressions of allies in
the region such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel.
Fourth, the United States as global hegemon should do away with its officiousness and bureaucratic harassment against individual citizens of recalcitrant regional hegemons. It is beneath the United States to punish
individuals who have been sought out only because they hail from countries such as Iran and Libya, for example. The United States has shown it can and will work with countries like North Vietnam and North Korea.
Why can't it communicate with countries like the Islamic Republic of Iran?
Fifth, U.S. foreign-policy makers must not contaminate their policies towards one problem area by formulating policies based on conditions that dominate in other problem areas. This is especially true in the Middle
East, where U.S. policy towards Israel takes precedence over other major issues in the region. The global hegemon's close and uncritical views of Israel run directly against the interpretations of other major countries in
the region. Iran, which has been particularly outspoken about the situation of the Palestinians, has been singled out for special condemnation by pro-Israeli voices in the United States.
Sixth, the global hegemon desperately needs to develop a serious understanding of other cultures and civilizations. American leaders have shown little sensitivity towards developments in Iran and are often extremely
illiterate concerning Shii Islam. Some of this is due to ignorance; some is due to bias; some is due to politics. The global hegemon cannot afford to be ignorant about its neighbors in this shaking and shrinking world.
The frozen state of U.S.-Iran relations is not only damaging to the interests of both parties but it has a negative impact upon the global system more generally. In the long term, the global hegemon needs to communicate
and cooperate with Persian Gulf hegemon Iran. At the same time, a rapprochement between Iran and the United States is in the interest of the Islamic Republic. When the leaders in both countries recognize this reality,
then they must carefully and cautiously begin to develop new diplomatic approaches.
If you smell a delicious, crispy smell after the race, it's not your tailpipe. It's just a little of Shake...and Bake!
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Hegemony Updates
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EMORY
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Heg: Declining- Economy/Military Overstretch
US heg tanking- declining dollar plus overstretched military prove
Obstfelt and Rogoff 06 professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley and Professor of Public Policy and Professor
of Economics at Harvard (Maurice and Kenneth, “Could the Twin Deficits Jeopardize US Hegemony?”, Harvard.edu, 7/4/06,
http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~jfrankel/SalvatoreDeficitsHegemonJan26Jul.pdf)
The decline in the pound was clearly part of a larger pattern whereby the United Kingdom lost its economic pre-eminence,
colonies, military power, and other trappings of international hegemony. As some of us wonder whether the United States might
now have embarked on a path of “imperial over-reach,” following the British Empire down a road of widening federal budget
deficits and overly ambitious military adventures in the Muslim world, the fate of the pound is perhaps a useful caution. The Suez
crisis of 1956 is frequently recalled as the occasion on which Britain was forced under US pressure to abandon its remaining
imperial designs. But the important role played by a simultaneous run on the pound is often forgotten.10 Paul Kennedy (1989)’s
suggestion of the imperial overreach hypothesis and its application to US hegemony may have been essentially correct but 20years
premature, much like the forecasts of those in the early 1990s who warned prematurely of the dollar’s imminent demise.
Over the last four decades, our allies have been willing to pay a financial price to support American leadership of the international
economy, because they correctly saw it to be in their interests. In the 1960s, Germany was willing to offset the expenses of
stationing U.S. troops on bases there so as to save the United States from a balance of payments deficit. In the 1980s, the U.S.
military was charged less to station troops in high-rent Japan than if they had been based at home. In 1991, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,
and a number of other countries were willing to pay for the financial cost of the war against Iraq, thus temporarily wiping out the
U.S. current account deficit for the only time in a twenty-year period. Repeatedly the Bank of Japan, among other central banks,
has been willing to buy dollars to prevent the U.S. currency from depreciating (late 1960s, early 1970s, late 1980s).
During the same period that the United States has lost its budget surplus and the twin deficits have re-emerged, i.e., since 2001, we
have also lost popular sympathy and political support in much of the rest of the world.11 In the past, deficits from imperial
overstretch have been manageable because others have paid the bills for our troops overseas: Germany and Japan during the Cold
War, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in 1991. Now the hegemon has lost its claim to legitimacy in the eyes of many. Next time the US
asks other central banks to bail out the dollar, will they be as willing to do so as Europe was in the 1960s, or as Japan was in the
late 1980s after the Louvre Agreement? I fear not.
If you smell a delicious, crispy smell after the race, it's not your tailpipe. It's just a little of Shake...and Bake!
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Hegemony Updates
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Heg: Decline- Empirical Cycles
Heg decline now- empirical data
Martins 07 research director of UNESCO-UNU Network (Carlo Eduardo, The Impasses of U.S. Hegemony: Perspectives for the Twenty-first
Century, 2007, http://lap.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/34/1/16)
I would argue that since 1967 the United States has been in a period of hegemonic decline. It still maintains its financial,
ideological, and military hegemony, but it has been made increasingly vulnerable by the pressure that the current-account deficit in
the balance of payments is exerting on the dollar, by neoliberalism’s crisis of legitimacy, and by the unfolding impact of
September 11, 2001, which has reignited both U.S. imperialism and military-political reactions against it, threatening to expand the
costs of securing the world-system to unforeseen dimensions.1 To situate the trajectory of U.S. hegemony in the world-system, we
must bring the longue durée into our analysis. To do so, we should consider the following analytical elements:
1. Systemic cycles, theorized by the world-system school in works by writers such as Giovanni Arrighi and Beverly Silver (1999)
and Immanuel Wallerstein (1996). These cycles are organized according to hegemonies divided into phases of expansion and
crisis. During the crisis phase, the hegemon uses its financial power to continue leading global accumulation, but its financial
strength soon gives way to increasing deterioration of its productive and commercial bases. The disintegration of hegemony gives
rise to a stage of systemic chaos, and a bifurcation emerges in which new power structures vie for control. In historical capitalism,
this process culminates in “thirty years’ wars” that end with a single configuration of power, one that reconstitutes the worldsystem upon new bases and increases both its breadth and the interaction among its parts
. 2. Kondratieff cycles, which are linked to organizational and technological revolutions and normally manifest themselves in 50or 60-year periods divided into Aphases (of expansion) and B-phases (of economic crisis).
The trajectories of U.S. hegemony and the modern world-system in the coming decades should be understood in terms of these
three long-run tendencies. I would argue that the expansion phase of a new Kondratieff cycle has been developing in the United
States since 1994. This expansion will lack the brilliance of the phase that developed in the postwar period. It will be shorter and
will promote lower rates of growth, since it will be affected by two downward trends: civilizational crisis and the B-phase of the
systemic cycle. Within this new phase of expansion, the financial and ideological foundations of U.S. hegemony will deteriorate,
and the United States will lose the leadership position that it exercised in the world economy from 1980 to 1990, when it was
surpassed in dynamism only by East Asia. The world will enter a new phase of systemic chaos, and no nation-state will be able to
reconstruct the world-system on new hegemonic bases. A bifurcation will occur: on one hand, there will be forces attempting to
restore historical capitalism to U.S. imperialism via the cohesion of the principal centers of global wealth, and, on the other hand,
there will be forces seeking to overcome the modern world-system through a posthegemonic system. This confrontation will occur
not only among nation-states (although, in part, it may be oriented in terms of them) but also transnationally. The transnational
dimension, aimed at creating new forms of power to direct both human existence and the planet, has already manifested itself, for
example, in mass demonstrations against U.S. imperialism and the oligarchic coordination of the world economy and in attempts
to organize social movements on a global scale, most notably in the World Social Forum. If transnationalism succeeds, humanity
will be able to traverse the systemic chaos without succumbing to a cataclysmic war. Transnational forces will create “drive belts”
across nation-states, circumventing global oligarchies. But if nationalism succeeds, it will be difficult to avoid a move toward
fascism, barbarism, and the use of the state as an instrument of coercion.
If you smell a delicious, crispy smell after the race, it's not your tailpipe. It's just a little of Shake...and Bake!
4
Hegemony Updates
ENDI 4-Week
EMORY
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Heg: the End is Near- the best collapse card
Obama part of Heg collapse
Hoffman- 09 the Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan (Andy, “
U.S. Global Hegemony - The Beginning and the End”, 4/18/09, http://www.midasletter.com/commentary/090418-2_US-hegemony-the-beginning-and-the-end.php)
All empires peak when arrogance rears its ugly head, and in the U.S.'s case it was Vietnam that triggered it. As someone too young
to have been around during the era of the "Red Peril", it is hard to envision the fear of the spread of Communism that existed in
America. But it most certainly did, yielding numerous standoffs, skirmishes, and wars (such as the Korean conflict and the Cuban
missile conflict) before the real damage occurred in Vietnam.
In fairness, America had one more brief moment of dominance, as the technology revolution of the 1980s and 1990s was clearly
spawned in Silicon Valley. The birth of the modern age of electronics and internet applications was clearly an American phenomenon, and for a brief time spurred the 1990s hype that the age of the
Jetsons was upon us. This myth, combined with massive monetary stimulus following the brief 1987 stock market crash, was what created
the stock market bubble that ended in 2000. Oh, and guess who took over as head of the Federal Reserve in 1987, and was the brains and brawn behind this indiscriminant money printing?
And what do you think he did? Yep, you guessed it, he lowered interest rates to 1%, printed more money, and reduced financial market regulations further. Sound anything like "supply-side economics", (which not
coincidentally commenced at the same time Greenspan was appointed head of the Federal Reserve)?
To this day, Greenspan is still somehow revered as a great financial mind, which is yet another example of the "black is white" thinking in today's America. In my view, he will one day be remembered for the
catastrophic effects of these decisions, in my mind the single most responsible individual for what we are enduring today. In fact, he encouraged borrowers to take out Adjustable-Rate Mortgages (ARMs) when
mortgage rates were at all-time lows, and actually stated that derivatives are a great invention because they serve to spread out risk.
Well, what happened next?
