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Women make up growing share of U.S. entrepreneurs, with much of that growth driven by women of color (American Express Open 2017). Women are far less likely than men, however, to hold patents (Milli et al. 2016), which has important implications for their business success, particularly for those in STEM industries, where patents are more common. Similarly, Bell et al. (2016) show that children from minority racial and ethnic groups, apart from Asian children, are much less likely to grow up to be inventors: White children are three times as likely as Black children, and eight times as likely as Hispanic children, to become inventors as adults.

Previous research has found that intellectual property rights, including patents, can play an important role in business success. Many lenders consider patent ownership, or at least having a patent application filed, an important factor in making their funding decisions: patent holders are more likely to receive private equity financing from venture capitalists and typically receive funding more quickly than entrepreneurs who do not hold patents (Häussler, Harhoff, and Mueller 2012; Graham et al. 2009). Patents have also been linked to greater market value among established businesses (Hall, Jaffe, and Trajtenberg 2005). Higher rates of patenting or other intellectual property holdings among women business owners could improve their access to financing and help them achieve their growth aspirations and maximize revenues.

Sex class is so deep as to be invisible. Or it may appear as a superficial inequality, one that can be solved by merely a few reforms, or perhaps by the full integration of women into the labour force. But the reaction of the common man, woman, and child - 'That? Why you can't change that! You must be out of your mind!' - is the closest to the truth. We are talking about something every bit as deep as that. This gut reaction - the assumption that, even when they don't know it, feminists are talking about changing a fundamental biological condition - is an honest one. That so profound a change cannot be easily fitted into traditional categories of thought, e.g., 'political', is not because these categories do not apply but because they are not big enough: radical feminism bursts through them. If there were another word more all-embracing than revolution - we would use it. Until a certain level of evolution had been reached and technology had achieved its present sophistication, to question fundamental biological conditions was insanity. Why should a woman give up her precious seat in the cattle car for a bloody struggle she could not hope to win? But, for the first time in some countries, the preconditions for feminist revolution exist - indeed, the situation is beginning to demand such a revolution. The first women are fleeing the massacre, and sharing and tottering, are beginning to find each other. Their first move is a careful joint observation, to resensitise a fractured consciousness. This is painful: no matter how many levels of consciousness one reaches, the problem always goes deeper. It is everywhere. The division yin and yang pervades all culture, history, economics, nature itself; modern Western versions of sex discrimination are only the most recent layer. To so heighten one's sensitivity to sexism presents problems far worse than the black militant's new awareness of racism: feminists have to question, not just all of Western culture, but the organisation of culture itself, and further, even the very organisation of nature. Many women give up in despair: if that's how deep it goes they don't want to know. Others continue strengthening and enlarging the movement, their painful sensitivity to female oppression existing for a purpose: eventually to eliminate it. Before we can act to change a situation, however, we must know how it has arisen and evolved, and through what institutions it now operates. Engels's '[We must] examine the historic succession of events from which the antagonism has sprung in order to discover in the conditions thus created the means of ending the conflict.' For feminist revolution we shall need an analysis of the dynamics of sex war as comprehensive as the Marx-Engels analysis of class antagonism was for the economic revolution. More comprehensive. For we are dealing with a larger problem, with an oppression that goes back beyond recorded history to the animal kingdom itself. In creating such an analysis we can learn a lot from Marx and Engels: not their literal opinions about women - about the condition of women as an oppressed class they know next to nothing, recognising it only where it overlaps with economics but rather -their--analytic method. Marx and Engels outdid their socialist forerunners in that they developed a method of analysis which was both dialectical and materialist. The first in centuries to view history dialectically, they saw the world as process, a natural flux of action and reaction, of opposites yet inseparable and interpenetrating. Because they were able to perceive history as movie rather than as snapshot, they attempted to avoid falling into the stagnant 'metaphysical' view that had trapped so many other great minds. (This sort of analysis itself may be a product of the sex division, as discussed in Chapter 9.) They combined this view of the dynamic interplay of historical forces with a materialist one, that is, they attempted for the first time to put historical and cultural change on a real basis, to trace the development of economic classes to organic causes. By understanding thoroughly the mechanics of history, they hoped to show men how to master it. Socialist thinkers prior to Marx and Engels, such as Fourier, Owen, and Bebel, had been able to do no more than moralise about existing social inequalities, positing an ideal world where class privilege and exploitation should not exist - in the same way that early feminist thinkers posited a world where male privilege and exploitation ought not exist - by mere virtue of good will. In both cases, because the early thinkers did not really understand how the social injustice had evolved, maintained itself, or could be eliminated, their ideas existed in a cultural vacuum, utopian. Marx and Engels, on the other hand, attempted . a scientific approach to history, They traced the class conflict to its real economic origins, projecting an economic solution based on objective economic preconditions already present: the seizure by the proletariat of the means of production would lead to a communism in which government had withered away, no longer needed to repress the lower class for the sake of the higher. In the classless society the interests of every individual would be synonymous with those of the larger society. But the doctrine of historical materialism, much as it was a brilliant advance over previous historical analysis, was not the complete answer, as later events bore out. For though Marx and Engels grounded their theory in reality, it was only a partial reality. Here is Engels's strictly economic definition of historical materialism from Socialism: Utopian or Scientific: Historical materialism is that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all historical events in the economic development of society, in the changes of tile modes of production and exchange, in the consequent division of society into distinct classes, and in the struggles of these classes against one another-. (Italics mine)

As the global reserve currency since the end of World War II, the US dollar has been intrinsic to the functioning of the world economy. The US dollar is so fundamental to the global financial system that the political and economic ramifications of the dollar's reserve currency status are rarely considered. The US dollar as the global reserve currency is a subject of critical importance, both to the understanding of the international financial system, and the wider political and economic ramifications of the status accorded to the dollar. As F. William Engdahl has explained,

Maintaining the role of the US dollar as world reserve currency has been the foremost pillar of the American Century since 1945, related to but more strategic even than US military superiority. How that dollar primacy has been maintained to now encompassed the history of countless postwar wars, financial warfare, debt crises, and threats of nuclear war to the present. (Engdahl 2008)

The global dominance of the U.S. dollar has given the United States enormous economic and political power. The U.S. has been able to print money and borrow at low-interest rates because other countries have been willing to hold U.S. dollars in their reserves. This has enabled the U.S. to finance its large trade deficits and military spending, which have been central to its global power.

