A Theory of Hegemonic Overreach

Dennis Florig

Hankuk University of Foreign Studies

Seoul, South Korea

A Note on the Concept of Hegemony

The concept of hegemony has come to have several different connotations and shades of

meaning in several different disciplines. In the field of international relations there are

two starkly contrasting concepts of hegemony. While both notions recognize a hegemon

as a state that exercises power over others, the basis of this power is conceived quite

differently. In one view, hegemony is synonymous with domination. A state is

hegemonic if it can dominate other states in a system with its military and/or economic

power, if it can coerce others with its hard power.

However, the notion used in this paper is more Gramscian, conceiving hegemonic power

as being based on a subtle fusion of coercion and consent. (Gramsci, Arrighi, Nye)

Sustained leadership of any political system, particularly a global system of states,

requires not only the hard military and economic power to enforce dominance when

necessary, but also the ideological, political, and institutional power to persuade others to

accept the rules and norms of a system largely designed and operated by the hegemon

and its allies. This soft power is what allows a hegemonic system to function across

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decades without continuous resort to massive violence. The global hegemon is able to

represent the world system, which works primarily to the advantage of itself and its allies,

as a system of universal norms and practices that benefit all. Of course, many

participants in the system are not fooled completely by the ideological mystifications, and

therefore the political, economic, and institutional incentives of the system are aligned to

reward states and leaders that comply and punish those who do not. However, it should

not be missed that at least to some degree consent is actually produced, that many of the

beliefs and ideas of the system are internalized and sincerely held by many whose real

interests may or may not be served by the system.

I. Theories of Hegemonic Stability and Hegemonic Cycles

Ahistorical Theories of Hegemonic Stability

One widely accepted assertion of international relations today is that there is only one

superpower, that we live in a unipolar world. Many U.S. IR scholars and most U.S.

policymakers see America’s superpower as contributing to global stability. This is the

theory of unipolar stability or hegemonic stability in which the hegemonic power plays a

crucial role in maintaining order in the world system. According to this perspective, the

hegemon is the most benign power in the global system. Because the hegemon is the

power that benefits most from the existing world order, the hegemon has the greatest

stake in keeping that system functioning. The military power of the hegemon keeps the

peace, discouraging challengers to the global order. The economy of the hegemon is the

engine that drives international economic growth and development. In order to preserve

its network of alliances, the hegemon is the political broker who moderates disputes

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between other powers, thus keeping them from escalating into serious conflict. The

hegemon seeks to bind other states into the global order and thus plays a leading role in

developing global institutions that manage international security and economic

relations. The hegemon is often the source and usually a propagator of ideas about world

order and security. In the words of former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, the

hegemon is “the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.”

In this simplest form, the theory of hegemonic stability is ahistorical. The global

leadership that the U.S. took after the second world war is assumed to play out

indefinitely or at least through much of the 21st century. The challenge of the Soviet

Union and communism, the rise of China, even the fall of the prior hegemon Great

Britain are relegated to footnotes in the ongoing story of U.S. global leadership. In this

view, unipolarity is not a moment, it is the fate of the U.S. to be “bound to lead” the

global system in perpetuity, or at least as far out as policymakers are capable of thinking

or scholars are willing to project.

Theories of Hegemonic Cycles

An opposing perspective, the theory of hegemonic cycles, argues that hegemonic systems

run in very predictable patterns. The weaker, often realist, version of this theory, argues

simply that hegemonic unipolarity is unstable and likely over time to break down into

multipolarity or bipolarity.

The stronger version argues that there is empirical evidence of a repeated regular “long

cycle” of hegemonic breakdown in which hegemony begets counter hegemonic challenge,

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hegemonic war, and the emergence of a third power as the new hegemon.

(Gilpin,Wallerstein, Modelski, Rasler and Thompson)

According to the theory of hegemonic cycle, as European powers expanded their

conquest of non-European lands and modernized their economies, one power usually

stood at the apex of the capitalist system. Roughly speaking, in the 16th century, Portugal

led the system, in the 17th century it was the Netherlands, in the 18th and 19th centuries it

was Great Britain, and in the 20th century it was the U.S. Hegemony is won through a

combination of economic and military superiority. Hegemony is lost when a rising power

emerges with innovative technologies and new forms of economic, political, and/or

military organization amassing capabilities that challenge those of the hegemon. The

challenger covets the position of the hegemon. The Spanish challenged the Portuguese,

the French challenged both the Dutch and the British. Later the British were challenged

by Germany. The U.S. was challenged by the Soviet Union. The contest between the

hegemon and the hegemonic challenger will generally lead to a system-wide war. In

three of the five cases the hegemon and the challenger were both so weakened that a third

power rises to succeed as hegemon.

Recently certain scholars of global hegemonic systems have suggested that the theory of

the hegemonic state is superfluous or even inaccurate. Serious questions have been

raised about the importance of purported hegemons 16th century Portugal and 17th century

Netherlands to a global system in which Europe was still a minor proportion of all world-

wide production, or even their importance in European politics, given the relative

weakness of their armies. (Wilkinson) This is only the latest of a series of objections that

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the theory of hegemonic cycles, while pointing out significant regularities in relations

between major powers and ordering in the international system, has a tendency to fit too

wide a range of history and too diverse a set of circumstances into too narrow a

Procrustean bed of convenient theory.

Dynamic Theories of Globalization and Hegemonic Stability

The theory of long cycles of hegemony has also been criticized as not giving enough

weight to the changing nature of the hegemonic system over time. Hegemonic cycle

theory does recognize that the rise of each new hegemon and each new hegemonic

challenger represent a new stage in the historical development of the world capitalist

system and the dominant mode of organization of the system. The succession of the

Dutch, the British, and the Americans to the position of hegemony is generally

recognized as not only a change in leadership but also a progression in the scope and

scale of capitalist organization. Yet within theories of long cycles of hegemony these

distinctions tend to represent differences in degree, not in kind.