Not surprisingly, a combination of historically low interest rates, reduced regulation on the credit industry and Wall Street financial engineering, global competitive currency devaluations, and massive monetary and
fiscal stimulus created credit and housing bubbles that dwarfed the stock market bubble before it, as well as the explosion of publicly-traded and OTC derivatives, which more than anything else are the source of the
financial catastrophe that is tearing apart America.
Which brings me to the final part of this missive, the one describing what we are seeing TODAY.
The End of the End
The U.S.'s brief reign as world superpower has been marked by the continuing application of short-term "band-aids" to try and buy
time, with the hope that things will get better. No long-term strategies, no game plans, nothing. Just politicians being politicians,
doing what it takes to get re-elected.
All along the "foundation" of U.S. global hegemony was its manufacturing base . This area was rock-solid during the 50s and 60s, but has proven to be fleeting in the
90s and 00s due to the decline in America's finances, the weakening of its military due to a series of unproductive, draining wars, and the growth of more significant manufacturing powers such as Japan, China, and
others.
Thanks to the natural weakening of this foundation, as well as the horribly counterproductive actions taken during
Clinton/Bush/Obama, Rubin/Summers/Lindsay/Snow/Paulson/Geithner, and Greenspan/Bernanke administrations, there are no
longer anymore viable "band-aids" to apply.
Thus, the only thing left has been the 24/7 rigging of markets and printing, printing, printing of money.
Does anyone realize that the reason Citibank and Wells Fargo were able to report "profits" was because the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) last month decided that banks can now value their "toxic
assets" at whatever they'd like, even if similar assets have recently sold for fractions of this amount? Or, in JP Morgan's case, due to exceptional "trading profits", which based on simple statistical analysis could not
possible occur without some insider knowledge of where markets are going.
And then there are outright lies, such as Wells Fargo having the gall to state that its mortgage origination business was extremely profitable this past quarter. You mean during an historical collapse in the stock market,
the housing market, and employment, during which Wells Fargo itself was handed $25 billion of free, taxpayer money to enable survival, that they made profits on its housing business? Not to mention that accounting
rules enable banks to record "profits" simply from originating a mortgage, despite the fact that it will not be known for decades whether the loan will actually be paid back, much less in today's environment where loan
defaults are at record (and accelerating) rates, mortgage foreclosures and unemployment are exploding, and housing prices are declining at double-digit rates.
Moreover, in Citibank's case, the $1.6 billion of "profits" recorded in the first quarter stands against a balance sheet of close to $1 trillion of assets, many of which are hopelessly insolvent and would be massively
written down NOW if the FASB hadn't suddenly changed its mark-to-market accounting rules, as described above. This "band-aid" will not make these hundreds of billions of assets worth more, not now, not in six
months, not EVER.
Current "Economic Policy"
President Obama's "economic plan" is built on sand. Or worse, as there does not appear to be any "plan" at all.
It is just a series of such band-aids created by Wall Street and spearheaded by his head economic advisor, Larry Summers, and Treasury Secretary Geithner. Two of Obama's top three campaign contributors were JP
Morgan and Goldman Sachs, as was the case for most (if not all) of the Congressional figures involved in engineering the bailouts.
Larry Summers, as Treasury Secretary back in the Clinton Era, actually penned the "Gibson's Paradox" essay that describes how keeping interest rates low fosters low inflation expectations, and the best way to keep
interest rates low is to hold down the gold price. Meanwhile, Geithner, in his previous post as head of the NY Federal Reserve, was a key point man in the actions of the PPT and gold Cartel, a disciple of none other
than Alan Greenspan. Fed Chairman Bernanke, by the way, has been so discredited by his ineptitude that he is hardly worth mentioning.
Right now, the only plan I see is a series of lies, frauds, and manipulations of financial markets and the public's perception. "Operation Confidence Con", as I have heard it described, is nothing more than an acceleration
of the bastardized economic policies of the past three decades, aided and abetted by massive corruption from the Wall Street masters than now run Washington, and an exponential increase in the 24/7 activities of the
PPT/Gold Cartel to try and fool the masses into believing that Obama's "plan" is working, which it is not and which logically cannot work, EVER.
Regarding gold and silver, I have been watching these markets trade every day for the past seven years. Each day the manipulation in these markets has gotten worse, but nothing like what I've seen in the past month,
particularly around the Fed's "quantitative easing" announcement last month and the conclusion of the "G-20" meeting two weeks ago. Can you believe that, following these massively gold-bulliish announcements, that
gold and silver are actually lower?
For those reading this missive; if you believe that the economy has turned, banks are now profitable, inflation is not a concern,
jobs are about to become plentiful, and the dollar is a smart place to be, continue as you were.
But if not, which I suspect represents 99% of you, continue to PROTECT YOURSELF. Gold and silver are a gift at these levels, as are foodstuffs and other
necessary consumables before accelerating (or god forbid) hyperinflation hits in the not so distant future. And continue to participate in "tea parties" or anything that enables you to assert your rights, while you still have
them.
U.S. hegemony was significant. And real. But alas, for just a very brief period in the annals of history. It is nearly gone, and when
it is, you will wish you have protected yourself. Life will go one, just not in the same way we have been accustomed to.
If you smell a delicious, crispy smell after the race, it's not your tailpipe. It's just a little of Shake...and Bake!
5
Hegemony Updates
ENDI 4-Week
EMORY
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Heg: Decline by 2020
United States Global Superpower Days are Numbered
Bulmer-Thomas 06 director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Victor, “2020 vision in anticipating china”, 8/31/09, http://archiveworld-nour-obscur.blogspot.com/2006/08/far-east-2020-vision-in-anticipating.html)
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union 15 years ago, there has been only one megapower — the United States. For the first 10
years, the dominance of the US was seen as a great opportunity to rebuild the global institutional architecture in favour of a more
democratic, rational and equitable system.
The United Nations, partially crippled during the Cold War by superpower rivalry, acquired a new lease of life and UN
peacekeeping operations multiplied.
In the past five years, however, US hegemony has been viewed much less favourably with opinion polls across the world recording
unprecedented levels of distrust of the US Governments throughout the world.
The US is still the only megapower, but this could change in the next 15 years. While no country is close to present levels of US
defence spending, military prowess is only one aspect of megapower status.
Power in international affairs stems from economic strength, political influence, cultural attraction and the ability to use coercive
diplomacy. It is this combination that makes the US a megapower despite the fact that it is not supremely dominant in any of these
areas except the military.
Other countries might aspire to megapower status in the next 15 years, but only one — China — is likely to achieve it. Its annual
rate of economic growth is likely to be at least double that of the United States, while its population is five times the size.
This will make China not only the second-largest economy in the world by 2020, but also the main trading partner for a wide range
of countries. With economic power will come political influence, the growth of the Chinese language (now being promoted all
over the world by the Confucius Institutes) and a steady rise in military spending.
China already enjoys many of the trappings of a great power, thanks to its permanent seat on the UN Security Council and the
ability to exercise a veto.
The world in 2020 is therefore likely to be dominated by two megapowers and this will require a difficult process of adjustment by
all other states. Both countries are strong upholders of the principles of national sovereignty for themselves with a great reluctance
to commit to international laws or treaties that could compromise or restrict their ability to act as sovereign powers.
The US, believing itself to be a force for good in international affairs, is less respectful of the national sovereignty of other states
while China is a strong upholder of the principle of non-interference, fearing that anything else might set a precedent to be used
against it in the future. China,
However, as it gains in confidence, it may move closer to the US position by 2020.
Most countries will hope for good relations with China and the US and this may not be easy particularly [for Australia] in Asia and
the Pacific. Just as the US used its growing power a century ago to reduce the influence of the United Kingdom in the Caribbean
Basin and become the regional hegemon, so China will want to use its economic strength to reduce US influence in the regions of the world closest to its borders.
The Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, at China's prodding, has already called for an end to US bases in Central Asia. And
China will have accumulated a great deal of "soft" power by 2020, allowing it to strengthen commercial ties with "friendly"
countries.
China is not, and will not be, an easy country with which to collaborate. Its one-party system is likely still to be intact in 2020 with
nationalism having replaced communism as the prevailing ideology.
Some countries — notably Japan — have already made clear that an even closer alliance with the US is the best insurance policy
against the "peaceful rise" of China. This is understandable — if shortsighted.
China's relative importance to Japan and other Asia-Pacific countries will increase by 2020, while the relative economic
importance of the US is likely to diminish. Even Japan, therefore, can be expected to reach a new kind of accommodation with
China in the next decade.
For the US, China's emergence as a megapower is likely to be particularly traumatic. The US State Department has called for China to
become a "responsible stakeholder" in the international system, but the US has not set a good example and China is no
more likely than the US to commit to international treaties that restrict its freedom to manoeuvre.
Containment is no longer an option, while strategic rivalry is fraught with danger. The risk of the two megapowers, therefore, carving out spheres of influence — with China dominant in the Asia-Pacific region and the
US in the Americas and perhaps the Middle East — is very real.
This is an outcome that other countries — Australia included — will need to resist. For small and medium-size powers, the greatest protection of national security lies in multilateral institutions and the rule of law.
China does need to be encouraged to become a responsible stakeholder, but it is the pressure from other states in the international community — not from the US — that is more likely to make this happen. And China
must come to understand that good relations with its neighbours, including Australia, depend on this.
The year 2020 once seemed very far away, but no longer. Democracies, such as Australia, are often fixated on the short term for
understandable electoral reasons. However, the big challenges — climate change, the loss of biodiversity, the risk of pandemics,
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and energy security — all require long-term strategic thinking.
The emergence of China as a megapower in the next 15 years requires such strategic thought; it cannot be reduced simply to a
commercial opportunity.
If you smell a delicious, crispy smell after the race, it's not your tailpipe. It's just a little of Shake...and Bake!
6
Hegemony Updates
ENDI 4-Week
EMORY
MPH
Heg: Decline- Multipolarity on the Way
Multipolarity on the way
People’s Daily 09 (2/24/09, “The US hegemony ends, a world of multipolarity begins”,
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90002/96417/6599374.html,)
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently published two graphics which struck people as odd by the stark juxtaposition: In
2003, GDP in the U.S accounted for 32 percent of the world total, while GDP of the emerging economies put together took up only
25 percent. In 2008, however, things just reversed with 25 percent for the U.S. and 32 percent going to the emerging economies.