However, the dollar’s hegemony now faces increasing challenges, and its importance is waning. The rise of China and the European Union has led to the growing use of alternative currencies, which has weakened the dollar’s global dominance.

Much contemporary commentary favors the first option—reducing commitments—and denounces the third as financially ruinous and perhaps impossible.5 Yet significantly expanding American capabilities would not be nearly as economically onerous as it may seem. Compared to the alternatives, in fact, this approach represents the best option for sustaining American primacy and preventing a slide into strategic bankruptcy that will eventually be punished. Since World War II, the United States has had a military second to none. Since the Cold War, America has committed to having overwhelming military primacy. The idea, as George W. Bush declared in 2002, that America must possess “strengths beyond challenge” has featured in every major U.S. strategy document for a quarter century; it has also been reflected in concrete terms.6 From the early 1990s, for example, the United States consistently accounted for around 35 to 45 percent of world defense spending and maintained peerless global power-projection capabilities.7 Perhaps more important, U.S. primacy was also unrivaled in key overseas strategic regions—Europe, East Asia, the Middle East. From thrashing Saddam Hussein’s million-man Iraqi military during Operation Desert Storm, to deploying—with impunity—two carrier strike groups off Taiwan during the China-Taiwan crisis of 1995– 96, Washington has been able to project military power superior to anything a regional rival could employ even on its own geopolitical doorstep. This military dominance has constituted the hard-power backbone of an ambitious global strategy. After the Cold War, U.S. policymakers committed to averting a return to the unstable multipolarity of earlier eras, and to perpetuating the more favorable unipolar order. They committed to building on the successes of the postwar era by further advancing liberal political values and an open international economy, and to suppressing international scourges such as rogue states, nuclear proliferation, and catastrophic terrorism. And because they recognized that military force remained the ultima ratio regum, they understood the centrality of military preponderance. Washington would need the military power necessary to underwrite worldwide alliance commitments. It would have to preserve substantial overmatch versus any potential great-power rival. It must be able to answer the sharpest challenges to the international system, such as Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 or jihadist extremism after 9/11. Finally, because prevailing global norms generally reflect hard-power realities, America would need the superiority to assure that its own values remained ascendant. It was impolitic to say that U.S. strategy and the international order required “strengths beyond challenge,” but it was not at all inaccurate. American primacy, moreover, was eminently affordable. At the height of the Cold War, the United States spent over 12 percent of GDP on defense. Since the mid-1990s, the number has usually been between 3 and 4 percent.8 In a historically favorable international environment, Washington could enjoy primacy—and its geopolitical fruits—on the cheap. Yet U.S. strategy also heeded, at least until recently, the fact that there was a limit to how cheaply that primacy could be had. The American military did shrink significantly during the 1990s, but U.S. officials understood that if Washington cut back too far, its primacy would erode to a point where it ceased to deliver its geopolitical benefits. Alliances would lose credibility; the stability of key regions would be eroded; rivals would be emboldened; international crises would go unaddressed. American primacy was thus like a reasonably priced insurance policy. It required nontrivial expenditures, but protected against far costlier outcomes.9 Washington paid its insurance premiums for two decades after the Cold War. But more recently American primacy and strategic solvency have been imperiled. THE DARKENING HORIZON For most of the post–Cold War era, the international system was— by historical standards—remarkably benign. Dangers existed, and as the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, demonstrated, they could manifest with horrific effect. But for two decades after the Soviet collapse, the world was characterized by remarkably low levels of great-power competition, high levels of security in key theaters such as Europe and East Asia, and the comparative weakness of those “rogue” actors—Iran, Iraq, North Korea, al-Qaeda—who most aggressively challenged American power. During the 1990s, some observers even spoke of a “strategic pause,” the idea being that the end of the Cold War had afforded the United States a respite from normal levels of geopolitical danger and competition. Now, however, the strategic horizon is darkening, due to four factors. First, great-power military competition is back. The world’s two leading authoritarian powers—China and Russia—are seeking regional hegemony, contesting global norms such as nonaggression and freedom of navigation, and developing the military punch to underwrite these ambitions. Notwithstanding severe economic and demographic problems, Russia has conducted a major military modernization emphasizing nuclear weapons, high-end conventional capabilities, and rapid-deployment and special operations forces— and utilized many of these capabilities in conflicts in Ukraine and Syria.10 China, meanwhile, has carried out a buildup of historic proportions, with constant-dollar defense outlays rising from US$26 billion in 1995 to US$226 billion in 2016.11 Ominously, these expenditures have funded development of power-projection and antiaccess/area denial (A2/AD) tools necessary to threaten China’s neighbors and complicate U.S. intervention on their behalf. Washington has grown accustomed to having a generational military lead; Russian and Chinese modernization efforts are now creating a far more competitive environment. Second, the international outlaws are no longer so weak. North Korea’s conventional forces have atrophied, but it has amassed a growing nuclear arsenal and is developing an intercontinental delivery capability that will soon allow it to threaten not just America’s regional allies but also the continental United States.12 Iran remains a nuclear threshold state, one that continues to develop ballistic missiles and A2/AD capabilities while employing sectarian and proxy forces across the Middle East. The Islamic State, for its part, is headed for defeat, but has displayed military capabilities unprecedented for any terrorist group, and shown that counterterrorism will continue to place significant operational demands on U.S. forces whether in this context or in others. Rogue actors have long preoccupied American planners, but the rogues are now more capable than at any time in decades. Third, the democratization of technology has allowed more actors to contest American superiority in dangerous ways. The spread of antisatellite and cyberwarfare capabilities; the proliferation of man-portable air defense systems and ballistic missiles; the increasing availability of key elements of the precision-strike complex— these phenomena have had a military leveling effect by giving weaker actors capabilities which were formerly unique to technologically advanced states. As such technologies “proliferate worldwide,” Air Force Chief of Staff General David Goldfein commented in 2016, “the technology and capability gaps between America and our adversaries are closing dangerously fast.”13 Indeed, as these capabilities spread, fourth-generation systems (such as F-15s and F-16s) may provide decreasing utility against even non-great-power competitors, and far more fifth-generation capabilities may be needed to perpetuate American overmatch. Finally, the number of challenges has multiplied. During the 1990s and early 2000s, Washington faced rogue states and jihadist extremism—but not intense great-power rivalry. America faced conflicts in the Middle East—but East Asia and Europe were comparatively secure. Now, the old threats still exist—but the more permissive conditions have vanished. The United States confronts rogue states, lethal jihadist organizations, and great-power competition; there are severe challenges in all three Eurasian theaters. “I don’t recall a time when we have been confronted with a more diverse array of threats, whether it’s the nation state threats posed by Russia and China and particularly their substantial nuclear capabilities, or non-nation states of the likes of ISIL, Al Qaida, etc.,” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper commented in 2016. Trends in the strategic landscape constituted a veritable “litany of doom.”14 The United States thus faces not just more significant, but also more numerous, challenges to its military dominance than it has for at least a quarter century.

