What is hegemony? Is the United States losing it?
Michael Brenner for Consortium News
HEGEMONY. “Hegemony, Hegemon everywhere — but not a ‘definition’ in sight.”
Talk about American foreign policy is fixated on the word — omnipresent in all manner of discourse: academic, journalistic, political. It shares characteristics with other trendy terms that have won favor and fervor — e.g. existential or transgender — without any agreement on what real-world phenomena they refer to.
We don’t debate their precise meaning; instead, we make a facile assumption that any person’s individual understanding of its meaning is the implicitly genuine one — replete with connotations.
Hence, the ensuing conversation is among persons who collectively have no common understanding as to what exactly they are talking about. That discomforting condition conforms to the mores of a society that prizes expounding and emoting at the expense of communication.
There are, of course, some observable phenomena that prompt an implicit set of questions.
Generally speaking, we recognize that the world is in flux, that pre-existing patterns are giving way to something that is different yet still formless.
One, is the United States less capable of getting its way in global dealings that it did formerly? When was “formerly?”
If so, what are the key change variables? Are there multiple trajectories that we can imagine? What can we do to improve the odds on one or another crystallizing? “Control” is the pivotal word in any generic definition of “hegemony.”
Consider this formulation: “Hegemony represent the stable control by a dominant state — acting in its self-defined national/imperial interest — of its external environment.”
We do not have an historical example that perfectly models that abstract conception. The closest approximation to an “ideal type” is the conjectured vision of American global hegemony presented in the historic Wolfowitz Memorandum of 1991.
It is historic in two respects: first, it depicts a world wherein paramountcy is total — unqualified and without any limits; second, its fundamental ideas have come to be assimilated by the country’s foreign policy elites. For roughly 15 years (1990-2005), global realities came closest to match that conception, encouraging efforts to realize it.
The era of America the “hyper-power” endured in Washington and other capitals until the serene confidence in the former was troubled by three developments: the trauma of 9/11; the ascension of Vladimir Putin in Moscow who resurrected Russia as a resource-rich independent power from the ashes of the Yeltsin implosion; and the looming presence on the horizon of China as a potential rival to long-term American supremacy.
Hyper-Power & Boundaries
Putin in a meeting in Moscow in May 2025. (Kremlin)
Boundaries: A challenge to determining whether a condition of hegemony exists is the designation of boundaries between the area of control and a state’s hinterland. That issue has a direct bearing on the stability factor in a few respects: the potential of threats emerging from the latter which either might challenge domination in the former realm and/or affect access to valuable resources — energy being the obvious one in today’s world.
The comprehensive hegemony envisaged by Wolfowitz obviates that worry. In the wake of the American rampage through the Greater Middle East, culminating in the war of aggression on Iran, the United States along with its vassals, has lost a large measure of its “soft hegemony” in the Persian Gulf.
So, too, free movement though energy supply corridors. Measure of control. Full hegemony is achievable only where control is absolute and “permanent.”
Consider the contrast between the degree of American domination over oil and gas in the Middle East and British control over all the resources under the India Raj. For roughly 175 years, London ran India — a complete institutionalized dominant-subordinate relationship which systematically transferred wealth from one to the other.
Similar colonial, geographically bounded hegemonies were a feature of the West’s Imperial Age — from Algeria, to India-China, to Indonesia and across Africa. Stabilizing those relationships went a major political step further in strategies of annexation a la Algeria, Russia in Central Asia and the Caucasus, the U.S. in Puerto Rico and the incorporation of half of Mexico by virtue of outright conquest.
The Soviet Union established de facto annexation across the swath of Eastern Europe after WWII — a form of rigid hegemony that lasted 45 years. Hard-point hegemony served a complementary strategy of exerting influence in neighboring territories via physical intimidation, interference in local politics, and structural economic dependency links.
America in the Western Hemisphere provides the most glaring example. For the century after the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine, United States hegemony was the paramount fact of politico-economic life in South and Central America. Its restoration is the manifest goal of the current Trump administration as enunciated by Marco Rubio on repeated occasions.
Segmented or sectoral hegemony is a condition wherein a dominant state, employing an array of the methods noted above, exercises stable control over one critical sphere of an inter-state relationship while largely tolerating independence in others.
