The stability of the US hegemony in times of regional divergence

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the relationship between the possible US decline and the growing divergence of political dynamics at the regional level. It investi-gates contemporary US strategic discourse in order to understand whether it has theorized the decline-regionalism nexus and, if so, with what policy implications. To this aim, the chapter develops a theoretical framework to classify the different conceptions of decline and sketches the different causal paths by which declinism and regionalism could influence one another. The chapter maintains that, short of Bush Junior's Global War on Terror, the decline-regionalism nexus has steadily influenced US contemporary foreign policy. In particular, it maintains that the regional policies adopted by the US to answer the perception of national decline, and thus keep its global influence, contributed to the overall process of regional-ization. However, the kind of decline the US perceived did change and revealed the decline-regionalism nexus differently related to the hegemonic role of the country.