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Welcome back. Today is Friday, April 24th, 2026, and we are joined by Professor Jeffrey Saxs. Uh, thank you for coming on.
I'm um yeah, I've been wanting to speak with you about this um uh what appears to be the yeah the decline at least of the hegemonic era after the cold war because after the cold war we really saw that the image of the US as being all powerful was very important to shape the international system that is states linked their security to the United States as it tended to monopolize the security and advert uh sorry adver um adversaries uh try to keep a very low profile not to provoke the US. But as we know, hedgemons become overstretched and exhaust themselves and uh it seems this is what Trump wanted to reverse. But with the Iran war, it seems instead it exposed uh even more so the limits of US power. I was just wondering how how do you see this uh or how do you assess the I guess the longer term relevance of the Iran war?
>> Uh certainly we're seeing the limits of US power. No doubt. I think what we're seeing is is a long-term trend. Um a long-term trend actually, that is a decline of western hegemony or an end of western hegemony which one can date already back to the end of World War II uh when most of Europe lost its colonies around the world. uh the United States uh in a way replaced the European empires to become an American empire. Uh it competed with the Soviet Union uh as the two major imperial powers but the US was uh within that competition in some way always dominant economically and technologically. It was a very frightening time uh because these were two nuclear superpowers uh uh that were uh at each other's throats often at least in proxy wars. When the Soviet Union uh dissolved or disintegrated in 1991, it looked to uh the US leadership and to much of the world that the US was the sole superpower and was completely dominant. But I would say the long-term trend that had led to the decline overall of Western power after World War II was continuing.
What happened at the end of World War II with the end of the European imperial age was that the rest of the world and especially in Asia was given new space for catching up technologically, catching up in terms of education levels, literacy, urbanization, industrialization. And so all the way back from the end of World War II on, there was a narrowing of the gap between the industrialized West, which broadly speaking was Europe and the United States, and the countries of Asia and at least some partial economic development success stories in other parts of the world as well. So the way I view it is that uh for around 150 years roughly speaking from the beginning of the 19th century to the end of World War II the western world and especially Europe dominated the world. Uh that really was a western hegemony. uh basically uh Britain in the lead of that, but a number of powerful European countries with uh imperial possessions around the world. After World War II, the gap between uh the West and the rest narrowed. Within the west, the US was clearly the dominant power, but underneath the surface was the yearby-year economic progress of much of Asia. And that means that on a long-term trend, not on a year-to-year trend, but on a long-term trend, the dominance of the Western world was bound to diminish.
But I would say two things hid that. Uh the dominance of the US and Soviet Union made it look like it was really a two empire affair battling with each other. And it was easy to take one's eyes off of the rise of Korea or the rise of uh Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, the so-called Asian tigers or even the rise of China economically which began in the late 1970s. So it looked like it was two powers battling each other when more fundamental change was underway. And I keep coming back to Asia as central to this because Asia is home to 60% of the world population and has always been the center of gravity of uh world population and of the world economy for two millennia or more. And so what was happening was that Asia was slowly coming back from a century and a half of European imperial rule. But that was beneath the surface. It was gradual. It was yeartoyear. Uh and it looked like the United States and the Soviet Union were duking it out. So that when the Soviet Union ended in December 1991, there was one superpower remaining. The end of history was declared. Uh the United States looked like the sole superpower. It was the unipolar moment. US was the indispensable country. Every superlative one could imagine was given. Uh the neoconservatives in the United States believe their own headlines. Uh and uh the portrayal that the fundamental change in the world was US dominance became the meme. But I would say the from an economic point of view the fundamental story was the yearby-year stepbystep narrowing of the gap between the west again meaning Europe and the US and Asia and the rise of Asia was the real story in terms of relative power.
Now, one could add a few points that even in the heyday of US power, the US could not defeat Vietnam. Uh the US could not overcome uh the anti-colonial wars and anti-colonial uh sentiments. The US could not keep uh European empires intact or replace them with American empires in much of Asia. uh though the US influence uh in post-war Japan and Korea was nearly total uh we we can say but all of this means that from my point of view the unipolar moment after 1991 was an illusion to an important extent if you were looking at this as an economist as I was during that period I is uh rather routinely saying that Asia is rising and that this is creating a different kind of world. If you were in geopolitics, uh power projection and military, it didn't necessarily look like that. And what's interesting I think and I think it would be fun to actually go back to look at what uh the strategists were saying about China back in 1991 and 1992 when the unipolar moment was projected. My memory which may be wrong is that they weren't saying much about China uh that China was not viewed as a likely important actor. It was a poor country that assembled goods for US markets. It would be good if it rose in power perhaps because it would continue to check uh Russian uh influence. But I don't think that China was viewed as a strategic issue by the United States until after the start of the 21st century and really until around 2010 when Obama started talking famously about the Asia pivot or the China pivot.