The two graphs show GDP as a percentage of total world output. However, what deserves notice is that the dramatic reversal could
take place in just five years, and how much more will it change in the next five or the next ten years?
It is evident that the upshot of the shifting economic power signals a swift reduction of U.S. strength as a unipolar power. 'At best,
America's unipolar moment lasted through the 1990s, but that was also a decade adrift…So now, rather than bestriding the globe,
we are competing—and losing—in a geopolitical marketplace alongside the world's other superpowers: the European Union and
China,' citing an article in Saturday's New York Times Magazine titled 'Waving Goodbye to Hegemony' by Parag Khanna.
In the post-Cold War period and with the decomposition of the former Soviet Union, the world scenario was generally subject to
the U.S influence. And especially in the 1990s, it seemed conceivable and probable that the international power structure would be
ended in the U.S. predominance in the political, economic and cultural systems, or simply and bluntly put, the U.S. would be 'King
of the hill.' It would be that case if the U.S. were not hit by the '9.11' terrorist attack.
The U.S. used to rally the international support by launching a severe clampdown upon terror and acting as the global rescuer to
keep the world free from the terrorist havoc. But quite soon, this noble campaign against terrorism, initiated by the U.S. NeoConservative elites, was interpreted by the international community as a camouflage used by the U.S. to hide its intention to regain
monopoly over the entire globe. In 2008, nevertheless, the U.S hegemony was pushed onto the brink of collapse, as a result of its
inherent structural contradictions, which proved well-rooted in the American society and far from conciliatory. A visible sign of
the U.S. strength decline turned out to be the decline of its monolithic economic clout over the globe.
The typically American liberal capitalist financial system, featuring the loopholes of effective monitoring and feeding greed and
exploitation, sparked a swirl of Domino Effects last year and quickly sent the whole economy into plunging. The worst ever
economic downturn since the Great Depression also helped the first African-American president Barack Obama take power in a
backdrop that Americans are so dearly longing for a radical change.
With the breakdown of the U.S.--dominated international power structure, the world attention would be focused on such an
unavoidable question: Does the decline of U.S. geopolitical hegemony make multilateral global governance more likely? Perhaps
it is still too early to rush any conclusion, but at least one thing is certain: the U.S. strength is declining at a speed so fantastic that
it is far beyond anticipation. The U.S. is no longer 'King of the hill,' as a new phase of multipolar world power structure will come
into being in 2009, and the international order will be correspondingly reshuffled. Albeit, for now, the new international power
structure is still indiscernible—
In the Middle East, peace talks between Palestine and Israel have yet to see any fruit, and maybe not in prospect; Iran is rising as a
regional power; Latin America is stepping up its efforts to break away from the U.S. orbit; the European Union cannot afford its
increasing expansion; Leading players on the European Continent such as Britain, Germany and France are battling their own
economic downtrend; and Russia also faces a tough job in reducing its heavy reliance on gas exports and building the modern
manufacturing industry of its own.
China has grown to be a new heavyweight player and stepped into the limelight on the world stage. And its role in salvaging the
plummeting world economy from hitting bottom looms large and active, as the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said during
her just wrapped-up Asian tour, 'the U.S. appreciates the continued Chinese confidence in the U.S treasuries.' If the Cold War was
'a tug of war' between East and West, and a showcase of hard power, what we have today, for the first time in history, is a global,
multicivilizational and multipolar competition, and a display of smart power. To be the winner, one has to seek more cooperation
rather than confrontation.
If you smell a delicious, crispy smell after the race, it's not your tailpipe. It's just a little of Shake...and Bake!
7
Hegemony Updates
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Heg: Collapse Imminent Due to Globalization
US Heg Collapse coming- globalization
Warwick and Pincus 08 Washington Post Staff Writers (Joby and Walter, “Reduced Dominance is Predicted for US”, 9/10/09,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/09/AR2008090903302.html)
An intelligence forecast being prepared for the next president on future global risks envisions a steady decline in U.S. dominance
in the coming decades, as the world is reshaped by globalization, battered by climate change, and destabilized by regional
upheavals over shortages of food, water and energy.
The report, previewed in a speech by Thomas Fingar, the U.S. intelligence community's top analyst, also concludes that the one
key area of continued U.S. superiority -- military power -- will "be the least significant" asset in the increasingly competitive world
of the future, because "nobody is going to attack us with massive conventional force."
Fingar's remarks last week were based on a partially completed "Global Trends 2025" report that assesses how international events
could affect the United States in the next 15 to 17 years. Speaking at a conference of intelligence professionals in Orlando, Fingar
gave an overview of key findings that he said will be presented to the next occupant of the White House early in the new year.
"The U.S. will remain the preeminent power, but that American dominance will be much diminished," Fingar said, according to a
transcript of the Thursday speech. He saw U.S. leadership eroding "at an accelerating pace" in "political, economic and arguably,
cultural arenas."
The 2025 report will lay out what Fingar called the "dynamics, the dimensions, the drivers" that will shape the world for the next
administration and beyond. In advance of its completion, intelligence officials have begun briefing the major presidential
candidates on the security threats that they would be likely to face in office. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) received an initial briefing
Sept. 2, with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) expected to receive one in the coming days, intelligence officials said.
As described by Fingar, the intelligence community's long-term outlook has darkened somewhat since the last report in 2004,
which also focused on the impact of globalization but was more upbeat about its consequences for the United States. The new view
is in line with that of prominent economists and other global thinkers who have argued that America's influence is shrinking as
economic powerhouses such as China assert themselves on the global stage. The trend is described in the new book "The PostAmerican World," in which author Fareed Zakaria writes that the shift is not about the "decline of America, but rather about the
rise of everyone else."
In the new intelligence forecast, it is not just the United States that loses clout. Fingar predicts plummeting influence for the United
Nations, the World Bank and a host of other international organizations that have helped maintain political and economic stability
since World War II. It is unclear what new institutions can fill the void, he said.
In the years ahead, Washington will no longer be in a position to dictate what new global structures will look like. Nor will any
other country, Fingar said. "There is no nobody in a position . . . to take the lead and institute the changes that almost certainly
must be made in the international system," he said.
The predicted shift toward a less U.S.-centric world will come at a time when the planet is facing a growing environmental crisis,
caused largely by climate change, Fingar said. By 2025, droughts, food shortages and scarcity of fresh water will plague large
swaths of the globe, from northern China to the Horn of Africa.
For poorer countries, climate change "could be the straw that breaks the camel's back," Fingar said, while the United States will face "Dust Bowl" conditions in the parched Southwest. He said U.S. intelligence agencies
accepted the consensual scientific view of global warming, including the conclusion that it is too late to avert significant disruption over the next two decades. The conclusions are in line with an intelligence assessment
produced this summer that characterized global warming as a serious security threat for the coming decades.
Floods and droughts will trigger mass migrations and political upheaval in many parts of the developing world. But among industrialized states, declining birthrates will create new economic stresses as populations
become grayer. In China, Japan and Europe, the ratio of working adults to seniors "begins to approach one to three," he said.
The United States will fare better than many other industrial powers, in part because it is relatively more open to immigration. Newcomers will inject into the U.S. economy a vitality that will be absent in much of
Europe and Japan -- countries that are "on a good day, highly chauvinistic," he said.
"We are just about alone in terms of the highly developed countries that will continue to have demographic growth sufficient to ensure continued economic growth," Fingar said.
Energy security will also become a major issue as India, China and other countries join the United States in seeking oil, gas and other sources for electricity. The Chinese get a good portion of their oil from Iran, as do
many U.S. allies in Europe, limiting U.S. options on Iran. "So the turn-the-spigot-off kind of thing -- even if we could do it -- would be counterproductive."
Nearly absent from Fingar's survey was the topic of terrorism. Since the last such report, the intelligence community has projected a declining role for al-Qaeda, which was deemed likely to become "increasingly
decentralized, evolving into an eclectic array of groups, cells, and individuals." Inspired by al-Qaeda, "regionally based groups, and individuals labeled simply as jihadists -- united by a common hatred of moderate
regimes and the West -- are likely to conduct terrorist attacks," the 2004 document said.
The new assessment saw a continued threat from Iran, however. Fingar predicted steady progress in the Islamic republic's attempts to create enriched uranium, the essential fuel used in nuclear weapons and commercial
power reactors. For now, however, there is no evidence that Iran has resumed work on building a weapon, Fingar said, echoing last year's landmark National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which concluded that warheaddesign work had halted in 2003.
He said Iran's ultimate decision on whether to build nuclear weapons depended on how its leaders viewed their "security requirement" -- whether they thought their government sufficiently safe in a region surrounded
by traditional enemies.
Iranians are "more scared of their neighbors than many think they ought to be," Fingar said. But he noted that the United States had eliminated two of Iran's biggest enemies: Iraq's Saddam Hussein and the Taliban
regime in Afghanistan.
"The United States took care of Iran's principal security threats," he said, "except for us, which the Iranians consider a mortal threat."
If you smell a delicious, crispy smell after the race, it's not your tailpipe. It's just a little of Shake...and Bake!
8
Hegemony Updates
ENDI 4-Week
EMORY
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Heg: Will be Inneffective in the Future
Global hegemon likely to become permanently vacant
Weissburg 08 Aspen Institute (Josh, “Global hegemon watch: permanent vacancy likely”, 9/10/09, http://www.giiexchange.org/blog/2008/09/global_hegemon_watch_permanent.html)
Americans are used to thinking of their country as the teacher in a global classroom of sorts, keeping order and trying to help a lot
of unruly countries learn how to make something of themselves. By many measures, this is a pretty accurate analogy for the
United States' dominant role in world events post-World War II. Not that Americans are pleased with every aspect of this picture;
mixing metaphors somewhat, most wish the U.S. "would spent less time and money playing world policeman." (See the the
Stanley Foundation's US in the World-inspired report, Talking About the Connection Between U.S. and Global Security, which is
based on polling data to this effect).
