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The Eagle Has Crash Landed Author(S): Immanuel Wallerstein Source: Foreign Policy, No Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLC The Eagle Has Crash Landed Author(s): Immanuel Wallerstein Source: Foreign Policy, No. 131 (Jul. - Aug., 2002), pp. 60-68 Published by: Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLC Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3183418 Accessed: 12/09/2010 23:36 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=wpni. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLC is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Foreign Policy. http://www.jstor.org THE k C] I d " ,I., . I.I ... AGLE StRASH LANDED PaxAmericana is over.Challenges from Vietnamand the Balkans to theMiddle East and September 11 haverevealed the limits ofAmerican supremacy.Will the UnitedStates learn tofade quietjy, or will U.S. conservativesresist and thereby transform a gradual decline into a rapidand dangerousfall? I By Immanuel Wallerstein he United Statesin decline?Few peo- why the so-called Pax Americanais on the ple today would believe this asser- wane requires examining the geopolitics of tion. The only ones who do are the the 20th century,particularly of the century's U.S. hawks, who argue vociferously final three decades.This exerciseuncovers a sim- for policiesto reversethe decline.This beliefthat the ple and inescapableconclusion: The economic,polit- end of U.S. hegemony has already begun does not ical, and military factors that contributed to U.S. follow from the vulnerabilitythat became apparent hegemony are the same factors that will inexorably to all on September 11, 2001. In fact, the United produce the coming U.S. decline. States has been fading as a global power since the 1970s, and the U.S. responseto the terroristattacks INTRO TO HEGEMONY has merely acceleratedthis decline. To understand The rise of the United States to global hegemony Immanuel Wallersteinis a senior researchscholar at Yale Uni- was a long process that began in earnest with the versity and author of, most recently, The End of the World world recession of 1873. At that time, the Unit- As We Know It: SocialScience for the Twenty-FirstCentu- ed States and Germany began to acquire an ry (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999). increasing share of global markets, mainly at the 60 FOREIGN POLICY rThe historybooks recordthat WorldWar I brokeout in 1914 and endedin 1918 and thatWorld War II lastedfrom 1939 to 1945. How- ever,it makesmore sense to consid- er the two as a single,continuous "30 years' war" between the United States and Germany, with trucesand localconflicts scatteredin between.The com- petitionfor hegemonic succes- siontook an ideologicalturn in 1933, whenthe Nazis came to powerin Germanyand began their quest to transcendthe globalsystem altogether, seek- ing not hegemonywithin the currentsystem but rather a form of global empire. Recall the Nazi sloganein tausendjiidhriges Reich(a thousand-yearempire). In turn, the United States assumedthe roleof advocateof centristworld liberalism-recall formerU.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's"four freedoms" (free- dom of speech, of worship, from want, andfrom fear)-and enteredinto a expense of the steadily recedingBritish econo- strategicalliance with the Soviet Union, making pos- my. Both nations had recentlyacquired a stable siblethe defeatof Germanyand its allies. political base-the United States by successfully WorldWar II resultedin enormousdestruction 8 terminatingthe CivilWar and Germanyby achiev- of infrastructureand populations throughout Eurasia, ing unificationand defeatingFrance in the Fran- fromthe Atlanticto the Pacificoceans, with almost co-PrussianWar. From 1873 to 1914, the United no countryleft unscathed. The only major industrial States and Germanybecame the principalpro- power in the world to emergeintact-and even ducers in certainleading sectors:steel and later greatlystrengthened from an economicperspec- automobilesfor the United Statesand industrial tive-was theUnited States, which moved swiftly to chemicalsfor Germany. consolidateits position. JULY I AUGUST 2002 61 The Eagle Has Crash Landed But the aspiring hegemon faced some practical monopoly soon disappeared:By 1949, the Soviet political obstacles. During the war, the Allied pow- Union had developednuclear weapons as well. Ever ers had agreed on the establishmentof the United since, the United States has been reduced to trying Nations, composed primarilyof countries that had to preventthe acquisition of nuclearweapons (and been in the coalition against the Axis powers. The chemical and biological weapons) by additional organization'scritical feature was the SecurityCoun- powers, an effort that, in the 21st century,does not cil, the only structurethat could authorizethe use of seem terriblysuccessful. force. Since the U.N. Chartergave the right of veto Until 1991, the United States and the Soviet to five powers-including the United Statesand the Union coexisted in the "balance of terror" of the Soviet Union-the council was rendered largely Cold War.This status quo was tested seriouslyonly toothless in practice. So it was not the founding of three times: the Berlin blockade of 1948-49, the the UnitedNations in April 1945 that determinedthe KoreanWar in 1950-53, and the Cubanmissile cri- geopolitical constraints of the second half of the sis of 1962. The result in each case was restoration 20th century but ratherthe Yalta meeting between of the status quo. Moreover,note how each time the Roosevelt,British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet Union faced a political crisis among its satel- and Soviet leaderJoseph Stalin two months earlier. lite regimes-East Germany in 1953, Hungary in The formal accordsat Yaltawere less important 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, and Poland in than the informal,unspoken agreements, which one 1981-the United Statesengaged in little more than can only assess by observing the behavior of the propagandaexercises, allowing the Soviet Union to United Statesand the Soviet Union in the years that proceed largely as it deemed fit. followed. When the war ended in Europeon May 8, Of course, this passivity did not extend to the 1945, Soviet and Western(that is, U.S., British,and economicarena. The UnitedStates capitalized on the French)troops were located in particularplaces- Cold War ambiance to launch massive economic essentially,along a line in the center of Europethat reconstructionefforts, first in WesternEurope and came to be called the Oder-NeisseLine. Aside from then in Japan (as well as in South Korea and Tai- a few minor adjustments,they stayedthere. In hind- wan). The rationale was obvious: What was the sight, Yalta signified the agreement of both sides point of havingsuch overwhelmingproductive supe- that they could stay thereand that neitherside would riority if the rest of the world could not muster use force to push the other out. This tacit accord effective demand? Furthermore,economic recon- applied to Asia as well, as evinced by U.S. occu- structionhelped create clientelistic obligations on the pation of Japan and the division of Korea.Political- part of the nations receivingU.S. aid; this sense of obligation fostered willingness to enter into military alliances and, even more important,into political Byremoving the only ideological justification subservience. Finally, one should not under- behindU.S. hegemony, thecollapse of communism estimate the ideological and cultu- ral component of U.S. hegemony. ineffect signified the collapse of liberalism. The immediate post-1945 period may have been the historical high point for the popularityof commu- ly, therefore,Yalta was an agreementon the status nist ideology. We easily forget today the large votes quo in which the Soviet Union controlledabout one for Communistparties in free elections in countries third of the world and the United States the rest. such as Belgium,France, Italy, Czechoslovakia, and Washington also faced more serious military Finland, not to mention the support Communist challenges.The SovietUnion had the world'slargest parties gathered in Asia-in Vietnam, India, and land forces, while the U.S. government was under Japan-and throughoutLatin America. And that still domestic pressureto downsize its army,particular- leaves out areas such as China, Greece, and Iran, ly by ending the draft. The United States therefore where free electionsremained absent or constrained decidedto assertits militarystrength not via land for- but where Communist parties enjoyed widespread ces but through a monopoly of nuclear weapons appeal. In response, the United States sustained a
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