Critically examine the decline of the United States of America as a hegemon and its implications for the changing international political order. (2021, 15 Marks)
Declinism is old: Paul Kennedy’s “imperial overstretch” (1987) foretold it before the Soviet collapse, and Joseph S. Nye counts several false alarms since Sputnik (Is the American Century Over?, 2015). The verdict turns on what is said to decline. Hegemony is leadership others accept; unipolarity is a distribution of capabilities. They have moved at different speeds, and that gap shapes the emerging order.
The case for decline
- Economic: China’s output overtook America’s at purchasing-power parity in the mid-2010s; federal net interest passed $1 trillion in fiscal 2025.
- Ideological: the 2008 crisis began on Wall Street and discredited the Washington Consensus; V-Dem’s 2026 report downgraded the US to an electoral democracy.
- Strategic: China’s military build-up and Russia’s wars from Georgia (2008) to Ukraine (2022) contest American power regionally.
- Alliance cohesion: Europe pursues strategic autonomy (Readiness 2030, up to €800 billion); India bought the S-400 and Russian oil despite American pressure.
- Willingness: the 2021 Afghan withdrawal, America First, “burden-shifting” in the December 2025 National Security Strategy, and a January 2026 exit from 66 international bodies.
The critique: decline of what?
- Susan Strange (“The Persistent Myth of Lost Hegemony”, 1987): structural power over security, production, finance and knowledge persists. The dollar still held about 57% of allocated reserves in early 2026, and the US spent $954 billion on defence in 2025, a third of the world total.
- Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth (World Out of Balance, 2008): power projection rests on accumulated capability GDP cannot quickly buy.
- The US share of world GDP, about 26% in 2024, is essentially unchanged since 1990; Europe and Japan lost ground to China.
- Nye’s three-dimensional chessboard: military power near-unipolar, economic power multipolar, transnational power diffused.
The balance: relative decline is real; absolute decline largely is not; the willingness to underwrite the order is what has actually moved.
Implications for the international order
- Multiplexity, not succession: Amitav Acharya (The End of American World Order, 2014) foresees overlapping regional orders rather than a new centre; Shivshankar Menon calls the world economically multipolar, politically confused and militarily unipolar.
- Under-provided public goods: Nye’s “Kindleberger trap” (2017) warns that order fails when neither leader nor riser supplies them; the WTO Appellate Body has been idle since December 2019.
- Parallel institutions and minilateralism: AIIB, the New Development Bank and an enlarged BRICS sit beside the Quad, AUKUS and I2U2.
- Transition risk: Graham Allison’s Thucydides Trap (Destined for War, 2017) marks the danger when a riser approaches a ruling power.
- Space and exposure for middle powers: India’s multi-alignment (Quad, BRICS, SCO) works because no pole can compel, yet the 50% tariff of August 2025 showed a declining hegemon can still coerce.
Conclusion
The United States is declining as an organiser of order far faster than as a power: it can still block most outcomes but no longer determine them alone. The result is a contested, fragmented pluralism in which American influence remains the largest single input, and India’s interest lies in shaping its rules.