Is The United States Still A Globally Hegemonic World Power?

For much of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century, the United States has enjoyed the status as a dominant player in the international states system, with a "preponderance of power" not achieved by any other state from the early modern period. However, in recent years, this hegemony is increasingly brought into question. In particular, scholars wonder whether the United States is still a globally hegemonic power, given the meteoric rise of China from international pariah to the second largest economic power in the world in less than four decades and the relative stagnation of the United States and the West in general. Other questions inevitably follow. If the United States is still the global hegemon, will it continue to be so in the future? Will China challenge American hegemony, and how will it affect the current global political system? What are the possible implications of a global order without American hegemony? Using the material-social/internal-external framework developed by Buzan, this article will assess the current material and non-material capabilities of the US vis-à-vis China to come to the conclusion that America still maintains a significant gap over its closest potential contender. However, the signs of a decline in US legitimacy and domestic support for international engagements imply that the current US hegemony may not remain stable for long. The conclusion of the article will elaborate on implications of the findings to the international system, and include further remarks on the relevance of a question on hegemony to the current debates on globalisation.

For readers, it is essential to understand what hegemony refers to. The concept used in this article was developed by Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist intellectual, in order to explain why, despite Marx's predictions of an inevitable proletarian revolution in capitalist states, no such revolutions occurred in the early 20th century. According to Gramsci, the hegemony of the ruling classes in a capitalist society is upheld not only by force and coercion, but also, and more importantly, by successfully propagating values and norms that legitimise the ruling classes' dominance in a socially stratified society. Taken to an international context, hegemony can be understood as a condition in which the hegemon - the most powerful state in the international system - maintains its dominance not only by force (or threat of using force) but also by widespread ideational (non-material) influence and support for its dominant position. From Buzan, we can define hegemony in the material-social/domestic-external framework: a great power only achieves hegemony if it obtains 1) substantial material (economic/military) advantages over other powers, and 2) widespread "social" (ideational) support within the system, which includes 2a) a strong domestic will to lead the system and 2b) strong external support for its policies and values.

To assess whether the United States is still a global hegemon, one only needs to compare its capabilities with those of the second power in the order, the one with most potential to overcome it as the new hegemon. This article argues that China is such a power: not only has China recently become the second largest economy in the world, but its military spending in 2012 was also second behind the US, suggesting that China is currently No.2 based on material capacity alone. The rise of China in the last four decades, with a breakneck average annual economic growth of 9.9% from 1980 to 2012, makes the probability of "catching up" to the hegemon ever more likely. The only other serious contender for global hegemony would be the European Union (EU), and in social terms the EU is "at the international level... better placed than either the US or China". However, its fragmented internal politics and "little support at the level of the citizenry for the EU to have a larger and wider international engagement" arguably limits the hegemony prospect of the bloc.

Currently, the US arguably has significant material advantages over China. Militarily, the US spent $682 billion on its armed forces, more than four times the estimated amount spent by the second biggest spender, China ($166 billion), and more than the military budget of all the next 13 countries combined. Not only does the US possess formidable military capability, it is capable of projecting it globally: it possesses ten active aircraft carriers, comparing to China's only one (the Liaoning has not been fitted any aircraft for regular service yet), and has military installations in all major continents. Economically, the United States' GDP ($15.68 trillion in 2012) is nearly twice that of China ($8.23 trillion); only the European Union, which is not a nation-state, has a higher GDP than the US. The US enjoys an advantage from the "universal dollar" (composing 61.94% of total allocated foreign reserves in the world ), which gives the US much more flexibility in maintaining trade deficits than other states. In addition, economic might is translated into strong influence in international economic organisations, giving the US even more leverage: voting powers of the US in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) are respectively 16.75% and 12.87% , the highest of all participant countries, compared to China's 3.81% and 3.74%.

Currently, in terms of non-material assets, the US (and its powerful allies in the West) still has a wide lead: not only are Western cosmopolitan values like consumerism widespread, the West still leads the world in innovation capacity and is home to most of the world's prestigious universities and business schools. The Western system of liberal democracy, of which the US appears to be the main representative, is popular: the number of countries that follow the model nearly doubled between 1990 and 2010. In comparison, China has no great power allies on the world stage, and there are doubts about the ability of China to export its current governance model, which is a mix of economic liberalism and political authoritarianism.

However, it can be argued that the "social position" of the US will decline in the long term, due to a number of factors. Firstly, it is argued, there has been a significant decline of support within the international system for the US's role as the leading power. Since the end of the Cold War, "America's military-political global engagement has been costly, unpopular and often unsuccessful," and it has "won more enemies than friends [for the US]". Secondly, despite the current dominance, "important elements of traditional US soft power," like free-market capitalism, may no longer garner overwhelming support like before. Indeed, the current global economic crisis has evoked more and more criticism of "unfettered capitalism" from increasing numbers of prominent leaders, including the Pope. Finally, the will to support a hegemonic rule in the US is waning, as demonstrated from the low support of the American public for a possible US intervention in Syria. This is further complicated by the nature of domestic American politics, which can prevent the formation of a unified foreign policy; the ongoing quarrels between the White House and Congress regarding the Iran nuclear deal offers an excellent example.

In conclusion, it can be argued that the United States is, for now, still a globally dominant power, given its significant material and ideational advantages over China as its closest potential competitor. However, declining American social influence and a rapidly rising Chinese economy imply that this situation will not remain for long. With the prospect of China becoming a dominant power in the Asia-Pacific region, some scholars like Mearsheimer predict a future conflict between the two powers ; however, diminishing American capabilities makes this prospect more and more unlikely. Furthermore, China has no intentions to challenge the US and alter the international system beside its focus on territory and sovereignty , and consequently this may lead to a future with no global hegemon - a future characterised by regionalism and regionally dominant powers .

However, one may ask, is it still relevant now to discuss about hegemons, 'rising' and declining nation-states in an age of globalisation, with the transformation of state power and emergence of non-state actors in the global political stage? The growing influence of multi-national companies (MNCs) and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), as a result of ongoing globalisation, has long been documented: for example, WikiLeaks cables show the significant penetration of Shell into the Nigerian state, and it is argued that NGOs as "global civil society actors" noticeably influence decision-making by governments at the International Criminal Court. Does a hegemon still matter if the sphere of global politics that it controls - that between sovereign states - keeps getting smaller and smaller? More research and debate is necessary to assess this topic. However, one can argue that a dominant state in the international system may find it easier to ward off the pressures of globalisation to its core institutions, like sovereignty and the legitimate use of violence, and thus retain a considerable degree of autonomy and agency; after all, in the words of Mary Kaldor, the United States is the only country not hemmed in by globalisation, and thus "the last nation-state".