China’s control of the critical global rare earth mineral supply is the outstanding contemporary example.
This cursory consideration of the multiple meanings and modalities of the term hegemony makes evident its limitations as a useful concept for explaining the significance and implications of the shifting international landscape.
At its core what we are referring to is dominance. A condition that demonstrates itself in control over the behavior of other parties, mainly states, that compose the external environment. Its variable methods can be military, economic, ideological, politically interventionist or a mix. That control by degrees can be fixed or fluid, applied to seize benefits and assets or to thwart the efforts of others to seize yours — comprehensive or sectoral.
Let us look at the most notable episodes in America’s foreign dealings over the past decade with a view toward ascertaining whether there have been systemic shifts in its overall influence to shape its features to U.S. national advantage.
So, we run into a long-time promoter of the Wolfowitz worldview at Raffles bar in Singapore, who’s been out of the loop for 25 years, engaged in the lucrative pastime of smuggling opium out of the Golden Triangle, who asks: “How is the U.S. doing?”
ECONOMIC
Trump on April 2, 2025, when he signed an executive order on the administration’s tariff plans at the White House. (White House / Daniel Torok, Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain)
- The United States over the past decade or so has been pursuing a comprehensive, relentless campaign to advance its global dominance. That project entails shoring up its economic influence via its control of crucial financial structures, the weaponization of commercial leverage points, boycotts and embargoes.
- Washington arbitrarily imposed heavy tariffs on every trading partner from Lesotho to China in violation of treaty obligations and international law. All conceded to varying degrees with the partial exception of China, which stared Trump down by deploying the deterrent of rare earth minerals. Even Beijing accepted selective tariff increases on selective exports and has not retaliated against the comprehensive American program restricting access to semi-conductor technology. The E.U., Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia also pledged massive investments in American industry.
- Washington coerced India into limiting energy imports from Russia and to offer additional commercial concessions. Its fallout, associated with controversial diplomatic moves in the Middle East, has served the American interest in weakening BRICS.
- Washington, along with its loyal European servants, has attacked Russian energy shipping in the Baltic, Black Sea, Mediterranean and English challenge with no reaction or retaliation from Moscow.
- It also has imposed a blockade against shipping in and out of the Persian Gulf with no retaliation from Russia or China.
- It has seized $300 billion in Russian central bank assets sheltered in the SWIFT system. It has seized tens of billion in assets held by private Russian parties as well with no retaliation. Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund RDIF and Putin’s special presidential envoy for investment and economic cooperation has engaged in extensive talks with American officials on U.S. proposals to set up a joint investment trust using the $300 billion as a source of capital and collateral that would give the U.S. a stake in Russian natural resources.
- Washington has induced President Putin to get himself enmeshed in endless, empty discussions with Kushner/Witkoff/Bessent despite their failure to offer a single concession on Russia’s redline demands. In contrast, Putin tries to cultivate Trump with cosseting words — assiduously avoiding anything that connotes hostility — and with imaginings of future cordial Russo-American cooperation. Oddly, Putin gives no sign of awareness that he is dealing with a Fascist psychopath with demonstrable dementia who tried to kill him.
- Washington has engaged in piracy on the high seas in violation of international law and treaties by multiple attacks on Venezuelan, Columbian and Iranian commercial vessels including fishing boats.
- Washington has imposed a total military blockade on Cuban imports/exports demanding the capitulation of the current government. No retaliation or meliorative action of consequence from Russia, China or Mexico.
- Washington attempted to coerce Denmark into transferring sovereignty on Greenland to the United States. Reactions from parties other than Copenhagen were tepid and accommodating. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte proposed expanded U.S./NATO bases and investments on Greenland.
- E.U. leaders favored concessions on expanded, autonomous American military bases and concessionary access to mineral rights. Putin suggested a possible sale using the sale of Alaska as a valuation baseline.
MILITARY
- Washington has been an accomplice in Israel’s multifaceted plan to eliminate all rivals in the Middle East so as to establish its regional hegemony. That includes the extermination and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza and the West bank; the seizure of Syrian territory; the aggression in Lebanon as a prelude to annexation of its southern region; the aggression against Iran; and solidifying bases in northern Iraq in violation of an official demand from Baghdad that both leave.
