Democratic Hegemony and American Hegemony

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National power elites, including those in America, are confronting a dilemma. ... democratic hegemony, so as to avoid a classic imperial self-isolation of the ...
Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Volume 19, Number 2, June 2006

Democratic Hegemony and American Hegemony Alfredo G A Vallada˜o Institut d’e´tudes politiques de Paris Abstract The emergence of an ‘American democratic empire’, rising from the global informational and transportation revolution, that has its epicentre situated on the territory of the United States (US), has produced a profound metamorphosis in world affairs. National power elites, including those in America, are confronting a dilemma. They are compelled to accept, favour and even defend the so-called globalisation process in order to avoid further erosion of their economic and political power. On the other hand, this process is also directly threatening this same power. The paradox is that the US is the main promoter and defender of last resort of the new global ‘order’, which at the same time is restricting its own margins for sovereign action. The ‘democratic empire’ is thus fostering the rise of a democratic hegemonism at the expense of a ‘US hegemonism’. This democratic hegemonism is a gradually rising—and fragile—consensus on a proliferating set of perceptions and values, stressing individual freedom, responsibility and political and social activism. This consensus arises from the material possibilities of a more individualistic way of life and the increasing capacity of single individuals or organised groups to participate in global and local political decision-making processes. This is a process that favours the empowerment of interest groups whose reference is no longer solely the nation-state. Hence, traditional power elites are progressively losing their ability to present themselves as the ultimate embodiment of a national ‘general interest’. The irony of the seemingly intractable contradiction between US hegemonism and democratic hegemonism is that the actual spreading of the logic of the latter is closely dependent on US power and willingness to defend its own national interest. The greatest challenge for the coming decades will be the construction of supranational governance institutions under democratic hegemony, so as to avoid a classic imperial self-isolation of the US—a situation that would trigger the inevitable demise of democratic hegemonism and, for the time being, of any order as such.

Introduction The emergence in the last two decades of an ‘American democratic empire’ (Vallada˜o 1993, 1996) has produced a profound metamorphosis in world affairs. We must come to terms with new paradoxes concerning political power that affect the inner core of our beliefs involving the role of national states, the international hierarchy of power, the definition of security, the possibilities of inter-state conflicts and even of ‘imperialism’ itself. The new ‘empire’, rising from the global informational and transportation revolution that opened the way to the present process of transnationalisation of finance, chains of production and symbolic contents, is undoubtedly a global phenomenon. Nevertheless, its dynamic ISSN 0955-7571 print/ISSN 1474-449X online/06/020243–18 q 2006 Centre of International Studies DOI: 10.1080/09557570600723712

244 Alfredo G A Vallada˜o epicentre is situated on United States (US) territory and the American polity constitutes its main guarantor of last resort. It can be defined as ‘democratic’ in the sense that it favours individual mobility and initiative, as well as open access to information, and that it empowers growing networks of non-state actors, fostering impersonal rules-based polities and undermining, for better or worse, traditional forms of political power based on custom, personal allegiances or sheer force. These non-state actors—supporters as well as opponents—are, most of the time voluntarily, a part of the new order, gradually increasing their own political influence and utilising it for their own ends on what could be labelled a new global political arena.1 They are also the main engine spurring the development of economic, social and symbolic global interdependence, where states have less and less control over their national territory and people. The term ‘empire’, however, still has residual pertinence since some strong elements of coercion remain, even if they do not translate into permanent direct administration of foreign territories or centralised control of local allied clients. Outside the US, non-American national elites have huge margins of manoeuvre, even if some have less elbow room to act than others (Zimbabwe, for example, is not France or Britain, but nonetheless its ruling group can defy strong international pressures). Yet, the American state apparatus and its armed forces function as the main institutions capable of ensuring the security of the emerging order against strategic threats. In this sense, the US today does not have the characteristics of classic Western or Eastern territorial empires, but its national capabilities and will to project economic, military and cultural power (alone or within a coalition of allied nations) give the US administration an ‘imperial’ global reach. This is something that also heavily impacts the American political system by concentrating power in the executive branch, at the expense of the Congress and the Supreme Court (Vallada˜o 1996, 69 –98; Rudalevige 2005). Still, national power elites, including those in America, are confronting a dilemma. They are compelled to accept, favour and even defend this so-called globalisation process in order to avoid further erosion of their economic and political power (international as well as domestic). On the other hand, this process is also directly threatening this same power. Traditional rivalries between states and national interest do not disappear, but they have to conform and are strongly limited by the dynamics of growing inter-state dependence and the political weight of non-state actors. Obviously, asymmetries do exist and some states are more sovereign than others. But the fact is that this slow dilution of power also applies to the last superpower. The US is at the crux of this paradox: it is the main promoter and defender of last resort of the new global ‘order’, which at the same time is restricting its own margins for sovereign action. The ‘democratic empire’ is thus fostering the rise of a democratic hegemonism at the expense of a ‘United States hegemonism’. The most common meaning of hegemony, a term closely linked to the statecentric tradition in international relations (IR) literature, implies domination of world politics or parts of a ‘world-system’ by a nation-state or a group of states. 1 The World Economic Forum in Davos and the World Social Forum, for example, are both offspring of the progression of the ‘democratic empire’. The role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), like Oxfam, in the inner workings of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) trade negotiations is another example.

