Hegemony 

  Friday, January 11, 2008

    By Ivan Simic

Hegemony is the dominance of one group over other groups with or without
the threat of force, to the extent that for instance, the dominant party
can dictate the terms of trade to its advantage; more broadly, cultural
perspectives become skewed to favor the dominant group. The cultural control
that hegemony asserts affects commonplace patterns of thought: hegemony
controls the way new ideas are rejected or become naturalized in a process
that subtly alters notions of common sense in a given society.

Hegemony results in the empowerment of certain cultural beliefs, values, and
practices to the submersion and partial exclusion of others. Hegemony
influences the perspective of mainstream history, as history is written by
the victors for a congruent readership. History has it that hegemony has
been played since time immemorial; we may recall the dominance of Persian,
Roman, Mongol, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, German, Chinese, Russian, French,
British Empire, amongst others.

These days, hegemony is played through the international system by supreme
powers such as the United States, China, Russia, India and the European
Union. As we all know the U.S. is the youngest among them, but how did she
become rival for hegemonic battle in this world? The U.S. does not have
history of a concordance of ruling like others, consequently, where is the
interest of the U.S. in this competition? The answer is the United Kingdom
and more or less the State of Israel.

The British Empire was one of the most successful Empires in modern era;
however, as she get weaker, she needed to find a strategic partner for
further domination, and she found one in the U.S. Let us not forget that the
UK is also a member of the EU, so we can easily say that she is one of the
most influential countries in the world, but without the U.S. or the EU, is as fragile as any other small country. Accordingly, we can say that the UK is a very
wise country that gets its will in many ways.

The state of Israel, on the other hand is a small state that is
capable of protecting itself and creating confusion in the world,
especially in the Middle East. By this, we can see that Israel is using the
U.S. to conduct some sort of control among others while being well
protected.

Therefore, we can say that the U.S. is being naïve and inexperienced in that
it allows itself to be used by smaller countries to create order among
nations, or maybe she is deceiving us and learning to become an independent
hegemon.

China, Russia and India are old and astute countries and true world super
powers. They are also countries that have history in concordance with ruling and wars. So we can say that it is in their nature to be dominant. These three
countries, individually are strong enough for any challenge in this hegemonic
game of dominance.

The interest of the European Union to dominate others is reflected in countries
well known as warriors, such as France, Germany, Spain, UK
and Austria. Separately, these countries don't stand any chance of supremacy over
others, but with the help of other members of the Union are
major players in the hegemonic game. From this we can easily say that
these countries are using other members of the Union to gain more power to be the world's first true superpowers.

This modern race for world true hegemon brought us numerous good and bad
things; one of the good things was the rapid development of technology,
science, medicine, among other things. Conversely, increased competition
succeeded in the manufacturing and development of lethal weapons, bombs and
machines. As a result, society has not been able to develop so fast as it has been in the past 60 years. 

Therefore, we can say from that period of World War II, the world has developed extremely fast and it continues to develop. For this reason, one could not be more
thankful to the competition. What can we then expect in the future when we talk about domination among countries?

In the very near future, it is more likely more unions and alliances
would be formed and led by countries such as, Russia, China and India (Union of Asian countries), Iran and Saudi Arabia, (Alliance of Arab countries), Union of South America, a stronger African Union, and eventually, a North American Union led by the United States.

After these Unions are formed, we can expect even bigger ones, but how they are going to transform themselves and stand the test of time, is only a matter of time to
decide. When these new Unions are formed, we can foresee a new World Order
that will most likely lead us to increased conflicts, conflicts that will
leave us in devastation and sadness that cannot be described. The winners in
that conflict will be left with nothing to dominate.

Which side will the UK take in these adventures? Well, it is up to her to
start thinking about that. When we take a look at the history of mankind we can see that there has never been peace among nations, and it is becoming increasingly elusive.


Ivan Simic lives in Belgrade, Serbia. Address: Paloticeva 12, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia, Tel: +381 63  7508500.