Strategic Panorama 2009 - 2010 - IEEE

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND THE NEW WORLD GOVERNANCE
Fl o r e n t i n o Po r t e r o Ro d r í g ue z
THE AMERICAN HEGEMONY
One of the salient issues of the US debate on its role in the world
relates to its status as an empire. It is no coincidence that it
should have been a British professor specialising in colonial history
who raised the question, first to a select audience in Washington
DC and subsequently in book form. The debate was important in that
it was a provocation designed to spur the American elites to attempt
to define in easily recognisable historical terms what the United States
represents in today’s world. As was to be expected, the first answer
to whether it could be considered an empire was a radical no. There
was an obvious argument: the area of sovereignty of an empire, in the
historical sense of the word, extended to remote territories, colonies,
whose inhabitants were not always considered citizens. This was not
the case of the United States. What is more, as a former colony it had
always upheld an anti-imperialist attitude which had led to serious differences
with some of its most important allies. The Suez crisis, recalled
in this connection by Henry A. Kissinger, was a clear example. It was
evident to many US analysts that America’s disinterest in incorporating
overseas territories and, in particular, its deep-rooted rejection of policies
of this kind stemming from its establishment as a state and as a
nation spared it from being classified as such. However, new semantic
meanings develop over time. Imperial power nowadays is not necessarily
conditional upon the possession of remote territories. If we were to
confine ourselves to the traditional sense of the word we would have
to conclude that empires are a thing of the past. In a global world characterised
by the effect of successive revolutions in communications,
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