So all of this is to say Glenn that um the broadest trend of all in the world scene in my view is that from 1800 to 1950 roughly speaking the the western world led by the European empires and within Europe by Britain dominated the world. They industrialized. They had the vast preponderance of military power. They had the vast preponderance of technology. Uh the overwhelming leadership in science. Uh whether that balance was in Europe or the United States already began to shift by the beginning of the 20th century, but decisively shift shifted at the end of World War II. But taking the west as a whole, that dominance of the west peaked around 1950. And while there was no well, I'd say the the headline was European empires over uh India independent, people's republic of China declared and so forth. um those political headlines started a deep economic process that we loosely call catching up. It's not an adequate phrase, but at least for the first 50 years of the period from 1950 to 2000, it's not a bad phrase to think that what was happening in Asia was catching up in the sense of literacy for the first time, mass public education for the first time, basic infrastructure being built uh that had not really been built during the European imperial heyday catching up no longer is the right phrase because China is clearly in the lead technologically in a lot of areas now and the United States is by far not uh the hegeimon or the sole superpower in the world on most criteria economically and technologically China is at least the peer of the United States but I would a in manufacturing almost across the board uh and in heavy industry almost across the board, China's way ahead of the United States right now.
Uh so in this sense the idea that uh American hegemony is coming to an end I would say that has been true gradually for decades. I would say that the uh post 1991 euphoria in the United States about the unipolar world and it really was euphoria. I was around to see it uh to see it in the think tanks to see it in the universities to see it in Washington uh to of course listen to it in the rhetoric of every president and so forth. This was always in my view economically ignorant. I was also part of a debate uh back in the 1990s. Was the rise of Asia real or something that was going to collapse? And there were articles about the myth of the Asian miracle uh and so forth. in my view all along was we're seeing a a long-term real catching up process and again after 2010 a going ahead process uh in many ways. Um, so I never bought into this unipolar story uh as as being real. And having witnessed the Vietnam War debacle, I always felt that America exaggerated its power. I would say that the Ukraine war is another demonstration of the clear limits of American unipolarity because basically uh the Ukraine war was the end of NATO enlargement and the end of the US putting its pieces on the board wherever it wanted. We can remember that in the unipolar moment, Spignu Bjinski uh basically had the idea that the United States would come to dominate Eurasia, nothing less. Uh and that Ukraine would be the pivot for doing that. Uh and President Putin basically stood up and said, "No, not on my watch. It's not going to happen." uh and the Ukraine war is essentially a war of uh the limits of American expansion. So the the limits were already demonstrated. The US thought that it would just blow off Russia financially, economically by sanctions or militarily or through subversion inside with some kind of color revolution or something else. And all of that proved to be a complete illusion as well. So long answer to the question uh yes, we're seeing the limits of Western power. We're seeing the limits of US power. But my answer is that western power which is a relative concept after all has been waning because of the rise of Asia already since uh 75 years since the middle of the 20th century. And the unipolar moment was never real. Uh it was always uh um a bit delusional uh to think that the US was riding supreme. Now having said all of that, the US clearly still has a lot of power and a lot of influence and a lot of destructive capacity. So this isn't the collapse of uh US power, but it is definitely the limits of US power.