Democratic Hegemony and American Hegemony 245 This concept can have many variants: active imposition and enforcement of a set of rules necessary for managing a particular world-system and for assuring its reproduction or, in a more sophisticated sense, rule by consent or ideological leadership (not necessarily in contradiction with the former more ‘crude’ forms of domination). It is in this last category that I would place US hegemonism. In the Marxist Gramscian tradition (Gramsci 1975) hegemony is, essentially, a consensual domination by a ruling class, but this dominance is still conceived in the framework of national states and inter-state relationships. In my view, democratic hegemonism is neither linked to state-dominance nor classdominance. I would define it as a gradually rising and fragile consensus on a proliferating set of perceptions and values, stressing individual freedom, responsibility and political and social activism. These perceptions and values arise from the material possibilities of a more individualistic way of life and the increasing capacity of single individuals, organised groups, enterprises, and institutions (supporters or opponents of ‘globalisation’ ideologies) to participate in the global and local political decision-making processes from within or outside of today’s states or inter-state apparatus. The irony of the seemingly intractable contradiction between US hegemonism and democratic hegemonism is that the actual spreading of the logic of the latter is closely dependent on US power and willingness to defend its own national interest. The greatest task that all states (including the more destitute) and non-state actors will have to tackle is how to build new transnational institutions that would assure them more influence on the global decisionmaking process—which directly impacts local decisions—and that are adapted to this new era of diminishing national sovereignties. This will be crucial in order to avoid a classic imperial self-isolation of the US, a situation that would trigger the inevitable demise of democratic hegemonism and, for the time being, of any order as such. The New Limits of the State-Centric Approach The Vanishing National ‘General Interest’ Various IR theories have difficulty coming to terms with the new geopolitical reality: a world of growing interdependencies that coexists with a single global power centre. This difficulty derives from the discipline’s state-centric tradition. Although these theories acknowledge the importance and impact of the so-called new actors, they continue to assume that international relations are ultimately determined by the action of states, where governments have enough control over their territory, population and national resources and, therefore, are capable of producing power projects that can be more or less rational. The present categories of the IR debate—unipolarity and multipolarity, American hegemony and antihegemonic countervailing coalitions (balancing), bandwagoning, empire and regional security complexes, etc—reflect how the core role of states remains a determining paradigm. There is no doubt that states continue to be essential actors in international relations, some with much more capacity to act than others. But the theoretical monopoly of action attributed to them by IR theories has been eroded from both the ‘top’ and from the ‘bottom’. International rules and organisations reduce

246 Alfredo G A Vallada˜o national governments’ capacity to manoeuvre. This does not make it impossible to break collective rules or to ignore international institutions, but it simply means that the price to be paid (symbolic, political, economic and sometimes military) gets higher and higher. The WTO, the first international organisation with ‘teeth’ (its panels to resolve disputes and its Appellate Body), is one good example of the new constraints on the capacity of states to act. More decisive, however, is the multiplication of new actors ‘from below’: multinational companies, great metropolises or regions, humanitarian or development-oriented NGOs, criminal or terrorist transnational organisations, religious bodies and even single individuals or groups interconnected by the new information technologies (IT). This proliferation of global and local networks, indifferent to national borders, is fuelled by the access to globalised information, an explosion in communication capabilities and the unprecedented increasing mobility of people, resulting from modern transportation facilities. All these factors seriously hamper governments from exercising broad control over their national space and populations. The interconnection and interdependence of economic, social, cultural and symbolic processes favour the crystallisation and empowerment of interest groups whose reference is no longer solely the nation-state. Hence, traditional power elites (from the Left and from the Right, democratic or authoritarian) are progressively losing their ability to present themselves as the ultimate embodiment of a national ‘general interest’ and, therefore, their capacity for formulating credible strategies in the international arena.

Limits of the Various ‘Regionalist’ Approaches In recent years, the ‘Copenhagen School’ and proponents of the Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT) have tried to salvage the state-centric realist conceptions by combining them with a constructivist approach (Buzan and Wæver 2003). ‘Regions’, conceived as a new paradigm for analysing new geographic power constructs encompassing the political, military, economic and societal logics, could be used to redefine a new neo-realist graduation of power centres. The incremental development of these regional complexes as alternatives to globalisation (which is perceived, essentially, as a single power imperial expansion) would also open the possibility of new forms of inter-imperialist rivalries, a way of saving the classic state-centric balance of power vision. The RSCT is directly challenged by ‘New Regionalism’ theorists (Hentz and Bøa˚s 2004; Telo` 2001) who point out that regional constructs respond, and are closely linked to the globalisation process, and that they express the interaction between local and global levels and, hence, have different motivations and so many patterns as well. In addition, RSCT glaringly overlooks the importance of the multiplicity of actors, state and non-state. Both visions, which consider the emergence of regions as the new founding paradigm, have important limitations. New Regionalism underestimates the crucial impact of the use of force as a defining variable. Governments are still capable of mobilising means and men for violent action (with or without some form of international legitimacy, and even outside or against the logic of global interdependence). Some, looking at the European Union (EU) experience, assert