Americans are used to arguments about teaching style, so to speak--are we cooperative, responsible and principled or heavy-handed and selfish?--that sort of thing. But that conversation doesn't challenge the "teacher in
the global classroom" frame. This is a simplistic frame, and I think most Americans would recognize that at some level we actually "need" other countries--but how and for what remains murky. How to reconcile the
"teacher in the classroom" idea--confirmed over and over again by foreign news coverage of chaotic places in which the U.S. tries to sort out the troublemakers and keep things on track--with the idea that the U.S. is
somehow dependent on other countries for its economic prosperity and security?
It can be difficult to reconcile global interconnectedness with the "teacher in the classroom"; sometimes I find myself thinking skeptically about aspects of U.S. engagement abroad: How much good can we do in
countries that need to be stabilized and rebuilt? Would we be better served concentrating on our problems at home? It's easy for people who work day in and day out on foreign policy and global issues to talk about the
?
This week The Washington Post reported that the top U.S. intelligence analyst, Thomas Fingar, is now documenting the end U.S.
dominance. It's not that the United States is becoming a weak nation; it's just that so many other countries are on the rise. Going
back to the schoolteacher analogy, our students are growing up, and the old classroom rules don't apply.
In the new intelligence forecast, it is not just the United States that loses clout. Fingar predicts plummeting influence for the
United Nations, the World Bank and a host of other international organizations that have helped maintain political and economic
stability since World War II. It is unclear what new institutions can fill the void, he said.
In the years ahead, Washington will no longer be in a position to dictate what new global structures will look like. Nor will any
other country, Fingar said. "There is no nobody in a position . . . to take the lead and institute the changes that almost certainly
must be made in the international system," he said.
Since its inception, the Global Interdependence Initiative has been helping advocates make the case that "the U.S. cannot go it
alone." Because of globalization, for better and for ill, what happens abroad comes back to affect Americans, and vice versa. This
has broad implications for the way that the United States pursues its own security (cooperation and partnerships take on new value)
and economic future (immigration, visas and education become pretty important economic issues, not just social ones).
But the intelligence community's findings are giving the United States new incentives--beyond cuddly arguments for American
altruism--to be genuinely constructive (or, to borrow a business term, to "add value") when we engage other countries. It's not a
classroom out there anymore; it's more like a global bazaar--let's hope we're offering something the rest of the world will buy.
importance of U.S. engagement abroad, but what about legislators who must make financial tradeoffs
If you smell a delicious, crispy smell after the race, it's not your tailpipe. It's just a little of Shake...and Bake!
9
Hegemony Updates
ENDI 4-Week
EMORY
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Heg: Collapse Coming
Heg collapse coming imminently
Global Times 08 (9/12/08, “Coming Collapse of Hegemonic World”, http://china.org.cn/international/opinion/2008-09/12/content_16440328.htm, )
With the clout of China and India rising on the international arena, some people in the West, who are concerned over the already
fragile, US-dominated unipolar world political structure or the Western hegemony, have rushed to offer a variety of recipes for
inter-power relations in the 21st century and for the world's new power structure.
These recipes include multi-polar, non-polar or collective power models, a "democracy value alliance", a new trans-Atlantic union,
and even a joint China-US governance idea.
All these concepts are in essence changed versions of the new US or Western hegemonic model that proposes maintaining the
world's established power structure through absorbing some emerging powers. The model also proposes carrying out reforms of
the new power structure. In all this the idea is to keep the US and Western hegemonic position intact as much as possible. The new
situation emerging from the very beginning of the 21st century indicates that neither the US nor the Western hegemony will last
for ever, and there will not be a transfer of the old hegemony to a new one. In the 21st century, the world will see the end of not
only the US-dominated hegemony, but also of the hegemonic model that allows a few world powers to control global affairs.
The decease of the US and Western hegemony will not be caused by the challenge from such rising powers as China or other
countries. It will be caused by the world's irreversible efforts for a hegemony-free political structure. As the result of this situation,
we can expect a hegemony-free and harmonious world in the 21st century in which big countries will fulfill their responsibilities
and obligations and small ones can enjoy equality, democracy and assistance from each other.
In the 21st century, the United States, the protagonist of the current unipolar world, will gradually evolve into a common power
because of accelerated efforts of many countries which will advocate an end to the unipolar power pattern. Since the US invasion
of Iraq in 2003, a "balance of power" has come into being among the major countries. Despite its sole superpower status, the
United States cannot always succeed in solving some global issues. It is even incapable of handling some domestic issues such as
the subprime crisis. All these transmit to the world a strong signal that the US hegemony and Western dominance are now in an
irreversible process of decline and final disappearance.
In dealing with some global issues, today's United States not only needs substantial support from staunch allies, but also needs understanding, participation and cooperation from other key world or regional players.
Sometimes, it even has to give up its leading role to other big powers in finding settlements of some intractable issues.
With the spirit of peace and democracy exercising strong restraint within their boundaries, European countries have lost the basic driving force for hegemonic wars against other countries. On the other hand, economic
globalization and marketization of the world since the end of the Cold War have activated the urge for peace and development among a number of developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Especially the
peaceful rise of some powers, such as China, India, Russia, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, has prompted some Western countries to join the resistance to hegemonism.
Some new-generation European leaders, though, still want to maintain the Western hegemony with the US at its core. They want to do so by advocating the "values diplomacy" and setting up the so-called democracy
and values alliance or by forming a new trans-Atlantic union. But all these wishes will be difficult to fulfill.
The emergence of some peace-promoting powers will be an irresistible historical tide in the 21st century. Their rise will lay solid groundwork for the final end of the long-standing hegemonism in world politics.
New Delhi has generally chosen a path of peaceful development in South Asia despite its position of supremacy in the sub-continent. China has been even more committed to a peaceful development and always
condemns any use of force in solving international disputes.
The strong efforts and calls for a hegemony-free world from these new emerging powers and the massive populations of Asian, African and Latin American countries have exerted a huge pressure on hegemonic
countries, prompting them to deal with others on an equal footing.
The change of the world's hegemonic pattern pushed by newly emerging powers serves the basic interest of the whole world,
including the West. It will also act as the main impulse to build a conflict-free and harmonious world in the new century.
The authors are with the School of International Studies of Renmin University of China. The article is reprinted from Global
Times.
If you smell a delicious, crispy smell after the race, it's not your tailpipe. It's just a little of Shake...and Bake!
10
Hegemony Updates
ENDI 4-Week
EMORY
MPH
Heg: Decline- Generic (1/2)
Heg collapse imminent
Rodgers 09 senior international correspondent for CNN (Walter, “America: a superpower no more”, 4/8/09,
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0408/p09s01-coop.html)
Two American icons, General Electric and Berkshire Hathaway, lost their triple-A credit ratings. Then China, America's largest
creditor, called for a new global currency to replace the dollar just weeks after it demanded Washington guarantee the safety of
Beijing's nearly $1 trillion debt holdings. And that was just in March.
These events are the latest warnings that our world is changing far more rapidly and profoundly than we – or our politicians – will
admit. America's own triple-A rating, its superpower status, is being downgraded as rapidly as its economy.
President Obama's recent acknowledgement that the US is not winning in Afghanistan is but the most obvious recognition of this
jarring new reality. What was the president telling Americans? As Milton Bearden, a former top CIA analyst on Afghanistan,
recently put it, "If you aren't winning, you're losing."
The global landscape is littered with evidence that America's superpower status is fraying.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan – arguably the world's most dangerous country – is falling apart, despite billions in US aid and support.
In Iraq, despite efforts in Washington to make "the surge" appear to be a stunning US victory, analysts most familiar with the region have already declared Iran the strategic winner of the Bush administration's war
against Saddam Hussein. The Iraq war has greatly empowered Iran, nurturing a new regional superpower that now seems likely to be the major architect of the new Iraq.
Sadly, what was forgotten amid the Bush-era hubris was that America's edge always has been as much moral and economic as military. Officially sanctioned torture, the Abu Ghraib scandal, US invasion of a sovereign
country without provocation, along with foolishly allowing radical Islamists to successfully portray the US as the enemy of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims, shattered whatever moral edge America enjoyed before 2003.
Washington's uncritical support of Israel at the expense of Palestinians is perceived by much of the world as egregiously hypocritical. Consequently, America's collision course with Islam may be irreversible. Muslims
believe Islam never lost the moral high ground – and they won't readily relinquish it for Western secularism.
Even politically conservative journals such as The National Interest recognize something has gone wrong. In a recent issue, Robert Pape opined: "The self-inflicted wounds of the Iraq war, growing government debt,
.… If present trends continue, we will look back
at the Bush administration's years as the death knell of American hegemony."
Now, as a massive retrenchment of the US economy is under way, it is time to shake the mental shackles of the superpower legacy
and embrace a more peripheralist agenda. That need not mean isolationism or retreat. It would still require maintaining substantial
armed forces with a qualitative edge, but using them only when there is an affordable and persuasive American national interest.
Iraq never fitted that description.
increasingly negative current-accounts balance, and other economic weaknesses have cost the United States real power in today's world
The price tag for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wars is in the trillions. Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese military commentator, prophetically observed 2,500 years ago, "[W]hen the army marches abroad, the treasury will
be emptied at home."
It remains a lingering American myth that US troops and warships can go anywhere and pay any price. Not so. The modern Chinese have discovered a better way. The Washington Post reports that the Chinese went on
a shopping spree recently, taking advantage of fire-sale prices to lock up global supplies of oil, minerals, and other strategic resources for their economy. That amounts to a major economic conquest – without using a
single soldier. By contrast, American efforts to secure oil have looked clumsy.
Iran also is achieving serious regional hegemony, without armadas, using proxy guerrilla armies to dominate its near neighbors. Its rebuffs to President Obama's recent outreach speaks to Tehran's growing confidence in
its ability to manipulate its home-field advantage – stage-managing events from Afghanistan to Lebanon, all the while thumbing its nose at both the American and Israeli "superpowers."
