ch 3, US hegemony in world politics Flashcards
BEGINNING OF THE ‘NEW WORLD ORDER
The US hegemony began in
1991 after Soviet power disappeared from the international scene.
2) In August 1990, Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded Kuwait, rapidly occupying and subsequently annexing it.
3) The United Nations mandated the liberation of Kuwait by force.
4) The US President George H.W. Bush hailed the emergence of a ‘new world order’.
5) A massive coalition force of 660,000 troops from 34 countries fought against Iraq and defeated it in what came to be known as the First Gulf War.
However, the UN operation, which was called
‘Operation Desert Storm’, was overwhelmingly American.
9/11 AND THE ‘GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR
1) On 11 September 2001, nineteen hijackers hailing from a number of Arab countries took control of four American commercial aircraft shortly after takeoff and flew them into important buildings in the US.
2) One airliner each crashed into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York.
3) A third aircraft crashed into the Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia, where the US Defence Department is headquartered.
4) The fourth aircraft, presumably bound for the Capitol building of the US Congress, came down in a field in Pennsylvania.
5) The attacks have come to be known as “9/11”.
The US response to 9/11
- The response was swift and ferocious.
- As a part of its ‘Global War on Terror’, the US launched ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ against all those suspected to be behind this attack, mainly Al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
- The US forces made arrests all over the world, often without the knowledge of the government of the persons being arrested, transported these persons across countries and detained them in secret prisons.
- Some of them were brought to Guantanamo Bay, a US Naval base in Cuba, where the prisoners did not enjoy the protection of international law or the law of their own country or that of the US.
- Even the UN representatives were not allowed to meet these prisoners.
THE IRAQ INVASION
On 19 March 2003, the US launched its invasion of Iraq under the code name ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’. More than forty other countries joined in the US-led ‘coalition of the willing’ after the UN refused to give its mandate to the invasion. The purpose of the invasion was to prevent Iraq from developing weapons of mass destruction(WMD).
WHAT DOES HEGEMONY MEAN?
Politics is about power. In the case of world politics too, countries and groups of countries are engaged in constantly trying to gain and retain power. This power is in the form of military domination, economic power, political clout and cultural superiority. This is called Hegemony.
1) HEGEMONY AS HARD POWER
1) The US power lies in the overwhelming superiority of its military power
2) The US today has military capabilities that can reach any point on the planet accurately, lethally and in real time, thereby crippling the adversary. No other power today can remotely match them.
3) The US today spends more on its military capability than the next 12 powers combined.
4) Furthermore, a large chunk of the Pentagon’s budget goes into military research and development , or, in other words, technology.
5) Thus, the military dominance of the US is not just based on higher military spending, but on technology that no other power can at present match.
2) HEGEMONY AS STRUCTURAL POWER
1) Hegemony is reflected in the role played by the US in providing global public goods. By public goods we mean those goods that can be consumed by one person without reducing the amount of the good available for someone else. Fresh air and roads are examples of public goods.
2) The best examples of a global public good are sea-lanes of communication (SLOCs), the sea routes commonly used by merchant ships..It is the naval power of the US that underwrites the law of the sea and ensures freedom of navigation in international waters.
3) Another example of a global public good is the Internet. The Internet is the direct outcome of a US military research project that began in 1950. Even today, the Internet relies on a global network of satellites, most of which are owned by the US government.
4) There is not a single sector of the world economy in which an American firm does not feature in the “top three” list.
5) The World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Trade Organisation (WTO) are the products of American hegemony.
6) A classic example of the structural power of the US is the academic degree called the Master’s in Business Administration (MBA). The idea that business is a profession that depends upon skills that can be taught in a university is uniquely American.
3) HEGEMONY AS SOFT POWER
1) This third sense of hegemony is about the capacity to ‘manufacture consent’. Hegemony arises when the dominant class or country can win the consent of dominated classes,
2) All ideas of the good life and personal success, most of the dreams of individuals and societies across the globe, are dreams churned out by practices prevailing in twentieth-century.
3) America is the most seductive, and in this sense the most powerful, culture on earth. This attribute is called ‘soft power’: the ability to persuade rather than coerce. E.g. the blue jeans worn by people all over the world.
3 constraints on American Power
1)The first constraint is that the system of division of powers between the three branches of government places significant brakes upon America’s military power by the executive branch.
2)The second constraint on American power is the open nature of American society. The American mass media may from time to time impose or promote a particular
perspective on domestic public opinion in the US, This factor, in the long run, is a huge constraint on US military action overseas.
3)The third constraint on the US is perhaps the most important. There is only one organisation in the international system that could possibly moderate the exercise of American power today, and that is the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
The US obviously has an enormous interest in keeping the alliance of democracies that follow the market economies alive and therefore will not displease its allies in the NATO.
