How Might Hegemons Encourage the Proliferation of Regimes among Other States - Essay Example

How might hegemons encourage the proliferation of regimes among other s? “The hegemon manages the status quo for its own benefit, rewards its allies and penalizes rivals” (Brussmann and Oneal 2007, p.88) A true hegemon is characterised as a state which maintains preponderant authority or dominance over others, underpinned by economic, political or military superiority (DuBois 2005). Marxist theory also explores the philosophy of cultural hegemony, whereby a society’s ruling class is capable of manipulating a state’s culture (beliefs, values and social norms) so that this dominating ruling party builds a worldview which is forced upon other states with the expectation that this worldview becomes the predominant cultural norm throughout the world. This cultural hegemonic worldview is therefore successful (largely) due to the economic, military-related or politically-oriented dominance maintained by the hegemon. An enquiry has been posed, questioning how hegemons might potentially encourage propagation of regimes among other states. Regimes are established governments, cultural norms or rules that guide and control an established institution and serve as the foundation for how this institution engages and interacts with domestic and international societies. In contemporary IR studies, regimes are enacted through interventions by the public and are considered permanent and durable organisations of norms and practices, such as the World Trade Organization or other organization with ample legal support and regulations to achieve institutional objectives. Hegemons, due to their economic or military-related superiority over other states and their ability to influence worldwide cultural norms, are often opposed by other states. The degree to which a state maintains power serves as the underpinning for international relations ideologies and hegemons attempt to exert this power to construct methodologies for constructing international order (Buzan 2004). States that are, therefore, subjugated by hegemons and compelled to assimilate to the dominant cultural values of the hegemon can experience substantial indignation, seeing hegemonic dominance as an affront to domestic state ideologies that differ from the hegemon. Hence, hegemons encourage the proliferation of regimes among other states as an effort to liberate a state from hegemonic dominance, re-exert the subjugated state’s values and beliefs, and create a multi-polar international environment with more equilibrium in the global balance of power and other state influence in exerting unique and differentiated worldviews. The world, today, is witnessing the rise of a new regime, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a regime with an objective of establishing a desired Islamic ideology in the Sunni regions of Syria and Sunni regions in Iraq (Cockburn 2014). The main tenet of the Muslim faith is to spread Islam throughout the world to ensure that all live in the pursuit of worshipping Allah. Christianity is the predominant religious order in the United States which maintains many fundamental disparities compared to the Islamic faith. Many of the United States’ social, cultural and political ideologies are founded on principles and doctrine stemming from the Christian dogma. As one of the world’s most dominant hegemonic states, the United States exerts its own worldview pertaining to freedom of religion, the attainment of individual liberties, and general independence both as a nation and as an individual. For strict Muslim followers, the only legitimate duty of the faithful is to promote the word of God and abide by His directives. With the United States being instrumental in imposing its worldviews through the world, and chastising or penalising those states who do not share this ideology, the U.S. gained alliances from the United Kingdom and other non-Muslim states in an effort to combat ISIS religious ideologies from spreading, viewing these as poisonous and malicious religious dogma. International society has recently witnessed this association manifest through military airstrikes against ISIS-held territories and facilities with ISIS leaders iterating to the world through global media that this regime holds Western ideologies to be evil and irrelevant for the establishment of an Islamic state. Hence, ISIS, in an effort to assert its widely-popular Islamic agenda transitioned from a rather innocuous institution with little global presence and influence into a regime believing itself capable of thwarting the cultural hegemony of the United States and its alliance partners throughout the world that directly conflict with its inherent religious ideologies. Society witnesses these oppositional strategies manifesting themselves in the forms of public beheadings and other radical strategies to sanction the authority and global relevancy of the American socio-religious philosophy in which this hegemon attempts to exert as a cultural norm relevant and acceptable to dominant hegemonic states in the developed world. The Realist approach dictates that the pursuit of shifting the balance of power is necessary for a regime to achieve greater global power or dismantle and undesirable status quo exerted by a dominant hegemon (Baylis and Smith 2005). Following the U.S. attacks which occurred on September 11, 2001, the government of the United States underpinned a new type of democratic realism as a hegemon seeking war with terrorism, consisting of forceful unilateralism and the preservation of U.S. military superiority (Barry 2004). The U.S., maintaining great power in relation to controlling many of the world’s material resources, asserts the state’s competency (and intention) in establishing the framework for maintaining international order. Polarity of resource capability as a result of maintain military superiority, production capacity, wealth and technology explain why this hegemon is influential in achieving support for this unilateral effort to further compel international obedience to the American socio-political ideology. ISIS, fully transitioned from an institution to a regime as a result of American imposition on an established, inherent religious agenda, became a fully-fledged regime determined to shift the balance of international power in favour of exerting its own objectives which are in direct conflict to American hegemonic values. Now, it might be argued by those