The Era of American Primacy Is Far from Over

Hal Brands

Security, Global Governance, United States

Washington is still the global top dog—but it will need to work harder to stay on top regionally.

Is the era of American primacy over, and should the United States conduct a fundamental geopolitical retrenchment as a result? These questions are now being debated more seriously within the U.S. foreign-policy community than they have been for decades, and answering them correctly requires understanding four fundamental points about the arc of American power.

First, the possession of international primacy has benefitted the United States greatly over the years, allowing it to fashion a generally advantageous world order. Second, and contrary to what is often argued today, this era of American primacy is not yet over, nor will it end anytime soon—the United States still has a commanding lead in the most important dimensions of global power. Third, however, if American primacy still remains intact, that primacy is nonetheless growing more contested today than at any previous time during the post-Cold War era. And fourth, although it would be unwise for the United States to retrench dramatically from its globe-straddling posture, America will need to make greater investments, and greater efforts, to sustain its eminently favorable global position in the years to come.

Let’s start with the first point—that primacy has been very good for the United States. America has enjoyed some degree of international primacy since World War II, and an essentially unrivaled sort of primacy since the end of the Cold War. And over the course of several decades, Washington has used that primacy to shape an international system that, by any meaningful comparison, has been highly conducive to American interests and ideals. Washington has employed its power to uphold stability in key regions, to foster the spread of democracy and human rights, to anchor a prosperous and liberal global economy, and to contain or roll back the influence of aggressive authoritarian powers or other malign actors that might fundamentally disrupt this more or less happy state of affairs. To be sure, the temptations of power have occasionally gotten the better of Americans, leading to military interventions or other exertions that have proven counterproductive in the end—Vietnam and Iraq being the two foremost examples. But on the whole, the United States has profited handsomely from its primacy, using it to shape a fairly congenial global order.