Think of two significant trend lines in the world today. One is the increasing ambition and activism of the two great revisionist powers, Russia and China. The other is the declining confidence, capacity, and will of the democratic world, and especially of the United States, to maintain the dominant position it has held in the international system since 1945. As those two lines move closer, as the declining will and capacity of the United States and its allies to maintain the present world order meet the increasing desire and capacity of the revisionist powers to change it, we will reach the moment at which the existing order collapses and the world descends into a phase of brutal anarchy, as it has three times in the past two centuries. The cost of that descent, in lives and treasure, in lost freedoms and lost hope, will be staggering. Americans tend to take the fundamental stability of the international order for granted, even while complaining about the burden the United States carries in preserving that stability. History shows that world orders do collapse, however, and when they do it is often unexpected, rapid, and violent. The late 18th century was the high point of the Enlightenment in Europe, before the continent fell suddenly into the abyss of the Napoleonic Wars. In the first decade of the 20th century, the world’s smartest minds predicted an end to great-power conflict as revolutions in communication and transportation knit economies and people closer together. The most devastating war in history came four years later. The apparent calm of the postwar 1920s became the crisis-ridden 1930s and then another world war. Where exactly we are in this classic scenario today, how close the trend lines are to that intersection point is, as always, impossible to know. Are we three years away from a global crisis, or 15? That we are somewhere on that path, however, is unmistakable. And while it is too soon to know what effect Donald Trump’s presidency will have on these trends, early signs suggest that the new administration is more likely to hasten us toward crisis than slow or reverse these trends. The further accommodation of Russia can only embolden Vladimir Putin, and the tough talk with China will likely lead Beijing to test the new administration’s resolve militarily. Whether the president is ready for such a confrontation is entirely unclear. For the moment, he seems not to have thought much about the future ramifications of his rhetoric and his actions. China and Russia are classic revisionist powers. Although both have never enjoyed greater security from foreign powers than they do today — Russia from its traditional enemies to the west, China from its traditional enemy in the east — they are dissatisfied with the current global configuration of power. Both seek to restore the hegemonic dominance they once enjoyed in their respective regions. For China, that means dominance of East Asia, with countries like Japan, South Korea, and the nations of Southeast Asia both acquiescing to Beijing’s will and acting in conformity with China’s strategic, economic, and political preferences. That includes American influence withdrawn to the eastern Pacific, behind the Hawaiian Islands. For Russia, it means hegemonic influence in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, which Moscow has traditionally regarded as either part of its empire or part of its sphere of influence. Both Beijing and Moscow seek to redress what they regard as an unfair distribution of power, influence, and honor in the U.S.-led postwar global order. As autocracies, both feel threatened by the dominant democratic powers in the international system and by the democracies on their borders. Both regard the United States as the principal obstacle to their ambitions, and therefore both seek to weaken the American-led international security order that stands in the way of their achieving what they regard as their rightful destinies. It was good while it lasted Until fairly recently, Russia and China have faced considerable, almost insuperable, obstacles in achieving their objectives. The chief obstacle has been the power and coherence of the international order itself and its principal promoter and defender. The American-led system of political and military alliances, especially in the two critical regions of Europe and East Asia, has presented China and Russia with what Dean Acheson once referred to as “situations of strength” that have required them to pursue their ambitions cautiously and, since the end of the Cold War, to defer serious efforts to disrupt the international system. The system has checked their ambitions in both positive and negative ways. During the era of American primacy, China and Russia have participated in and for the most part been beneficiaries of the open international economic system the United States created and helps sustain; so long as that system functions, they have had more to gain by playing in it than by challenging and overturning it. The political and strategic aspects of the order, however, have worked to their detriment. The growth and vibrancy of democratic government in the two decades following the collapse of Soviet communism posed a continual threat to the ability of rulers in Beijing and Moscow to maintain control, and since the end of the Cold War they have regarded every advance of democratic institutions — especially the geographical advance of liberal democracies close to their borders — as an existential threat. That’s for good reason: Autocratic powers since the days of Klemens von Metternich have always feared the contagion of liberalism. The mere existence of democracies on their borders, the global free flow of information they cannot control, the dangerous connection between free market capitalism and political freedom — all pose a threat to rulers who depend on keeping restive forces in their own countries in check. The continual challenge to the legitimacy of their rule posed by the U.S.-supported democratic order has therefore naturally made them hostile both to that order and to the United States. But, until recently, a preponderance of domestic and international forces has dissuaded them from confronting the order directly. Chinese rulers have had to worry about what an unsuccessful confrontation with the United States might do to their legitimacy at home. Even Putin has pushed only against open doors, as in Syria, where the United States responded passively to his probes. He has been more cautious when confronted by even marginal U.S. and European opposition, as in Ukraine. The greatest check on Chinese and Russian ambitions has been the military and economic power of the United States and its allies in Europe and Asia. China, although increasingly powerful, has had to contemplate facing the combined military and economic strength of the world’s superpower and some very formidable regional powers linked by alliance or common strategic interest — including Japan, India, and South Korea, as well as smaller but still potent nations like Vietnam and Australia. Russia has had to face the United States and its NATO allies. When united, these U.S.-led alliances present a daunting challenge to a revisionist power that can call on few allies of its own for assistance. Even were the Chinese to score an early victory in a conflict, such as the military subjection of Taiwan or a naval battle in the South or East China Sea, they would have to contend over time with the combined industrial productive capacities of some of the world’s richest and most technologically advanced nations and the likely cutoff of access to foreign markets on which their own economy depends. A weaker Russia, with its depleted population and oil- and gas-dependent economy, would face an even greater challenge. For decades, the strong global position enjoyed by the United States and its allies has discouraged any serious challenge. So long as the United States was perceived as a dependable ally, Chinese and Russian leaders feared that aggressive moves would backfire and possibly bring their regimes down. This is what the political scientist William Wohlforth once described as the inherent stability of the unipolar order: As dissatisfied regional powers sought to challenge the status quo, their alarmed neighbors turned to the distant American superpower to contain their ambitions. And it worked. The United States stepped up, and Russia and China largely backed down — or were preempted before acting at all. Faced with these obstacles, the best option for the two revisionist great powers has always been to hope for or, if possible, engineer a weakening of the U.S.-supported world order from within, either by separating the United States from its allies or by raising doubts about the U.S. commitment and thereby encouraging would-be allies and partners to forgo the strategic protection of the liberal world order and seek accommodation with its challengers. The present system has therefore depended not only on American power but on coherence and unity at the heart of the democratic world. The United States has had to play its part as the principal guarantor of the order, especially in the military and strategic realm, but the order’s ideological and economic core — the democracies of Europe and East Asia and the Pacific — has also had to remain relatively healthy and confident.

