The National Interest
Spring 2001

Getting Hegemony Right

by G. John Ikenberry

 

In May 1999 the Oxford Union debated the proposition, "Resolved, the United States is a rogue state." The resolution was ultimately defeated, but around the world there is growing unease about a global order dominated by American power—power unprecedented, unrestrained and unpredictable. The unease is felt even by America's closest allies. "The United States of America today predominates on the economic level, the monetary level, on the technological level, and in the cultural area in the broadest sense of the word", French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine observed in a speech in Paris in early 1999. "It is not comparable, in terms of power and influence, to anything known in modern history." European diplomats, following Védrine's coining of the term, have begun calling the United States a "hyperpower." During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States kept each other in check. Today the restraints are less evident, and this has made American power increasingly controversial.

This is an unexpected turn of events. Just a little over a decade ago many pundits argued that the central problem of U.S. foreign policy was the graceful management of the country's decline. Paul Kennedy's famous book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, argued that the United States would go the way of all great powers—down. Japan was on the rise and Europe was awakening. World politics after the Cold War, it was widely assumed, was to be profoundly multipolar.

But the distribution of world power took a dramatic turn in America's favor. The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union, the decline in ideological rivalry, lagging economic fortunes in Japan and continental Europe, growing disparities in military and technological expenditure, and America's booming economy all intensified power disparities during the 1990s. Today it is not decline that the United States must manage but the fear, resentment and instabilities created by a decade of rising American power.

A global backlash to U.S. power is not inevitable, however, particularly if the United States remembers its own political history. Our leaders have the ideas, means and political institutions that can allow for stable and cooperative order even in the midst of sharp and shifting asymmetries of power. The United States faced this problem after World War II and solved it by building what might be called a "stakeholder" hegemony. America can do it again today . . . . Think of the United States as a giant corporation that seeks foreign investors. It is more likely to attract investors if it can demonstrate that it operates according to accepted accounting and fiduciary principles. The rule of law and the institutions of policymaking in a democracy are the political equivalent of corporate transparency and accountability. Sharp shifts in policy must ultimately be vetted within the policy process and pass muster by an array of investigatory and decision-making bodies. Because it is a constitutional, rule-based democracy, outside states are more willing to work with the United States—or, to return to the corporate metaphor, to invest in ongoing partnerships.

This open and decentralized political process works in a second way to reduce foreign worries about American power. It creates what might be called "voice opportunities"—that is, opportunities for political access and, with it, the means for foreign governments and groups to influence the way Washington's power is exercised. In 1990 the political analyst Pat Choate wrote a bestseller entitled Agents of Influence, detailing the supposedly scandalous ways in which Japanese ministries and corporations were manipulating the American political process. High-priced lobbyists were advancing Tokyo's commercial interests within the hallowed halls of the American capital and undermining the pursuit of the U.S. national interest. Today Washington is even more inundated by foreign diplomats and revolving-door lobbyists working to ensure that the interests of America's partners are not overlooked. Looked at from the perspective of the stable functioning of America's hegemonic order, Choate was actually describing one of the brilliant aspects of the United States as a global power. By providing other states opportunities to play the game in Washington, they are drawn into active, ongoing partnerships that serve the long-term strategic interests of the United States.

A third and final element of the American order that reduces worry about power asymmetries is the web of multilateral institutions that mark the postwar world. After World War II, the United States launched history's most ambitious era of institution-building. The UN, IMF, World Bank, NATO, GATT and other institutions that emerged provided a more extensive rule-based structure for political and economic relations than anything seen before. The United States had been deeply ambivalent about making permanent security commitments to other states and about allowing its political and economic policies to be dictated by intergovernmental bodies. The Soviet menace was critical in overcoming these doubts. Networks and political relationships were built that—paradoxically—made U.S. power both more far-reaching and durable but also more predictable and malleable.

In effect, the United States spun a web of institutions that connected other states to an emerging American-dominated economic and security order. But in doing so, these institutions also bound the United States to other states and reduced—at least to some extent—Washington's ability to engage in the arbitrary and indiscriminate exercise of power. Call it an institutional bargain. The price for the United States was a reduction in Washington's policy autonomy, in that institutional rules and joint decision-making reduced U.S. unilateralist capacities. But what Washington got in return was worth the price. America's partners also had their autonomy constrained, but in return were able to operate in a world where U.S. power was more restrained and reliable . . . .