Yet the belief is widespread that the global system has undergone a fundamental

transformation in the last half century. The globalization thesis is often fused with a form

of the hegemonic stability argument. According to this view, since World War II, and

especially in recent decades, a new era has begun in which American leadership is not

only more easily exercised, but also more necessary, and recognized as necessary, by

most of the major global powers and players.

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According to this perspective, globalization has increased the ability of the hegemon to

integrate the system, lessened the possibilities for system-wide breakdown, and reduced

the ability of competitor states to mount true counter hegemonic challenges. In this view,

the global system of the early 21st century is much more interdependent economically,

institutionalized politically, and wired for communications than it has ever been, leaving

little space for counter ideologies or powerful economic or political blocs to exist outside

the prevailing global system.

Perhaps the most well known is Fukuyama’s The End of History, which was so popular in

the triumphalism on the heels of the end of the Cold War but which may seem a bit naïve

several years into the Terrorism Wars. Without explicitly mentioning the theory of

hegemony, few scholars have inadvertently given a more profound statement of the

ideology of western hegemony than Fukuyama.

Another version of the globalization hypothesis that may be growing in appeal given the

rising distaste for the unilateral militarism of the Bush administration is Joseph Nye’s The

Paradox of American Power. Theories of hegemony typically try to integrate two

dimensions of analysis—economic and military-political, tracing how rising economic

challenging powers can eventually come into military conflict with the prevailing

hegemon. With his concept of soft power—social, cultural, and ideological power—Nye

adds a third dimension to the equation, a dimension that is almost certainly taking on an

ever increasing importance in the information age, when the internet, satellite TV, and

Hollywood reach directly into the sensorium of an ever greater fraction of the world’s

population. Soft power provides ideological and cultural means to help absorb rising new

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powers into the system, defusing potentially destructive conflicts between challenger

powers and the established hegemonic state.

II. A Theory of Hegemonic Overreach

A modification of the hegemonic cycle theory that incorporates some aspects of the

globalization thesis might be called a theory of hegemonic overreach. Most

contemporary analysts of hegemonic breakdown focus on the imbalance between

economic growth and innovation in new rising powers vs. heavy politico-military

commitments in the economically receding hegemon. Marx saw global capitalism

engendering its own fatal oppositional forces, like a sorcerer’s apprentice unable to

control his own magic. Lenin added the global politico-military contradictions of

imperialism. In describing the dilemmas of leading powers, Kennedy pointed out the

problem imperial overstretch, a succinct metaphor for the standard theory of cyclical

hegemonic breakdown.

But perhaps another important contradiction in the world system is the tendency of the

hegemonic system to relentlessly incorporate innumerable peoples and cultures, to

swallow whole and be unable to digest entire ways of life. Like the liberal Nye, perhaps

theorists of hegemonic breakdown need to take much more seriously a third ideological-

cultural dimension as well as the more classical economic and politico-military

dimensions. Such analysis could supplement more standard theories of hegemonic

breakdown.

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The theory of hegemonic overreach sees each iteration of the hegemonic system as

qualitatively different. The hegemonic system led by the British spanned more of the

globe and reached deeper than when it was led by the Dutch. Since the U.S. has assumed

control of the system it has grown broader and thicker than it was in the days of the

British. But just as each iteration integrates more and more of the global economics and

politics, it also pulls more and more activity into its orbit which cannot be easily

integrated.

The theory of hegemonic overreach argues that exactly because the breadth and scope of

the world system expands over time, an analogous problem becomes more difficult at

each successive iteration. As the hegemonic system grows broader, deeper, and more

institutionally complex over time, it still shows countervailing tendencies toward

breakdown for two fundamental reasons.

First, exactly because the system reaches ever more deeply into ever more aspects of

everyday life in all corners of the planet, it increasingly engenders more sustained

opposition and effective resistance. Second, the particular state that is in the position of

hegemon, the United States, has a unique sense of messianic mission to make over the

world in its image that leads it to take on an almost unlimited project of transforming the

non-western world. That boundless project of global transformation periodically leads

the U.S. into military, political, and economic interventions that ultimately undermine

support for the global system and strengthen the very forces opposed to it.

Overreach of the Hegemonic Cultural and Ideological System

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Certainly there is a rich tradition of study of the cultural and ideological dimension of

hegemony reaching back to Gramsci himself and post-colonial theorists such as Fanon,

Friere, Said, and others. However, this intellectual tradition is rarely drawn upon in

analysis of hegemonic breakdown or the dilemmas of the hegemonic state.

The capitalist economic system and the McWorld/Hollywood cultural system is relentless

as it pervades deeper and deeper into more and more obscure corners of the world, ever

expanding its sway and stirring both awe and resistance wherever it travels. Many

Americans may feel their hearts warmed at the opening of another McDonalds in some

obscure corner of the planet, but most of them feel discomfited to see more Spanish

language signs than English signs and hear Spanish spoken more often than English if it

happens in part of their town. Yet an influx of Mexican or Caribbean laborers hardly

represent the threat to the traditional American way of life that American businesses,

banks, movies, television, dress, etc. do to time-honored culture in a traditionalist Third

World town.

The western expansion into the non-western world has been going on for half a

millennium. The fear of loss of identity in this process in the non-western world is

centuries old, as is the American dread of being overwhelmed by masses of unassimilated

immigrants. Yet only a few challenge that the cultural assault of the West has intensified

in the information age, that in the words of Nye, it has become “thicker and quicker.” It

has gone from being ever more global in scope to becoming ever more invasive in

depth—to reaching not only most spaces on the planet to pervading an ever higher

proportion of daily activities around the world. What the panglossians of globalization

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fail to recognize is that this greater depth of global reach may be provoking a

proportionally greater reaction and resistance. A threshold in the rate of cultural intrusion

may have been crossed, a ceiling in the scope and depth of alien cognitive dissonance, at

least in some large parts of the non-western world, leading to what Bush conservatives

have called on the domestic front “culture wars” on a global scale.