Last August's Russian invasion of Georgia was a painful reminder that Russia has what its leadership calls "privileged interests" on its periphery. Yesterday's superpowers have been replaced by regional hegemons, as
the globe is being carved up into more-defensible spheres of interest.
Americans need to acknowledge that war, like politics, is the art of the possible, and both have their limits. The Bush administration was unable to deliver its promised democratic remake of the Muslim Middle East.
Thus, another unpleasant truth: The Western democratic model has no appeal to much of the Arab world. Nor is democracy an
attractive model for huge swaths of the rest of the world, such as Russia and China.
It's time to lower our geopolitical sights and end America's unrealistic crusade. We shouldn't expect "them" to want to be like "us."
It took years for the US to recover its moral authority after Vietnam. It will be an even harder comeback this time.
If you smell a delicious, crispy smell after the race, it's not your tailpipe. It's just a little of Shake...and Bake!
11
Hegemony Updates
ENDI 4-Week
EMORY
MPH
Heg: Decline- Generic (2/2)
US Heg on the downward spiral
Khanna 08 Director of the Global Governance Initiative and Senior Research Fellow in the American Strategy Program at the New
America Foundation. (Parang, “Waving Goodbye to Hegemony”, 1/27/08, New York Times Magazine
http://www.paragkhanna.com/2008/01/waving_goodbye_to_hegemony.html)
? Indeed, improvements to
America's image may or may not occur, but either way, they mean little. Condoleezza Rice has said America has no "permanent enemies," but it has no permanent friends
either. Many saw the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as the symbols of a global American imperialism; in fact, they were signs of
imperial overstretch. Every expenditure has weakened America's armed forces, and each assertion of power has awakened
resistance in the form of terrorist networks, insurgent groups and "asymmetric" weapons like suicide bombers. America's unipolar
moment has inspired diplomatic and financial countermovements to block American bullying and construct an alternate world
order. That new global order has arrived, and there is precious little Clinton or McCain or Obama could do to resist its growth.
Why? Weren't we supposed to reconnect with the United Nations and reaffirm to the world that America can, and should, lead it to collective security and prosperity
The Geopolitical Marketplace
At best, America's unipolar moment lasted through the 1990s, but that was also a decade adrift. The post-cold-war "peace dividend" was never converted into a global liberal order under American leadership. So now,
rather than bestriding the globe, we are competing -- and losing -- in a geopolitical marketplace alongside the world's other
superpowers: the European Union and China. This is geopolitics in the 21st century: the new Big Three. Not Russia, an increasingly depopulated
expanse run by Gazprom.gov; not an incoherent Islam embroiled in internal wars; and not India, lagging decades behind China in both development and strategic appetite. The Big Three make the rules -- their own
rules -- without any one of them dominating. And the others are left to choose their suitors in this post-American world. Robert Kagan famously said that America hails from Mars and Europe from Venus, but in
reality, Europe is more like Mercury -- carrying a big wallet. The E.U.'s market is the world's largest, European technologies more and more set the global standard and European countries give the most development
assistance. And if America and China fight, the world's money will be safely invested in European banks. Many Americans
scoffed at the introduction of the euro, claiming it was an overreach that would bring the collapse of the European project. Yet
today, Persian Gulf oil exporters are diversifying their currency holdings into euros, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran
has proposed that OPEC no longer price its oil in "worthless" dollars. President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela went on to suggest
euros. It doesn't help that Congress revealed its true protectionist colors by essentially blocking the Dubai ports deal in 2006. With
London taking over (again) as the world's financial capital for stock listing, it's no surprise that China's new state investment fund
intends to locate its main Western offices there instead of New York. Meanwhile, America's share of global exchange reserves has
dropped to 65 percent. Gisele Bündchen demands to be paid in euros, while Jay-Z drowns in 500 euro notes in a recent video.
American soft power seems on the wane even at home.
The key second-world countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, South America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia are more
than just "emerging markets." If you include China, they hold a majority of the world's foreign-exchange reserves and savings, and
their spending power is making them the global economy's most important new consumer markets and thus engines of global
growth -- not replacing the United States but not dependent on it either. I.P.O.'s from the so-called BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) alone accounted for 39 percent of the volume raised globally in
2007, just one indicator of second-world countries' rising importance in corporate finance -- even after you subtract China. When Tata of India is vying to buy Jaguar, you know the landscape of power has changed.
Second-world countries are also fast becoming hubs for oil and timber, manufacturing and services, airlines and infrastructure -- all this in a geopolitical marketplace that puts their loyalty up for grabs to any of the Big
Three, and increasingly to all of them at the same time. Second-world states won't be subdued: in the age of network power, they won't settle for being mere export markets. Rather, they are the places where the Big
Three must invest heavily and to which they must relocate productive assets to maintain influence.
The Non-American World
Karl Marx and Max Weber both chastised Far Eastern cultures for being despotic, agrarian and feudal, lacking the ingredients for organizational success. Oswald Spengler saw it differently, arguing that mankind both
lives and thinks in unique cultural systems, with Western ideals neither transferable nor relevant. Today the Asian landscape still features ancient civilizations but also by far the most people and, by certain measures,
the most money of any region in the world. With or without America, Asia is shaping the world's destiny -- and exposing the flaws of the grand narrative of Western civilization in the process.
The rise of China in the East and of the European Union within the West has fundamentally altered a globe that recently appeared
to have only an American gravity -- pro or anti. As Europe's and China's spirits rise with every move into new domains of
influence, America's spirit is weakened. The E.U. may uphold the principles of the United Nations that America once dominated, but how much longer will it do so as its own social standards
rise far above this lowest common denominator? And why should China or other Asian countries become "responsible stakeholders," in former Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick's words, in an American-led
international order when they had no seat at the table when the rules were drafted? Even as America stumbles back toward mult ilateralism, others are walking away from the American game and playing by their own
rules.
The self-deluding universalism of the American imperium -- that the world inherently needs a single leader and that American liberal ideology must be accepted as the basis of global order -- has paradoxically resulted
in America quickly becoming an ever-lonelier superpower. Just as there is a geopolitical marketplace, there is a marketplace of models of success for the second world to emulate, not least the Chinese model of
economic growth without political liberalization (itself an affront to Western modernization theory). As the historian Arnold Toynbee observed half a century ago, Western imperialism united the globe, but it did not
assure that the West would dominate forever -- materially or morally. Despite the "mirage of immortality" that afflicts global empires, the only reliable rule of history is its cycles of imperial rise and decline, and as
Toynbee also pithily noted, the only direction to go from the apogee of power is down.
The web of globalization now has three spiders. What makes America unique in this seemingly value-free contest is not its liberal democratic ideals -- which Europe may now represent better than America does -- but
rather its geography. America is isolated, while Europe and China occupy two ends of the great Eurasian landmass that is the perennial center of gravity of geopolitics. When America dominated NATO and led a rigid
Pacific alliance system with Japan, South Korea, Australia and Thailand, it successfully managed the Herculean task of running the world from one side of it. Now its very presence in Eurasia is tenuous; it has been
shunned by the E.U. and Turkey, is unwelcome in much of the Middle East and has lost much of East Asia's confidence. "Accidental empire" or not, America must quickly accept and adjust to this reality. Maintaining
America's empire can only get costlier in both blood and treasure. It isn't worth it, and history promises the effort will fail. It already has.
Would the world not be more stable if America could be reaccepted as its organizing principle and leader? It's very much too late
to be asking, because the answer is unfolding before our eyes. Neither China nor the E.U. will replace the U.S. as the world's sole
leader; rather all three will constantly struggle to gain influence on their own and balance one another. Europe will promote its
supranational integration model as a path to resolving Mideast disputes and organizing Africa, while China will push a Beijing
consensus based on respect for sovereignty and mutual economic benefit. America must make itself irresistible to stay in the game.
I believe that a complex, multicultural landscape filled with transnational challenges from terrorism to global warming is completely unmanageable by a single authority, whether the United States or the United
Nations. Globalization resists centralization of almost any kind. Instead, what we see gradually happening in climate-change negotiations (as in Bali in December) -- and need to see more of in the areas of preventing
nuclear proliferation and rebuilding failed states -- is a far greater sense of a division of labor among the Big Three, a concrete burden-sharing among them by which they are judged not by their rhetoric but the
responsibilities they fulfill. The arbitrarily composed Security Council is not the place to hash out such a division of labor. Neither are any of the other multilateral bodies bogged down with weighted voting and
cacophonously irrelevant voices. The big issues are for the Big Three to sort out among themselves.
If you smell a delicious, crispy smell after the race, it's not your tailpipe. It's just a little of Shake...and Bake!
12
Hegemony Updates
ENDI 4-Week
EMORY
MPH
Heg: Multipolarity
US Heg will give way to multipolarity
People’s Daily 09 (2/24/09, “The US hegemony ends, a world of multipolarity begins”,
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90002/96417/6599374.html,)
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently published two graphics which struck people as odd by the stark juxtaposition: In
2003, GDP in the U.S accounted for 32 percent of the world total, while GDP of the emerging economies put together took up only
25 percent. In 2008, however, things just reversed with 25 percent for the U.S. and 32 percent going to the emerging economies.
The two graphs show GDP as a percentage of total world output. However, what deserves notice is that the dramatic reversal could
take place in just five years, and how much more will it change in the next five or the next ten years?
It is evident that the upshot of the shifting economic power signals a swift reduction of U.S. strength as a unipolar power. 'At best,
America's unipolar moment lasted through the 1990s, but that was also a decade adrift…So now, rather than bestriding the globe,
we are competing—and losing—in a geopolitical marketplace alongside the world's other superpowers: the European Union and
China,' citing an article in Saturday's New York Times Magazine titled 'Waving Goodbye to Hegemony' by Parag Khanna.
In the post-Cold War period and with the decomposition of the former Soviet Union, the world scenario was generally subject to
the U.S influence. And especially in the 1990s, it seemed conceivable and probable that the international power structure would be
ended in the U.S. predominance in the political, economic and cultural systems, or simply and bluntly put, the U.S. would be 'King
of the hill.' It would be that case if the U.S. were not hit by the '9.11' terrorist attack.