Democratic Hegemony and American Hegemony 247 that the emergence of ‘civil powers’ (Telo` 2004), based on regional integration and strong conditional enlargement procedures, is eroding the old balance of power founded on military strength. This vision is regularly taken aback by the use of force and is also incapable of articulating a response compatible with its ambition (for example, Balkans, Rwanda, Iraq, etc). On the other hand, RSCT underestimates the fact that all regional powers, their rivalries and their ambitions, are deeply constrained by the sheer dynamics of the emerging and universal global system of interdependence, where nonstate actors play an ever bigger role. Inter- or intra-state conflicts can be more or less tolerated as long as they are not perceived as threatening the core functioning of this globalisation process (economically, politically, militarily, symbolically, etc). This situation does not inhibit localised regional inter- or intrastate tensions and violent antagonisms, rather it leaves no room for new interimperialist conflicts and, for that matter, not even to a stable lonely imperialism, as we sustain further on. The fact is that RSCT and New Regionalism do not take into account the paradoxical nature of the overwhelming incentives that each national power elite has to participate and defend a global order that, at the same time, diminishes its power and strongly hamper its decision-making autonomy. In the end, both conceptions also turn a blind eye to the increasing possibilities of a strategic use of force by non-state actors2 and its consequences for statehood itself. The Global Communication Revolution The ‘Ambition Drain’ The impact of this globalisation process is obviously extremely diverse and there are huge asymmetries in terms of political power, economic efficiency and problems to be solved among the world’s states. However, every single state, from the US to the Mauritius Islands, is faced with this challenge. Examples are abundant. More than half of world trade is in the hands of big multinational corporations. If the American retail company Wal-Mart were a state, it would be China’s eighth biggest trading partner. Such Chinese dependence on foreign companies is all the more evident when one realizes that almost 60% of the country’s exports take place through foreign, especially American companies established in China, and that the US is still its biggest market. Brazilian soy exports, the major success story of the last decade, are largely controlled by transnational companies. In the US and Europe, workers and politicians denounce the ‘delocalisation’ of jobs (to India, Morocco, Eastern Europe, etc), not only in manufacturing but also in the service sector, which directly affects the middle class. There is no bigger symbol of Japanese economic and entrepreneurial pride than Sony; but 75% of the company’s capital is foreign-owned, two thirds of its activities take place abroad and its new president is an American.3

2 This is truly the case of the aerial bombing of the two most important urban centres of the global economic and political system, Washington, DC and New York, perpetrated by a non-state network, al-Qaeda. 3 For some pertinent examples of this globalisation phenomenon, see Friedman (2005).

248 Alfredo G A Vallada˜o Of further importance is the new mobility of individuals and their access to globalised information. Whether positive or negative, migrations are beginning to have a crucial influence in the domestic economy of states: the increasing value of remittances, the ‘emigration’ of brains, the loss for some and gain for others of a country’s most dynamic and ambitious people who are ready to face the challenges (even illegality) for a dream of social mobility. There are also the cultural impacts of these migrations on where the migrations originate from and their final destination, the consolidation of transnational families and the growing leverage of diasporas. In the Arab World the emigration of college-educated people is approaching 70%—a worrisome brain drain for the future of that region. The same can be said of Latin America or Africa, where a significant portion of the most entrepreneurial and courageous people of modest background leave to settle in the US or Europe: it is in fact an ambition drain that has been depleting the vitality of the emigrants’ countries of origin (Vallada˜o 2000).

Globalised Social Perceptions This rising individual mobility, combined with the possibility of keeping family and social ties with one’s homeland, allows for various levels of prosperity and poverty, lifestyle, freedom and opportunity to be widely known throughout the planet. And the globalised media enhances these perceptions. It is not only CNN or the BBC; Al-Jazeera’s main message is not the anti-American discourse of some of its interviews, but the images of streets, supermarkets, universities, political practices, and the way youngsters lead their everyday lives seen in reports filmed all over the world, particularly in the West or in Japan. This combination of mobility and global information is actually curtailing the nation-state’s or political authorities’ control over the perceptions of social justice or internal inequalities. It is increasingly harder to try to convince a population of the legitimacy of an authoritarian regime and a closed, stagnating economy benefiting a small privileged elite, in the name of non-Western traditions or ‘cultural values’. People nowadays have alternatives, like emigrating, participating in transnational activist organisations or, spurred by frustration, adhering to terrorist groups or criminal networks. In Arab countries, nearly 60% of the population is less than 25 years old (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia 2003), with no perspective of a good job, economic prosperity or social mobility. In Central America and the US, transnational gangs like Mara Salvatrucha are overflowing with recruits (Valdez 2000; Revelli 2004). Some neo-Marxist IR scholars (for example, Sklair 2001; Robinson 2004), confronted with the aforementioned globalisation of societies, combined with the proliferation of initiatives by non-state actors and their increasing influence, and then coupled with the diminishing power of national ‘ruling classes’ have tried to salvage their core ideological tenet—‘class struggle’ as history’s engine. They have done so by theorising the emergence of a transnational capitalist class (TCC) dominating an emerging transnational state (TNS) against the resistance of popular sectors worldwide. This mechanical adjustment of ‘national capitalism’ concepts to the realm of ‘global capitalism’ seriously underestimates the power and efficient activism of non-state actors that are not linked to interests of corporations or international technocrats interests—interests that can hardly be bundled into a

