Altering United States' Hegemony

According to a search in Google, hegemony is defined as “the dominance or leadership of one social group or nation over others.”¹ Like Katie, I have never heard of this term before our reading and discussion this week. Before reading The Unipolar Illusion by Christopher Layne, I did not even know that the United States was really considered the world’s super power by itself. All of this time, I thought that the world’s super power was divided amongst the U.S. and other countries such as England and China.

What I enjoyed about our discussion this week though was when we came up with the possibilities of the United States (Gunpëri) stepping down or going away as a hegemony and how we (the rest of the world) would react. I feel that as humans, when there is no higher power to control us, our normal instinct is to do whatever we want. Unfortunately with that, is that, eventually all hell will break loose when one accidentally messes up as others slowly gets dragged into the situation. Similarly, if there is no hegemony to maintain some kind of order then there would be no control between countries if they come into a disagreement.

Although we did not get to discuss it a lot, I wanted to hear more opinions about the question I brought up, “What if instead of the United States leaving, everyone in the U.S. moved back to their family root’s country and there would be no United States anymore, what would happen then?” According to Christian, most Americans would move back to Europe and it being the second strongest world power, next to the U.S., would be the next hegemony. I, however, feel that in modern day there are many other countries that are currently gaining power and could potentially become higher super powers in the future. Countries like China, India, and Brazil are developing more and more. If there would be no more United States and everyone went back to their country of origin, would we just be traveling back to the periods before modern territorial state?

1. Definition of Hegemony - http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:hegemony&sa=X&ei=j9aLTPn3G8Sblgfhxolj&sqi=2&ved=0CBIQkAE