The U.S. used to rally the international support by launching a severe clampdown upon terror and acting as the global rescuer to
keep the world free from the terrorist havoc. But quite soon, this noble campaign against terrorism, initiated by the U.S. NeoConservative elites, was interpreted by the international community as a camouflage used by the U.S. to hide its intention to regain
monopoly over the entire globe. In 2008, nevertheless, the U.S hegemony was pushed onto the brink of collapse, as a result of its
inherent structural contradictions, which proved well-rooted in the American society and far from conciliatory. A visible sign of
the U.S. strength decline turned out to be the decline of its monolithic economic clout over the globe.
The typically American liberal capitalist financial system, featuring the loopholes of effective monitoring and feeding greed and
exploitation, sparked a swirl of Domino Effects last year and quickly sent the whole economy into plunging. The worst ever
economic downturn since the Great Depression also helped the first African-American president Barack Obama take power in a
backdrop that Americans are so dearly longing for a radical change.
With the breakdown of the U.S.--dominated international power structure, the world attention would be focused on such an
unavoidable question: Does the decline of U.S. geopolitical hegemony make multilateral global governance more likely? Perhaps
it is still too early to rush any conclusion, but at least one thing is certain: the U.S. strength is declining at a speed so fantastic that
it is far beyond anticipation. The U.S. is no longer 'King of the hill,' as a new phase of multipolar world power structure will come
into being in 2009, and the international order will be correspondingly reshuffled. Albeit, for now, the new international power
structure is still indiscernible—
In the Middle East, peace talks between Palestine and Israel have yet to see any fruit, and maybe not in prospect; Iran is rising as a
regional power; Latin America is stepping up its efforts to break away from the U.S. orbit; the European Union cannot afford its
increasing expansion; Leading players on the European Continent such as Britain, Germany and France are battling their own
economic downtrend; and Russia also faces a tough job in reducing its heavy reliance on gas exports and building the modern
manufacturing industry of its own.
China has grown to be a new heavyweight player and stepped into the limelight on the world stage. And its role in salvaging the
plummeting world economy from hitting bottom looms large and active, as the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said during
her just wrapped-up Asian tour, 'the U.S. appreciates the continued Chinese confidence in the U.S treasuries.' If the Cold War was
'a tug of war' between East and West, and a showcase of hard power, what we have today, for the first time in history, is a global,
multicivilizational and multipolar competition, and a display of smart power. To be the winner, one has to seek more cooperation
rather than confrontation.
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Heg: Unsustainable/Counterbalancing
US heg on decline- counterbalancing now
Layne 06 Associate Professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A & M University. (Christopher, “The
Unipolar Illusion Revisited”, 2006, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v031/31.2layne.html)
The United States' hegemonic grand strategy has been challenged by Waltzian balance of power realists who believe that the days
of U.S. primacy are numbered and that other states have good reason to fear unbalanced U.S. power. 2 More recently, other
scholars have argued that, albeit in nontraditional [End Page 7]forms, counterbalancing against the United States already is
occurring. While many of these scholars favor primacy, they acknowledge that unless the United States wields its
preponderant power with restraint, it could fall victim to a counterhegemonic backlash.
Heg can’t be kept up- Iraq, overstretch, diminishing quality of troops, and small ground forces
Posen 07 International Professor of Political Science at MIT (Barry, “The Case for Restraint”, Nov-Dec 07, American Interest, http://www.theamerican-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=331)
These enormous strengths masked certain weaknesses, however. U.S. active ground forces have been relatively small since
conscription was abandoned at the end of the Vietnam War. The all-volunteer ground forces of the United States shrunk quickly
from their end-of-Cold War peak of nearly a million, reaching 470,000 in the Army and a bit under 170,000 in the Marines in
2001. By comparison, the United States had 440,000 soldiers and marines in Vietnam in 1969, out of a total personnel strength of
nearly two million.
Even with the 92,000-soldier increase now pledged by Republicans and Democrats alike, U.S. ground forces will remain small. It
is difficult to maintain more than a third of a professional ground force in combat at any one time without suffering acute retention,
recruitment and training problems. The United States now has roughly half of its forces deployed, and this is widely understood to
be unsustainable. The demands of the Iraq war have essentially swallowed the Army and Marines over the past five years,
and other possible U.S. adversaries dwarf Iraq in population—Iran is nearly three times as populous, Pakistan nearly six
times.
The U.S. national security establishment, to include the intelligence agencies and the State Department, also remains short of
individuals who understand other countries and their cultures. It lacks sufficient numbers of analysts, diplomats, advisors and
intelligence agents for the array of global engagement opportunities it has taken up. It also seems to lack the domestic political
capacity to generate sufficient non-military material resources to support its foreign policy. Whether foreign economic assistance
is money well spent or not, the United States has a difficult time generating these funds. In a more general sense, the American
public has been trained by its politicians to be chary of taxes. So the U.S. government has financed much of its security effort since
September 11, 2001 with borrowed money. Even obvious security-related taxes, such as a tax on gasoline to discourage
consumption and thus help wean the United States off imported oil, find no political sponsors.
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Heg: Obama Can’t Solve
Obama can’t solve heg
Hadar 09 research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute (Leon, “The US is no longer a Global Hegemon”, 2/3/09,
http://globalparadigms.blogspot.com/2009/02/us-is-no-longer-global-hegemon.html)
Changes in the status and power of nations, just like changes in economic conditions, are not always immediately apparent. There
is, in the jargon of economics, a recognition lag between the time when an economic shock, such as a sudden boom or bust, occurs
and the time when it is recognized by economists, central bankers and the government.
Recognition lag explains why, for example, economists have only recently acknowledged the current economic recession - several
months after it began. And recognition lag might well be why officials and pundits are now failing to recognize the detrimental
impact of the combination of the Iraq war and the financial crisis on America's standing in the international system.
Some attribute Washington's current difficulties in dictating global developments to the Bush administration's mismanagement of
US diplomacy and national security policy. The conventional wisdom is that a more visionary and competent Obama
administration will be able to reassert America's global leadership role - especially in the Middle East.
According to that logic, a charismatic and cosmopolitan President Barack Obama, by re-energizing the United States' diplomatic
influence and emphasizing Washington's commitment to play the role of an honest broker, will revive the dormant IsraeliPalestinian peace process, overcome the many obstacles to a political settlement, and help bring peace to the Holy Land. (Some
pundits seem to assume a similar peacemaking model can be implemented in other troubled regions as well, such as South Asia
and the Caucasus.) All that is lacking, supposedly, is enlightened leadership and American willpower.
Such assumptions about US omnipotence are woefully out of touch with reality. The mess the Bush administration made in the
Middle East, where US military power was overstretched to the maximum, coupled with the dramatic loss of American financial
resources, has produced a long-term transformation in the balance of power in the region and worldwide. The confluence of these
negative factors has significantly eroded Washington's diplomatic and political clout. The increasing wariness of the American
public regarding new US military interventions, as a consequence of the Iraq war, will reinforce this trend.
This is not the first time there has been a lag between when an international crisis, such as a military conflict or a loss of
geostrategic standing, takes place and the time when officials, pundits and the public recognize its effect on the global balance of
power. In the aftermath of World War II, which devastated the military and economic power of Britain and France, the two leading
imperial powers, officials and journalists continued to refer to those two declining nation-states as Great Powers. It was not until
the late 1950s that the diminished status of Great Britain and France was widely recognized and the adjective "great" was finally
dropped when the two countries were mentioned.
That the US has already been losing some of its leverage has been demonstrated by Washington's failure to contain the rising
power of Iran and Tehran's growing influence through surrogates in Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories. Notwithstanding
strong opposition from Washington, Israel decided to open negotiations with Syria, while Hizbullah was once again invited to join
the government in Lebanon.
While the US does not now occupy the same kind of drastically weakened geopolitical position that Britain and France did after
World War II, we must recognize that it is no longer a global hegemon, as it was during the first decade or so after the end of the
Cold War. Even the most visionary and competent US president will be that much more constrained in his ability to "do
something" when an international crisis takes place.
In 2000, the United States was at the apex of international power in a unipolar world, and the Israelis and the Palestinians were led
by strong and more moderate leaderships than today. Even at that time, Washington could not significantly advance an IsraeliPalestinian peace process. There is little reason to expect that Obama will be an exception, and an effective Holy Land
peacemaker, in 2009. With an overstretched military and an economy in recession, the incoming president, like others in
Washington, will be forced to recognize that reality sooner or later.
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Heg Turns: Terrorism
a. Heg Causes Terrorism
Layne 02 Associate Professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A & M University Unipolar Illusion
Revisited”, 2006, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v031/31.2layne.html)
The U.S. role in the Gulf has rendered it vulnerable to a hegemonic backlash on several levels. First, some important states in the
region (including Iran and Iraq) aligned against the United States because they resented its intrusion into regional affairs. Second,
in the Gulf and the Middle East, the self-perception among both elites and the general public that the region has long been a victim
of “Western imperialism” is widespread. In this vein, the United States is viewed as just the latest extraregional power whose
imperial aspirations weigh on the region, which brings a third factor into play. Because of its interest in oil, the United States is
supporting regimes—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Gulf emirates—whose domestic political legitimacy is contested. Whatever
strategic considerations dictate that Washington prop up these regimes, that it does so makes the United States a lightning rod for
those within these countries who are politically disaffected. Moreover, these regimes are not blind to the domestic challenges to
their grip on power. Because they are concerned about inflaming public opinion (the much talked about “street”), both their loyalty
and utility as U.S. allies are, to put it charitably, suspect. Finally, although U.S. hegemony is manifested primarily in its
overwhelming economic and military muscle, the cultural dimension to U.S. preeminence is also important. The events of
September 11 have brought into sharp focus the enormous cultural clash, which inescapably has overtones of a “clash of
civilizations,” between Islamic fundamentalism and U.S. liberal ideology.
