The hegemonic crisis on a world scale

Emir Sader

09/01/2014

Opinión

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Never before has the tension between a world that is running out of steam, but still attempting to survive, and a new world that is attempting to emerge with great difficulty, been so real as it is today. In the vacuum we find a world that is unstable, turbulent, with a great struggle for a new world hegemony.

The decadence of US hegemony in the world and the exhaustion of the neo-liberal model are evident, but at the same time, there is no power or group of countries on the horizon that can exercise world hegemony in place of the United States. Nor has a model appeared that can challenge the economic hegemony of neo-liberalism on a world scale. The post-neo-liberal governments of Latin America do not have sufficient strength to dispute this global hegemony.

The victory in the cold war has not meant that the imposition of the Pax Americana has brought stability to the world. On the contrary, never before have we had so many violent conflicts, since the United States has chosen, with its military supremacy, to move conflicts into the sphere of violent confrontation. This was the case in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, but they have been unable to impose political stability over the ruins left by military intervention. These countries continue to exist in a state of war in the world today.

In the case of Syria -- and by extension, Iran -- the United States has not been able to generate even the minimum political conditions for new military interventions, so have had to take part in peace negotiations.

Nevertheless, the United States is still the only world power that employs its economic, technological, political, military and cultural power to impose itself as the country which has the greatest influence in the world, the only power to have a global strategy. Neither China, nor the weakened European Union, nor Latin America, or any group of forces joined together, have been able to oppose U.S. hegemony in the world.

The deep and prolonged economic crisis that afflicts the centre of capitalism has shown that areas of the South -- in Asia and Latin America -- can defend themselves, suffering from the impact of the recession but without being submerged in it, as has happened with other crises afflicting the centre of the system. There is already in the world a certain level of economic multilateralism, which has allowed countries with post-neo-liberal governments to defend themselves without falling into recession, thanks to South-South interchanges and those processes of regional integration in South America, and the great expansion of internal markets of popular consumption. Nevertheless, the recessive pressures have had an impact on these countries, so that they need integrated responses in order to reactivate their economies.

However, in spite of the current disrepute of neo-liberal policies that have brought on the crisis at the centre of the system, and have proved incapable, so far, of restoring a healthy economy, to date the neo-liberal model continues to dominate in great part the world economic system. The measures taken by European governments, for example, are neo-liberal in character, designed to react in the face of a neo-liberal crisis, attempting to put out the fire with gasoline.

And this is so because neo-liberalism is not only an economic policy, but a hegemonic model, which has a close relationship with the hegemony of financial capital on a world scale, with the US-UK block as the political centre, as well as a way of life (the so-called American way of life) centred on consumption, the commodification of life and shopping malls. It symbolizes a point of no return for capitalism on a global scale, which at the same time imposes limits to the proposals of action on the part of political powers and international organizations.

Thus the world will go on, at least until the middle of this new century, with a period of turbulence, in which the decadent US hegemony will survive, although with growing difficulty. In the same way the dominance of the neo-liberal model will continue, though in a weakened state, condemning the world economy to greater concentration of wealth, exclusion of rights and continued economic recession.

Thus a profound and extended hegemonic crisis will remain on a world scale, with the persistence of the old models and difficulties in establishing alternatives.

- Emir Sader, Brazilian sociologist and political scientist, is coordinator of the Laboratory of Public Policy of the State University of Rio Janeiro (UERJ).

https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/82201