Hegemony and Global Citizenship

Transitional Governance for the 21st Century

R. Paehlke

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137476012
• eBook ISBN: 9781137476029
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The first decade of the 21st century raised many questions regarding hegemonic power. This system for managing global affairs has significant costs and limits. This book explores one alternative, global citizenship and more democratic global governance - an alternative that is arguably now both necessary and possible.

1

Hegemony’s Comforts, Hegemony’s Price

Prior to September 11, 2001, most Americans felt secure and blessed. They were grateful for the wealth that nature and hard work had provided and comfortable as citizens of a hegemonic power, a self-identified “greatest nation on earth.” This sense of comfort existed even for many who had little by way of a personal share in America’s material bounty. Most Americans felt happily isolated from the worst perils of a troubled world.

Most paid only minimal attention to that world even as the US military patrolled it and American corporations profited mightily in it. Americans understood that, but were also content living in a land unto itself—self-protected and free, a nation in some ways much like a cowboy or space explorer. As well, many in “real” (noncoastal, nonurban) America were prone to finding the rest of the world insufficiently American.

Within a year after September 11, however, many Americans and non-Americans (including myself) saw the nation much like Brent Scowcroft, G. H. W. Bush’s National Security advisor, viewed Dick Cheney when he said that he “didn’t know him anymore.” America had seemed to go to a dark place in its national psyche, a place from which it only began to emerge toward the end of the Bush years when Katrina struck New Orleans and Wall Street misbehavior caused the global economy to collapse.

The Bush administration rejected the Kyoto Protocol and occupied Baghdad, and this and the verbal and policy hostility and bluster that came with it provided the world with a disheartening beginning to the new millennium. Unintentionally, those years may also have sparked a nascent global public consciousness in the form of a near-universal rejection of American leadership. Even some Americans began to wonder about the wisdom of unfettered hegemonic power. This at least temporary shift in global outlook could, in time, lead to a rethinking of how the world governs itself.

The 2008 election of Barack Obama partially restored global confidence in America, a confidence that has again waned since the 2010 reentrenchment of conservatism and the ensuing legislative gridlock and a continuing global inability to act decisively regarding climate change and other global concerns. This ongoing reality reminds the world that extreme conservatism could again come to power in America. Rethinking a world dominated by an unpredictable hegemonic power is now essential.

This rethinking is necessary because our world is stunningly good at forgetting the past, even one so recent. American conservatism, for example, has adapted little since the Bush years and America’s media sometimes report as if those eight years, and the intense global reaction to them, never happened. Mitt Romney’s presidential candidacy was as belligerent regarding the Middle East as the Bush administration had been. Indeed his foreign policy views were guided by many of the same people. Romney was, in 2012, more inclined to climate change denial than Bush had been despite Romney’s own quite decent climate record as governor of Massachusetts. As well, Romney’s economic and social policy assertions during the campaign made Bush’s inaction in New Orleans during Katrina look like the humane ministrations of Mother Theresa.

Doubts regarding hegemonic power have emerged in this still new century, but what alternatives are possible? One this book will explore is the possible emergence of a new actor on the global stage: a global citizen’s movement, inevitably a long process, but one entity that could spur interest in collective global action on urgent matters. If trust in such a movement were to build, perhaps even global security could in time be dealt with cooperatively. Before any inquiry into how citizenship might evolve in the face of global economic integration, we need to explore hegemony and the risks associated with highly concentrated global political power.

Sometimes in global affairs, as in everyday living, we must experience the consequences of getting things wrong in order to slowly begin to imagine how they might be better. After eight years of Bush and Cheney many, including a majority of Americans, came to appreciate where they did not want to go. The Bush years and since have been full of horror and hope. The hope is very far from realized, but it remains alive.

Obama’s election was a great relief to the world, but hegemonic power on his watch has only been able to haltingly respond to the problems the world faces: climate change, rising inequality and the many environmental and economic problems rooted in the deregulatory mindset. Not that the Obama administration has not tried, but at best only very small steps have been taken. The clear reason is that American government is designed to avoid an undue concentration of internal power in the hands of public officials and in this it is a brilliant success, too brilliant at times. Presently in America policy paralysis seems the only alternative to something much worse.

