Varieties of US Post-Cold War Imperialism: Anatomy of a Failed Hegemonic Project and the Future of US Geopolitics

Abstract

Seeking to explain the changes — within underlying continuities — that have taken place in US geopolitical strategy since the early 2000s, this article analyses the dialectical interplay between political agency — in turn linked to specific social forces — and changing structural conditions within the global political economy. Geopolitical strategy is thus seen as constructed through a network of actors whose practices are shaped by their own social positions as well as by the broader global structural context. Analysing these networks with social network analysis we show how neoconservative intellectuals — linked to dominant sections of US capital — came to formulate a hegemonic project for the preservation of US primacy in the context of the rising contradictions of US-led neoliberal globalization. The ultimate failure of this hegemonic project subsequently set the structural context in which the network around Obama is now trying to formulate a more effective strategy.