Furthermore, if one truly believes the argument that the tools of the information age are

inherently decentralizing and empowering to marginal social and political forces, then

these tools can be mobilized by the resisters as well as the propagators of westernized

versions of globalization. In other words, Islamicists can use the internet, camcorders,

and satellite TV too.

Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis is usually shunned by both realists and critical

theorists of hegemony. However recent history seems to support at least two of

Huntington main theses. Civilizations are increasingly tending to clash, if for no other

reason than the intensification of cultural globalization. As Huntington notes, this has a

lot to do with the unexpected revival of religious fundamentalism at the end of the 20th

century, not only in the Muslim world, but in much of the Hindu and Christian domains

as well. In what Huntington calls the “revenge of God,” religious right parties and

factions have been thriving not only in the Muslim but in the Christian and Hindu worlds

as well, reflecting growing membership in fundamentalist sects around the globe. In

much of the world religious fundamentalism has replaced socialism as the most powerful

form of resistance to western liberal globalization, although progressive resistance is still

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also a major force as seen in the revival of social democracy in South America and the

peace movement in Europe and North America in recent years. In the early 21st century,

the prevailing challenge to the hegemonic system, and particularly to the policies of the

hegemonic state, come not so much from rival states but from mass movements based on

a sense of cultural and national difference.

Hegemonic Overreach and American Messianic Mission

Huntington’s assertion that western universalism is unlikely to convert the rest of the

world to liberal globalism but is more likely to make the clash of civilizations more

intense also seems to be proving true. If the smug sense of the inevitability of the

triumph of western superiority of a Fukuyama that prevailed during the Clinton era tends

to exacerbates global tensions, then the Manichean militarism of neoconservative

messianic mission has inflamed them even more.

Taking seriously the ideological-cultural dimension can also help understand the behavior

of the current hegemon—that sense of almost religious mission, that almost revolutionary

zeal to transform a backward world, that arrogant assumption that the world should be

reshaped in America’s image. (Gamble, Smith, Stephanson, Coles) On the one hand, the

hegemon is often taken as a highly conservative power, bent on preserving the system

that puts it at the apex. The hegemonic state has always been in somewhat of a

contradictory position. It must be conservative in the sense of preserving the system yet

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it must also be aggressive in extending the scope and depth of the overall system into the

non-western world.

Yet due to its pre-hegemonic formative experiences, the U.S. has always been

qualitatively different than the British or any hegemonic predecessor. From the first

attempts of the U.S. to step up as a leading world power at the post-World War I peace

conference, the U.S. has sought more aggressively to transform international political and

economic systems in its liberal image.

One source of this difference lies in U.S. historical experience. The U.S. was a nation

built on immigration. People from around the world came to the U.S. and were made

over into Americans, leaving more nationalistic of the American elite with the impression

that most of the world wants to become Americans. It is only a slight parody to say that

from this point of view, those who have not yet made the passage are simply weaker and

lack the will compared to their stronger brethren who already made it.

These immigrants from diverse nations, religions, and cultures were poured into the

“melting pot” of American culture and “Americanized” through a systematic process of

indoctrination into a civic culture of liberal capitalism, rugged individualism, democracy

of white males, nationalist expansionism, and “Manifest Destiny” through public schools

and political propaganda through the mass media. It was no accident that the random

cacophony of peoples that desperately fled to the North American continent in the 18th

and 19th centuries was molded into the unified, purposeful global hegemon of the 20th

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century. And while it was not part of a master plan, neither is it a random event that the

U.S. attitude toward the entire planet in the 20th century is not that different than the

American attitude toward North America in the 19th century.

The American transformational mission cannot be fully grasped without understanding

U.S. economic and geostrategic interests as the hegemonic state. But neither can it be

truly understood without grasping the messianic impulses that lie deep in American

culture. The twin pillars of religious doctrine and secular liberalism that lie at the heart

of U.S. hegemony can be seen in the son of a Christian minister Woodrow Wilson, the

first U.S. president to clearly articulate the concepts of U.S. hegemony and whose name

is still synonymous with them. Speaking of the U.S. forces in World War I, Wilson’s

sense of religious mission shines through.

(The troops) brought with them a great ardor for a supreme cause. . . .

They saw a city not built with hands. They saw a citadel . . . where dwelt

the oracles of God himself. . . . There were never crusaders that went to

the Holy Land in the old ages . . . that were more truly devoted to a holy

cause.i

And Wilson also clearly saw the U.S. as the expression of God’s will on

earth.

The men who . . . frame[d] this government . . . set up a standard to

which they intended that the nations of the world should rally. They said

to the people of the world, "Come to us, this is the home of liberty; this is

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the place where mankind can learn how to govern their own affairs . . .

and the world did come to us.ii

While over the years it has often been judged wise not to express directly overt religious

sentiments in international fora and the ideology itself has become more secularized, the

same sense of global mission to transform the world has been consistent for almost a

century. In his second Inaugural Address, often taken as the defining speech of his

presidency, George Bush, openly expressing long held views, sounds much like Wilson

nearly a hundred years ago. Although at one point he explicitly denies seeing the U.S. as

the “chosen nation” of God, the rest of the text shows a profound sense of divine mission.

President Bush clearly believes that “God moves and chooses” in human history and the

direction “He” chooses for “all the world” is American style liberty.

we can feel that same unity and pride whenever America acts for good, and the

victims of disaster are given hope, and the unjust encounter justice, and the

captives are set free.

