The Greatest x Hegemonic Stability Theory
"Kanye West is blond and gone"
It is only fit to begin this music x IR theory series with “The Greatest”—a lyrical collaboration between Lana Del Rey and Jack Antonoff—and hegemonic stability theory (HST). In “The Greatest,” Del Rey sings us an elegy of the American social fabric. Emotional numbness and displacement characterize the sonic landscape. Reality in this world is “fuzzy” like the sound of the song’s guitars—and it might not just be the smoky air arising from ever-intensifying wildfire seasons.
For nearly a decade, pundits have been pointing to the United States’ decline on the global stage. Alexander Cooley and Daniel Nexon penned a book dedicated to examining America’s “Exit from Hegemony.” The United States emerged from the Cold War as the sole superpower, but the “unipolar moment” was indeed just that—a moment. And in that moment, critics point to the Global War on Terror and the Iraq War as choices of over-indulgence in the exercise of power. While IR theory suggests that unipolarity entails some degree of “competition costs,” one can still observe the forging of the myths of empire, especially after the Soviet Union’s fall, and the near universal expansion of America’s global military footprint. The United States’ abrupt and chaotic departure from Afghanistan was the equivalent of Del Rey’s resigned admission: “I guess that I’m burned out after all.”
According to hegemonic stability theorists (e.g., Robert Gilpin, Charles Kindleberger, and Stephen Krasner), the decline of US leadership in international affairs would represent “the greatest loss of all.” HST suggests that the maintenance of international order depends in large part on a singular service provider of international order (i.e., a hegemon). International order is a public good, which means states face a collective action problem: states would be better off contributing to its maintenance but face free rider incentives and instead to shirk in their duties. Thus, having a hegemon take on the burden guides the globe away from a bad equilibrium characterized by unilateral defection from order maintenance.
Most prominently during the Trump administration, pundits pointed to a crisis in the liberal international order (LIO)—that is, the structure of world politics espousing democratic political systems, free economic exchange, and multilateralism. Trump favored autocrats over democrats, erected barriers to free trade, and eschewed multilateral institutions. In the absence of the hegemon, HST predicts chaos will ensue. An implication would be to draw connections between the decline in US support for the tenets of LIO and a number of consequential international political outcomes, including the absence of a coordinated global response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the empowerment of autocratic leaders, especially Russian president Vladimir Putin, on the world stage.
Hegemonic stability theorists also worry about the threat of rising powers. Paul Kennedy’s Rise and Fall of Great Powers (1987) is emblematic of end-of-the-Cold-War rhetoric around American decline and the possible rise of other powers in its place. (At the time, pundits were especially concerned about an economically rising Japan.) Why is a rising power problematic from the perspective of HST? According to Gilpin, rising powers try to challenge the rules of the status quo international order. This challenge imposes costs on the existing hegemon, which already struggles with maintaining its commitments to the status quo order. If the rising power and hegemon cannot find a peaceful way to manage disagreements about international order, then (Gilpin argues) a “hegemonic war” is likely to ensue. The primary consequence of this war is the delineation of victor and vanquished. The victor sets the terms of a new order.
In today’s environment, the rise of China has been the source of much anxiety. Will the United States and China fight a hegemonic war? Various scholars have raised this very question (notably, Graham Allison). Rush Doshi argues that China is, at least, using its rising power to pursue a grand strategy of expansion, which entails blunting American power and succeeding America as a global hegemon. “But nobody warns you before the fall.” More concerning, Hal Brands suggests, is the possibility that China’s decline might raise the probability of (China) initiating a war, specifically as an attempt by more risk-acceptant leaders to catch a falling star.
Moreover, US foreign policy, while damaged by the erratic and cruel tendencies of the Trump administration, remains fundamentally oriented towards maintaining American hegemony. The Biden administration has repeatedly claimed that “America is back” (despite contradictions in current immigration and refugee policy, and lingering questions about democratic reform at home). The Biden administration has also clearly pointed to advancing authoritarianism, especially as embodied by China, as one of the greatest challenges of this era. In summary, disagreements about international order between the United States and China are many and substantive. Although this fundamental precondition for a hegemonic war may exist, the plausibility of such a war and the merits of anxieties about China are contested and subject for another newsletter.
Nonetheless, international affairs are “getting hot”—not only in terms of climate change but also regarding the war in Ukraine, which raises the prospect of a direct military confrontation between the United States and Russia. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is widely deemed a “test for the survival” of a rules-based LIO: can Putin’s naked aggression—contravening the post-World War II norm against territorial conquest—be stopped and deterred in the future; can Russian leadership be held accountable for the war crimes of the military offensive; will Ukrainian political sovereignty and territorially integrity be restored; and will Ukrainian democracy be permitted to flourish?
In many respects, the war in Ukraine is the most painful of “wake-up calls” to the United States, which in recent years floundered in its global leadership. But if there is ever a moment to not wallow in one’s decline and instead step up, it surely is now.