Many political scientists in this decade are struggling with the idea that the hegemonic power of the United States is in sharp decline or completely stagnant. With the current state of the nation and the many problems that have arisen from the irresponsibility of its actions, the strength of the hegemony of the United States is undoubtedly diminishing. We can make several observations ranging from all the different aspects that show that the US hegemonic force is beyond repair and will not be resurrected. Although the desperate struggles of the US government to demonstrate its unwillingness to accept the fact are admirable and at some points not without good intentions, the US hegemonic power is outdated and broken.

In the early 1950s, the United States rose to power as the elite world hegemon. After World War II, the major economic powers had to cut deep into their own pockets to pay their war wages and rebuild devastated countries and economies. England, France, Germany, and Japan were all on the verge of total destruction at this point, and the United States used this to their advantage. Although the US participated in the war itself, the scope of the battles never reached the mainland, keeping the nation’s infrastructure intact. This incredible power continued from the 1950s to the late 1970s. In this era, the Bretton Woods agreement made the USD the center of the global economy and it became the official, internationally traded currency by default. The USD was the only currency that could be created on a large scale and maintain the faith of foreign investors due to its value and versatility in the world market (Krasner 187). All of the world’s top ten banks were American-owned, making the US the world’s largest creditor. The US was the number one destination for foreign direct investment and during these two decades, the US was also able to sustain the highest level of growth of its economy (Bartilow Lecture). These characteristics made the United States the undisputed hegemonic state in the world at that time. Almost all financial decisions that were made regarding international trade were made through the United States. The United States also established several regimes: the GATT (The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, now the WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and a host of other international regimes affiliated with the United Nations (Lake 121).

As the effects of World War II began to wear off, the United States slowly lost the drastic gap in power that it enjoyed. From the 1960s to the mid-1970s, countries such as Japan, the former Soviet Union, and what was then West Germany increased their military and financial capabilities at a faster rate than the United States. This raises the first dilemma when we explore the hegemonic decline of the United States, because the hegemon must be very powerful relative to other states in order to retain its power (Krasner 185). The US global power status since the early 1980s has been in steady decline. Currently, the US dollar is relatively weak compared to the currencies of the world’s major trading partners. This makes it more difficult to make a credible argument for why the USD should remain the default trading currency when others have a much better argument for taking the title, such as the EU euro (EUR) or the Japanese yen (¥). ). The United States has now gone from being the world’s largest creditor to the world’s largest debtor. This has caused one of the most significant reductions in American power. It is very difficult to maintain hegemony when you are beholden to other nations because of borrowed money instead of having other nations beholden to you. This significantly limits your options when it comes to implementing a world policy that would give you certain advantages. Since 1986, the US balance of payments has been very lopsided when the US began importing more than exporting, which was the beginning of the massive deficit the US government is now dealing with (Krasner 189) . More recently, the US has been hit by an overwhelming number of recurring crises that have put economic growth into a slump and major problems stemming from the current banking collapse. Certainly, it would seem that the United States is falling behind in financial performance due to the misunderstanding of past policies that made the United States the power that it was economically.

The magnitude of these problems does not stop only at the pending economic crisis. The United States is losing important advantages in education, infrastructure, innovation, and health care. For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the US lectured to far more Ph.D. students than any other nation could come close to. Now the US lead in that area of ​​interest has shrunk significantly and with current trends in the US educational system, soon the top spot in producing Ph.Ds will no longer exist in favor of the US. This could be a direct result due to the fact that the US is no longer home to the most advanced and renowned higher education facilities in the world, certainly lagging behind European and Asian universities. . When it comes to secondary education, the US is experiencing a record number of young people who are illiterate and/or who are dropping out of school altogether. The European and Asian systems for educating their young are now proving far superior to the antiquated and underfunded ways of the American system (Bartilow Lecture).
When it comes to the military, innovation and health care, there are also problems that continue to spiral out of control fast. While US military might remains unique, the events of 9/11 demonstrated that there are still ways to strike within the country’s borders, and the US response to those acts later made the hegemonic power seem more powerful. weak than ever. Powerful foreign nations are rapidly improving their military capabilities and can maintain a smaller and more cost-effective force than the larger and more widespread US military. More than 45 million Americans remain without health care. Unhealthy, untreated Americans can’t work because they’re home sick or injured, and don’t forget that the US is also home to one of the world’s unhealthiest fast-food diets. These two separate problems do not mix well in the long run, when most of the technological and medical innovation is done in other parts of the world, which will create a serious financial burden when health care will soon be imported and cause significant problems for the current unhealthy generation of Americans who will crave medical treatment.

However, we can learn from the hegemonic states of the past, all of which faded over time, just as the American is doing today. Britain was perhaps the last true hegemon before the United States. In 1890, the collapse of her empire had just begun. David A. Lake’s research on the subject is a work that needs to be closely scrutinized because of the illustrious similarities between the British recession in retirement and that of the United States as well. For much of the 19th century, Britain dominated in the same fields that the US did from the 1950s to the late 1970s. Soon, in the late 1800s, the US and Germany adopted a protectionist system to plant their economic seeds and before long they were overtaking British industries and capabilities. Britain’s industrial base collapsed, forcing them to invest heavily in the service, transport, and insurance sectors of the economy just to break even when it came to their balance of payments statistics. For the time being, the British were able to continue with the pound as the dominant world currency. The fragile system was already on the thinnest ice, when World War I confounded the weak British economy (Lake 122). At the time of Britain’s reign of power, they also carried out operations to fully open and liberalize the world economy. This led to brief substantial economic abundance, but eventually the struggles to remain a power strong enough to be considered an absolute hegemon faded away. Hegemonic powers are only sustainable during periods of constant economic growth. When growth is no longer the complete and absolute state of hegemony’s economic functionality, power ceases to be consistent. We see this to be the case for Britain, as other world powers emerged and became caught up in terms of economic status and influence, the British power exercised was much more explicit and coercive, just as it was during the American hegemonic era under President Nixon (Lake 121). It is safe to say that the United States is headed down the same path that will eventually end in the ultimate dethronement of the US empire and its hegemonic capabilities. If you think about all the complications that the United States is experiencing right now in terms of obvious financial difficulties and others in the areas of education, technological innovation and health, respectively. Other nations have clearly begun their own recovery phase and are hampering American power as we speak. The irony between the situations that led to the collapse of the British hegemonic state and the current burdens being placed on a disdainful American hegemony are too similar to be coincidental. It took the disaster of World War I to finally destabilize British hegemony, and the United States is one major crisis away from experiencing the same fate (Bartilow Lecture).

Since the loss of British power, it has been noted that Great Britain was never able to rise again to regain the hegemonic position. This may go on to show us what the American empire will look like fifty years from now. The United States will have to become much more of a team player in the new world economy after realizing impossible responsibilities as a hegemon. As the international economic system has continued to transform, it does not seem that another hegemonic state will emerge anyway. The playing field is equal on almost all fronts between the world’s superpowers and in terms of transportation and advanced communication there is hardly any secret information when it comes to technological innovation. As for the United States, the elements that propelled the US to hegemonic power are very outdated and literally impossible to recreate in the absence of a Third World War and due to the increasingly interconnected world economy, it would still be most impossible for the United States. America to live through another world war with its weak public and private domestic sectors, a weak currency when compared to others, and no real way to manufacture goods for export with a growing uneducated workforce.

Note: All information from Dr. Bartilow’s lectures was taken from sessions between 01.15.09 and 01.30.09
Special Thanks: Dr. Stephen A, Krasner, Dr. Robert Lake, and Dr. Horace A. Bartilow