CRUMBLING HEGEMONY

Some time ago Zbigniew Brzezinski, a US geopolitical specialist and preacher of hegemony, said that the US hegemony has come to an end. A national security advisor to the US president over 30 years ago, he was one of main advocates for the theory of the US domination of the “unipolar world.” He maintained that the 21^st century would be the century of the United States, saying that it must dominate the world after the Cold War.

However, in the twilight of his life, he has grown skeptical of the US policy of its supremacy, which he had devoted his every effort to realize, and admitted its impossibility.

Dmitri Suslov, vice-chairman of the External Defence Policy Council of Russia, and several other specialists have also insisted that the structure of the US supremacy has crumbled. The US president, too, has confirmed that the world has become multi-polarized.

Then, what are the fundamental factors that have broken the supremacy of the US?

They are none other than its aggressive wars, military pressure, intervention in other country’s internal affairs, economic blockade and so on. Soon after the end of its confrontation with the Soviet Union in the late 20^th century, it got drunk with almightiness of its strength and frittered away military expenditure to modernize its military equipment and increase its armed forces. The US military expenditure, which was bigger than those of the world major military powers put together, increased year after year, and its air and naval task forces deployed in several countries in the Middle East, East Asia and other regions were beefed up.

Having designated its potential enemies and crying about “threat” from them, it made a list of targets of its preemptive strike and made nuclear preemptive strike its official policy. It accelerated the expansion of NATO and schemed to form a new military block in order to encircle its enemies.

Its maneuverings for reinforcing military strength to gain world supremacy developed into aggressive wars against other countries. Without the consent of the UN Security Council, it invaded Iraq in March 2003 under the pretext of “dismantling WMD.” Later, it came to light that the pretext had been fabricated. With regard to this arbitrary exercise of military strength against a sovereign country, a French news agency commented that the Iraqi war meant the revival of the US arbitrariness and that the war was characterized by the US arbitrariness that reappeared in the world arena.

The US did not hesitate to commit aggression and intervention bringing pain and disaster to the peoples of other countries, and openly carried out military operations such as drone raids and “operations for capturing terrorists” in other countries, ignoring their sovereignty.

However, the hegemony which the US craved for has brought about a completely opposite result.

Many countries have put efforts to building up their military strength to cope with the US military hegemony. Cooperation has been strengthened and regional measures have been taken among several countries. In this course, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization has appeared, and joint military exercises taken place between China and Russia. Voices have rung out from various corners of the world in opposition to the US military high-handedness and arbitrariness. 

A Russian specialist said, “The US tried to build up its hegemony in the 1990s when Clinton was its president. But it resulted in weakening the hegemony. It met with opposition from centres of other forces, made many countries its enemies and lost its position. At the end of the term of Bush fils the supremacy of the US came to the end.”

It has also lost its ability to arbitrarily control the world market economy.

“Economic integration” is an external economy policy it has pursued since the end of the Cold War. It expanded its markets through the capitalist market system it established in many regions in the world and enjoyed its benefits for a while. It boasted that its economy was a locomotive of the world economy.

Afterwards, financial crisis broke out in various parts of the world. The crises broke out in England, Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico and other countries had harmful impact not only on the regions concerned but also on the development of the world economy. In particular, the crisis of default mortgage broke out in 2007 in the United States developed into a world financial crisis.

This clearly revealed the danger and vulnerability of the international financial and monetary system controlled pegged to the US dollars.

To cope with this, many countries have produced regional currencies, and moves to strengthen South-South cooperation got brisk. The Summit of 20 and formation of BRICS show that the days are gone when the US controlled the world economy. China, India, Brazil and other countries are developing rapidly, forming centres of new forces, and in the course of this the influence on the world economy has been re-divided.

The US is getting exhausted as days go by. Heavily indebted owing to the state debt of USD 17 trillion which exceeded the limit of state debt, the US is decreasing its military expenditure despite its desire. Signs of downfall can be found within the country: partisan dispute is fierce on formulating state budget, and having lost financial backing, the government once declared closure of part of its work and dismissed many public servants.

Now the US is desperately trying to revive its crumbling hegemony, but the trend of the times aspiring for independence will not allow it.