Hegemony, military power projection and US structural economic interests in the periphery

Abstract

Positing the dawning of a ‘post-American World’, ‘declinists’ have taken little account of the USA’s surging interventionist tendencies and the new political economy of military power arising from the relentless pursuit of global militarism. The USA has long exercised its competitive advantage in military power to enhance its diplomatic clout, as well as to advantageously reposition its national industrial and financial base. The pace of such martial efforts has accelerated as US policy makers, employing a ‘deep engagement’ grand strategy, strive for paradigm maintenance and geopolitical expansion within the periphery. Interventions have been facilitated through new processes and procedures, carefully constructed to create a sufficient degree of autonomy to permit the US state to ‘project power’ without broad societal resistance. US policy is path-dependent, locked into a reflexive pattern, unable and unwilling to learn from its long string of blunders and delusionary adventures. But US policy makers do not suffer a loss of will-to-power, as neo-conservatives allege.