The Decline of American Hegemony: Biden’s Foreign Policy Towards China

Abstract

The capitalist crisis of the late 1960s not only revealed the end of the long postwar expansion but also the crisis of US hegemony, which entered into decline. Under neoliberal globalization, US foreign policy has positioned itself as a political instrument of hegemonic preservation in the face of the struggle for an ascending multipolar global order. With the arrival of Joe Biden to the presidency of the United States, this policy has represented a departure from the isolationist policy of Donald Trump, but it unfolds as a renewed version of “Cold War” politics, that is, an aggressive multilateralism and a “reloaded” imperialism, which far from advancing towards a multipolar order excludes and sanctions countries considered enemies of the United States and branded as authoritarian, non-democratic, or populist. The list is long and begins with China, which is defined as the strategic adversary of the United States in the twenty-first century.