The United States as Global Liberal Hegemon

Since I was a boy, I have heard the phrase repeated thousands of times that America is the leader of the free world. In political science jargon, the liberal hegemon. But what exactly does that mean? By the time I was 9, I knew that Americans elected the President to be the leader of the United States, but who elected America to be the liberal hegemon? Why the United States? Do the citizens of the United States receive any benefits from having their country be the hegemon besides tens of thousands of deaths and many billions spent on defense? Furthermore, does any country need to hold that position?

Secretary of State Blinken said, “Whether we like it or not, the world does not organize itself.” So why does the United States get to organize the world? Who anointed America to play the role of what is commonly called the liberal hegemon, and what explicitly is a liberal hegemon? Why does any country need to, or have the right to play the cop enforcing specific rules over another country. And how does economics and finance fit into a modern definition of hegemony?

So why is a liberal hegemon needed and who should be the ultimate adjudicate in the relationship of one country to another at this time in history? These are the two key issues of this book. Why can’t the United Nations organize the world or be the cop? This chapter looks at the various historic alternative approaches to some form of global order whether it was balance of power, the League of Nations, or the UN and the difficulties all these approaches faced.

The United States was the only major nation whose birth was influenced by the philosophical enlightenment movement. Thus, it has a very different view of the role of government. In America, the government was created not to watch over the individual welfare of its citizens but to guarantee their fundamental rights and liberties. That perspective emphasizes the individual over the community. America rode the tiger of globalization to economic, if not domestic tranquility like few other nations. But in that exhilarating ride, America never gave anything but lip service to the underbelly of globalization—pandemics, global warming, economic contagion, and internationally unregulated economic power. So does America’s political culture, based on an aggrandized view of the eighteenth-century enlightenment theory of individual rights, hinder its ability to lead in the twenty-first century?

What are the somewhat inevitable traps and sometimes major disasters that befall America’s hegemonic policy? Are they avoidable? Does power in some way demand action, no matter how damaging that action could be? Can you prevent the misreading of history that led to the Vietnam War, or the groupthink and lack of knowledge that led to the second Iraq War? How can the United States as the hegemon judge when not to go down the proverbial rabbit hole? Is that even possible with our current circumstances? Does the susceptibility of the United States to serious and harmful misjudgments prevent the United States from being the liberal hegemon? There has never been a major actor on the world stage who has not fallen into this trap. Yet disastrous mistakes like Vietnam and Iraq do not erase the fundamental question of who can and will organize the world.

Finally, it all comes down to the American citizen and the simple question, are the rewards of hegemony worth the price? The United States is historically a very different type of hegemon. It is, on the one hand, a multi-ethnic and multicultural democracy where the rewards and the cost of holding that position need to be justified not to the king, not to the autocrat, not to the elites but to the everyday person. In addition, there is the role of the free press and social media in America, where any action by the government is open to immediate critique. All of which makes playing the role of hegemon much more complex, magnifying the domestic political risk quotient in decision-making. America does not have to be the hegemon; she chooses to be the hegemon. It is a political choice. If America entirely withdrew from its role as hegemon both militarily and financially, it would be impossible to calculate the global damage. However, it is still America’s choice to make that decision. So, what are the rewards, costs, and responsibilities that the American citizenry has undertaken as the global leader?