Fall 2017 JPI

The essay will be divided into five sections. In the first section, I will offer the definition of a
challenger to American hegemony by examining the history of the USSR, a real challenger to the
American world order. Models of economic development, security alliance systems, and global
strategies will be considered as three key elements to define a challenger. In the second section, I will
analyze why China does not fit the definition above. My response to opposing arguments will be
presented in the third section, where Mearsheimer’s viewpoints on China will be discussed. The fourth
section will be the analysis of the strategy for the US to transform China into a partner. Finally, a
conclusion will be drawn based on the discussion.
WHAT IS THE DEFINITION OF A CHALLENGER TO THE US HEGEMONY?
When people search for the definition of a challenger to the hegemony of the US, the history
of the Cold War provides them a good start. The existing world order was consolidated after the
Second World War by the US. With the norms of democracy, open economy, and freedom, the US
designed the American model of development and consolidated its blueprint of world order based on
its model. People believed that their world could be modernized in the American way because they
thought that the “American example could help people to liberate productivity and innovation from
‘ancient’ cultures and ideologies.” 3 With the American model of development, America formed a
liberal world, which was also called the international order designed by the US. However, the American
world order was soon under the threat of a rising power—the Soviet Union.
According to the theory of communist internationalism, the USSR needed to support the
“gigantic pace of world revolution and prevented revolution from being defeated by alliance of
capitalist under the League of Nations.” 4 It was seen as the way to create a new world order which
was different from the American one. “Soviet Communism became a deadly rival of Americanism
because it could be seen as an alternative modernity.” 5 This new world order was founded on
centralized politics, state-led economy, and world revolution, which became a threat to the capitalist
world order. Consequently, the USSR became a challenger to the hegemony of the US. In order to
protect the American model of economic development, the Marshall Plan was conducted to rebuild
the economy of Europe, a continent which was a frontier that had to be defended against the invasion
of the communism model. Containment was the main American foreign policy because the US needed
to prevent the domino effect under the menace of the Eastern Bloc. The Bretton Woods system was
developed as a global strategy to protect the American world order for the reason that the US needed
to “make American capital available as cheap public loans to those governments that chose an open
economy and the development of capitalist markets.” 6
From the competition between the two superpowers in the Cold War, we can determine the
definition of a challenger to the US hegemony. It is the country that tries to develop a new world
order which includes three key elements. A challenger should initially have and promote an alternative
model of economic development to build the economic foundation for the new world order. The
USSR applied and promoted the communist economic model, which “was based on a system of state
ownership of the means of production, collective farming, industrial manufacturing, and centralized
3 Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, 11.
4 Mazower, Governing the World, The History of an Idea, 1815 to the present, 176.
5 Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, 17.
6 Odd Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, 153.
JPI Fall 2017, pg. 44