The Kremlin has espoused ‘multipolarity’ as a core foreign policy concept — I would argue, pace other interpretations — precisely for this reason. Namely, ‘multipolarity’ fits into the inherent pessimism of Russian messianism. In the Kremlin’s version, ‘multipolarity’ concerns different civilisations of ‘traditional societies’, on which the West attempts to impose its ‘globalist’ values and ‘unipolar’ and ‘colonial’ order. In this narrative, truly sovereign states (i.e., the great powers) such as Russia are tasked with the mission to join lead the non-West ‘world majority’ for restraining the West’s imposition of ‘decadent‘ ‘globalist‘ values. (In other words, to assume the role of the katechon, that what restrains the coming of the Antichrist. Not surprisingly, as argued by Alicja Curanovic, the Russian Orthodox Church sees multipolarity as a core element of Russia’s ‘mission’ in the world.) As a pro-active ideology, ‘multipolarity’ is, simultaneously, a reality (Lavrov: multipolarity is an ‘objective and unstoppable process‘) and a political project, thwarted by the recalcitrant West (Putin: ‘multipolarity in the world is inevitable, despite attempts to prevent it’).

Africa has been routinely identified in Russian academic and policy circles as an emerging power pole in the world, and thus a participant in the ‘multipolarity’ political project. The 2023 Foreign Policy Concept alludes to this role for the continent. At the 20 March Russia-Africa interparliamentary conference, Putin referred to ‘Africa’ as a leader in the multipolar world, hailing the continent’s large (approximately 1,2 billion people) and growing population. However, Putin, in his 20 March speech, spoke of Russia’s role being to ‘extend a helping hand‘ to the countries of Africa, particularly against the West’s ongoing ‘neocolonialism’. The dual sense of ‘multipolarity’ is in display here. While Africa is its own ‘pole’, it still requires assistance from Russia to stand as one.