We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of

freedom…Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and

chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent

hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our

Founders declared a new order of the ages; when soldiers died in wave upon

wave for a union based on liberty; when citizens marched in peaceful outrage

under the banner "Freedom Now" - they were acting on an ancient hope that is

meant to be fulfilled. History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a

visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty.

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America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world, and to

all the inhabitants thereof.iii

The American impulse to rework the world in its image comes not only from its

corporate and political imperatives but also at a deeper level from fundamental cultural,

ideological, and even religious beliefs, not only from its calculations of power, but from

its sense of its manifest destiny, once taken as a charge to rule over North America, now

conceived on even a grander scale to be a mission to literally save the world.

III. Hegemonic Overreach and U.S. Foreign Policy: Failures and “Successes”

Overreach vs. Overstretch as Explanation of U.S. Foreign Policy Failures

In the past half century the contradiction of the nearly limitless project of the U.S.

hegemonic state with its limited will and ability to commit resources to carry out its

grandiose project has led to several major U.S. policy failures.

Perhaps the most influential popular concept that emerged from the academic hegemonic

cycle literature into policy and popular political discourse was the phrase “imperial

overstretch” coined by Paul Kennedy. Imperial overstretch was introduced in the late

1980s in the wake of the U.S. retrenchment after Vietnam, the global recessions of the

1970s and 1980s, the relative decline of the U.S. economy compared to the Japanese and

East Asian and even the leading European economies, and the conversion of the U.S.

from the leading global creditor into the leading global debtor. It captured in a simple

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phrase the perception that the U.S. was a power in decline and a sense of the reasons

behind that decline. It fell out of fashion in the 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet

Union, the revival of the U.S. economy, the easy victory in the first Iraq War, and overall

impression of U.S. hyperpower. However, in the wake of 9/11, the snafu in Iraq, and the

growing resistance around the world to Bush administration policies, overstretch or some

similar concept seems destined to return to international political discourse to seek to

explain the deeper roots of U.S. foreign policy.

I suggest that hegemonic overreach is a more apt metaphor. What is the difference which

term is applied? Over-stretch, over-reach, they both describe over-action. But

overstretch implies an unavoidable, inevitable, mechanical process devoid of human will

or choice. Overreach identifies willful human action, like reaching for an apple on a tree

in a garden. Overstretch connotes a defective product, overreach invokes bad choices.

Kennedy’s theory of overstretch is an expression of the standard view of the cycle of

hegemonic breakdown which emphasizes the temporal contradiction of the hegemonic

state—the rising cost of politico-military commitments vs. the declining economic

capabilities relative to rising challenger states. The metaphor of hegemonic overreach

supplements this perspective by pointing to an inherent contradiction that is not so much

rooted in time, although it works out over time—the mismatch between the finite

capabilities of the hegemonic state and the virtually infinite mission of transforming the

world into one liberal, democratic paradise. Over time, this broad messianic mandate to

“save the world” translates into a series of unmanageable particular interventions that

prove beyond the ability of the hegemonic state and its allies to sustain.

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In the context of the global system and U.S. foreign policy both overstretch and

overreach signify a mismatch between capabilities and missions, but they suggest

different ways of thinking about why this mismatch occurs, how to avoid future policy

failures, what causes the breakdown of hegemonic systems, and the future direction of

the current system.

The theory of hegemonic overreach contributes to better understanding of several cases

of U.S. foreign policy failure, particularly 1. the Vietnam War, 2. the current war in Iraq,

and 3. the attempt of Woodrow Wilson to impose his vision of reform at the Paris peace

conference after the first world war. Two apparent policy triumphs that later bore bitter

fruit are also examples of hegemonic overreach—the restoration of the Shah of Iran and

the support for the anti-Soviet Islamic militant rebels in Afghanistan that later became the

Taliban and which included aid to Osama bin Laden. Each of these cases lends credence

to the theory of hegemonic overreach as a way of understanding recurrent crises in the

global system and endemic, systemic flaws in U.S. foreign policy.

Vietnam

One of the most significant policy failures of U.S. hegemony, and one that first gave

credence to the possibility that U.S. hegemony was headed toward breakdown was the

Vietnam War. Many different reasons have been given for the miscalculation of the U.S.

in Vietnam and it is beyond the scope of this paper to delve into them all. The more

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limited purpose here is to compare overreach vs. overstretch as explanations and in

particular to consider the importance of ideological-cultural factors as compared to more

purely economic or military-strategic factors in the decision to intervene.

Certainly one of the principle reasons for the U.S. invasion of Vietnam was the

misinterpretation of the nature of the Vietnamese revolution as primarily part of the

world communist conspiracy rather than a national revolution. This is how President

Lyndon Johnson characterized the war:

North Viet Nam has attacked the independent nation of South Viet Nam.

Its object is total conquest. . . Over this war—and all Asia—is . . . the

deepening shadow of Communist China. . .The contest in Viet Nam is

part of a wider pattern of aggressive purposes. . . Around the globe, from

Berlin to Thailand, are people whose well being rests in part on the belief

that they can count on us if they are attacked. To leave Viet Nam to its

fate would shake the confidence of all these people in the value of an

American commitment and in the value of America's word.iv

Because of its messianic global crusade against communism the U.S. saw not only the

Vietnamese conflict, but virtually every local anticolonial rebellion and regional conflict

as part of its Manichean struggle with communism. Local and regional forces were either

good supporters of the “free” world or agents of the communist dark side.

U.S. forces may have been stretched thin around the world by this global crusade as was

recognized by the Nixon Doctrine which was proclaimed upon retreat from Vietnam. But

the reason why the U.S. had so many missions must also be examined carefully. The

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interests of capitalists stretch far and wide around the globe. But few major corporate

interests were at stake in Vietnam. The “domino theory” suggested that if Vietnam fell

more obvious assets like Indonesia, the Philippines, or even eventually Japan might be at

risk. Yet in fact when Vietnam went, the rest of Indochina fell, but no further dominos

toppled. So perhaps we should also take seriously the messianic mindset that sought to

save the entire world from godless communism as a real ideological and cultural force in

driving the U.S. commitment in remote Vietnam. Maybe the real geostrategic lesson of

Vietnam is that reach exceeded grasp.