Democratic Hegemony and American Hegemony 249 ‘class’, in the sense of 19th and 20th century sociology. It also underrates the central contribution of these new actors (supporters and opponents) to the spread and strengthening of the globalisation process. Similarly, it confuses the actual crisis and proliferation of international inter-state organisations with a hypothetical embryo of a TNS. Paradoxically, the TCC proponents are applying a state-centric logic to their global capitalism analysis while firmly rejecting that same logic.4 What we are witnessing is, therefore, a true revolution, as profound as the 19th century Industrial Revolution or the Fordism-Keynesianism of 1930 – 1990, two transformations with planetary impact with origins in two hegemonic powers (Britain and the US) but that allowed for the development of other power centers (US, Germany and Japan in the first case, Europe and Japan in the second). Today, what Mead (2004) calls ‘Millennium Capitalism’ (MC)5 follows a similar course: the boost given by the American market and society gives rise not only to new social-economic state powers (China, India and others), but also to trans- or anational networks and forces. Parallel to states, the latter have increasingly gained more weight in the world’s productive systems and in its social reproduction. United States of America: ‘Liberal Order’ and Limits to the State’s Options Globalisation’s Engine and Testing Ground The engine of the MC is undoubtedly within US territory. It is in the US that we see the strongest concentration of the main factors that nurture the development of this new paradigm: technological and ‘managerial’ innovation, investment and risk capital sources, extraordinary trade deficits making the US the world’s ‘buyer of last resort’ and the planet’s economic growth engine, and a friendlier environment for business and individual initiative. Other essential elements are the strong and foreseeable legal guarantees for companies, associations or single individuals, a transparent and democratic political process, and the fact that the US is a magnet for would-be immigrants.6 On top of that, there is the American productivity explosion that has taken place over the last two decades thanks to the massive introduction of new technologies and deregulation—both in the manufacturing and service sectors—and the transfer, through tax reductions, of part of the public budget assigned for public economic and social interventions to private investments. This process also benefits from a proactive attitude of the American state, which responds fairly quickly to the pressures of the more dynamic sectors of its economy. 4 In the same ideological vein, Hardt and Negri (2000) show more coherence by abandoning altogether the idea of ‘class’ in favour of the lofty concept of ‘multitude’ and of a new capitalist expansion seen as a bio-political process disconnected from any social concrete figures. But this extreme attempt to save the possibility of a global bipolar social conflict fails to show how the two ‘sides’ can exist as concrete social and political subjects. 5 In using these politically neutral terms, we are following Walter Russell Mead’s poetic intuition when he put that label on the new emerging global economic and commercial organisation that has been developing in the years around the 2000 millennium, which arouses apocalyptic hopes and fears. In order to avoid repetition, we are also using as synonyms terms that are not always analogous: MC, liberal order, market democracy, Communications Capitalism. 6 On the US as an engine of a new paradigm, see Vallada˜o (2006).

250 Alfredo G A Vallada˜o The central issue, however, is that even in the US this new dynamic brutally favours some interest groups at the expense of others. Particularly threatened are those who benefited most from the Fordist-Keynesian period, represented politically by a significant part of the Democratic Party and by a moderate wing of the Republicans. These threatened groups are the middle class with connections to public services (economic and social regulation organisations, social security, local governments, etc), worker’s groups and protected industries (steel or textiles, for example), minorities dependent on public policies, farmers who are still able to pressure the federal administration to guarantee them subsidies (but until when?), and many others. The whole state apparatus of the Keynesian tradition (the Rooseveltian ‘welfare state’ developed during the Cold War and exported to the rest of the world as the dominant paradigm) is slowly falling apart in the face of the MC power.

No Way Back to Old America This same dynamic also favours networks, producers, regions, and populations in other areas of the world, that are often in contradiction with the interests of some categories of the American population. In fact, the overwhelming power of this Communications Capitalism has drastically limited the options of both the weak and ‘middle’ states as well as those of the American state and government. The Federal Reserve Bank, the utmost symbol of American financial power is slowly being confined to the task of managing the local imbalances of a global financial system still based on the dollar but where decisions taken by institutional investors from all over the world, Chinese, Japanese and European monetary authorities can have a huge impact even on the American internal market. As a matter of fact, the US is still the biggest financial bloke on the bloc, but it is progressively losing its capacity to control what we could genuinely call a ‘world-dollar’. Today, besides being compelled to follow and favour this evolution of society, the main option of the federal administration is to use the state’s power to ‘counterbalance’ the losses of the economic sectors that are still important in electoral terms (this is the case of the Farm Bill for agriculture, or the use of safeguards and systematic anti-dumping procedures to protect the steel or textile sector). But this counterbalancing is done with clear consciousness that it can only be pursued during a transitional period, and that it is inevitable that losers will be slowly abandoned in favour of all the domestic winners. While the spreading of this ‘liberal order’ tends to narrow the American state’s possibilities of action, the impact it has on other states’ capacity to manoeuvre can be infinitely stronger. Even in a strict ‘power balance’ perspective (with or without coalitions), it will always be necessary to have a strategy for building this balancing power. But, nowadays, this kind of dream cannot possibly be realised in an autarchic way, by trying to mobilise one’s society around the FordismKeynesianism canons or its totalitarian and inefficient avatar, ‘real socialism’. Reduced to their own forces, no nation-state or coalition of states (not even the EU) have a big enough market for economies of scale, financial resources or production of top level research and development (R&D) necessary to aspire to the category of hegemon, co-hegemon or peer competitor of the US. And not even

Democratic Hegemony and American Hegemony 251 the US would be able to maintain its power if it decided to close itself off from the world. Paradoxes of the Balancing Projects The New ‘National’ Power: Local Administration of Global Constraints Any state project designed to enhance its influence and its own role in the international arena has to include, whether willing or unwilling, a strategy of integration in the MC. Preferably, this should be a well-analysed and programmed integration in order to attract as many factors as possible that guarantee today’s growth, prosperity and economic power. The great paradox is that this is not exactly bandwagoning with the US. The American state is in a paradoxical situation as it is forced to make efforts to adapt itself to the new liberal order, despite being the main engine of this same order. The result is that any velleity of balancing will depend on bandwagoning to the logic of the liberal order and not necessarily to the US caravan (China is a very good example of this attitude). Economic success is one of the master keys of a counterbalancing project. But while deep integration into the MC is crucial in order to have the chance to be successful in this area, it also means that the bigger the ambition of counterbalancing (in state terms), the bigger the part one plays in strengthening the liberal order and, hence, in watering down ‘national’ state power. In fact, the power of states does not vanish but is transformed, in the sense that the local administration of the global MC becomes its primordial function, in response to the idiosyncrasies of the planet’s diverse societies. There will be different ways of pursuing this purpose: by proactively promoting the expansion of the new paradigm, by trying to negotiate better and less asymmetric conditions, or even by trying to become a ‘nuisance’, so as to slow down the movement at local levels and to put off decisions that will harm the traditional elites or by trying to live in autarchy, be it ‘neutral’ or aggressive vis-a`-vis the liberal order. In this last case, there is not the slightest chance of accumulating power, and this may even spur the hostility from a considerable part of the international community.7 A Democratic Challenge to the National State The second great paradox is the issue of democracy. A set of policies is absolutely necessary in order to contain the brain and ambition drain in a world of open communications and to convince the most dynamic sectors and people—essential to any national power—to stay in their countries of origin. These policies should 7