For critics of American power, the best way for the United States to cope is for it to retrench its position in the world, divest itself of overseas obligations that others ought to handle, and serve, at most, as a distant offshore balancer. These critics would grant China and Russia their own regional spheres of interest in East Asia and Europe and focus the United States’ attention on defending its borders and improving the well-being of Americans. But there is a core of unrealism to this “realist” prescription: it doesn’t reflect the true nature of global power and influence that has characterized most of the post–Cold War era and that still governs the world today. The United States was already the only true global superpower during the Cold War, with its unparalleled wealth and might and its extensive international alliances. The collapse of the Soviet Union only enhanced U.S. global hegemony—and not because Washington eagerly stepped in to fill the vacuum left by Moscow’s weakness. Instead, the collapse expanded U.S. influence because the United States’ combination of power and democratic beliefs made the country attractive to those seeking security, prosperity, freedom, and autonomy. The United States is therefore an imposing obstacle to a Russia seeking to regain its lost influence.

What has happened in eastern Europe over the past three decades is a testament to this reality. Washington did not actively aspire to be the region’s dominant power. But in the years after the Cold War, eastern Europe’s newly liberated countries, including Ukraine, turned to the United States and its European allies because they believed that joining the transatlantic community was the key to independence, democracy, and affluence. Eastern Europeans were looking to escape decades—or, in some cases, centuries—of Russian and Soviet imperialism, and allying with Washington at a moment of Russian weakness afforded them a precious chance to succeed. Even if the United States had rejected their pleas to join NATO and other Western institutions, as critics insist it should have, the former Soviet satellites would have continued to resist Moscow’s attempts to corral them back into its sphere of interest, seeking whatever help from the West they could get. And Putin would still have regarded the United States as the main cause of this anti-Russian behavior, simply because the country was strong enough to attract eastern Europeans.

Such is Kagan’s thesis. What are we to think of it? First, his account of the origins of World War I and of American entry into the war is one-sided and in my view wrong. But more important for our present purpose, Kagan gives his readers no indication that what he says is controversial. In his discussion of the origins of World War I, he uncritically adopts Fritz Fischer’s thesis that the war came about as the result of a deliberate attempt by Germany to gain European hegemony. He mentions that a revisionist group of historians after the war challenged the Versailles verdict of unique German guilt, but he doesn’t tell us what their arguments were. He notes that Harry Elmer Barnes had churned out propaganda against the Kaiser during the war and changed his mind afterwards, disillusioned by what he regarded as Wilson’s betrayal of his idealistic principles, but Kagan does not tell us what Barnes said in his major revisionist study, The Genesis of the World War (1926), namely that Russia and France used the crisis after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand to bring about a general war in order to secure territorial gains to both countries.

Hegemonic reform. A major preoccupation in American political science and international studies is repair and maintenance of hegemony, or "getting hegemony right" (Ikenberry, 2001, 2002), by using more "soft power" (Nye, 2002), exercising restraint so hegemony is less offensive to other powers (Luttwak, 1998; Brutents, 2000), strengthening cooperation with Europe via NATO (Kagan, 2004), or using hegemony more benevolently (Maynes, 1997). These perspectives tend to focus on power politics, are usually short on political economy and economics, and rarely question whether hegemony is in fact reparable.

In the pages of Foreign Affairs, the indefatigable Robert Kagan recently weighed in with yet another fervent appeal on behalf of empire. Ever the true-blue American, Kagan avoids using the offensive E-word, of course. He favors the term hegemony, which, he explains, is benign, involving neither domination nor exploitation but willing submission—“more a condition than a purpose.” Scratch the surface, however, and “The Price of Hegemony” offers a variation on Kagan’s standard theme: the imperative of militarized U.S. global primacy, whatever the price and with little regard for who pays.

Few would charge Kagan with being a deep or original thinker. As a writer, he is less philosophe than pamphleteer, albeit one possessing a genuine gift for packaging. Recall, for example, his famous assertion that “Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus.” Once deemed to express a truth of Lippmannesque profundity, this warriors vs. wimps formulation has since lost much of its persuasive appeal, not least because the warriors, a.k.a. “the troops,” have not fared especially well when dispatched to liberate, pacify, or depose.

