G. John Ikenberry, "Getting Hegemony Right," The National 
Interest, No. 63 (Spring 2001)



In May 1999 the Oxford Union debated the proposition, "Resolved, the United 
States is a rogue state." The resolution was ultimately defeated, but around the 
world there is growing unease about a global order dominated by American 
power—power unprecedented, unrestrained and unpredictable. The unease is felt 
even by America’s closest allies. "The United States of America today 
predominates on the economic level, the monetary level, on the technological 
level, and in the cultural area in the broadest sense of the word", French 
Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine observed in a speech in Paris in early 1999. "It 
is not comparable, in terms of power and influence, to anything known in modern 
history." European diplomats, following Védrine’s coining of the term, have 
begun calling the United States a "hyperpower." During the Cold War, the Soviet 
Union and the United States kept each other in check. Today the restraints are 
less evident, and this has made American power increasingly controversial.
This is an unexpected turn of events. Just a little over a decade ago many 
pundits argued that the central problem of U.S. foreign policy was the graceful 
management of the country’s decline. Paul Kennedy’s famous book, The Rise and 
Fall of the Great Powers, argued that the United States would go the way of all 
great powers—down. Japan was on the rise and Europe was awakening. World 
politics after the Cold War, it was widely assumed, was to be profoundly 
multipolar.
But the distribution of world power took a dramatic turn in America’s favor. The 
sudden collapse of the Soviet Union, the decline in ideological rivalry, lagging 
economic fortunes in Japan and continental Europe, growing disparities in 
military and technological expenditure, and America’s booming economy all 
intensified power disparities during the 1990s. Today it is not decline that the 
United States must manage but the fear, resentment and instabilities created by 
a decade of rising American power.
A global backlash to U.S. power is not inevitable, however, particularly if the 
United States remembers its own political history. Our leaders have the ideas, 
means and political institutions that can allow for stable and cooperative order 
even in the midst of sharp and shifting asymmetries of power. The United States 
faced this problem after World War II and solved it by building what might be 
called a "stakeholder" hegemony. America can do it again today. . . .Think of 
the United States as a giant corporation that seeks foreign investors. It is 
more likely to attract investors if it can demonstrate that it operates 
according to accepted accounting and fiduciary principles. The rule of law and 
the institutions of policymaking in a democracy are the political equivalent of 
corporate transparency and accountability. Sharp shifts in policy must 
ultimately be vetted within the policy process and pass muster by an array of 
investigatory and decision-making bodies. Because it is a constitutional, 
rule-based democracy, outside states are more willing to work with the United 
States—or, to return to the corporate metaphor, to invest in ongoing 
partnerships.
This open and decentralized political process works in a second way to reduce 
foreign worries about American power. It creates what might be called "voice 
opportunities"—that is, opportunities for political access and, with it, the 
means for foreign governments and groups to influence the way Washington’s power 
is exercised. In 1990 the political analyst Pat Choate wrote a bestseller 
entitled Agents of Influence, detailing the supposedly scandalous ways in which 
Japanese ministries and corporations were manipulating the American political 
process. High-priced lobbyists were advancing Tokyo’s commercial interests 
within the hallowed halls of the American capital and undermining the pursuit of 
the U.S. national interest. Today Washington is even more inundated by foreign 
diplomats and revolving-door lobbyists working to ensure that the interests of 
America’s partners are not overlooked. Looked at from the perspective of the 
stable functioning of America’s hegemonic order, Choate was actually describing 
one of the brilliant aspects of the United States as a global power. By 
providing other states opportunities to play the game in Washington, they are 
drawn into active, ongoing partnerships that serve the long-term strategic 
interests of the United States.
A third and final element of the American order that reduces worry about power 
asymmetries is the web of multilateral institutions that mark the postwar world. 
After World War II, the United States launched history’s most ambitious era of 
institution-building. The UN, IMF, World Bank, NATO, GATT and other institutions 
that emerged provided a more extensive rule-based structure for political and 
economic relations than anything seen before. The United States had been deeply 
ambivalent about making permanent security commitments to other states and about 
allowing its political and economic policies to be dictated by intergovernmental 
bodies. The Soviet menace was critical in overcoming these doubts. Networks and 
political relationships were built that—paradoxically—made U.S. power both more 
far-reaching and durable but also more predictable and malleable.
In effect, the United States spun a web of institutions that connected other 
states to an emerging American-dominated economic and security order. But in 
doing so, these institutions also bound the United States to other states and 
reduced—at least to some extent—Washington’s ability to engage in the arbitrary 
and indiscriminate exercise of power. Call it an institutional bargain. The 
price for the United States was a reduction in Washington’s policy autonomy, in 
that institutional rules and joint decision-making reduced U.S. unilateralist 
capacities. But what Washington got in return was worth the price. America’s 
partners also had their autonomy constrained, but in return were able to operate 
in a world where U.S. power was more restrained and reliable. . . .
From The National Interest No. 63, Spring 2001.