American Primacy by Default: Down but Not Out

Abstract

American primacy continues to characterise the international system, despite trends toward a diffusion of power. The discussion is too often biased in favour of multipolarity due to imprecise or misleading definitions of US primacy. On the basis of a simple definition of what a “pole” is, combining GDP and defence expenditure, only the US can be considered a global pole. The current economic crisis is not changing this reality. Even considering perceptions, soft power, and the ability to translate power into influence, rising powers like China or an aggregate power like the EU have a long way to go before they can get on an equal footing with the United States.

Notes

The authors wish to thank John Kramer and Sonia Lucarelli for helpful comments on a previous draft of the article.

¹D. Rothkopf, “9/11 Was Big. This Is Bigger”, The Washington Post, 5 October 2008.

² Ibid.

³Caracciolo, “L’impero senza credito”, 7.

⁴D. Brooks, “Missing Dean Acheson”, International Herald Tribune, 2 August 2008.

⁵Well respected analysts have offered succinct presentations of some of our points. See, for example, P. Kennedy, “Is this the end of the American era?” The Sunday Times (12 October 2008). In addition, a forthcoming special issue of the prestigious academic journal World Politics begins by accepting the fact of American unipolarity and presents a debate among international relations scholars on its consequences.

⁶Waltz, Theory of International Politics.

⁷Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint.

⁸Waltz, Theory of International Politics.

⁹Wohlforth, “The Stability of a Unipolar World”, 10. Wohlforth's work builds on Waltz, Theory of International Politics.

¹⁰Schweller, “Tripolarity and the Second World War,” 75.

¹¹http://www.imf.org/external/data.htm

¹² SIPRI Yearbook 2008.

¹³Nye, The Paradox of American Power.

¹⁴ Ibid., 1.

¹⁵Institute of International Education, Atlas of Student Mobility

¹⁶Kupchan, The End of the American Era.

¹⁷Dialogo fra Marta Dass[ugrave] e Charles Kupchan, “La fine dell’era americana e il suo inizio”.

¹⁸Haass, “The Age of Nonpolarity”.

¹⁹The fact that powerful countries have not used force against each other in recent year is an important reason for stressing GDP as more important than military expenditure.

²⁰Zakaria, The Post-American World, see book review in this issue, p. x.

²¹ Ibid., 43. See also 167–214.

²²See, for example, Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq.

²³“Global Economic Gloom – China and India Notable Exceptions. Some Positive Signs for U.S. Image,” Pew Global Attitudes Project, 12 June 2008. http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=260.

²⁴“Economic and financial indicators”, The Economist, 31 January 2009, 101.

²⁵Porter and Schwab, “The Global Competitiveness Report 2008–2009”. http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/gcp/Globalpercent20Competitiveness_percent20Report/index.htm.

²⁶“Economic and financial indicators”, The Economist, 8 November 2008. Note also that China's export markets will suffer from the global downturn. See J. Yardley and K. Bradsher, “China, an Engine of Growth, Faces a Global Slump”, The New York Times, 22 October 2008.

²⁷There also appears to be no historical correlation between American economic growth and defence spending.

²⁸T. Shanker and C. Drew, “Anticipating Cuts in Military Spending, Budget Planners Sharpen Their Pencils,” The New York Times, 3 November 2008.

²⁹G. Rachman, “Top dog America should enjoy its last, precious years,” Financial Times, 4 June 2007. For a similar assessment of Chinese power relative to the US, see “Global Trends: A Transformed World”, National Intelligence Council, Washington, DC, November 2008, http://www.dni.gov/nic/PDF_2025/2025_Global_Trends_Final_Report.pdf. (Note: the NIC report predicts a multipolar world for 2025, but it fails to define a pole and its analysis predicts that only China will have half the capabilities of the US as of 2025.)

³⁰ SIPRI Yearbook 2008.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Roberto Menotti

The authors wish to thank John Kramer and Sonia Lucarelli for helpful comments on a previous draft of the article.