Another characteristic of today’s rules-based order is rising living standards facilitated by global trade. Governments have lowered tariffs and relaxed or removed barriers to foreign goods or foreign investment, producing enormous net benefits. For most of its history, the US government attempted to manage trade, especially by protecting privileged and politically well- connected US industries from foreign competition. But, coming out of World War II, US officials took the lead in promoting trade liberalization. They helped to establish new institutions, including the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the World Trade Organization, that would make it easier for countries to trade with one another. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank contributed as well, deepening countries’ economic ties, and generating desperately needed liquidity during crises. The United States also wielded its prodigious economic power unilaterally in the postwar years, especially the dollar’s dominant role in the global economy—and often for foreign policy aims that had nothing to do with expanding global commerce. Even US partners and allies were targeted. Immediately after World War II, for example, the United States extracted concessions from the United Kingdom as it sought loans to put its fiscal house in order. And, not quite ten years later, when the United Kingdom, France, and Israel conspired to take back the Suez Canal from Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Eisenhower administration compelled a humiliating retreat by threatening to sabotage the British pound. Such economic coercion would be far more difficult today. More broadly, trade and globalization are driven by a growing appreciation of the economic benefits that they deliver to a widening circle of beneficiaries, not by the implicit threat of US coercive power being employed against those who might disagree. Indeed, the US government has practically abandoned the field when it comes to promoting greater trade liberalization, explains Adam S. Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, by attempting to insulate the US “economy from foreign competition, while the rest of the world has continued to open up and integrate.”43 The data bear this out. Trade’s share of global GDP has been steadily rising for decades, from 39 percent in 1990 to 61 percent by the time of the financial crisis of 2008. That prolonged recession took a toll on global trade, which has now nearly returned to pre-crisis levels. In the United States, by contrast, trade as a share of US GDP grew much more slowly than the rest of the world—from 20 percent in 1990 to 30 percent in 2008. It then fell at the same rate as other major economies during the global great recession but has not yet recovered. US policy is generally not driving the rest of the world to embrace liberal trade practices. Since 2000, Posen notes, the United States has negotiated a handful of free-trade agreements, but mostly with small economies, and not with an object of promoting greater economic engagement between Americans and others. The United States has isolated itself economically in other ways as well. “A succession of nationalist policies that have increased the threat of arbitrary restrictions on technology transfer and foreign ownership,” Posen explains, have discouraged many foreign companies from making major investments or opening new businesses in the United States. Such “greenfield investment” totaled $13 billion annually in 2000 but had fallen to $4 billion by 2019. And foreign money is not the only thing that has been frightened away. Many people are also less interested in coming to the United States; net immigration has been declining for decades.44 As noted, the global economy has mostly bucked these trends, embracing greater economic linkages even as Americans were cutting them. And the durability of the international economic order has proved itself in other ways. The types of major shocks that cast a pall over the global economy in the early 1970s (e.g., the Arab oil embargo) are less likely today because supplies are more plentiful and widely distributed, and consumers more adaptable. Meanwhile, the collapse of even major states or entire regions’ financial networks very rarely spiral into a global contagion. The collapse of the residential real estate market in the United States in 2007-2008 might be the exception to this pattern, which again calls into question the notion of the United States as a uniquely stabilizing economic force, or responsible for sustaining the global economy. On the whole, global trade does not depend on a single state connecting buyers and sellers; and supply chains have become considerably more diversified over the last half century. Major disruptions to global trade are rare and almost always short- lived. The international economic order is surprisingly robust, and the occasional shocks are unlikely to be mitigated by coercive threats and shows of force. In this context, US military power may be as destabilizing as it is stabilizing. Extremist groups, in particular, may seize upon feelings of resentment and humiliation caused by foreign domination to grow their ranks and draw support to their cause. And the wars in the Greater Middle East have devastated countries from Libya to Iraq to Syria to Yemen to Afghanistan and spread chaos far beyond the region as millions of migrants have fled the violence. Political scientist Daniel Drezner concluded in 2013 that the United States’ massive military power “plays a supporting role” in stabilizing the international economy but only when combined with the United States’ economic primacy.45 And that latter advantage, in particular, has been steadily eroding over time. According to the World Bank, the US share of global output, as measured by purchasing power parity, has fallen from 20.8 percent in 2000 to 15.8 percent in 2020.46 A less economically dominant United States should not expect that its still-dominant military alone will allow it to wield the same level of influence as before. In sum, while the US foreign policy establishment often imagines the United States to be at the center of the global rules-based order—the indispensable nation, as it were—a fair-minded reading of US policy reveals that the United States was not solely responsible for creating many of the favorable trends of the last half century. And, in several critical respects, US policy ran counter to, or actively undermined, global norms surrounding the use of force; respect for national sovereignty, self-determination, and human rights; and noninterference in global trade. The United States has often championed the foundational pillars of the post-World War II rules-based international order, but it has also engaged in activities that erode or violate these principles.

As noted above, one of the more disappointing trends of the last fifteen years has been the apparent erosion of democracy and human rights. According to Freedom House, “nearly 75 percent of the world’s population lived in a country that faced [democratic] deterioration” in 2021. These setbacks have even occurred in established democracies, and close US allies and partners, including Hungary, Mexico, and Turkey. Even the United States is counted among the twenty-five countries that suffered the largest decline in democracy from 2010 to 2020.37 But it would be a mistake to blame US relative decline for the democratic backsliding of the last decade. After all, while the United States has often encouraged the spread of democracy globally, it has also occasionally thwarted it, either by overthrowing or undermining elected governments, or colluding with autocratic regimes to put down pro-democracy movements. Even US allies and partners have been subjected to US interventions, including everything from election interference to assassinations and coups d’etat.38 Such efforts often conflicted with the United States’ supposed commitment to liberal values and respect for self-determination. In her study of covert regime-change operations during the Cold War, for example, political scientist Lindsey O’Rourke observes that forty-four of sixty-four, or more than two-thirds, supported authoritarian forces, “including at least six operations that sought to replace liberal democratic governments with illiberal authoritarian regimes.”39 Even as the United States was engaged in such behavior, however, democracy spread around the world. From 1945 to 1989, for example, the number of autocracies fell from 137 to 105 while democratic states rose from a mere twelve to fifty- one. By 2001, according to the Varieties of Democracy Project, the number of democracies equaled the number of autocracies (eighty-eight each).40 The expansion of democracy globally from the late 1940s and into the 1990s produced several generations of men and women empowered and inclined to challenge leaders when they lie, mislead, or otherwise behave in ways contrary to the interests and wishes of their people. This has important implications for the global order, and the US role within it. At the height of its power, the United States might have been forgiven for occasional hypocrisy when it talked about supporting democracy even as it subverted it. During the Cold War with the Soviet Union, for example, the US role was clearly seen as preferable to the alternative, or a “necessary evil” to thwart a presumably revisionist power. In the present era, however, the United States is being held to account by its longtime allies and partners—and especially by the publics in these countries. The durability and resilience of the current order, including the ability to resist pressure and intimidation by dominant powers, could be made stronger by the continued growth of democracy. Democratically elected governments that ignore their own citizens in order to maintain faith with a foreign patron risk being voted out of office. The general election in Spain in March 2004, for example, ousted the ruling People’s Party (PP). Many factors explain the upset, including bloody terrorist attacks just days before the vote, but the PP had strongly supported the US war in Iraq, despite the war’s unpopularity in Spain, and the winning Socialists pledged to remove Spain’s troops from Iraq.41 And US officials have sometimes struggled to work with new democracies—even those that they had a hand in creating. In successive parliamentary elections since 2005, Iraqi voters have chosen representatives who did not support US policy objectives, with many elected officials openly hostile to the presence of US troops on Iraqi soil, and supportive of close ties with Iran. In the Maldives, meanwhile, challenger Ibrahim Mohamed Solih defeated President Adbulla Yameen in elections held in September 2018, on a promise to review all infrastructure deals negotiated with China.42 While US elected officials from John Quincy Adams to George W. Bush have celebrated the growth of democracy around the world, the evidence does not support the claim that the United States has been a leading driver of such trends. And there is reason to believe that democracy can grow again, as it did in prior eras, so long as people around the world believe in its relative advantages over undemocratic alternatives.