The terrorism of Osama bin Laden results in part from this cultural chasm, as well as from more traditional geopolitical grievances.
In a real sense, bin Laden’s brand of terrorism—the most dramatic illustration of U.S. vulnerability to the kind of “asymmetric
warfare” of which some defense experts have warned—is the counterhegemonic balancing of the very weak. For all of these
reasons, the hegemonic role that the strategy of preponderance assigns to the United States as the Gulf’s stabilizer was bound to
provoke a multilayered backlash against U.S. predominance in the region. Indeed, as Richard K. Betts, an acknowledged expert on
strategy, presciently observed several years ago, “It is hardly likely that Middle Eastern radicals would be hatching schemes like
the destruction of the World Trade Center if the United States had not been identified so long as the mainstay of Israel, the shah of
Iran, and conservative Arab regimes and the source of a cultural assault on Islam.”15 (Betts was referring to the 1993 attack on the
World Trade Center.)
b. US retaliation to a terrorist attack causes global nuclear war.
Jerome Corsi, 2005. PhD in political science from Harvard. excerpt from Atomic Iran,
http://911review.org/Wget/worldnetdaily.com/NYC_hit_by_terrorist_nuke.html.
The combination of horror and outrage that will surge upon the nation will demand that the president retaliate for the
incomprehensible damage done by the attack. The problem will be that the president will not immediately know how to respond or
against whom. The perpetrators will have been incinerated by the explosion that destroyed New York City. Unlike 9-11, there will
have been no interval during the attack when those hijacked could make phone calls to loved ones telling them before they died that
the hijackers were radical Islamic extremists. There will be no such phone calls when the attack will not have been anticipated until
the instant the terrorists detonate their improvised nuclear device inside the truck parked on a curb at the Empire State Building. Nor
will there be any possibility of finding any clues, which either were vaporized instantly or are now lying physically inaccessible under
tons of radioactive rubble. Still, the president, members of Congress, the military, and the public at large will suspect another attack by
our known enemy – Islamic terrorists. The first impulse will be to launch a nuclear strike on Mecca, to destroy the whole religion of
Islam. Medina could possibly be added to the target list just to make the point with crystal clarity. Yet what would we gain? The
moment Mecca and Medina were wiped off the map, the Islamic world – more than 1 billion human beings in countless different
nations – would feel attacked. Nothing would emerge intact after a war between the United States and Islam. The apocalypse would
be upon us. Then, too, we would face an immediate threat from our long-term enemy, the former Soviet Union. Many in the Kremlin
would see this as an opportunity to grasp the victory that had been snatched from them by Ronald Reagan when the Berlin Wall came
down. A missile strike by the Russians on a score of American cities could possibly be pre-emptive. Would the U.S. strategic defense
system be so in shock that immediate retaliation would not be possible? Hardliners in Moscow might argue that there was never a
better opportunity to destroy America. In China, our newer Communist enemies might not care if we could retaliate. With a
population already over 1.3 billion people and with their population not concentrated in a few major cities, the Chinese might calculate
to initiate a nuclear blow on the United States. What if the United States retaliated with a nuclear counterattack upon China? The
Chinese might be able to absorb the blow and recover. The North Koreans might calculate even more recklessly. Why not launch upon
America the few missiles they have that could reach our soil? More confusion and chaos might only advance their position. If Russia,
China, and the United States could be drawn into attacking one another, North Korea might emerge stronger just because it was
overlooked while the great nations focus on attacking one another.
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Heg Turns: China Relations
a. Heg in Asia eradicates any U.S. China Relations
Brookings Institute 00 Foreign Policy Magazine’s #1 think tank (11/00, http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2000/09northeastasia_xinbo.aspx)
Three major factors have constantly troubled Sino-U.S. relations in the post-Cold War era: human rights, trade, and security. With the
de-linking of China's human rights record from its MFN treatment in 1994 and the closing of Beijing-Washington marathon negotiations on China's WTO membership in 1999, human rights and trade may subside as
major sources of tension on the bilateral agenda. Security issues, emerging in the mid-1990s, now appear to be the most important factor affecting bilateral relations.
Due primarily to differences in their worldviews, historical experiences and capabilities, China and the U.S. have diverging
conceptions of security, which in turn has led to their different security practices. Chinese and U.S. security interests in Asia both
converge and diverge, and as the U.S. begins to contemplate China as a latent adversary, such divergence will become even more
conspicuous. While both sides will continue to pursue their own security interests in Asia, each country also has to adapt itself to
the changing political, economic and security landscape in this region. To enable durable, peaceful coexistence, both sides will
have to make certain shifts in their current security policies.
To address these questions more directly, this paper first considers some of the U.S. misperceptions about China's policy objectives in the Asia-Pacific and certain important conceptual differences on security practices
between Beijing and Washington. Then, the study explores how China perceives the U.S. impact on its security interests. Finally, the paper concludes with a few policy recommendations as to how China and the United
States could manage the bilateral relationship more effectively.
Misperceptions and Conceptual Differences
One popular perception in the U.S. about China's long-term policy objectives in Asia is that Beijing aspires to be the regional
hegemon and would like to restore a Sino-centric order in this part of the world. This observation is wrong. First, Beijing believes
in the trend of multipolarization rather than unipolarization at both global and regional levels, and predicts that with continued
economic development and growing intra-regional political consultation in Asia, influence on regional affairs will be more
diversified and more evenly distributed. Secondly, even though China expects some relative increase in its influence in Asia, it
understands that because of the limits of its hard power and especially its soft power, China can never achieve a position
comparable to its role in the ancient past or to the U.S. role in the region at present.
Another misperception is that in the long run China will endeavor to drive the U.S. out of East Asia. Again this is not a correct assumption. From Beijing's perspective, the United States is an Asia-Pacific power,
although not an Asian power, and its political, economic and security interests in the region are deep-rooted, as are its commitments to regional stability and prosperity. In fact, Beijing has always welcomed a
however, Beijing also feels uneasy with certain aspects of U.S. policy. As a superpower, the
United States has been too dominant and intrusive in managing regional affairs. It fails to pay due respect to the voices of other
regional players, and sometimes gets too involved in the internal affairs of other states, lacking an understanding of their culture,
history and values. While there is no danger of the U.S. being driven out of East Asia, its current policy may result in the U.S.
wearing out its welcome in the region, thus undermining its contributions to stability and prosperity.
constructive U.S. role in regional affairs. At the same time
In the post-Cold War era, Washington has been advocating an Asia-Pacific security structure with the U.S. as the sole leader and
with U.S.-led bilateral alliances as the backbone. This is in essence hegemonic stability. Beijing believes, however, that regional
security rests on the cooperation of regional members and a blend of various useful approaches (unilateral, bilateral and
multilateral, institutional and non-institutional, track I and track II, etc.), not just on one single country and a set of bilateral
security alliances.
b. Relations key to global stability --- solves regional conflict, growth, terrorism and proliferation.
Aaron L. Friedberg, Fall 2005. Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. “The Future of U.S.-China Relations: Is Conflict Inevitable?”
International Security 30.2, Project Muse.
Recent events may prove to be little more than a passing chill. Whatever their ultimate significance, however, these developments
raise fundamental questions about the future direction and underlying determinants of U.S.-China relations. What is likely to be the
character of the relationship between the United States and the PRC over the next two or three decades? Will it be marked by
convergence toward deepening cooperation, stability, and peace or by deterioration, leading to increasingly open competition, and
perhaps even war? The answers to these questions are of enormous importance. If tensions between the two Pacific powers worsen,
the whole of Eastern Eurasia could become divided in a new cold war, and the prospects for confrontation and conflict would
seem certain to rise. On the other hand, a deepening U.S.-China entente could bring with it increased possibilities for sustained
worldwide economic growth, the peaceful resolution of outstanding regional disputes, and the successful management of pressing
global problems, including terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Whether for good or ill, the most
significant bilateral international relationship over the course of the next several decades is likely to be that between the United States
and the PRC.
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Heg Turns: Prolif
a. Heg Leads to Nuclear Proliferation
Walt 05 professor and academic dean at John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (Stephen, “The Global Response to
U.S. Primacy: Implications for Nonproliferation”, 3/4/05, http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.event_summary&event_id=110376)
Professor Walt discussed the main themes of his forthcoming book, Taming America: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy
(Norton, 2005). He focused, in particular, on how American global preeminence affects the proliferation choices of other
countries. Walt argued that the adverse perception of American power reflected in opinion polls (e.g., the Pew Global Attitudes
Project) stems from three sources: first, the sheer magnitude of American power relative to other states; second, opposition to
specific U.S. policies (such as the preventive war in Iraq), and third, Washington’s perceived double standard (e.g., tolerating
nuclear proliferation in Israel while opposing it in Iran).
Walt stated that states are either accommodating or resisting American power in this so-called era of unipolarity.
The strategies of accommodation include: (1) “bandwagoning,” or deflecting U.S. power through appeasement or acquiescence;
(2) enlisting the United States to address regional security problems (e.g., Qatar); and (3) “bonding” or aligning with the United
States to shape U.S. policy and gain concessions or prestige (e.g., British Prime Tony Blair’s approach toward both the Clinton and
Bush administrations).
The strategies of resistance include: (1) balancing (as pursued diplomatically by the French, German and Russian governments in
the United Nations during the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq War); (2) asymmetric responses – such as the pursuit of weapons of mass
destruction by “rogue states” in an effort to level the playing field with the United States; (3) “blackmail” (as North Korea is trying
to do with its nuclear weapons program); (4) “balking” – just saying no (e.g., Russia’s continuing nuclear relationship with Iran
despite U.S. objections); and (5) delegitimation – attempting to portray U.S. actions as self-interested and illegitimate.
Walt concluded that international concerns about U.S. power are undermining Washington’s nonproliferation efforts. He argued
that self-restraint was one mechanism to defuse this tension. In the current nuclear crises with North Korea and Iran there are
significant constraints on the use of force against suspect facilities. This may require a shift in U.S. strategy to de-emphasize the
option of military preemption and to offer security assurances to the countries of proliferation concern as an incentive for them to
forgo the nuclear option.
b. Proliferation leads to extinction.