Countries that control energy sources vital to the MC (the best example being Iran) or that have a huge power of nuisance in a strategic region (like North Korea) will obviously have more elbow room to manoeuvre than less endowed ones. After 9/11, Iraq was perceived by the US administration as the key for unlocking the inescapable deep political and economic reforms in the whole Middle East, if one was to effectively combat the growing threat of terrorism (in that case, oil was not the primary concern). Iran and North Korea are not looked at with such a sense of urgency and are, therefore, treated using diplomacy and coalitions of friendly states. But this could change abruptly if Iran was on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons which could destabilize the whole region, and if an unpredictable move by North Korea launched a nuclear arms race around the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea.

252 Alfredo G A Vallada˜o promote mobility and free movement of people, creativity, initiative and a free environment for business. They should establish rules that lead to confidence for businesses, prohibiting frank political meddling, as well as open the economy to trade and to the flux of ideas and innovations and, last but not least, guarantee some form of political representation for these very people. This kind of regime, that guarantees the rights, freedom and security of individuals, the mobility of ideas and people, and that accepts permanent innovation, can be called democratic, provided that this adjective is stripped of any reference to moral superiority or value judgment. It is a concept of ‘democracy’ defined simply as the most functional organisation for taking advantage of and adjusting to Communications Capitalism. Given the diversity of the world’s societies, it also implies that ‘democracy’ can have a great variety of material expressions. But these processes pose a terrible challenge to the traditional power elites (mainly for those longing for international influence). The drama of the American Democrats and of power groups linked to the Fordist-Keynesian paradigm shows that the threat is a real one, even in the US. In Europe, where the post-World War II social model eventually generated strong corporatist habits, the debate about the ‘democratic deficit’ is paralysing the process of integration itself. This challenge is obviously even more pressing in countries with authoritarian regimes, particularly in Africa and the Muslim world—China tries to conciliate both logics, but with growing difficulties—or in the clientelistic democracies as in Latin America, India and elsewhere. Not to mention the power groups in the so-called failing states, which make a living out of failure itself. The democracy paradox boils down to the fact that any attempted political liberalisation or promotion of new regimes ‘conducive to democracy’ will result in an inevitable renovation of the national power elites. And not only will these new actors have no interest in destroying the liberal order but, on the contrary, will try to take the most possible advantage of it (including in marginal or even ‘illegal’ ways). But this new dynamic does not necessarily take place inside a ‘national project’. In fact, it will be a modernisation of the state apparatus in the self-interest of groups or even individuals whose prosperity basically depends on their transnational connections. This, meanwhile, limits the options of the states in question. Evidently, to benefit from a democratic regime—or one which is ‘conducive to democracy’—and in order to increase their own power within the national state apparatus, these groups will also be forced to ‘buy’ their own legitimacy through public policies that partly attend to the interests of more domestic-linked social sectors, including some archaic ones. But this can only be done if the option for a local model of the liberal order materialises in economic success, which in turn reinforces the MC even further. The snake bites its own tail. ‘Intrusive’ Security as the Central Issue Micromanaging World Security In this new international reality, which can be defined as post-Westphalian,8 the issue of security takes another dimension. Communications Capitalism is 8 For some good insights on the end of the Westphalian order, see Smouts (2001), Badie (1999; 2001) and, for a Marxist perspective, Sklair (2001) and Robinson (2004).

Democratic Hegemony and American Hegemony 253 extremely robust yet vulnerable at the same time. Robust as any complex reticular based system which allows the isolation and bypassing of local crises—a sudden global crisis stemming from a big external shock being extremely unlikely. It is vulnerable because this ‘network of networks’ characteristic allows the negative effects of local problems to spread quickly and widely. Therefore, the MC requires continuous attention to possible economic and financial malfunctioning (arising from problems in the globalised financial markets, the stability and health of the emerging economies, access to natural resources, energy prices, etc), but above all to physical security (communications and control of space, security of cyberspace and air, sea and land communication lines, fighting terrorism with global capabilities, monitoring local conflicts that can lead to military intervention, etc). We are entering an era of more and more intrusive micromanagement. A terrorist attack in an American or European city with a ‘dirty’ radioactive bomb could endanger the very democracy in those two pillars of the ‘West’ and cause an economic and political crisis of planetary dimensions. But a local conflict between China and Japan could have not so different consequences. The fact is that all states that project themselves as active international players, through the necessary if possible advantageous insertion into the new international order will have to seriously consider how to contribute to the defence of such ‘order’. A Credible Substitute for American Power? The problem, so far, whether we like it or not, is that the US is the only material warrantor of global security. No other state—or coalition of states—has this kind of world capability to act. (To the point that a debate on whether the US is an imperial power or simply a mercenary force doing the ‘dirty work’ for the others would be legitimate.) And this role of a warrantor of last resort for world security has been going on since 1945: during the Cold War, it was the Americans who protected Europe and Japan against the Soviet threat. Today, it is still the US that guarantees, for itself and the rest of the world, the stability and the power balance in the West and South China Sea, or the oil flux and prices in the Middle East.9 And there are no important peacekeeping operations without the use of American financial, diplomatic and military capabilities. For the other states, the dilemma is choosing between accepting American strategy and decisions as they come, or proposing alternative security strategies that are both efficient and global. That is what the talk of possible anti-hegemonic coalitions is about. There are already, of course, coalitions focused on issues in 9 Oil and gas remains the domain of classical geopolitical power struggles. But there is a growing consensus and actual practice that in an interdependent world, with dwindling energy resources, hydrocarbons are becoming a truly universal ‘public good’ (the worldwide negative reaction to Russia’s aggressive tactics in pressuring Ukraine on gas prices is a good example). A single national state could be perfectly self-sufficient for its energy (or be strong enough to control foreign sources) and still be devastated by a world economic crisis caused by a malfunctioning of the global energy market. A state wellendowed with oil or gas can exert more influence in world affairs then countries that are deeply dependent for their energy needs, but this advantage has limits: the necessity of guaranteeing an efficient allocation of energy resources to the different production hubs that sustain the MC’s development at affordable prices and volumes. Any credible threat to this requirement would trigger a strong common response by the international community.