- Washington via NATO is forward deploying troops and weapons in Finland, Poland, Romania and Lithuania in direct provocation of Russia that violates multiple understanding dating back to 1990.
- Washington has deployed thousands of military personnel and C.I.A. operatives in Ukraine who direct cross-border operations, control HIMARS and ATACM systems, and electronic guidance crucial to drone attacks against Russian energy installations, strategic radars and Putin himself. Russian retaliation/response: zero.
- Washington has abrogated every arms control agreement dating from the Cold War era.
- Washington has ringed Russia with a network of ABM sites that could be converted to offensive missile launchers.
- Washington abrogated the 1970s historic agreement with China formally recognizing Taiwan as an integral part of China. Instead, it has promoted Taiwan autonomy by every conceivable means including massive arms sales and the siting of American military personnel on the island.
- Washington invaded Venezuela without provocation to arrest President Nicolas Maduro and to install an American friendly government headed by quisling former Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez who was recruited personally by C.I.A. Director John Ratcliffe. In return, American oil companies were given control of the country’s vast oil reserve.
- Washington gave vital backing to the Syrian insurrectionists directed by jihadist groups that overthrew President Bashar al-Assad to form a government under former al-Nusra/Al Qaeda chieftain Abu Mohammad al-Golani — on whom the U.S. had placed a $10 million bounty dead-or-alive.
POLITICAL
- Interventions in all of the above countries in coordination with military action.
- Washington encouraged India to ally with the U.S. and Israel in their war on Iran (and Palestinian genocide) in grotesque displays by inflamed Islamophobe Narendra Modi that have led to serious splits among BRICS partners. Intimidated by the U.S., India also curbed energy purchases from Russia – foregoing discounted oil and revenue from the re-export of refined petroleum products.
- This was against the background of the fanciful — now scuttled — plan for a grand Southern alternative route to the Chinese sponsored Silk Road much favored by the U.S. — a stunning display of American influence that could lead a putative great power to act contrary to its national interests, successful Kevorkian diplomacy modelled on the stymying of Japan in the 1980s.
- Washington managed to enlist Japan in its anti-China crusade with a vehemence that makes Tokyo an active partisan in the Taiwan independence movement.
- Washington encouraged the Pakistani military to topple and to imprison elected President Imran Khan who became anathema for his criticism of Israeli-American genocide in Gaza.
- Washington gives backing to various Kurdish separatist groups in Iraq and sought to have them open a second front against Iran.
- Washington essentially bribed Argentinian voters to support neo-Fascist and Trump ally Javier Milie by stating boldly that the U.S. would approve vital IMF monetary support and debt roll-over assistance only were he elected.
- Washington spurred Romanian authorities’ to void arbitrarily the results of the 2024 free and fair election of because the winner didn’t follow the anti-Russia hardline.
Free-Floating Anxiety
China’s President Xi Jinping, on left, with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in May 2025. (Kremlin.ru/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 4.0)
What if Trump had not made the monumental — perhaps fatal — mistake of warring on Iran?
The overall American performance does not support the judgment that there has been a drastic — much less, systemic change — a reversal of the United States’ dominant position in world affairs. It never achieved hegemony a la Wolfowitz even in its hyper-power heyday. Until the Iran disaster, its position was little changed.
There is more free-floating anxiety over possible loss of America’s status as global supremo than actual loss — at least for the present.
That anxiety has fueled a belligerent, radical strategy of over-reaching — one that largely succeeded, for the time being. The other major strategic error has been the designation of both China and Russia as powers that must be contained if not brought low.
Ensuing actions have accelerated and deepened a Sino-Russian partnership to the point where it is a given of global geostrategic reality. It is doubtful that American leaders ever had the perspective to act otherwise. The passionate dedication to achieving the Wolfowitz goal denied them the psychological and intellectual distance required to act with greater discretion.
Emulation of Bismarck’s approach to France and Russia has been beyond them. The United States’s record of general success in maintaining its power and influence is all the more remarkable (and highlights structural factors in the international equation) in the light of its leaders’ feeble understanding of global politics, their ignorance and their total absence of any diplomatic aptitude.
Michael Brenner is a professor of international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, mbren@pitt.edu
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