The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics by John M. Hobson

Author:John M. Hobson [Hobson, John M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2012-03-28T18:30:00+00:00

The paternalist-Eurocentric discourse of the decline of hegemony

If HST’s conception of the exercise of hegemony can be explained through an underlying subliminal paternalist Eurocentrism, likewise a series of Eurocentric monikers are evident in the theory’s explanation of hegemonic decline. In this vision the hegemon is ungraciously dethroned by two processes that are connected to the ‘free-rider problem’ that was mentioned earlier.164 Indeed, at the outset it is important to note that the ‘free-rider’ explanation of hegemonic decline conveniently scapegoats or blames all other states – especially Eastern ones – for the hegemon’s problems.165 But above all, the free-rider problem returns us to various nineteenth-century Eurocentric imperialist tropes, the first of which is the conception of ‘ungrateful free riders’ (see also Nossal 2001: 172–5). As Gilpin put it, ‘[t]he American Revolution began with the effort of the British crown to get “ungrateful” colonists to pay their “fair” share in the defense against the Indians and the French. And in the contemporary world, both Americans and Russians complain about defending “ungrateful”, free-riding allies’ (1981: 169). By definition, though, free-riders are ungrateful because they refuse to pay for the global public goods that they benefit from, despite repeated requests issued by the hegemon. Such an idiom returns us to Rudyard Kipling’s conception of the white man’s burden. For in his famous poem that was issued to an American audience in 1899 he warned that should the United States engage in a civilizing mission it should be prepared to court only unpopularity with those it would seek to help; that the imperial ‘civilizer’ should expect to incur only the ‘blame of those ye better, the hate of those ye guard’.

Of course, it might be replied that free-riders include Western states as much as Eastern ones. Though true, nevertheless it turns out that non-Western free-riders are treated as egregious offenders, with Japan and the East Asian NICs in the 1980s being singled out consistently throughout Gilpin’s 1987 book. Interestingly, the 1980s ‘yellow peril’ of Japan is now being superseded in the minds of contemporary neorealists by the coming ‘Chinese peril’ (e.g., Mearsheimer 2001). Ostensibly they are singled out because while they have been direct beneficiaries of US hegemonic largesse, their ‘resulting’ prosperity led to negative blowback in the guise of massive US trade deficits, particularly vis-à-vis Japan in the 1980s (and more recently vis-à-vis China in the 2000s). Interestingly, a clear sign of the ‘ungrateful’ Japanese could be found in the arguments of Shintaro Ishihara’s book The Japan That Can Say No (1991), which emerged at the peak of the Japanese Yellow Scare in America. The second aspect of the free-rider problem lies with the diffusion of advanced technologies from the hegemon which, when coupled with its exclusive provision of public goods and metropolitan investment abroad, enables the development of all other states and the relative decline of the hegemon. Worse still is that this all results in the rise of new great powers, one of which challenges and overthrows the hegemon, thereby reinforcing the altruistic notion of hegemonic self-sacrifice that underpins HST.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.