There are multiple explanations for the absence of great- power war in the post-World War II era, and the mere fact that US dominance coincides with that period of relative peace does not by itself prove that the United States was the cause. Indeed, human beings have been turning away from violence for generations. Skepticism toward organized violence and opposition to warfare dates to the late 1800s and accelerated after World War I.25 The United States has sometimes been at the forefront of these efforts. The Washington Naval Conference, a gathering of the world’s largest naval powers held between 1921 and 1922, for example, reined in the enormous expense of the weapons of mass destruction of that era. In a similar vein, US officials have helped broker an end to conflicts, ranging from the Russo-Japanese War to the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. And Americans, either as individuals or in an official capacity, have often been recognized as advocates for peace. The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to twenty- one Americans.26 But, on other occasions, the United States has engaged in military action that defied, either tacitly or explicitly, the norms of nonviolence enshrined in the United Nations (UN) Charter. Beyond the obvious cases of the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, other major operations, such as the bombing campaign against Serbia in 1999, were carried out without any UN Security Council (UNSC) authorization, while the regime-change operation in Libya in 2011 clearly exceeded the UNSC’s mandate that was limited to halting attacks on civilians. The United States ignored an International Court of Justice ruling regarding its mining of Nicaragua’s harbors in 1986 and has carried out numerous extrajudicial killings over the twenty-years-long Global War on Terrorism.27 But while the United States has sometimes waged war or violated others’ sovereignty, most countries do not exhibit these same impulses. And norms alone cannot explain the decline in organized violence since the end of World War II. Nuclear weapons matter, too. Since the 1960s, when multiple states came into possession of deliverable thermonuclear devices, they and others have been compelled to consider the possibility that a conventional war could escalate into an earth-ending conflagration. By substantially raising the cost of conflict, nuclear weapons have made war less likely. We do not know how much less likely, but few have tested the proposition.28 Deterrence, once thought to be fragile and delicate, might actually be quite robust and durable. States with a reliable nuclear force, one that is not in danger of being incapacitated during a surprise attack, are less fearful of conquest than those who lack such weapons. Indeed, North Korea’s leaders claim that their possession of nuclear weapons has deterred the United States and others from attacking it, whereas Libya’s decision to dismantle its nuclear program in the mid-2000s (admittedly in a very rudimentary state) left it with nothing to deter a US-led regime-change war less than a decade later.29 The increased precision and lethality of conventional weapons, too, could also create an environment less conducive to war, to the extent that these technologies deter would-be aggressors from believing that they can secure major gains at an acceptable cost. And by privileging the defense over the offense, new technologies could act to preserve the relatively peaceful and prosperous status quo—if status quo states, including especially US allies and partners, adapt their defense doctrines accordingly.30 Revisionist powers, including countries which seek to overturn political systems within given states, or disrupt long-established patterns of diplomacy and trade in particular regions, must contend with how these new technologies complicate their ambitions. Other factors, independent of these important technological innovations, must also be considered to explain the key characteristics of the current international order. Since the end of World War II, US leaders have often celebrated the benefits of peace over war. But the trauma of both world wars could have produced a similar result.31 Indeed, scholars have traced the decline of all forms of violence over several centuries, and credit a range of factors, from Montesquieu’s doux commerce (gentle commerce) to a growing appreciation for the rights of others, acquired through literature and the arts. The benefits of peace exceed those of war.32 The norms enshrined in the UN Charter, including respect for the sovereign rights of others, and a prohibition on the use of force except in self-defense, are more widely adhered to than many people realize. The world reacts harshly to those who disobey, and generally does not need to be told to behave by a disapproving Uncle Sam. The Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein’s attempted annexation of Kuwait, and Vladimir Putin’s seizure of Crimea, all elicited strong international condemnation—and even harsh punishment, ranging from economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation to retaliatory military action. The United States sometimes helps to coordinate international responses to aggression and illegal annexation, but not consistently. The Trump administration, for example, granted de facto recognition of Morocco’s claims to Western Sahara, a decision that the Biden administration has not yet reversed.33 Other illegal annexations that the US government has allowed to stand include Turkey’s seizure of lands in northern Cyprus and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Golan Heights. But the rest of the world has not followed the US lead. The 31 And, tragically, the United States’ own struggles in the wars that it has initiated over the last quarter century may now serve as an additional and useful warning to others. European Court of Human Rights and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights have both handed down adverse rulings against Turkey, and numerous NGOs and international bodies have criticized Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians and failure to abide by international law.34 The United States, too, has incurred the ire of global public opinion when it is seen as transgressing essential precepts of the modern rules-based international order. Favorable attitudes toward the United States declined during Trump’s presidency— e.g., 31 percent favorable in France and 26 percent in Germany— but the Pew Research Center found that that was merely an acceleration of a downward-sloping trend going back more than two decades. The previous low point occurred in March 2003 at the onset of the US invasion of Iraq (34 percent in Italy, 31 percent in France, 25 percent in Germany, and a stunning 14 percent favorable rating for the United States in Spain).35 Indeed, it would be hard to exaggerate the harmful effects that the US war in Iraq had on the nation’s international reputation.