Iraq

No one knows the long-term outcome of the current conflict in Iraq, but so far the U.S.

has not only been unable to defeat the insurgency, but the war has also created enemies

and lost supporters for the U.S. throughout the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds alike.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq is more easily explained by traditional economic and

geostrategic factors than the U.S. invasion of Vietnam (or Wilson’s master plan for

postwar peace). Iraq has huge oil reserves and is strategically located in the region that

exports most of the world’s oil. It is clear that the U.S. and its allies have massive

material interests at stake in the Middle East.

Yet the very fact that the U.S. and several of its key allies have differed so sharply on

strategy toward Iraq since 9/11 shows that something more than raw material interest

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drove the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In the first Gulf War under the first President Bush, the

U.S. had virtually unanimous support of its major allies and either troops or major

financial and logistical support from France, Germany, and Canada as well as Britain,

Italy, and Japan. In the current war in Iraq, while the governments of Britain, Italy, and

Japan supported the U.S., France, Germany, and Canada pointedly refused to do so.

Popular support in Europe and major allies in Asia has always been low. Several early

supporters of the war, such as Spain, have withdrawn their troops and others, such as

Italy, are preparing to do so.

When nations that all are heavily dependent on imported oil have such sharply different

policies toward the world’s leading oil exporting region, one must look at other factors

beyond simple dependence on foreign oil. Other material interests could be invoked.

France’s long standing oil contracts with the Saddam regime have often been used to

explain French reluctance to take a hard line. So have the high number of Arabs residing

in France compared to the low number of Jews. Yet neither of these factors deterred

France from sending troops in the first Gulf War. And neither of these factors was at

play in Canada’s or Germany’s decision not to back the U.S. in the second war after they

did in the first war.

Perhaps we need to look more carefully at the official motivations proffered by the Bush

administration. President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address to the American people,

before the invasion, played on post-9/11 fears and stressed the issue of WMD. Bush

accused Saddam Hussein of potentially having

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25,000 liters of anthrax--enough doses to kill several million people

38,000 liters of botulinum toxin--enough to subject millions of people to death

500 tons of sarin, mustard, and VX nerve agent (which) could also kill untold thousands

advanced nuclear weapons development program (and) a design for a nuclear weaponv

Bush also claimed

Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and

statements by people now in custody reveals that Saddam Hussein aids

and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda. Secretly, and

without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to

terrorists, or help them develop their own.vi

One year later, in his 2004 State of the Union speech, after no WMD had been found,

Bush’s justifications had shifted, and the war was now part of a grander strategy of

freedom and democratic peace for the entire Middle East.

(C)ombat forces of the United States and other countries enforced the

demands of the United Nations, ended the rule of Saddam Hussein, and

the people of Iraq are free.

As long as the Middle East remains a place of tyranny, despair, and

anger, it will continue to produce men and movements that threaten the

safety of America and our friends. So America is pursuing a forward

strategy of freedom in the greater Middle East.

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Our aim is a democratic peace, a peace founded upon the dignity and

rights of every man and woman. America acts in this cause with friends

and allies at our side, yet we understand our special calling: This great

republic will lead the cause of freedom.vii

The very fact that the ideological validations for the war could shift so dramatically in

one year shows they cannot be taken at face value, that more base economic and

geostrategic interests also lie behind the more noble rationalizations. Yet just because

something is not entirely true does not mean it is not believed. Although Washington

(and London) may have grossly exaggerated reports of WMD in Iraq, many may still

have sincerely believed that Saddam was attempting to regain weapons he in fact once

did have.

Similarly, just because the U.S. has historically acted more often to crush democratic

movements in the Middle East than to promote them, it does not follow that the rhetoric

about democratizing Iraq was not serious. In a historically messianic United States

traumatized by 9/11 but still comforted by post-Cold War triumphalism, the

neoconservative project of combating rising terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism by

transforming Iraq into an oasis of liberal democracy in the desert of Middle Eastern

autocracy sounded a sweet siren’s song. Surely the U.S. has neoimperial ambitions in

Iraq, but its original ambitions were actually much greater than merely economic or

geostrategic, in fact, they were truly revolutionary. They reached far beyond what could

reasonably have been expected to be achieved.

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Wilson’s Postwar Vision

Of the three policy failures cited in this section, the one that most clearly favors the

theory of hegemonic overreach against overstretch is Wilson’s failure to achieve his

visionary goals in the post-World War I settlement. The theory of overstretch

hypothesizes that hegemonic power degrades over time, like a physical substance being

subjected to repeated stress. If characteristic miscalculations and failures are significant

factors early in the hegemonic cycle that weighs heavily against life-cycle theories of

decline and overstretch as principle explanations of hegemonic failure.

Policy goals that reach far beyond capabilities available and messianic ideology that

drives global transformational goals that cannot be realized can be seen from the very

dawning of U.S. hegemony, after the U.S. had played a decisive role in the outcome of

the first world war. Woodrow Wilson, the U.S. president and the son of the preacher,

struck such a dramatic pose at the Paris Peace Conference as a man on a mission to

reform world politics. The story is so well known it does not need retelling here.

Yet Wilson’s bold declarations about self-determination of peoples and peaceful

settlement of international disputes went essentially unheeded as the leading imperial

powers carved up the Ottoman Empire’s territories, applied the concept of disarmament

only to Germany, and, while creating a League of Nations, did not give it sufficient

power to influence the outcome of international conflicts. Wilson’s reach so exceeded

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his grasp that even his own country’s Senate rejected the treaty that only marginally

reflected his transformational agenda.