Before Obama was elected, the view of America from within and the view from without seemed very different. It was difficult for Americans to see how they were seen from the outside and why they were seen that way. For those outside it was difficult to appreciate that America is highly complex and that individual Americans, even some arch-conservatives, are decent people. To the world’s credit the 2008 election was followed intently across the planet and Obama’s victory was celebrated widely. The world’s citizens had not given up on the possibility that America’s better nature would reemerge.

Today many Americans see that powerful nations are not exempt from global obligations and no nation, in the end, is uniquely capable even if it is exceptionally rich and powerful. The illusions of some regarding the meaning of American exceptionalism arise out of a distinctively American blend of self-confidence and insecurity and, for many, a lack of information regarding the rest of the world.

Exceptionalism as a dominant American worldview has faded somewhat. Yet many Americans are still prone to forgetting that no other nation has ever held global hegemonic power and that maintaining that power may prove even now to be unaffordable. The 2008 election responded to the overreach of the previous eight years, but did not rise to the level of national reflection. Since, however, more and more Americans have begun to tire of unfulfilled domestic needs which grow all the more striking in contrast to vast continuing expenditures on military power.

Some understand that imperial power and long occupations have become impossibly expensive and that within a global economy that is thoroughly integrated may be unnecessary. This combination creates real limits to, and for, hegemonic power. It illuminates the need for new thinking about international affairs and new ways to establish global security, stability, policy, and law.

The Bush administration failed profoundly because they could see nothing but hegemonic opportunities arising out of the collapse of the Soviet Union. They assumed that American global dominance could be asserted as if nothing else had changed. They could not have been more wrong. The real global challenges of the twenty-first century cannot be readily resolved through military power and indeed excessive military spending may assure that they will not be resolved. Moreover, global economic integration turns potential rivals into business partners. Many understand that—but few yet see a new way forward.

This chapter explores the limits of hegemonic power in this context. The book as a whole considers what may initially seem an improbable alternative to hegemony—a more globally oriented sense of citizenship and explores the circumstances that might make this a real possibility.

Hegemony in a Postcolonial World

What is hegemony? A hegemonic nation is not just the most powerful nation; it has overwhelmingly dominant power. At present, and for the foreseeable future, America will hold a preponderance of military power. America’s military expenditures are eight to ten times those of Russia or China, the next two leading military powers. Indeed, American military spending approaches that of the rest of the world combined.¹

Most striking is the contrast between US military spending and that of those nations that America considers leading threats to global stability: Iran, Syria, and North Korea. American military expenditures are 50 times Iran’s and as much as 500 times those of Syria.² Indeed US military expenditures are larger than the economies of Syria and North Korea. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, it is a cliché to say that the United States is the world’s “sole superpower.” But what does this massive advantage in military might actually achieve?

To put the question bluntly: is hegemony worth the money and the trouble? Is it a cost-effective expenditure of taxpayer dollars? Curiously, few within American foreign policy discourse explore such questions. In such an inquiry one might ask why hegemonic power is increasingly challenged to affordably occupy nations with what seem to be relatively inconsequential military capabilities. The answer is not, as Henry Kissinger has asserted, that there is an unwillingness to fight protracted wars on the part of Americans (or liberals, or Democrats).

Kissinger’s argument is absurd on its face (and needless to say self-serving with regard to Vietnam). America is as willing to fight wars as any nation save perhaps Afghanis for whom war is almost a hobby. The United States dropped more bombs on Vietnam than were dropped on Europe in World War II. The wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan were each longer than the involvement of United States in World War II. These recent wars had a less comprehensive mobilization and less solidarity for a reason: popular support faded when it became obvious that they were both pointless and could not be “won” in any normal meaning of the word.

It is time to realize that the “problem” goes beyond an “unwillingness to fight” or a lack of enthusiasm for war within democratic nations generally. It also goes beyond the massive incompetence in the early days of the Iraq occupation. The problem is this: global hegemonic domination may not be impossible, but it may no longer be affordable without abandoning nonsecurity societal priorities.³ Historically, hegemony failed because other nations of roughly comparable wealth and power were willing to compete. It is limited today largely as a result of two developments: wars of national resistance and terrorism (violence primarily waged against civilians).