It's interesting or by comparison though that in the 19th century much of the power politics was seen through the prism of Britain versus the Russian Empire and then uh as this rivalry was going on you saw new powers emerging at the periphery the US, Germany, Japan and um yeah to some extent this is what the 20th century was as well the United States versus the Soviet Union and then uh but of course now in this rivalry you saw especially as Asia really emerging at the periphery and uh uh this still there's the assumption that the the normal state of things uh which is again the western hedgeimonyy that will go back to this somehow but um but but I'm curious >> this is a basic point that um and it's a it's a basic lesson of all of history is that advantages uh of uh any one place are temporary. uh they could be temporary over the course of centuries or they could be fleeting over the course of decades depending on uh what you're really looking at. But technology which is usually the key to giving some kind of advantage, military technology or productive technology and in the case of the 19th century I put the steam engine as absolutely central to that unique uh advantage of Europe over the rest of the world. wasn't the only advantage but it was very key. Uh eventually good ideas, technology, knowhow diffuse uh and so keeping a monopoly of power is uh almost never impossible. You can try to hold trade secrets. You can try to limit the uh exports of high technology but reverse engineering uh copying success stories understanding the underlying uh science and technology. This is a worldwide gift. And so leaders find competitors uh because the basis of that leadership was typically some kind of real substantive technological advantage uh very often a military advantage that had come but then one that was quickly copied elsewhere. Of course, the whole nuclear age was like that when the atomic bomb was developed at Los Alamos and then dropped as a demonstration by Truman, a demonstration to Stalin by killing massive numbers in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The US planners thought that the US would have the atomic monopoly probably for about 30 years. It lasted four years. Uh because the Soviets spied, because they had great scientists, because of a lot of things, but monopolies don't last. Uh the idea that the United States has choke points is a constant meme. uh you know, you it's almost ludicrous, but you go back to the beginning of uh uh 2022. The US talked about cutting off Russian banks from Swift as the nuclear option. It was going to bring down the Russian economy. We had the choke points. We had the definitive hold on power. It basically meant almost nothing in the end. So this is a a constant uh refrain of history that uh if if one country takes the lead, which Britain did in industrialization at the late 19th century and then especially after the Napoleonic wars, other countries innovate, uh catch up, steal good ideas, uh narrow the gap, and often leaprog. And that was true of both Britain of Germany and the United States visav Britain in around 1870 onward. Uh and this is uh but it was kept within the western family I would say broadly speaking for uh a long time. It led to many racist ideas that this is a white people's hijgemony, that this is a European cultural hegemony, that this is a Christian hijgemony. But the idea was that yes, even as the reach of technology spreads uh uh with the Germany and the US, it's somehow all within the broader family. It's the western dominance. One country and one country only joined that by the end of the 19th century and that was Japan. Uh and Japan began its own uh uh imperial uh adventures on the basis of imitating uh the European empires. And very cruy, Japan invaded China multiple times and uh other parts of Asia in imitation I would say of the European empires. But other than Japan, this was a this this was a a western white Christian hegemony over the rest of the world. And it was taken by and large to be a permanent feature. There were glimmers of insight that this was temporary. Napoleon supposedly warned that when China awakes, the world will tremble and you know he supposedly said that in I think in exile already in the 1810s. But the point is that the natural dominance of the west was assumed. It became very deeply part of the mindset of the US and Europe. After World War II, Europe accepted that the US would carry the lead baton, but still the assumption of Western dominance prevailed. And I'd say it still prevails till today in some mindset change. China is viewed as an absolutely improper intrusion as something that can be contained as something that needs to be contained. How did we let that happen? Our biggest mistake was we let China into WTO is a constant refrain in Washington. we let them develop as if that's the American choice. Uh but that's also part of this delusion that the natural order of things is the western dominance. In any event, I think that's over. That's the point.
Well, in in realist theory though, it's often assumed that states are security maximizers. That is, if we're unbalanced, we'll continue to expand. So NATO expansion, Middle East, all of this until we're balanced. Once once we're balanced, then we'll seek a new status quo in order to essentially maximize our own security. And you would think that as NATO expansion came to a grinding halt in Ukraine, as NATO has been balanced by Russia or what we see now with the Middle East or what we see with China, you would assume that there would be a diplomatic effort to shift to a new status quo. Do you see?
>> But I I don't see it essentially. Instead, if I look at Iran, I think there's this this is part of the reason why there can't be a peace because uh Trump only wants a hegemonic peace. And >> you know, we saw that the US was quite desperate for a ceasefire. They agreed to Iran's format, then walked it all back once, you know, the guns went silent. And now the US appears to be marching toward allout war against Iran. Is this based on their reluctance to I mean find a peace that's not based on dominance or what or what do you think Trump's place >> this this is a great question uh and uh I think it comes to the variant uh uh schools of thought of realism there is the school of thought of our good friend John Mirshimer offensive realism uh which says that you can't really find an equilibrium uh among uh the great powers. They're they're always looking for an advantage. They're always annoying each other. Uh and um in John's theory, you end up with what his great book uh is titled the tragedy of great power politics. John says, "No, there really can't be a balance of power that's satisfactory in what is sometimes in in US schools called defensive realism rather than offensive realism. the idea that uh security is at the center but you can find a kind of uh modus vivendi of