It could be argued that Wilson’s failure is not quite the same as the failure in Vietnam

and the unfolding potential failure in Iraq because the U.S. had not yet the established

itself as global hegemon. However, Wilson’s postwar plan was clearly designed to create

U.S. hegemony. The U.S. had most of the capabilities to step up as the hegemon in the

post-World War I world. The U.S. simply misplayed its hand, first by Wilson’s

overreaching at the peace conference, then back home through the subsequent Republican

rejection of the Treaty of Versailles and the diplomacy necessary to carry out hegemonic

strategy.

Why did the U.S. succeed in establishing its hegemony after the World War II when it

failed after World War I? The standard answer that U.S. power was more overwhelming

because the old European powers were so much more thoroughly destroyed and needed

help facing the threat of the Soviet Union and international communism has great merit,

but it leaves out some nuances that are important for the later unfolding of U.S.

hegemony. Because of its anti-communist, anti-Soviet mission, the U.S. reined in its

reformist zeal and took a more realist approach to the European powers and Japan. And

because they were under such grave threat, the other capitalist powers were willing to

tolerate American messianic zeal, because a savior was precisely what they were seeking.

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The early Cold War masked the conflict between the messianic mission of U.S. foreign

policy and the interests of other capitalist powers that were more apparent when Wilson

came to Paris, during the Vietnam War, and since the end of the Cold War.

What Price Success?

Even prominent U.S. policy “successes” during the Cold War have later proven to be

cases of hegemonic overreach because of “blowback,” or counterproductive long-term

consequences. In the 1950s a popular revolution in Iran ousted the British created and

U.S. supported Shah of Iran. The CIA engineered a counterrevolution to bring the Shah

back to power.

In 1979 the Shah was ousted again, this time by the Islamic revolution led by the

Ayatollah Khomeini which established the theocracy which was ideological inspiration

for rising fundamentalism throughout the Islamic world. The quarter of a century of

repression by the Shah that U.S. intervention had produced had enraged the Iranian

people, liquidated democratic and popular forces that might have channeled that anger in

a progressive direction, and thus paved the way for a reactionary fundamentalist

revolution. The U.S. had the power to impose a regime on the Iranian people and help

keep it in government for a generation, but it could not control the long-term

consequences of its actions. Now the U.S. is facing down a militant Islamic state

apparently pursuing nuclear weapons. Once again, U.S. reach exceeded its grasp.

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U.S. support for Osama Bin Laden and other mujahadin in Afghanistan is another

example of the U.S. cold warriors helping empower forces that would come back to haunt

them. During the Cold War, when Osama Bin Laden was pointing his guns at the pro-

Soviet government in Afghanistan, the U.S. counted him as one of the good guys and the

U.S. was actually providing him with weapons.

The fall of the pro-Soviet regime in Afghanistan was a major triumph in U.S. policy, one

of the first in the series of shocks that led to the fall of the Soviet empire. However, the

swiftness and totality of the collapse of the Soviet system indicates that fall was heavily

overdetermined, that it was bound to happen regardless of any particular historical

sequence. The fall of the pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan probably sped up the

coming of the collapse and the U.S. support for the mujahadin probably helped their

cause. But the depth of Muslim hostility to the Soviet system was revealed in the

absolute and total flight of all the Muslim republics out of the Soviet Union once

Gorbachev lifted political repression. U.S. aid to the mujahadin was almost certainly

superfluous to the outcome in Afghanistan and even more so to the overall outcome in

the Soviet empire.

However, the U.S. aid was perhaps not incidental to the more local issue of who won out

in post-Soviet Afghanistan. Certainly the money, weapons, and training provided to

Osama bin Laden’s and other like minded forces were substantial to small, irregular

groups trying to establish themselves as independent fighting units and make a name for

themselves among anti-Soviet forces. While the U.S. probably cannot claim credit for

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the collapse of the pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan, it must bear some of the

responsibility for the kind of government that succeeded it.

The implications of U.S. “successes” in Iran in the 1950s and Afghanistan in the 1980s

are profound for the situation in Iraq today. In the long run, U.S. “success” in

establishing a partially functioning pro-American regime in Baghdad may do more to

stimulate the forces of Islamic fundamentalist resistance across the Arab and Muslim

world than an early U.S. retreat. A permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq may become

a symbol not of a rising tide of liberal democratization in the Muslim world, but of infidel

oppression, and a spur to a new surge of Islamic fundamentalist resistance to western

domination.

IV. Islamic Fundamentalism vs. the West: How Deep Is the Clash?

(This section deleted to meet space requirements)

V. Future Challenges to Hegemony

Potential Sources of Hegemonic Breakdown

The macro-historical theory of hegemonic cycles focuses on the overarching process of

the rise and decline of hegemonic powers. However, within any one of the cycles, there

are lesser periods of hegemonic weakening and regeneration. The loss of the Vietnam

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War followed by the oil shock induced recessions of the 1970s and the early 1980s led

some to predict the imminent breakdown of U.S. hegemony. The decisive victory in the

first Iraq war and the regeneration of the U.S. economy in the 1990s led others to talk of a

second American century. Both were premature.

Similarly, the short term outcome of the war in Iraq, whether it is the stabilization of a

pro-American regime or the collapse of the current pro-American government will almost

certainly lead either to new euphoric pronouncements about the 21st century belonging to

the U.S. or claims that the end of U.S. hegemony are nigh. Again, either conclusion will

most likely be premature. However, the outcome on the main battlefield so far in the

Terrorism Wars will indicate much about the future direction of the global system.

Hegemonic states and even hegemonic systems do have life spans, however hard it is to

gauge them.