254 Alfredo G A Vallada˜o the non-military domain—the G-20, for example, was useful for increasing the member countries’ bargaining power in agricultural negotiations at the WTO.10 But the central challenge for any hegemon—or aspiring hegemons—is how to maintain the security basis that is essential for the reproduction of what could be called the liberal order’s ‘democratic hegemonism’: how to respond to the challenges of local interstate rivalries in strategic regions, to ‘global’ terrorism, to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and so on and so forth. To any hegemon or counter-hegemon candidate, this means taking responsibility for the planet’s collective security. The debate on the United Nations’ (UN) Security Council enlargement raises this very question: the permanent members have to worry permanently about the security of the ‘united nations’. Good ideas are not enough and capabilities are required. In this respect, the US, Britain, France, Japan, China and Australia sent part of their war fleets to the Indian Ocean shortly after the December 2004 tsunami in order to show these ‘capabilities’ and prove that they were ready to make their contribution. No Law Without a Policeman: Interference and Multilateralism ‘With Teeth’ Multilateralism and Unilateralism: The Dilemma of the Use of Force It is time to put aside utopian or simply theoretical reflections about ‘antihegemonic coalitions’ and to look at the concrete, hard content of this kind of aspiration. Local or sectorial alliances exist and can play specific parts (the G-20, the EU itself, the African Union with an increasingly strong South African presence, the Group of Rio, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, etc). But what do they stand for at the strategic, that is, planetary level? All these partial alliances are subordinated, whether they want it or not, to the logic of global security, which determines the limits of their actions and options. So far, there is no credible global model or project, with enough legitimacy and broad consensus to appear as an alternative to the MC. So what is the meaning of proposals that call for ‘strengthening’ multilateralism or that dream of a ‘multipolar world’? Multilateralism can be characterised as a form—an institutional process—but what should its content be, here and now? These issues can be formulated in a simple way and deserve clear answers. What kind of economic policies are needed for the world (not just for a single region or country)? How can one organise the collective legitimate use of force against threats—both to the current model and to any supposed alter-mondialiste global model? What is to be done about rogue states or non-state groups who decide not to respect international law that multilateralism is supposed to defend? There is no law without a police. Who will be the world policeman and, above all, with what actual means? Who is ready to take responsibility for maintaining the global order? If there is a multilateral answer to all these questions, it will have to provide effective solutions and not only rhetoric for the current problems in the real world: such multilateralism would need teeth. 10 The G-20 came into being in Geneva, in 2003, during preparations for the WTO Cancun ministerial meeting. It is composed of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Cuba, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Paraguay, Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, Tanzania, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

Democratic Hegemony and American Hegemony 255 The dilemma faced by the world with respect to the US is that it was precisely this capability of unilateral action by the Americans during the Cold War that allowed the organisation of the collective (Western) defence of multilateralism. This was founded and actively promoted by the US itself from 1944 and later against the threat from the Soviet Union—and this threat was certainly openly unilateral. Washington’s ‘multilateral’ leadership accepted with or without reservations by its Western partners, was based in the actual and credible possibility of unilateral action in case of need. From the nuclear deterrence of 1950 –1989 to the first Gulf War in 1991 supported by the UN, Americans played this collective police role—with or without the participation of allies—with its successes and terrible drawbacks (Vietnam, Pinochet . . .). The Fordism-Keynesianism economic model itself—mass consumption and mass production sustained by economic competition and the welfare state— adopted by the Western world in the second half of the 20th century, and still dreamed of by much of the developing world, was also North American in origin. Even today, it is the American administration that has the strongest capacity of formulating a new strategic development project for the planet—and mobilising the corresponding diplomatic action—with some prospect of reaching a minimum general agreement. The US is the main sponsor of the Monterey Consensus11 which combines development aid and grants attached to social and political conditions with the global promotion of democracy and free trade. No doubt, the present debate about the pros and cons of this vision is absolutely essential, but there is certainly a strong wishful thinking component to it: so far, there is no alternative project that has both the scope required and the chance of generating consensus. The ‘another-world-is-possible’ proposals of the altermondialistes are so far but a generic expression of generous, good intentions. The ‘Chinese model’ is not palatable to the rest of mankind. The old Keynesian social-democracy is stuck in economic stagnation (with the exception of the peculiar and little exportable aggiornamento of this model in the small Scandinavian countries). Traditional socialisms and populisms are still blind alleys. This absence of any global and viable alternative does not mean that the present dynamic is free from catastrophic crashes. Huge global economic and social imbalances make the world significantly more vulnerable to a new oil shock, a shortage of basic commodities, a ‘world-dollar’ meltdown, a violent regional political crisis, a horrendous terrorist attack and other calamities. As global stability is vastly dependant on the US, what happens to the American economy and social fabric is a central issue for all. Is it possible for the US to collapse in a sort of rendition of the 1930s? Crystal balls do not give straight answers, but the current global environment can be differentiated from that of the 20th century crises: the globalisation of production and finance has massively spread the risks—and thus, the eventual pain—geographically and socially. The much greater interdependency imposed by a networked global economic system also means that not a single region of the world would be immune from a massive shock in some part of the system, and even less so if it touches 11

