No Roads Lead to Washington
American hegemony is doomed. This book sends a robust message that its unraveling has already begun, driven most importantly by alternative-order building and contention over liberal norms and governance. Alexander Cooley, director of Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, and Daniel Nexon, professor at Georgetown University, identify opposite trends in today’s world in the three areas that once supported American hegemony back in 1989: Russia and China are now engaged in their own activities to counter the Us-led international order; states in various regions are increasingly undermining the order by exiting its institutions and rules to solicit assets and governance from alternative patrons; and new networks that promote illiberal forms of order are now interacting to openly disrupt domestic liberal consensus in the West. For a post-hegemonic world, the authors project three scenarios: a world increasingly dominated by strategic Us-china competition; a multipolar world where multiple great powers co-operate while smaller powers lack agency over broad rule-making; and a world of globalized oligarchy and kleptocracy where much existing global economic architecture remains, but elements of political liberalism significantly erode. They conclude that the international system is too far down multiple pathways for a return of America’s former hegemonic role.