There is an even larger question than whether the U.S. will remain the hegemonic state

within the western system. How long will the West remain hegemonic in the global

system? Since Spengler the issue of the decline of the West has been debated. It would

be hard to question current western dominance of virtually every global economic,

political, military, or ideological system today. In some ways the domination of the West

seems even more firm than it was in the past because the West is no longer a group of

fiercely competing states but increasingly a cohesive force. In the era of western

domination, breakdown of the rule of each hegemonic state has come because of

competition from powerful rival states at the core of the system leading to system-wide

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war. The unique characteristic of the Cold War and particularly the post-Cold War

system is that the core capitalist states are now to a large degree politically united and

increasingly economically integrated.

In the 21st century, two factors taking place on the periphery and semi-periphery seem

more of a threat to the reproduction to the hegemony of the American state and the

western system than conflict between core states: 1. resistance to western cultural

hegemony in the Muslim world and 2. the rise of Asian super states.

Relations between the core and periphery have already undergone one massive

transformation in the 20th century—decolonization. The historical significance of

decolonization was overshadowed somewhat by the emergence of the Cold War and the

nuclear age. Recognition of its impact was dampened somewhat by the subsequent

relative lack of change of fundamental economic relations between core and periphery.

But one of the historical legacies of decolonization is that ideological legitimation has

become more crucial in operating the global system. The manufacture of some level of

consent, particularly among the elite in the periphery has replaced brute domination.

Less raw force is necessary but in return a greater burden of ideological and cultural

legitimation is required. Now it is no longer enough for colonials to obey, willing

participants must believe. Therefore, cultural challenges to the foundations of the liberal

capitalist world view assume much greater significance. Thus the resurgence of Islamic

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fundamentalism and other traditionalist belief systems as ideologies of opposition has

greater significance in a system dependent on greater levels of willing consent.

The other, more recent change in core-periphery dynamics is the re-emergence of great

states on the periphery or semi-periphery. China, low on the international division of

labor, is a classic case of a peripheral or at best semi-peripheral state. But its sheer size,

its rapid growth, its currency reserves, its actual and potential markets, etc. make it a

major power and a potential future counter hegemon. India lags behind China, but

aspires to the same heights. Russia has fallen from great power to semi-periphery status

since the collapse of the Soviet empire, but its energy resources and the technological

skills of its people make recovery of its former greatness possible. Perhaps in mid to

long term future the Terrorism Wars will be overshadowed by a counter hegemonic

challenge by a coalition of Asian states led by China or some other power.

No one knows exactly what the resurgence of Asia portends for the future. However, just

as half a century ago global decolonization was a blow to western domination of the non-

western world, so the shift in economic production to Asia will redefine global power

relations throughout the 21st century.

The Islamic Fundamentalist Challenge to Western Hegemony

The tendency of U.S. foreign policy and the western cultural system toward hegemonic

overreach both increase the probability that conflict with Islamic fundamentalism will

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intensify and decrease the probability that any emerging non-western super states can be

smoothly incorporated into the existing system.

One need look no further than the war in Iraq to see how the Terrorism War is only

creating more terrorists. This counter productive hegemonic overreach has a long history

in this part of the world. The U.S. engineered coup to return the Shah to Iran and the

Shah’s repression of all progressive forces left the Islamic revolutionaries of the

Ayatollah Khomeini the only viable vehicle of resistance. Iran was only the most visible

case of U.S. support for reactionary monarchs or military dictators in the Islamic world,

who hasten to crush any sign of progressive movement but either cozy up to reactionary

clerics in search of some popular support or are unwilling or unable to muster the same

determination in suppressing opposition in the mosques.

The Bush plan for democratization of Iraq and Afghanistan may seem an improvement

over the long standing U.S. practice of supporting reactionary regimes in the Islamic

world, but in fact it is a much more ambitious grasping for power than ever before

conceived. The old reactionary monarchs were expected only to rule their people and

keep the oil flowing. Perhaps wealth would trickle down and their societies over time

would modernize and even democratize, but that was not the essential function the

regimes performed for the West. But the Bush plan calls for immediate democratization

for Iraq and Afghanistan with the hope that they will initiate a wave of rapid

transformation of the Middle East and Central Asia into a region of liberal democracies

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much as changes in the Soviet system unleashed a wave of change in eastern Europe.

The evidence so far is that this is overreach on a massive scale.

Perhaps the high flying rhetoric of the neoconservatives should about transforming the

Middle East and the Islamic world should not be taken seriously. After all, plans for the

democratization of Kuwait were quietly shelved once the Kuwaiti royal family was

firmly back on the throne. If so, then the war in Iraq is more classic U.S. overreach, in

the tradition of reinstalling the Shah of Iran or the Vietnam War.

In either case, the vicious cycle between U.S. supported Israeli hard-liners and

Palestinian militants continues, with each act of violence by one generating more support

for their opponents. Similarly, Islamic fundamentalists and U.S. Christian

fundamentalists seem to be locked in a similar cycle, with the 9/11 bombing

strengthening the hard-line Republicans in the U.S. and the Iraq invasion strengthening

the Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East. The analogy is not so much to the wave

of democratizations at the end of the Cold War as the to the way in most of the Cold War

hard-line policies by the Soviets strengthened the hard-liners in the U.S. and hard-line

policies in the U.S. strengthened hard-liners in the Soviet Union.

It seems unlikely that the “clash of civilizations” between Islamic fundamentalists and the

West alone will bring about the breakdown of western global hegemony or even the end

U.S. domination within the existing system. The Terrorism Wars have already caused

considerable chaos in the Middle East and parts of Asia and some discomfort in the

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western world. It is beyond knowing whether these conflicts have already peaked or

whether we have just seen the tip of the iceberg. However, even if the Terrorism Wars

prove a long and brutal struggle in which Iraq was only an early theater, chaos in the

Muslim world is unlikely to represent a basic challenge to western supremacy.

