What is Liberal Hegemony?

By Christopher Ryan Maboloc, PhD 

Liberal hegemony is the idea that we can make the countries in the world liberal democracies, John Mearsheimer explains in his book, The Great Delusion. He refers to the first instance of the same as the Bush doctrine. The United States as a crusader state invades a country, throws out a dictator, and begins a nation building process by imposing liberal principles of democracy. Mearsheimer says that liberal democracy actually defeated Fascism in the first half of the last century and after the Cold War ended, communism, as countries aligned themselves with the American brand of democracy, aided by capitalism and international liberal institutions.

But history suggests that the crusader state approach of the US is wrong, he argues. Mearsheimer explains that as soon as the US began the process of nation building, nationalism in countries the US has occupied soon kicked in, for instance in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. The US has not made its position in the world any stronger by insisting on its brand of democracy. The interference of the US in the internal affairs of those countries only created resentment and anger. The Bush doctrine is blatantly unacceptable to people who simply want to determine their fate as a nation. 

The argument against liberal hegemony was used by Mearsheimer in predicting the war in Ukraine. The NATO trans-Atlantic alliance, in a memo released in 2008, indicated that it is open to Ukraine and Georgia joining it. But Russia does not want NATO to expand near its backyard. By inviting Ukraine, what NATO did was actually escalate the security competition in the region and as a result, Russia invaded Ukraine on the premise that it posed an existential threat to the former.

Mearsheimer also blames the US in creating a superpower in China. Using capitalism, it hoped to bring progress and prosperity into China and hope that in the end, the Chinese people will realize that democracy is better than communism, as if Xi will go away that easily. But the US has failed. China is now bullying its way into the South China Sea and is forging an eternal friendship with Vladimir Putin's Russia, to counter the interests of the US.

Mearsheimer's realism is about states trying to compete against each other in pursuit of securing their interests. As a result, less powerful countries are gobbled up and reduced into buffer status whose only role is to help maintain the balance of power and prevent the world in falling into a nuclear catastrophe. Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia are the three important regions in the world in which global hegemonic positioning is constantly being played, the scholar explained in a recent talk.