Victor A Utgoff, Deputy Director of Strategy, Forces, and Resources Division of Institute for Defense Analysis, Summer 20 02,
Survival, p.87-90
In sum, widespread proliferation is likely to lead to an occasional shoot-out with nuclear weapons, and that such shoot outs will
have a substantial probability of escalating to the maximum destruction possible with the weapons at hand. Unless nuclear
proliferation is stopped, we are headed towards a world that will mirror the American Wild West of the late 1800s. With most, if
not all, nations wearing nuclear “six shooters” on their hips, the world may even be a more polite place than it is today, but every
once in a while we will all gather together on a hill to bury the bodies of dead cities or even whole nations.
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Heg Turns: Economic Collapse (1/2)
a. US Heg to blame for global economic downturn
Hindustan Times (“Iran Blames US Hegemony for Crisis”, 8/16/08,
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?sectionName=WorldSectionPage&id=a9643e9e-fe42-4d18-81b1e3acd45fc3a5&&Headline=Iran+blames+US+hegemony+for+financial+crisis+)
Iran blamed the United States on Thursday for triggering global financial meltdown, saying the "hegemonic" nature of the US
economy affected other economies. Speaking on the sidelines of a conference in Kazakhstan, Iranian Foreign Minister
Manouchehr Mottaki said it was time to set up a "fair international financial system" to curb the impact of the U.S. economy on
world finances.
"The economic crisis in America had an immediate impact on the economies of other countries," said Mottaki.
"We believe that this (crisis) was caused by moves to impose one hegemonic economy on all the other economies."
Iran is at loggerheads with the United States and other Western nations over its nuclear programme which Tehran says is for
peaceful purposes but which the West fears is aimed at developing atomic weapons.
OPEC-member Iran says it would survive the global crisis better than others because its economy had grown more independent
since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
But economists disagree, saying Iran cannot stay immune from a possible world economic downturn because of its reliance on oil
revenues to fund its budget.
"Unfortunately only one economy in the world continues to receive revenue even when other parts of the world are suffering from
the crisis," Mottaki said, referring to the United States.
"We believe the only way out of this is to set up a fair international financial system."
b. The lack of an economic stability risks global nuclear wars
Mead 09 - Senior Fellow in US Foreign Policy Studies @ Council on Foreign Relations
Walter Russell, Only Makes You Stronger, The New Republic, 2-4-09, http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=571cbbb9-2887-4d81-8542-92e83915f5f8&p=1
The greatest danger both to U.S.-China relations and to American power itself is probably not that China will rise too far, too fast; it is that the current crisis might end China's
growth miracle. In the worst-case scenario, the turmoil in the international economy will plunge China into a major economic
downturn. The Chinese financial system will implode as loans to both state and private enterprises go bad. Millions or even tens of millions of Chinese will be unemployed in a
country without an effective social safety net. The collapse of asset bubbles in the stock and property markets will wipe out the savings of a generation of the Chinese middle class. The political consequences could include dangerous unrest--and a bitter
climate of anti-foreign feeling that blames others for China's woes. (Think of Weimar Germany, when both Nazi and communist politicians blamed the West for Germany's economic travails.) Worse, instability could lead to a vicious cycle, as nervous investors
moved their money out of the country, further slowing growth and, in turn, fomenting ever-greater bitterness. Thanks to a generation of rapid economic growth, China has so far been able to manage the stresses and conflicts of modernization and change; nobody
knows what will happen if the growth stops.
India's future is also a question. Support for global integration is a fairly recent development in India, and many serious Indians remain skeptical of it. While India's 60-year-old democratic system
has resisted many shocks, a deep economic recession in a country where mass poverty and even hunger are still major concerns could undermine political order, long-term growth, and India's attitude toward the United
States and global economic integration. The violent Naxalite insurrection plaguing a significant swath of the country could get worse; religious extremism among both Hindus and Muslims could further polarize Indian
politics; and India's economic miracle could be nipped in the bud.
If current market turmoil seriously damaged the performance and prospects of India and China, the current crisis could join the
Great Depression in the list of economic events that changed history, even if the recessions in the West are relatively short and mild. The United States should stand ready to
assist Chinese and Indian financial authorities on an emergency basis--and work very hard to help both countries escape or at least weather any economic downturn. It may test the political will of the Obama
For
billions of people in nuclear-armed countries to emerge from this crisis believing either that the United States was indifferent to
their well-being or that it had profited from their distress could damage U.S. foreign policy far more severely than any mistake made by George W.
administration, but the United States must avoid a protectionist response to the economic slowdown. U.S. moves to limit market access for Chinese and Indian producers could poison relations for years.
Bush.
It's not just the great powers whose trajectories have been affected by the crash. Lesser powers like Saudi Arabia and Iran also face new constraints. The crisis has strengthened the U.S. position in the Middle East as
falling oil prices reduce Iranian influence and increase the dependence of the oil sheikdoms on U.S. protection. Success in Iraq--however late, however undeserved, however limited--had already improved the Obama
administration's prospects for addressing regional crises. Now, the collapse in oil prices has put the Iranian regime on the defensive. The annual inflation rate rose above 29 percent last September, up from about 17
percent in 2007, according to Iran's Bank Markazi. Economists forecast that Iran's real GDP growth will drop markedly in the coming months as stagnating oil revenues and the continued global economic downturn
force the government to rein in its expansionary fiscal policy.
this has weakened Ahmadinejad at home and Iran abroad.
All
Iranian officials must balance the relative merits of support for allies like Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria against
domestic needs, while international sanctions and other diplomatic sticks have been made more painful and Western carrots (like trade opportunities) have become more attractive. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and other oil
states have become more dependent on the United States for protection against Iran, and they have fewer resources to fund religious extremism as they use diminished oil revenues to support basic domestic spending
and development goals. None of this makes the Middle East an easy target for U.S. diplomacy, but thanks in part to the economic crisis, the incoming administration has the chance to try some new ideas and to enter
negotiations with Iran (and Syria) from a position of enhanced strength. Every crisis is different, but there seem to be reasons why, over time, financial crises on balance reinforce rather than undermine the world position of the leading capitalist
countries. Since capitalism first emerged in early modern Europe, the ability to exploit the advantages of rapid economic development has been a key factor in international competition. Countries that can encourage--or at least allow and sustain--the change,
dislocation, upheaval, and pain that capitalism often involves, while providing their tumultuous market societies with appropriate regulatory and legal frameworks, grow swiftly. They produce cutting-edge technologies that translate into military and economic
power. They are able to invest in education, making their workforces ever more productive. They typically develop liberal political institutions and cultural norms that value, or at least tolerate, dissent and that allow people of different political and religious
viewpoints to collaborate on a vast social project of modernization--and to maintain political stability in the face of accelerating social and economic change. The vast productive capacity of leading capitalist powers gives them the ability to project influence
around the world and, to some degree, to remake the world to suit their own interests and preferences. This is what the United Kingdom and the United States have done in past centuries, and what other capitalist powers like France, Germany, and Japan have
done to a lesser extent. In these countries, the social forces that support the idea of a competitive market economy within an appropriately liberal legal and political framework are relatively strong. But, in many other countries where capitalism rubs
people the wrong way, this is not the case. On either side of the Atlantic, for example, the Latin world is often drawn to anti-capitalist movements and rulers on both the right and the left. Russia, too, has never really
taken to capitalism and liberal society--whether during the time of the czars, the commissars, or the post-cold war leaders who so signally failed to build a stable, open system of liberal democratic capitalism even as
If you smell a delicious, crispy smell after the race, it's not your tailpipe. It's just a little of Shake...and Bake!
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Hegemony Updates
ENDI 4-Week
EMORY
MPH
Heg Turns: Economic Collapse (2/2)
many former Warsaw Pact nations were making rapid transitions. Partly as a result of these internal cultural pressures, and partly because, in much of the world, capitalism has appeared as an unwelcome interloper,
imposed by foreign forces and shaped to fit foreign rather than domestic interests and preferences, many countries are only half-heartedly capitalist.
When crisis strikes, they are quick to
decide that capitalism is a failure and look for alternatives.
So far, such half-hearted experiments not only have failed to work; they have left the societies that have tried them in a progressively worse position, farther behind the front-runners as time goes by. Argentina has lost
ground to Chile; Russian development has fallen farther behind that of the Baltic states and Central Europe. Frequently, the crisis has weakened the power of the merchants, industrialists, financiers, and professionals
who want to develop a liberal capitalist society integrated into the world. Crisis can also strengthen the hand of religious extremists, populist radicals, or authoritarian traditionalists who are determined to resist liberal
capitalist society for a variety of reasons. Meanwhile, the companies and banks based in these societies are often less established and more vulnerable to the consequences of a financial crisis than more established firms
in wealthier societies.
As a result, developing countries and countries where capitalism has relatively recent and shallow roots tend to suffer greater economic and
political damage when crisis strikes--as, inevitably, it does. And, consequently, financial crises often reinforce rather than challenge the global
distribution of power and wealth. This may be happening yet again.
None of which means that we can just sit back and enjoy the recession. History may suggest that financial crises actually help capitalist great powers maintain their leads--but it has other, less reassuring messages as
If financial crises have been a normal part of life during the 300-year rise of the liberal capitalist system under the Anglophone powers, so has war. The wars of the League
The list of wars is almost as long as the
list of financial crises.
Bad economic times can breed wars. Europe was a pretty peaceful place in 1928, but the Depression poisoned German public opinion
and helped bring Adolf Hitler to power. If the current crisis turns into a depression, what rough beasts might start slouching toward
Moscow, Karachi, Beijing, or New Delhi to be born?
The United States may not, yet, decline, but, if we can't get the world economy back on track, we may still have to fight .
well.
of Augsburg and the Spanish Succession; the Seven Years War; the American Revolution; the Napoleonic Wars; the two World Wars; the cold war:
If you smell a delicious, crispy smell after the race, it's not your tailpipe. It's just a little of Shake...and Bake!
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