The Sunday Mail
Special Correspondent
THE term “hegemony” has its origins in ancient Greece where “hegemonia” was understood to mean “dominance over” with respect to relations between city-states.
According to current scholarship, the term hegemony, which was once popularised by Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci, is now shorthand to describe the relatively dominant position of a particular set of ideas and their associated tendency to become commonsensical and intuitive, thereby inhibiting dissemination or even articulation of alternative ideas.
The associated term “hegemon” is used to identify the actor, group, class or state that exercises hegemonic power or that is responsible for dissemination of hegemonic ideas.
This conforms to what Gramsci saw at the time as “cultural, moral and ideological” leadership of a group over “allied” and “subaltern” groups. Today, the term is broader to include political, military, economic, technological and cultural.
At the centre of “global hegemony” is the United States of America.
Zimbabwe is a victim of US’ hegemonism, like many countries.
A recent in-depth article by Xinhua revealed that America’s emergence as a global superpower after the two World Wars and the Cold War gave it the boldness to interfere in internal affairs of other countries, pursue, maintain and abuse hegemony.
It is this abuse of its hegemony that has endangered world peace and stability, hence the need to explore it in detail.
Loci of US’ hegemonism
US hegemonism is located in different spheres.
Political hegemony sees the US “throwing its weight around” to mould other countries and the world order with its own values and political system in the name of promoting democracy and human rights, the report notes.
Instances of US interference in other countries’ internal affairs abound.
In the name of “promoting democracy”, the United States practiced a “Neo-Monroe Doctrine” in Latin America, instigated “colour revolutions” in Eurasia and orchestrated the “Arab Spring” in West Asia and North Africa, bringing chaos to many countries.
In Zimbabwe, the United States has imposed sanctions and sponsored opposition groups to effect regime change.
The US acts as a bully on international platforms and exercises double standards on international rules. Placing its self-interest first, the US has walked away from international treaties and organisations, and put its domestic law above international law.
In April 2017, the Trump administration announced that it would cut off all US funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) with the excuse that the organisation “supports or participates in the management of a programme of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilisation”.
The United States quit UNESCO twice in 1984 and 2017.
In 2017, it announced leaving the Paris Agreement on climate change. In 2018, it announced its exit from the UN Human Rights Council, citing the organisation’s “bias” against Israel and failure to protect human rights effectively. In 2019, the United States announced its withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty to seek unfettered development of advanced weapons.
In 2020, it announced pulling out of the Treaty on Open Skies.
When it comes to democracy, the US arbitrarily passes judgment on other countries and fabricates a false narrative of “democracy versus authoritarianism” to incite estrangement, division, rivalry and confrontation.
In Zimbabwe and other African countries, notably Kenya, Burundi, Uganda, and so forth, the US has sought to meddle in elections and has condemned outcomes that it did not like.
Perhaps the most destructive manifestation of US hegemonism has been military hegemony or wanton use of force.
The history of the United States is characterised by violence and expansion.
Since it gained independence in 1776, the United States has constantly sought expansion by force: it slaughtered Indians, invaded Canada, waged a war against Mexico, instigated the American-Spanish War and annexed Hawaii.
After World War II, the wars either provoked or launched by the United States included the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the Libyan War and the Syrian War, abusing its military hegemony to pave the way for expansionist objectives.
There has not been any year in recent history that the US has not been engaged in war directly or indirectly.
Currently, it is embroiled in the Ukraine-Russia conflict, and is eager to draw and provoke China into it.
It has been remarked by authoritative scholars that the US is ruled by the so-called “military-industrial complex”. This has seen, in recent years, the US spending ridiculously high on military budgets to feed the “military industrial complex”.
The average annual military budget has exceeded US$700 billion, accounting for 40 percent of the world’s total. The United States has about 800 overseas military bases, with 173 000 troops deployed in 159 countries.
The wars that the US has waged are devastating, as millions of people have been killed, with economies and civilisations destroyed.
Washington has also adopted appalling methods in war, using massive quantities of chemical and biological weapons as well as cluster bombs, fuel-air bombs, graphite bombs and depleted uranium bombs, causing countless civilian casualties and lasting environmental pollution.
In 2008, the US and NATO came close to invading Zimbabwe.
This was stopped at the United Nations Security Council, thanks to the veto by China and Russia.
The US’ economic hegemony, characterised by looting and exploitation, is another bad dimension of US global dominance over other countries.