Disciplined terrorists and rioting Islamic immigrants can only episodically bring the

struggle home to the West. Access to crucial oil supplies can be cut off, throwing global

markets into turmoil, but the global economy has already twice recovered from oil shocks.

Taken in isolation from other factors, Islamic fundamentalism is unlikely to be a decisive

threat to western hegemony because there is no powerful Islamic state that can match

western economic productive power, much less systematically wage war outside its

territory, and thus there is no vital threat to western supremacy.

Potential Hegemonic Challenger States

The states that could potentially develop the capacity to challenge U.S. supremacy and

even western hegemony, depending on how the 21st century unfolds, are China, India,

and Russia. (Japan is another possibility if it fell out of the western alliance, but that is an

unlikely possibility and will not be considered here.) China and India are billion strong

economies that a growing at roughly 10% a year, but they are still relatively poor nations.

If they could sustain the current rates of economic growth they will eventually become

the two largest economies in the world.

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If China and/or India were to achieve levels of economic development even approaching

the West, they would represent a shift in economic power to Asia beyond what Japan and

other East Asian nations have currently achieved. China is already projected by many to

surpass the U.S. soon in total economic production if measured by real purchasing power

rather than by exchange rate. China’s population is almost double the U.S. and the EU

combined and growing faster. India’s population is about 50% greater than the U.S. and

the EU combined and growing much faster than China’s. In a couple of decades both

nations will have twice the population of the West. If in a few decades hence through

sustained economic growth either nation could achieve roughly half the GDP per capita

of the West, they would equal or surpass the West in total production.

However, for any of these states to become a challenger to western hegemony, several

conditions would have to be met. First, China and/or India would have to sustain their

almost unprecedented rates of economic growth for almost unprecedented decades of

virtually uninterrupted prosperity. Achieving high growth is rare enough, sustaining it

would be even more unlikely. Growth alone, without a change in the nature of the

economy and society would leave these nations still low on the international division of

labor, producing mostly low value added consumer goods for the western world. To

become true global powerhouses they would have to follow a similar trajectory as Japan

and South Korea and climb up the ladder of technology, finance, and complexity of

international organization. Russia would face a similar task starting from a higher

technological and social base, and with massive energy resources, but with 10% of the

population of the Asian giants.

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Yet even Japan, which has one of the handful of nations that has navigated these

imposing ordeals, is not a hegemonic challenger, but firmly ensconced within the western

system. A hegemonic challenger would need to develop a comparable system of hard

military and economic power and soft ideological and institutional power to the U.S. and

its western allies. It would need to create a counter hegemonic bloc, an alliance system

of like-minded nations with a sense of grievance against the dominant bloc, as the

communists had with capitalism or the fascists had with Anglo-American liberalism.

But most of all, even if a new super-state had power that was growing to match the U.S.

and the Europeans, it would need a reason to break out from the existing global system

rather than simply rise to power within the system. After all, the U.S. in the 19th century

flourished under British hegemony and when it passed Britain in first economic and later

political power in the 20th century it had no need to create a new system, but rather

simply supplanted the British in the existing system. Except for its disastrous alliance

with German fascism, Japan’s rise to global economic superpower has been

accomplished within the western hegemonic system.

The existing global system can accommodate new powers. But can it accommodate new

kinds of powers? For China and/or India, and probably Russia, to succeed, they will

most likely have to play by new rules, as did Japan and its East Asian imitators. The

imperial system under the British had few rules, and the U.S.-led post-World War II

trading system tolerated Japanese and other East Asian systematic mercantilist violations

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of the principles of free trade because at the time they were such a small part of the global

system. By the 1980s the differences in forms of capitalist organization between the

West and Japan and its East Asian imitators had become a major source of friction in the

global trading system. It was only a fortuitous set of circumstances—the recession in the

Japanese economy, the boom in the American economy, the collapse of communism, and

the war in the Persian Gulf that deflected U.S. attention—that forestalled a serious

confrontation between allies.

U.S. Hegemony and a Rising China (This section deleted to meet space requirements)

VI. Conclusion

The theory of hegemonic overreach proposed here draws upon several schools of

thought—long cycle theories of hegemonic breakdown, analyses of ideological-cultural

hegemony, the globalization hypothesis, Huntington’s clash of civilization’s thesis, and

studies of messianic mission in U.S. foreign policy. Hegemonic overreach has two

elements—the unwelcome overreach of the hegemonic economic, social, and cultural

system into traditional, non-western cultural zones and the overreach of the hegemonic

state’s military and political interventions into the affairs of other states and peoples.

Past long cycle theories of hegemonic breakdown have focused on the contradiction

between the hegemon’s growing military-political commitments and its slipping

economic capability relative to rising challenger states. The theory of hegemonic

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overreach introduces a third, ideological-cultural dimension. It is argued that because of

the intensification of globalization, crises for the hegemonic state today comes as much

from cultural resistance on the periphery and semi-periphery as from challenger states in

the core. The ideological-cultural dimension is also crucial in understanding the behavior

of the current hegemon. U.S. foreign policy is driven not only by abstract criteria of

hegemonic preservation, but also by a sense of messianic mission implanted long before

the U.S. stepped up to its current global role.

Recurrent failures in U.S. foreign policy can be traced to military and political

interventions explained by the theory of hegemonic overreach, some of which have been

briefly discussed in this paper. While these policy failures do not rise to the level of

breakdown of the hegemonic state’s control, they suggest the character of possible future

systemic crises.

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References (This section deleted to meet space requirements)

NOTES

i Wilson, Woodrow, http://geocities.com/florigkr/ForeignPolicyHistory.htmlii Ibid. iii Bush, George, White House website, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/01/20050120-1.htmlivLyndon Johnson, http://geocities.com/florigkr/chapter7r.htmlv George W. Bush, White House website, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.htmlvi ibid viiGeorge W. Bush, White House website, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040120-7.html

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