China can conquer Tibet and America might occupy nearby nations of limited size, but no nation, one might hypothesize, can any longer simply occupy another substantial nation at a distance for an extended period without broad support within the occupied population. At least it cannot do so without massive costs. Russia could not successfully occupy Afghanistan; the United States could not successfully occupy Vietnam and spent trillions trying to remake Iraq. Despite the staggering cost and a withdrawal of US ground forces, the long-term outcome in Iraq remains far from certain. Occupations sanctioned by international agencies or supported by most nations might succeed in some circumstances, but even that is uncertain.

The occupation of Afghanistan, a nation on which it bordered, contributed greatly to the demise of the Soviet Union. The attempt bankrupted a superpower and ended the Cold War. Interestingly in this regard, Lawrence Korb, an assistant Secretary of State in the Reagan administration, asserted that America was in a position to win the Cold War at that point only because it had previously exited Vietnam.⁴ Contrary to the domino theory, then, America’s enemies were not emboldened by withdrawal and great powers may be as likely to be weakened by the initiation or extension of occupations as with their end.

One might hypothesize that hegemonic powers are more vulnerable when they repeatedly use force rather than acting with restraint. Blood begets blood (and great expense) and there may well be less risk in being seen a paper tiger than Dick Cheney or other macho neo-conservative strategists would allow. When terror and guerilla war capability and feelings of national autonomy are widespread, the clear advantage rests with those that choose to defend against foreign occupiers and not with those who occupy hostile foreign territory. The defenders will not always win, but they can make many occupations more expensive than they are worth.

A corollary to this is an even more provocative possibility: military power, beyond the capacity to literally defend one’s own territory, is just not as consequential as it once was. War between nuclear nations is not a possibility that any sane nation would wish for, nor could a nuclear attack against a non-nuclear nation produce a net benefit for the attacking nation. The world’s nonmilitary reaction alone would undo that nation. In a globally integrated economy where most nations are highly trade dependent the resulting economic damage might well exceed any strategic benefits the attack could produce. For isolated states like North Korea, the response would likely be brief and terminal.

A powerful nation might defeat another nation’s standing army, but there are now few circumstances where, on offense, military success is likely to be of net benefit if the act is perceived to be unprovoked and the match highly disproportionate. The blow to US prestige inherent in the invasion of Iraq was considerable. Most circumstances like those Iraq was said to embody (illegal possession of nuclear and/or chemical weapons) could be more effectively handled by international organizations. Indeed Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) was handled effectively by international agencies and assertions to the contrary were false.

Nor does military strength alone provide an effective defense against terrorism. Technological, investigatory, police, and legal techniques are usually more important than sheer military capability. Some may have actually believed that the war in Iraq was part of a global war on terror, but that illusion has been dispelled for anyone that has not been in a coma since 2001. Moreover, the notion that Iraq, Iran, North Korea, or Syria or all of them together could or would attack the territory of the United States is absurd and would still be absurd if America were to abruptly cut its military budget in half.

Terrorists might enter the United States disguised as illegal immigrants (as some political figures have fantasized). Those agents might then acquire weapons sufficient to kill hundreds of Americans, but they could do such things regardless of who governed Iraq, or any other nation. And, if this scenario was plausible, why would the Bush government for years following September 11 have allowed millions to illegally cross the border and go to work without significant interference? Or for that matter, why is it that even today virtually anyone, including hypothetical terrorist infiltrators, can buy automated weapons at gun shows anywhere in America?

Prior to 2014 the war in Iraq was about conquest, not terrorism or dictatorship. It was also a Machiavellian illusion, a belief that being more feared than loved has practical value in a postcolonial age. It was also, for some centrally involved in its planning, about exorcizing the ghosts of Vietnam. It was a delusional dream that if only the American public did not see bodies and atrocities on television that th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Hegemony’s Comforts, Hegemony’s Price
• 2  A Tale of Three Cities: Kyoto, Baghdad, and New Orleans
• 3  The Evolution of Citizenship: From Athens to Earth
• 4  From New American Century to Global Age America?
• 5  Global Citizenship without Global Government
• 6  Conclusion: Building Global Citizenship
• Notes
• Index