In particular, it used the post-war scenario in Europe to fashion a dominant position on the global financial architecture.
This saw the Bretton Woods institutions, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which, together with the Marshall Plan, formed the international monetary system centred around the US dollar.
In addition, the United States has also established institutional hegemony in the international economic and financial sectors by manipulating the weighted voting systems, rules and arrangements of international organisations.
This scenario has led to imbalances in global access to resources and development.
Much worse, it has abused the global financial architecture to stymie, stifle and punish other countries and prevent access to international banks and economic independence.
Zimbabwe, which the US has slapped with sanctions, is a clear example of the abuse of the global financial system.
America’s economic and financial hegemony has become a geopolitical weapon.
Doubling down on unilateral sanctions and “long-arm jurisdiction”, it has enacted such domestic laws as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, and the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, and introduced a series of executive orders to sanction specific countries, organisations or individuals.
Such sanctions against foreign entities increased by 933 percent from 2000 to 2021.
The Bretton Woods institutions have effectively been barred from lending to Zimbabwe.
Over the past two decades, Harare has not accessed loans and development finance from these institutions.
The use of the US dollar as a “global currency” has allowed the country to exploit the world’s wealth with the help of “seigniorage” as others have to produce actual goods and wealth just to prop up America’s paper money.
According to experts, the hegemony of US dollar is the main source of instability and uncertainty in the world economy.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, trillions of dollars were injected into the global market, leaving other countries, especially emerging economies, to pay the price.
Not force for good
US’ hegemonism in the field of technology is not a force for good.
It actually seeks to deter other countries’ scientific, technological and economic development by wielding monopoly power, suppression measures and technology restrictions in high-tech fields.
Intellectual property is monopolised in the name of protection.
Taking advantage of the weak position of other countries, especially developing ones, on intellectual property rights and the institutional vacancy in relevant fields, the United States reaps excessive profits through monopoly.
Fearing the advance of China and how it is gaining an edge, a slew of excuses were fabricated to clamp down on China’s high-tech enterprises with global competitiveness.
More than 1 000 Chinese enterprises have been sanctioned.
In addition, the United States has also imposed controls on biotechnology, artificial intelligence and other high-end technologies, reinforced export restrictions, tightened investment screening, suppressed Chinese social media apps such as TikTok and WeChat, and lobbied the Netherlands and Japan to restrict exports of chips and related equipment or technology to China.
These are some of the most current and commonly understood examples.
Others include suppressing manpower development, research and development and using an ideological blockade.
On the other hand, Washington abuses its technological hegemony by carrying out cyber-attacks and eavesdropping or surveillance through cyber thefts, accessing mobile phones for data theft, manipulating mobile apps, infiltrating cloud servers and stealing through undersea cables.
Finally, another aspect of its global dominance is cultural hegemony, where it is responsible for spreading false narratives for its benefit.
Culture is defined as a way of life.
The global expansion of American culture is an important part of its external strategy and it is anchored on diluting or defeating other people’s ways of life.
The United States has often used cultural tools to strengthen and maintain its hegemony in the world.
These cultural tools include movies and TV shows, publications, media content and programmes by the government-funded non-profit cultural institutions.
One can also add such aspects as clothing, often apparel with US flags.
On TV, American values are elevated and movies create US heroes and heroines.
The US is now also actively manipulating traditional and social media to shape opinions, spread fake news, mislead global audiences and promote US culture and so forth.
Conclusion
The US global hegemony has roots that spread deep and wide.
It is the design of the Americans to dominate and suppress all other peoples of the world so that it becomes the sole power or a new imperial power.
In all this, it uses either subtle means such as culture and brute military force.
There are, however, indications that it will not succeed entirely despite massive investments in maintaining its superiority: the situation is just not sustainable.
The emergence of other blocs and alliances such as BRICS could be useful politically and militarily.
New financial, trade economics architecture underlined by movement away from the dollar-denominated global economy will lessen the dependence on, and leeching effect of, the US.
Countries of the world could also seek to enrich and exchange cultures that will broaden understanding of human family and its diversity rather than pander to the domination of a single culture.
Young people, in particular, could from vital cultural, business and political linkages that could create this progressive bulwark.
Finally, new technologies and innovations as well as research could be promoted in the context of multilateral cooperation to bypass restrictions and domination by single countries.
The future of humanity largely depends on a collective rather than a single dominating force.
A country that is insecure and given to rash decisions and bullying tendencies is dangerous for the world.