the great powers and a bit stay out of each other's way and treaties can matter and stabilize things to a bit is the predominant view. I would say Kissinger was somewhere in between the two. Uh strangely Kissinger studied the concert of Europe. This was his great model the 19th century stab relative stability uh of the major powers of Europe through a concert of systematic negotiation and basic norms of behavior. But Kissinger also succumbed to the offensive realism that when the other side is down take advantage of it. So he was in favor of NATO enlargement in the 1990s even though he knew it would provoke Russian unhappiness. Uh and others argue for that prudence is feasible. I think the I think what one of the things that makes John Mirshimer's work so important is that well I I don't agree with it myself as the um the necessary description of international politics. I think it's not a I think let me put it positively. I think it's a very good description of uh the mindset of American strategists. Uh so American strategists don't take enough uh as a a basis for stopping uh they there is a problem in the United States which is if any other major powers are standing we are threatened uh is the idea and so the United States has a and by us of course I mean Washington and by Washington I mean mainly the security establishment has a very hard idea, a very hard time with the idea that Russia is a stable uh great power. It has an extremely hard time with the idea that China is a stable great power. it's going to have a hard time with India being a great power because in the American mindset and I think it is I don't want to o over interpret John Mirshimer's um thoughts but I think he does portray right the idea that um it's too dangerous just to leave these other powers. you can't really trust them. Uh, and you should do what you can to undermine them. So, John does generally view China as a threat that we should be doing what we can to contain. I disagree with that viewpoint actually rather deeply because I don't view China as a threat to the United States at all. Um, and so I would uh like to work on cooperative accommodation in a number of ways and stay out of each other's red lines and stop the United States stopping from arming Taiwan and many other things that I think would make the world a lot safer. But the American mindset is it's a dangerous world out there and we have to push wherever we can. And we have caricatures of that. Our most caricaturish senator uh who is a a wararm monger for every occasion. If you want a new war, you trot them out is Lindsey Graham. He's always saying we need more war. Don't stop. Escalate. Whatever it is, whether it's Ukraine, whether it's Taiwan, whether it's Iran. And there is a course like that. Uh, one theory is they get campaign contributions from military contractors and so they're mouthpieces for them. They're wararm mongers in other ways. But there's also an idea that America should be the unipolar power and that it should fight its way to do that if necessary. uh and it should put a stick in the spokes of any other major power to tie that uh power up in knots uh and create trouble for it. And that to my mind is an accurate description of American foreign policym and state craft, but also a disastrous approach that is unnecessary, destabilizing, and ultimately dangerous for the United States itself, not to speak of all of the rest of the world.
Well, when there's extreme power disparities uh or over the past centuries of western dominance, it makes often sense for it to generate or be accompanied by ideologies of superiority. So when you address the rise of the rest, as you say, or the rise of China, the reaction one often gets would be, I guess, encapsulated in in work like Robert Kagan. He wrote uh the book the jungle grows back America and our imperiled world in which essentially the answer is the garden which would be us the civilized us would have to go out and trim back the jungle again and civilize it. I mean this is uh this is >> a very deep ideology. Uh it goes back centuries. It is it's also very interesting from the point of view of the history of thought. Philosophers inadvertently or inadvertently often really are just the scribes of power. Uh and so when uh countries become powerful uh the philosophy arises to underpin that power and we had centuries of European ascendance and then 150 to 200 years of unchallenged uh European dominance over the rest of the world. Basically while Europe lost some battles, it won most of the wars in Africa and in Asia and um a whole ideology developed many variants of it. uh scientific racism, pseudocientific racism I should say, but scientific racism uh and and of course uh the religious impulse uh God's on our side uh and many other similar philosophical ideas, the civilizing mission uh we have the key to civilization and even the most enlightened subtle impressive thinkers like John Stuart Mill were basically imperialists. John Stuart Mill worked for the East India Company. He wrote tracks for it and he wrote that it's uh it's Britain's mission uh to bring civilization to backward India. And so it's okay if there's a toutelage period. This is what empire is for. So a lot of ideology developed and it goes away very very slowly. It you look at British and French behavior while they don't have empires anymore they absolutely have imperial mentalities and uh often even more naive and militaristic than uh than the United States which actually has an empire. But Brit British rousophobia and Britain's drum beats of war against Russia in Ukraine is they're even louder than in the United States and crudder and more simple-minded. But they come from a longer period of empire. the the idea that British dominance is natural, inevitable, that Russia was the enemy of British dominance, and they still continue that battle even though they're an island, not an empire. And it um it it would be humorous if it weren't so dangerous.
>> Well, in the 19th century, John Stewart Mill advocated for a liberal empire. Today, we have NATO advocating for liberal hedgeimonyy. So there's some consistency in history though. But >> I say we learned everything we know from the British Empire. Everything America thinks it knows from the British Empire. And and actually the links are very direct of course language, culture, direct education, it's it's all there um to to be seen. And uh if Bill Clinton was a road scholar and roads was the great imperialist uh of Africa at the great in the large at the beginning of the nu uh 20th century Clinton sucked that up at Oxford so that when he became president of the United States in the 1990s he was filled with American grandiosity that he had somehow learned from the British experience.
Well, you have a big day there in New York. So, I want to thank you for taking the time to anytime. Great to be with you. Talk to you soon.