Hegemony

Domination of one state, region, class, or culture over others without the specific use of force. The concept of hegemony dates back to ancient times. Following the surrender of Athens to Sparta during the Peloponnesian War (431–405 BCE), Sparta came to dominate the region and emerged as the world's first hegemonic power. However, although Sparta exercised a considerable amount of political influence in both the domestic and international affairs of the conquered Greek city-states, it did not rule them in the same way that an imperial power administers its colonies. Instead of using force (coercive violence), Sparta ultimately achieved the compliance of lesser powers simply by establishing itself as the economic, political, military, and cultural leader of the region.

The history of the United States is marked by three distinct eras of hegemony—the immediate post–World War II period, the Cold War period, and the post–Cold War period. At the conclusion of World War II, the United States, as the world's dominant power, took the lead in organizing and constructing new sets of rules and institutions to govern the international market, coordinate relief and rebuilding efforts, and foster new diplomatic opportunities. By the early 1950s, U.S. hegemony (based on liberalism and capitalism) came into direct competition with a growing sense of Soviet hegemony (based on socialism and communism). For the next four decades, during the period known as the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union challenged one another for the position of supreme hegemon of the world. When Soviet hegemony began to crumble during the early 1990s, the United States once again became the world's only superpower.

Though no nation-state poses a genuine threat to U.S. hegemony at the current time, many feel that organized international terrorist groups possess the capabilities to significantly weaken American hegemony by disrupting its economy, threatening the security of its citizens, and identifying inherent hypocrisies in its foreign policies.

Critics of American attempts to exert leadership in the international arena insist that the United States is not so much a hegemon as it is an imperial power. From their perspective—the current war on terrorism notwithstanding—U.S. engagement abroad constitutes the unfolding of an aggressive, systematic plan for global domination at any cost and harkens back to the days of the imperial and colonial powers of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Proponents of America's leadership style, on the other hand, insist that the American mission to make the world safe for democracy and free markets is virtuous and that these [Page 321]political and economic ideals will usher in a new era of global peace and prosperity.