Adopted by Heads of State at the International Conference on Financing for Development that was held in Monterey, Mexico, from 18 to 22 March 2002 (United Nations 2002).

256 Alfredo G A Vallada˜o the core engine of globalisation (America). An American collapse would provoke a planetary collapse and, in that case, survival and early revival will be the privilege of the fittest—in the first place, the US again. Hence, other than a very small minority of dictatorial and archaic regimes and of utopian and/or apocalyptic political or terrorist organisations, the vast majority of state and non-state actors do not have any rational interest in an American economic crash. Still, this possibility cannot be excluded, but a crisis of such dimensions would probably start in some other strategic pole of the global economy before hitting North America. It would result in a much poorer and more dangerous world, but the US would remain in its role as the main regulator of the system. A Hierarchy of Local Threats to the Global Order Therefore, and except for the inclination of a very few European political families which dream of a ‘Europe-puissance’—a perspective that is deeply threatened by the French and Dutch ‘no’ to the European Constitution—there is no other national actor or coalition of states with the capacity to proclaim a global design for the world. There are, at best, pieces of regional visions that try to work out a different way of dealing with the local problems; but those have proven to be limited by both the lack of sustainable consensus and the incapacity of responding to the challenges of the global order’s functioning and defence. While democratic hegemonism has no rivals or credible and reasonably consensual alternative projects, this does not mean that the traditional regional geopolitical rivalries have disappeared along with their elements of balancing and bandwagoning. The difference in relation to the past is that, in an increasingly interdependent world, these disputes develop within their own logic as long as they do not directly threaten the functioning of the global order. Otherwise, they are likely to provoke a broad response, not only in the US but also in the international community, and could eventually be isolated and sometimes even destroyed (Myanmar, Syria, Iraq . . .). There exists an implicit hierarchy of ‘potential threats’ for each region of the world: a crisis in the Middle East has much more weight in global security than a massacre by the African Great Lakes. But any serious threat to the MC will constitute grounds for intervention. The simple question today is reduced to what should be the criteria for such interference. We live, therefore, in an ambiguous world where sovereign states still have some capacity of maintaining the geopolitical game of tick-tack-toe, but within the narrow limits of a global ‘order’ rooted in the growing power of transnational networks and social actors. At the core of such ambiguity stands the American state, the main state engine and the ultimate defender of dynamics which at the same time restrict its own capabilities (especially in the crucial economic field) and opens opportunities for the emergence of new power centres in other national states (which are also subject to the same limitations) and of transnational groups or networks. This is a logic which, paradoxically, reinforces the liberal order promoted by Washington, nurturing once again this spiral of retroactions.

Democratic Hegemony and American Hegemony 257 Democratic Hegemony or Imperial Overstretch Bandwagoning to Market Democracy Is it then the end of History? Of course not. The development of the MC itself will determine new power divisions and configurations (not necessarily ‘national’ ones), which will foster new rivalries and contradictions. The latter, however, will only be able to manifest themselves in the above-mentioned transnational arena, and not in a move backwards to the world of balance of power among sovereign states or ‘regional security complexes’. There will still be different views on the regulation of the liberal order (dealing with asymmetries, levels of social inclusion and protection or, in other words: how to slice the cake). This also means that the democratic regimes, or those conducive to democracy, will differ from one another, even if to survive they will have to be ‘compatible’ with the global order. There is certainly room for regional or transcontinental coalitions of states that can band together for the defence of specific policies or interests. But the degree of strategic influence of these states or coalitions will be proportional to their capabilities in assuming the security of the MC and its democratic hegemonism (the legitimate use of force included), and to their more or less dynamic contribution to global prosperity. The issue of hegemony—and of the possibilities of counterbalancing—should concentrate therefore on the growing difference between the ‘democratic hegemony’ (a revolution caused by the generalisation of a new economic, political and symbolic mode of production, founded on the trans- or a-national ‘new actors’) and the ‘hegemony’ of the American state. Leaving aside solutions involving a drastic rupture, which would decisively weaken the state that would try them, there are, for the time being, no alternatives to bandwagoning along with ‘market democracy’, both for the weak states as for those which still claim to increase their own influence. And this is also true for the US: there is no credible way to go back to old isolationist and all-out protectionist policies.

A Worst-Case Scenario: The Impractical American Empire As for the American state hegemony, which works as the central guarantee for the generalisation and reproduction of the democratic hegemony, it can always be contested by three kinds of actors: 1. Authoritarian states which try to increase their own influence through military means (essentially the acquisition of WMDs or the support of terrorist networks). In the face of American ‘hyperpower’, the chances of success are practically nil, even with the US bogged down in Iraq. 2. Democratic or ‘democratising’ states, alone or within regional integration processes, that might forge trade alliances (nonetheless, limited to certain sectors) or even security alliances capable of maintaining the global order at a regional level, but not necessarily as Washington would do or recommend. This strategy can have some success as long as it stays compatible with the democratic hegemony and does not threaten the direct strategic interests of the American state (the close and odd Lula-Bush relationship after Brazil decided to take more responsibilities in maintaining democratic stability in South America is a good example).