states throughout the world that do not share the American hegemonic worldview that this hegemon is attempting, first and foremost, to secure the interests and status quo that is in favour of the American ruling class. Whilst the U.S., as an international hegemon, asserts that many of its international relations strategies are founded on multi-polar intentions, the utilisation of dominant military powers over ISIS were not considered as viable retaliation methods until an American citizen had been executed by this regime. Atawaneh (2009) identifies that a socio-political norm in the United States is protection of its own citizens over that of other states’ citizens, with a general belief that murder of citizens is barbaric and highly abominable, despite the readiness of this nation to destroy another state’s citizens through wartime activities. With growing interest for global citizens to join ISIS and rising influence and economic power within this new regime, it also posed potential, future resource procurement problems for the United States as other nations sharing this religious-based ideology might favour the position of ISIS. Hence, the exploitation of U.S. military force to combat a growing ISIS threat, though with a trickle-down effect on other states, guaranteed its own citizen protection and sought to assure a more favourable position as a global trade partner with Middle Eastern states (many sharing the Islamic ideology). Hence, though a somewhat subjective assertion, hegemons cause the proliferation of regimes when Realist-based self-protectionism threatens the cultural, religious, or economic security of another institution. Resentment toward the hegemon serves as the foundation for conflict. In the case of ISIS versus U.S.-led coalition forces declaring a war on this regime, it may be a legitimate phenomenon that the U.S. and other allied forces do not fully recognise that many international citizens of other states find comfort and self-identity through their cultural/religious values and beliefs. Hence, a lack of publicised empathy stemming from the hegemon toward supporting the social motivations and needs of other states’ citizens could fuel this type of resentment that leads to an oppositional regime proliferation in an effort to secure the citizenry needs of the subjugated state. From a different perspective, one can consider the development of the World Trade Organization as a regime providing a framework for ensuring more trade-related equity and dispute resolution between international trading partners. Prior to the WTO formation, the prevailing regulatory structure for global trade was the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade enacted in 1948. After World War II, renewed emphasis on increasing industrial manufacturing capacity provided the United States with considerable export capability in a much unregulated environment. The U.S., as a growing hegemonic force related to economics and industry, had no regulations for dumping its products in foreign nations, or the predatory pricing strategy where products are dumped in another state at a price far below its home market pricing structure (Van Den Bossche 2005). Hegemonic production capacity, when occurring without an appropriate regulatory force to curb such injurious behaviours, allowed states such as the U.S. to boost national and corporate revenues using unfair trade initiatives such as dumping (and other predatory strategies now condemned by the WTO). Hence, the establishment of the WTO as a regulatory force ensuring more equitable trade behaviours throughout the world was proliferated by hegemonic exporters that caused risk to the domestic economic security of other states. The WTO served as a new regime that could reduce the hegemonic advantages of the U.S. and a checks and balances institution that impedes some of the trade-related and resource-based advantages of the hegemonic state. States with significant resource capability and production capacity served as potential or legitimate threats to domestic economic security, hence new regulatory frameworks which exert a new level of control over hegemons served as a Realist-based form of financial and industrial self-protectionism. Thus far, this essay has explored the oppositional aspects of regimes in an effort to supersede some of the military-related, economic or cultural superiority of the hegemon. However, it is not just direct opposition toward the hegemon which underpins regime propagation, it is about establishing international legitimacy as a means of promoting more power equality throughout the entire world and ensuring that international policies are formed of consensus rather than through hegemonic influence. Hegemons, due to their superiority related to other states, have more opportunities to utilise coercion in an effort to pursue a state’s own motivations and objectives. However, in contemporary global society, there is more emphasis being placed on ensuring morality and ethics as an outcome of state policy and behaviour. Organisations such as the United Nations regularly create internationally-accepted polices and frameworks pertaining to such issues as human rights protections, constructed through international consensus underpinned by a growing, shared worldview on moral and ethical acceptability. Hence, as it pertains to moral and ethical beliefs, regimes are constructed as an effort to prevent hegemonic coercion and instead create an international environment where consensus-based laws and norms are established that have mutual benefit for all international states. A legitimate political authority is one created through convention, attainable through the civil state, and not through coercion by hegemonic forces (Rousseau 2010). The international status quo should be a legitimate construct approved of by major states involved in the international system (Gilpin 1981). Hegemonic coercion can theoretically be exercised as a result of maintaining dominance over other states. Hence, any regime that gains influence and authority to ensure more ethically-driven and morally-founded behaviours of a hegemonic force illustrate how the objective of achieving international standards related to moral and ethics can be achieved through convention. It reduces the risk of coercive authority being exerted over other states by establishing an internationally-adopted regulatory force or framework that ensures decency, integrity and virtue by a dominant hegemonic force. To