It depends on how you define “the end of hegemony”. The first important imperialist war lost against the “BRICS” could very well be treated historically as a good chronological starting point of the change in global hegemony (which is a progressive process with a gray barrier)
Yeah but you have to put the border historically at some point. Wouldn’t you put the end of the hegemony at the point where it stops winning everything (meaning it’s no longer the hegemon), rather than at the end of the empire?
I just don’t think hegemony is binary like that. I’d say it’s fought for, achieved, maintained, and then fought to preserve until you can say there is no more unipolarity. I don’t think Ukraine losing would bring multipolarity yet imo
If anything I’d go so far as to say that unipolarity is already over and it’s been over for years. There is a coup government in Perú right now, with american boots on the ground. Chinese investment and soft power continues more or less unabated, and the only thing staying on the path of BRI’s projects is that the peruvians want to lengthen the route of the transoceanic railway. SOUTHCOM complains about chinese ports, but the fact of the matter is that the US has no use for peruvian minerals or brazilian soybeans and the pull of chinese money is too strong even for a comprador elite. The clown president in Buenos Aires wishes he could throw his lot in with the Americans, but the trade realities mean that he can’t and neither could the junta joke that ruled Brazil not long ago.
South America might be a particularly edge case example in my view, but the most normative one should be the existence of countries like India and Turkey. Not massively powerful or isolated, not defined by anti-americanism, and still playing at their own game, talking to everyone at once according to their own interest.
The ‘Suez Canal moment’ is often taken as the siren song of european hegemony, not because it is the perfect chronological moment where european imperial power ceased to exist, but because all of a sudden something that was beyond the pale was not only possible but felt only natural. It is nonetheless true that, at the same time, the european empires were both collapsing before losing the Suez and still exist to this day formally (for the french empire) and informally (for all the other empires). The greatest material change is that those neo-colonial empires were subsumed into the American one.
So TL;DR just as european multi-polarity gave way to Soviet-American bipolarity without entirely dismantling european structures of power, American unipolarity has already given way to defacto global multipolarity. Too many countries simply don’t take marching orders from Washington. There are far too many opportunities to raise capital aside from just New York and London. High tech weapons systems have been commoditized to the point where many can be produced, in house, by the Yemenis. And there are too many countries at the periphery of the American Empire who cannot but engage in political and commercial relations with the Empire’s enemies.
It is not healthy to try and see the future, however it is not for nothing that the former british prime minister feels that Ukraine is a new Suez Moment. Things changing and are changing very fast. New settlements need to be reached.
I think it would be wrong for any historian to not at least acknowledge that idk some 80% of Russian military technology and current capabilities were inhereted from the USSR. Indeed the war was fought primarily with cold war era weapons from old NATO stocks and former USSR countries all sent to Ukraine. Its basically the cold war went hot scenario but 30 years later.
Even at the worst times the USSR was a far bigger geopolitical opponent than BRICS is or will likely ever be imo exactly because China doesn’t want to fight the US military or otherwise and as such their strategy is to be friends with everyone at the same time.
The end result is even if the US ends up having to readjust their behavior they’re still the only major power willing to force others to do their bidding.
Even at the worst times the USSR was a far bigger geopolitical opponent than BRICS is or will likely ever be imo exactly because China doesn’t want to fight the US military or otherwise and as such their strategy is to be friends with everyone at the same time.
I think this part is a bit disingenuous. The USSR didn’t invest in military because it wanted to do so against the US, it’s because despite the constant pleas to de-escalate militarily, the US kept on increasing their military expenditure, forcing the USSR to do the same. China is now much more powerful compared to the US than the USSR ever was, possibly not militarily but definitely economically, and the ramp-up in military expenditure that NATO has forced for the past 2 years is only an appetizer of what it will do in order to preserve the status quo. The US sadly won’t be dethroned front the hegemony without a fight that it will itself begin.
They will lose, and no it won’t
It depends on how you define “the end of hegemony”. The first important imperialist war lost against the “BRICS” could very well be treated historically as a good chronological starting point of the change in global hegemony (which is a progressive process with a gray barrier)
Personally I define the end of hegemony as the end of it, instead of the beginning of the meaningful decline
Yeah but you have to put the border historically at some point. Wouldn’t you put the end of the hegemony at the point where it stops winning everything (meaning it’s no longer the hegemon), rather than at the end of the empire?
I just don’t think hegemony is binary like that. I’d say it’s fought for, achieved, maintained, and then fought to preserve until you can say there is no more unipolarity. I don’t think Ukraine losing would bring multipolarity yet imo
If anything I’d go so far as to say that unipolarity is already over and it’s been over for years. There is a coup government in Perú right now, with american boots on the ground. Chinese investment and soft power continues more or less unabated, and the only thing staying on the path of BRI’s projects is that the peruvians want to lengthen the route of the transoceanic railway. SOUTHCOM complains about chinese ports, but the fact of the matter is that the US has no use for peruvian minerals or brazilian soybeans and the pull of chinese money is too strong even for a comprador elite. The clown president in Buenos Aires wishes he could throw his lot in with the Americans, but the trade realities mean that he can’t and neither could the junta joke that ruled Brazil not long ago.
South America might be a particularly edge case example in my view, but the most normative one should be the existence of countries like India and Turkey. Not massively powerful or isolated, not defined by anti-americanism, and still playing at their own game, talking to everyone at once according to their own interest.
The ‘Suez Canal moment’ is often taken as the siren song of european hegemony, not because it is the perfect chronological moment where european imperial power ceased to exist, but because all of a sudden something that was beyond the pale was not only possible but felt only natural. It is nonetheless true that, at the same time, the european empires were both collapsing before losing the Suez and still exist to this day formally (for the french empire) and informally (for all the other empires). The greatest material change is that those neo-colonial empires were subsumed into the American one.
So TL;DR just as european multi-polarity gave way to Soviet-American bipolarity without entirely dismantling european structures of power, American unipolarity has already given way to defacto global multipolarity. Too many countries simply don’t take marching orders from Washington. There are far too many opportunities to raise capital aside from just New York and London. High tech weapons systems have been commoditized to the point where many can be produced, in house, by the Yemenis. And there are too many countries at the periphery of the American Empire who cannot but engage in political and commercial relations with the Empire’s enemies.
It is not healthy to try and see the future, however it is not for nothing that the former british prime minister feels that Ukraine is a new Suez Moment. Things changing and are changing very fast. New settlements need to be reached.
I think it would be wrong for any historian to not at least acknowledge that idk some 80% of Russian military technology and current capabilities were inhereted from the USSR. Indeed the war was fought primarily with cold war era weapons from old NATO stocks and former USSR countries all sent to Ukraine. Its basically the cold war went hot scenario but 30 years later.
Even at the worst times the USSR was a far bigger geopolitical opponent than BRICS is or will likely ever be imo exactly because China doesn’t want to fight the US military or otherwise and as such their strategy is to be friends with everyone at the same time.
The end result is even if the US ends up having to readjust their behavior they’re still the only major power willing to force others to do their bidding.
I think this part is a bit disingenuous. The USSR didn’t invest in military because it wanted to do so against the US, it’s because despite the constant pleas to de-escalate militarily, the US kept on increasing their military expenditure, forcing the USSR to do the same. China is now much more powerful compared to the US than the USSR ever was, possibly not militarily but definitely economically, and the ramp-up in military expenditure that NATO has forced for the past 2 years is only an appetizer of what it will do in order to preserve the status quo. The US sadly won’t be dethroned front the hegemony without a fight that it will itself begin.
I do think it would be a heavy blow to Western hegemony, but it will still persist for some time afterward.
Don’t take away my hope