Hegemony and decline: Reflections on recent American experience
Overview
In recent decades, American foreign policy analysis has oscillated between two dominant perspectives: triumphalism and declinism.
By triumphalism, I refer to the belief that the world is unipolar—oriented toward and led by a single superpower, the United States—implying American global hegemony. By declinism, I mean the argument that the U.S. is politically, economically, militarily, and morally "overstretched," a term popularized by historian Paul Kennedy, due to its efforts to maintain hegemonic dominance.
Key Theories of Decline
The link between hegemony and decline has been extensively studied. A foundational work is Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987), which traces the historical pattern of hegemonic powers—from Habsburg Spain to Bourbon France, Napoleonic France, and liberal Britain—ultimately succumbing to decline. The core reasons are consistent: excessive military spending and debt weaken the hegemon’s economy and society, eroding its military strength over time.
Economist Charles Kindleberger offers a parallel argument in The World in Depression: 1929-1939 (1973). He frames the hegemon as a provider of global public goods—military security and economic stability—while other nations "free-ride" on these benefits. Over time, the hegemon’s relative strength diminishes as beneficiaries grow stronger, leading to challenges that accelerate decline. Kindleberger viewed the 20th century’s world wars and the Great Depression as consequences of Britain’s weakened hegemony and America’s delayed assumption of leadership.
Personal Contributions to the Declinist School
My own work has explored the costs of America’s Cold War role. In Beyond American Hegemony (1987), I analyzed NATO’s strategic anomalies, particularly America’s extended nuclear and conventional deterrence in Europe. I argued that U.S. leadership in NATO was excessive, subsidizing European nationalism and hindering further integration. The economic burden was stark: in 1985, the U.S. spent 6.6% of GNP on defense, compared to France’s 4%, Germany’s 3.2%, Italy’s 2.3%, and Britain’s 5.2%. Roughly half the U.S. defense budget supported NATO commitments, with cost-shifting via dollar manipulation harming both the global economy and America’s fiscal health. Devolution of European security responsibilities to Europeans themselves, I contended, was urgently needed.
In The Bankrupting of America (1992), I focused on America’s fiscal deficit and rising debt, which grew from $1 trillion in 1980 to $4 trillion by 1992. The book examined the causes and consequences of habitual deficits, including the public’s resistance to higher taxes—a reluctance I attributed not to historical reflex but to the poor return on civilian spending compared to other Western nations. While European taxpayers paid more, they received robust social benefits (pensions, healthcare, education, infrastructure). America’s lower taxes yielded even lower civilian returns, partly due to the outsized defense budget, which absorbed 20–50% of federal spending since 1950. NATO’s costs, I argued, were a key link between geopolitical overextension and economic decline.
However, I did not attribute fiscal deficits solely to defense spending. Two other factors played critical roles:
- Public sector inefficiency: America’s 17th-century constitutional framework—a fragmented system of "independent barons"—lacked the disciplined majorities of 19th-century European democracies. This incoherence fostered an "Imperial Presidency," reliant on external threats (e.g., the Cold War) to justify its power. High military spending and a chaotic budget process were natural byproducts.
- Hegemonic cost-shifting: America’s global role allowed it to temporarily offload deficit burdens onto other nations via dollar manipulation. While convenient in the short term, this practice undermined long-term economic stability, fostering "Casino Capitalism" (a term borrowed from Susan Strange)—short-term speculation over productive investment.
These dynamics, I concluded, were central to America’s relative decline.