The multipolar world order presents both challenges and opportunities for Africa in terms security, economy and politics. By harnessing its resources, fostering regional cooperation, and asserting its agency on the global stage, Africa can claim its rightful place as a key player in the new world order. By navigating the complexities cautiously and prioritizing its own development and unity, Africa can contribute to a more peaceful, prosperous, and sustainable future for the continent and the world.

Opportunities in Security. Diversification of partnerships: The multipolar world offers African nations the opportunity to diversify their security partnerships beyond traditional allies like the West, emerging powers like China, Russia, Turkey, India and other new powers are increasingly active in African security, providing alternative sources of military equipment, training, and intelligence, this diversification can reduce dependence on a single power and potentially lead to better deals and more responsive partnerships Dike, 2023. Enhanced African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA): The AU's APSA framework provides a platform for continental cooperation on security issues, with a multipolar world offering more resources and partnerships, APSA can be further strengthened, enabling African nations to take greater ownership of their security and address regional threats more effectively Atkinson, 2022. Peacebuilding and conflict resolution: Africa's own experiences with conflict resolution and peacekeeping can be valuable assets in the multipolar world, African troops and expertise can be deployed in conflict zones with greater legitimacy and acceptance, potentially leading to more sustainable peace solutions Studies,2023.

In contrast, the benefits of embracing the world’s burgeoning multipolarity and attempting to build a strategy around it are significant. First and foremost, embracing multipolarity — instead of focusing purely on bipolar competition with China — should lower the risk of direct great-power war, albeit at the cost of potentially increasing the number of lower-stakes conflicts. This trend should not be overblown; there were numerous lower-stakes conflicts during the bipolar cold war and even in the unipolar moment. Yet because great-power war today can escalate to the nuclear level, it is an existential threat; preventing great-power war should be among the most important goals of American foreign policy.57 A multipolar strategy — one that is not entirely built around containing China — also allows the United States to hedge against a possible future decline in its power, or against further rise in China’s capabilities. U.S. strategy should instead focus on ways to leverage multipolarity to its benefit, recognizing that putting all Washington’s eggs in one basket — relying solely on the United States to provide the military force necessary to monitor and manage in all the world’s major regions — poses a significant risk. The emergence of other capable actors, particularly in Asia and Europe, creates a backup for U.S. power; these states may not share all of America’s goals, but their fundamental opposition to Chinese expansionism makes it less likely that China will run the global table should the United States falter. The converse is also true: The embrace of multipolarity helps the United States to hedge against a future where China falters. By maintaining flexibility and increasing the number of available partners, this approach can help to prepare the United States for a future where a range of possible challenges emerge.

Continuing to double down on the United States as the “indispensable nation” is likely to lead only to failure and overstretch. Indeed, academic research shows that those countries that respond to international shifts in the balance of power with appropriate levels of retrenchment and realignment typically do far better than those that refuse to adjust and end up exhausting themselves through overreach.

The United States should not retreat from the world stage but rather use the multipolar world to its advantage. Such a strategy would involve three core elements:

New world disorder: This is by now a commonplace of strategic debate. Great power rivalries and conflicts between different social systems are undermining the Western liberal rules-based world order, which had been accompanied by American global hegemony, at least since the end of the Cold War. On this, most agree. Where controversy starts is on the question of what order the world is moving toward, and indeed what order it should be moving toward.

On this question, Germany’s National Security Strategy offers an answer. “The 21st century world is a multipolar world,” says Olaf Scholz’s foreword. By using this phrase, the German chancellor re-emphasizes what he and other members of the German government have often stressed: Germany’s foreign and security policy is based on a model of multipolarity, and this is above all a pragmatic reaction to shifts in power over the past two decades.

Bipolar bloc confrontation thus comes with severe disadvantages, while any revival of the Western liberal rule-based order seems improbable for the foreseeable future. Likewise, a version of rules-based order that was revised by authoritarian states would be hardly acceptable for liberal democracies. All of these conditions make multipolarity a desirable fallback position, albeit of a temporary character. But what would this kind of multipolar order look like? It would have six characteristics:

First, poles are states or groupings of states that develop their own distinct set of rules and can attract other countries through their cultural and economic appeal (soft power) or exert influence on them through political, economic or military power (hard power).

One lesson of the Cold War is that survival is a mutual interest. Yet many see Chinese and Russian ambitions as unrelenting and inflexible. As such, there can be no accommodation, no modern Westphalian or Concert-of-Vienna-type order, no balance of power arrangements. Echoing Biden’s binary absolutism, other proponents of perpetual primacy like Hal Brands argue that sustained U.S. hegemony remains the most sensible US grand strategy. The assumption here is that U.S. power has not relatively declined — as the NSS also assumes, it is forever 1991. If that were the case, we might agree with this conventional wisdom. But it is not, and we cannot.

When he designed the containment strategy to fight the Cold War, George Kennan understood that the United States did not have the appetite for a war with the Soviet Union. President Harry S. Truman and other leaders who experienced firsthand the unpredictability and failures of both world wars had a sense of U.S. limits, particularly after Moscow acquired nuclear weapons. Even while Russia’s future looks grim and some believe that China has reached a stagnating peak, resurgent optimism for liberal hegemony with no limits seems oblivious to both domestic and global realities.