US Unipolar Hegemony: Rise & Fall of Cold War Superpowers - Essay Sample

Introduction

The international system which emerged post-1945 was bipolar in that it had two super-powers namely, the United States (US) and Soviet Union (USSR). The economic collapse of the USSR precipitated the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the USSR (Basu, "International politics: concepts, theories, and issues"). From the year 1990 onwards, America has been the world's sole economic and military superpower. New powers will inevitably emerge to challenge American hegemony.

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Trans-national trade agreements have become one of the ways that the Trump administration seeks to maintain American dominance of the international system (Sullivan, 10). Candidate Trump made a promise to put America first by not making the country party to any trade agreement that damages American workers and economic interests (Janusch, & Mucha, 8-12). This has meant that in the three years of the Trump Administration, trade policies and strategies used by the United States (US) have changed. This paper will be limited to US-China and US-Japan trade relations with the Trump administration.

US-China Trade War

China is a Communist but it adopted free-market reforms in the late 1970s to avoid an economic meltdown (Kim, "Economic transition in China and Russia"). Hence, unlike the US, there are a lot of state-owned enterprises in China but America's government doesn't trade directly with the Chinese government (Walters, "5 Things You Should Know About U.S. Trade with China"). Instead, it is the American private sector that engages with China through trans-national trade.

The free-market economic reforms China experienced after the death of Mao Zedong has resulted in the rapid economic development that has made it an emerging economic power that will eventually disrupt the current unipolar international system. (Mearsheimer, "The tragedy of great power politics"). This disruption is inevitable especially since the Chinese people have historically resented not being considered a great nation in the international system. The general fear in America's political elite that American consumerism is giving China the economic power to challenge American hegemony in the international system provides the background to the ongoing US-China trade war.

President Trump won the White House promising to renegotiate international trade agreements that did not put America first by damaging the interests of American workers and manufacturers (Janusch, & Mucha, 8-12). The Trump administration has imposed tariffs on imports from China as a strategy to secure a fair trade deal between the two nations (Lu, 83-103). China responded by imposing tariffs on imports from the US. A trade war of this nature will lead to bad economic outcomes for both.

Chinese consumers are one of the biggest markets for American exports. Tariffs harm American exporters because it is too expensive for them to access the Chinese market. This is forcing China to look for substitute sources of things they would have sourced from the US. On the other hand, cheap manufactured Chinese products will be similarly difficult to import into the US. Both nations will suffer from losing access to the biggest destinations of their export products.

US-Japan Trade War

Japan is an economically prosperous nation but America does not view it as a threat in the current system of global politics. There is a view in international relations that rapid economic development does not always create new powers that challenge existing ones(Basu, "International politics: concepts, theories, and issues"). Under the umbrella of defensive realism, a nation that would have otherwise been a new power opts to prioritize its economic interests by accepting the status quo rather than challenging old powers in the international system. In the context of US-Japan relations, Tokyo seems to have joined the rest of the world in accepting America's role as the leader of the current unipolar system of international politics.

Japan experienced rapid economic growth in the years between 1945 to when the Cold War ended in 1990 (Beckley, et al. 1-21.).At the end of this period, Japan had evolved into the second-largest economy in the world second only to the United States. Candidate Trump highlighted Japan as an example of a nation that is using the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal to take advantage of America using unfair trade practices (Smith, & McClean, 9.). On the third day of his presidency, Washington withdrew from the TPP (Taylor, "A timeline of Trump's complicated relationship with the TPP"). Japan always held the position that the TPP is meaningless without US participation. But the Tokyo warned that if Washington refused to renegotiate a new TPP, Japan would prioritize regional trade deals that exclude the US but include China. Not renegotiating TPP would put in danger American exporter's access to markets in the Asia-Pacific region. The rationale for this fear is that if Japan had prioritized regional trade deals, China would have assumed a major role in determining the rules regulating the Asia-Pacific trade that may have excluded American exports.

The primary source of trade deficits with Japan is the importation of Japanese cars and the lack of similar volumes of exports of American cars to Japan ("Trump Says US Reaches Trade Deals with Japan, No Vote Needed").To deny China the opportunity to use regional trade deals to exclude American exports in the Asia -Pacific region, the Trump administration entered into initial agreements on trade during September 2019 that will be fast-tracked by avoiding Congressional approval. Using the executive agreement mechanism, the Trump administration undertook to enter a deal with Japan on digital trade and the reduction of tariffs on Japanese agricultural as well as industrial goods but not on automobiles.

Conclusions

After the end of the Cold War, the US became the sole superpower in international politics. The international system is dynamic characterized by the rise of new powers and the fall of old powers. Rapid economic development in both Japan and China have made them emerging powers that can challenge American leadership of the current unipolar international system.

Trade wars have become one of the ways America can assert and protect their economic dominance. The Trump administration's foreign policy of withdrawing from trade agreements that it perceives as harmful to American manufacturers and workers. Fairtrade is a term that means that the two nations have almost equal import-export ratios. Consequently, to address how trade imbalances with China and Japan are damaging America's manufacturing base, the Trump administration has imposed tariffs on import goods from these two destinations.

Works Cited

"Trump Says the US Reaches Trade Deals with Japan, No Vote Needed." CNBC, CNBC, 17 Sept. 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/17/trump-says-us-reaches-trade-deals-with-japan-no-vote-needed.html.

Lu, Feng. "China-US Trade Disputes in 2018: An Overview." China & World Economy 26.5 (2018).

Sullivan, Jake. "The world after Trump: how the system can endure." Foreign Aff. 97 (2018).

Taylor, Adam. "A timeline of Trump's complicated relationship with the TPP." The Washington Post 13 (2018).