illustrate, one could consider the activities undertaken by the U.S government in its post-9/11 self-proclaimed war on terrorism. The government was cited for conducting subjectively illegal activities of surveillance against its own citizens in an effort to identify domestic terrorism threats and similar strategies within other states without the direct influence or approval of relevant foreign state authorities. Superior technological capability within the United States hegemony as well as coordination and support from allied partners, such as former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair (as one example), allowed the United States to extend its political influences outside of the United States border and intrude on the activities and lifestyles of foreign citizens to fulfil the self-protectionist objectives of the hegemon. During the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Saddam Hussein regime was removed of authority with the U.S. justification that it was pursuing evidence of the construction of globally-threatening weapons of mass destruction. These efforts were widely criticised by many states throughout the world as militaristic actions not founded by concrete, quantitative evidence of the presence of such weapons on foreign soil. Therefore, to ensure minimisation of the potential coercive powers of a hegemon, regimes are formed in other states to promote a new type of moral convention whereby consensus, compromise and agreement through negotiation are the objectives of removing hegemonic influence from international relations. Furthermore, guaranteeing state sovereignty is another rationale for the proliferation of regimes within a state in response to hegemonic influence. Sovereignty is the assertion that a state is free to conduct whatever activities it deems appropriate within the boundaries of its own national territories. The basic accepted premise of sovereignty is that while given internal autonomy within a state, the state should not interfere in the activities and affairs of foreign states (Goldstein and Pevehouse 2012). In recent years, upon creation of the European Union, the previous Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Gordon Brown, insisted that he would ensure Britain’s sovereignty in respect to preventing the EU to exert policy mandates on this state (Summers 2007). However, under the definition of legitimate sovereignty, this would also prevent the United Kingdom from intruding or interfering in the political or social activities of a foreign state in equal proportion to self-protectionism from the European Union’s growing influence. However, with the U.S.-led coalition attacks against such nations as Syria, against the ISIS regime, and in the 2000s during the invasion of Iraq, Britain maintained economic and military-related support which ultimately led to intrusive and invasive actions against a foreign state in which militant combatants were placed to fulfil political objectives within the foreign sovereignty. Not only from a militaristic perspective, hegemonic forces with considerable buying power along the international supply chain infringe on the sovereignty of foreign states, especially in an effort to exert a human rights agenda on nations that allow exploitation of labourers in the manufacturing environment without regulatory emphasis to control the sweatshop business model. Hypocrisy associated with the hegemonic promotion of sovereignty and legitimate infringements against this ideology by the hegemon might explain the development of regimes within another state. Hegemons, in an effort to hegemonic state control over foreign states, will seek the development of bureaucracies to build additional international authority over other states and suggest that ceding a state’s sovereign authority is in the foreign state’s best interest. In certain charter language, such as that constructed by hegemonic influences in such organisations as the United Nations, will insinuate that failure to abide by hegemonic state control objectives could potentially lead to militaristic action against another state. This was insinuated against Iraq upon the nation’s successful exile from Kuwait in the UN Resolution 687 which compelled Iraq to report all locations of chemical and biological weapons to the UN and submit to on-site inspections within Iraq’s territory to this end. The emphasis of this Resolution was that such efforts to achieve nuclear non-proliferation objectives would include hegemonic military force for non-compliance. Hence, regimes in states might well be constructed as a means of ensuring sovereign authority within a foreign state’s borders, thus attempting to insulate the state from hegemons attempting to intimidate or pressure a sovereign state with intimation of utilising military or economic force (sanctions) to achieve a coercive end. As identified in this essay, there are many potential rationales for why regimes propagate as a direct response to the influence and authority of hegemons supported by superior military, cultural, industrial and economic advantages held by the hegemon. Attempts to exert a worldview that directly conflicts with the socio-political or religious beliefs of a state or institution, such as in the example of ISIS, illustrate why a regime attempts to thwart and challenge hegemonic values and beliefs that are radically disparate to an institution’s agenda and social objectives. To ensure sovereignty within a non-hegemonic state without being victimised by threats or other intimidation represents a Realist-based strategy of self-protectionism and self-determination that underpins the construction of a regime within another state. To prevent subjugation of a national culture or social identity might also explain the propagation of the foreign regime. As shown by this essay, regimes provide support for liberating a state from hegemon influence, control and domination, achieve affirmation of a state’s unique values and beliefs, and shift the balance of power internationally in favour of consensus and convention to maintain international order without a single hegemonic force able to exert its influence in international affairs. References Atawaneh, A.M. (2009). The discourse of war in the Middle East: analysis of media reporting, Journal of Pragmatics, 41, pp.263-278. Barry, T. (2004). Toward a new grand strategy for U.S. policy, IRC Strategic Dialogue, 3(5). 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