After Pax Americana: Benign Power, Regional Integration, and the Sources of a Stable Multipolarity

Abstract

Is it inevitable that America’s economic and military preponderance will decline? If so, what can the United States and other regional powers do to prepare for this eventuality? For Charles Kupchan at the Council on Foreign Relations, “to assume that international order can indefinitely rest on American hegemony is both illusory and dangerous.” Kupchan constructs a U.S. grand strategy based on encouraging the development of benign regional unipolarity in North America, Europe, and Asia to counter the fragmentation and rivalry likely to result as a consequence of America’s waning preponderance. He concludes with three policy recommendations that should guide future U.S. foreign policy: strengthen the U.S. commitment to use self-restraint in exercising its power, focus on consolidating the pluralistic cores in Europe and East Asia, and make regionalism a priority over global multilateralism.