And they’re constructing a very different kind of world order.ĬH: There are telltale signs of an empire in deep distress, we exhibit all of them. But they didn’t participate in the debate, and therefore they don’t share these principles, and they have no commitment to them. China is the first global hegemony to arise who did not participate in that fraught five-century process of creating this world order. When you think about this transition, the succession of empires and world orders, it’s been within a kind of continuous European conversation. With Professor Alfred McCoy.Īlfred McCoy: As US global hegemony fades, as US imperial power fades, will the principle five of the US duality survive? Will this international system grounded in the international rule of law, the respect for human rights and the respect for national sovereignty survive as China becomes the world’s great hegemony? And I’m rather pessimistic. Today, we discuss the decline of the American Empire and the new global order. McCoy’s new book is ‘To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change’.įollow us on Facebook: /OnContactRTĬhris Hedges: Welcome to On Contact. “Each transition to a new world order has occurred when a massively destructive cataclysm has coincided with major social change,” he notes, arguing that the climate crisis will be the trigger for a new configuration of world dominance. The key to Chinese dominance, he argues, is its far-sighted strategic focus on control of the world’s energy and raw materials, increasingly in short supply, and its investment in technologically advanced infrastructure. “While Washington was spilling its blood and treasure into desert sands,” writes McCoy, “Beijing had been investing much of its accumulated trade surplus in the integration of the ‘world island’ of Africa, Asia, and Europe into an economic powerhouse.”

The new world order, McCoy argues, will see China ascendant. The familiar patterns of decline allow him to speculate about what lies ahead as the global dominance of the United States crumbles under the weight of disastrous military adventurism, the collapse of public institutions, a rapacious and greedy oligarchic elite, and inept political and military leadership. McCoy looks at past empires and how they disintegrated in his book ‘To Govern the Globe’. Chris Hedges discusses the decline of the American empire and the new global order with Professor Alfred McCoy, who holds the Harrington Chair in History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Changing world order book