258 Alfredo G A Vallada˜o 3. New actors: transnational corporations, NGOs, cooperation networks between metropolises, terrorist or criminal organisations, etc. These players already represent strong counterbalances to American state policies, with an influence sometimes determinant in the domestic policies of the remaining superpower. But these new forces can exert a positive or negative influence: 1. By reinforcing democratic hegemony, watering down the hegemony of the American state and pushing other states to take responsibility for the collective definition and maintenance of global order and security. 2. By threatening democratic hegemony (as do transnational criminal or terrorist networks) and, therefore, menacing the strategic interests of the American hegemon. If there is no collective international response, a classic ‘imperial’ reaction from the US could eventually be triggered (consisting of a strategy of direct control of foreign populations and territory, heavily dependent on coercion).12 If this hypothesis turns out to be true, it would in due time cause the destruction of the liberal order and of the democratic hegemony itself. It would also lead to an overextension of American power, which would render it incapable of controlling the fragmentation processes around the world. This is truly the worst-case scenario, which could only lead to a new era of global chaos in which, due to general interconnection and interdependency, everyone would suffer, but particularly the weakest and most vulnerable societies. Conclusion Presently, there is no alternative for countries that pursue economic prosperity and influence in international affairs other than participating in the dynamics of democratic hegemonism, promoted by the expansion of Millennium Capitalism, even though this dynamic increasingly erodes and limits the national states’ autonomy of action and room to manoeuvre. To maintain its hegemonic leadership, the US is therefore condemned to go on impelling and defending a process that makes it increasingly dependent not only on other states, but also on the transnational networks of ‘new actors’. For the rest of the world, there are few options. One would be to oppose or maintain some distance from the new international relations paradigm, at the risk of being left aside or even destroyed by economic stagnation or by force. Another option is to accept the MC logic with the idea of strengthening one’s own influence, but being clearly aware however that the price to be paid is acknowledging, for a considerable period of time, both American leadership and the growing power of non-governmental actors. While participating in the dynamics of democratic hegemonism represents, so far, the only viable option—regardless of one’s opinions about American hegemony—the central strategic problem is how to organise such participation and to guarantee the defence of the process. The new actors have weighed increasingly in the MC integration strategies of several countries, but efficient 12 The new doctrinal emphasis given by the Pentagon on ‘Stability Operations’ capabilities (US Department of Defense, 2005) if it is not integrated into some form of a new and legitimate multilateral institutional arrangement could represent a first and dangerous step in this direction.

Democratic Hegemony and American Hegemony 259 institutional instruments for democratic representation and manifestation of these trans- or a-national interests are still lacking. The limitations of the present strictly inter-governmental international organisations (IMF, World Bank, UN, WTO and others)—which were reasonably well-adapted to the era of the spreading of the Fordist-Keynesian state-centred model—are becoming increasingly evident. In the field of security, however, the role and mobilisation capacity of national states is even more crucial. There are but two options. Either the other states’ passivity and withdrawal will compel the US to unilaterally take over the task, which would strongly increase the entropy of the international system and the general ungovernability of the planet. Or growing numbers of states will give themselves the necessary means and will to accept a share in the responsibility of defending the democratic hegemony along with the US. But the organisation of a new world collective security system, adapted to the threats arising from interdependency and requiring the development of supranational rules and a legitimate use of force much more intrusive than in the past, also calls for new or deeply reformed international institutions. The greatest challenge for the next decades will be the construction of supranational governance institutions under the democratic hegemony, so as to avoid the ‘imperial’ isolation of American hegemony and the unavoidable resulting chaos. Some have thought that the fall of the Berlin Wall was the end of History. They were wrong. But so are those who continue to believe that the Treaties of Westphalia, signed in the 17th century, put an end to the political history of mankind. References Badie, B (1999) Un monde sans souverainete´ (Paris, Fayard) Badie, B (2001) ‘Realism under Praise, or a Requiem? The Paradigmatic Debate in International Relations’, International Political Science Review, 22: 3, 253 –260 Buzan, B and Wæver, O (2003) Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press) Friedman, TL (2005) The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Gramsci, A (1975) Quaderni del carcere (Torino, Einaudi) Hardt, M and Negri, A (2000) Empire (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press) Hentz, JJ and Bøa˚s, M (eds) (2004) New and Critical Security and Regionalism: Beyond the Nation-State (London, Ashgate) Mead, WR (2004) Power, Terror, Peace and War: America’s Grand Strategy in a World at Risk (New York, Knopf) Revelli, P (2004) ‘Derrie`re la violence des gangs du Salvador’, Le Monde Diplomatique, March, 18– 19 Robinson, WI (2004) A Theory of Global Capitalism (Baltimore, Maryland, Johns Hopkins University Press) Rudalevige, A (2005) The New Imperial Presidency: Renewing Presidential Power after Watergate (Ann Arbor, Michigan, University of Michigan Press) Sklair, L (2001) The Transnational Capitalist Class (Oxford, Blackwell) Smouts, MC (Ed.) (2001) The New International Relations: Theory and Practice (London, Hurst) Telo`, M (Ed.) (2001) European Union and New Regionalism: Regional Actors and Global Governance in a Post-Hegemonic Era (London, Ashgate) Telo`, M (2004) Europa, potenza civile (Bari, Laterza)

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