The biggest constraints to American hegemony lie within the heart of hegemony itself. We can identify three constraints on American power.
The first constraint is the institutional architecture of the American state itself. A system of division of powers between the three branches of government places significant brakes upon the unrestrained and immoderate exercise of America’s military power by the executive branch.
The second constraint on American power is also domestic in nature and stems from the open nature of American society. Although the American mass media may from time to time impose or promote a particular perspective on domestic public opinion in the US, there is nevertheless a deep scepticism regarding the purposes and methods of government in American political culture. This factor, in the long run, is a huge constraint on US military action overseas.
However, it is the third constraint on the US that is perhaps the most important. There is only one organisation in the international system that could possibly moderate the exercise of American power today, and that is the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). The US obviously has an enormous interest in keeping the alliance of democracies that follow the market economies alive and therefore it is possible that its allies in NATO will be able to moderate the exercise of US hegemony. |
