Edward Goldberg — The Future of Global Order and America’s Influence

The Michael Shermer Show Archives

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The United States as Global Liberal Hegemon: How the U.S. Came to Lead the World examines America’s role as the global liberal hegemon. Using a historical analysis to understand how the United States came to serve as the world leader, Goldberg argues why the role of a liberal hegemon is needed, whether the United States has the ability to fulfill this role, and what the pitfalls and liabilities of continuing in this role are for the nation. He also considers the impact that this role on the global stage has for the country as well as individual citizens of the United States. Goldberg argues that the United States’s geographic location away from strong competitors, it’s role as the dominant economy for much of the 20th century, and its political culture of meritocracy all contributed to the United States taking this role in the 1940s. He also argues that the role of liberal hegemon has shifted to include not only being the international policeperson but also to be the world’s central banker, a role that at this time only the United States can fill.

Edward Goldberg is a leading expert in the area of where global politics and economics intercept. He teaches International Political Economy at the New York University Center for Global Affairs where he is an Adjunct Assistant Professor. He is also a Scholarly Practitioner at the Zicklin Graduate School of Business of Baruch College of the City University of New York where he teaches courses on globalization. With over 30 years of experience in international business and as a former member of President Barack Obama’s election Foreign Policy Network Team, Dr. Goldberg is the author of Why Globalization Works For America: How Nationalist Trade Policies Destroy Countries, and The Joint Ventured Nation: Why America Needs A New Foreign Policy. He is a much-quoted essayist and public speaker on the subjects of Globalization, European-American relations, U.S.-Russian and China relations. He has commented on these issues on PBS, NPR, CBS, Bloomberg, and in The New York Times, The Hill, and the Huffington Post. His new book is The United States as Global Liberal Hegemon: How the U.S. Came to Lead the World.

Shermer and Goldberg discuss:

“In the 1940s, when America anointed itself hegemon, somewhat like in Great Britain in the nineteenth century, American foreign policy was largely, aside from Harry Truman and a few others, dominated by a group of men who generally all went to similar prep schools and graduated from Princeton, Yale, or Harvard. This has changed drastically. If there is one common domestic thread in American post-World War II history, it is how American society and political life has become noticeably more diverse.”

• The 2024 presidential election is the first time Americans are voting on whether the U.S. should remain the so-called “leader of the free world” – or just go it alone as Donald Trump suggests. Even in the late 1930s, the heyday of isolationism, isolationism never appeared on the ballot. In fact in the presidential election of 1940, the Republican candidate Wendel Wilkie was an internationalist.
• What are the benefits to American citizens to continue in this role? What are the costs? And why can’t another nation or some institution play this role?
• Does the U.S. need allies to be successful or are relationships/institutions like NATO “obsolete” as Trump has stated?
• Why does there need to be a global leader or as Secretary of State Blinken said, an organizer? Is there any logic for instance to Donald Trump’s statement that he would “encourage Russia to do whatever the hell they want?”
• As the world faces new globalized communal problems, climate change, pandemics, financial contagion, etc., is the U.S. political culture capable of leading the world against these more abstract threats?
• Secretary of State Blinken’s statement, “Whether we like it or not, the world does not organize itself,” I look at why the United States is the only country capable of organizing the world, of being the liberal hegemon.
• the world’s central banker, the financial fireman of the world, a position at this time only the United States can fulfill.
• why a liberal hegemon is needed. Why can’t the United Nations organize the world or be the cop?
• The United States was the only major nation whose birth was influenced by the philosophical enlightenment movement. Thus, it has a very different view of the role of government. In America, the government was created not to watch over the individual welfare of its citizens but to guarantee their fundamental rights and liberties. That perspective emphasizes the individual over the community. Does America’s political culture, based on an aggrandized view of the eighteenth-century enlightenment theory of individual rights, hinder its ability to lead in the twenty-first century?
• Foreign governments have been trying to influence American foreign policy since the time of George Washington.
• disastrous mistakes like Vietnam and Iraq
• The March of Folly
• are the rewards of hegemony worth the price for the American citizen? $1.120 trillion the United States spent on defense in 2022. This expenditure created approximately 800,000 civilian jobs and 1.3 million active-duty jobs. But could these funds have created larger economic growth if applied to other areas?
• U.S. has defense treaties with 51 countries plus independent security understandings with others.
• Is the Iowa farmer aware that the reason their soybeans can be shipped safely around the world is because of the protection of the United States Navy?
• Roosevelt State of the Union address to Congress January 6, 1941: “No realistic American can expect from a dictator’s peace international generosity, or return of true independence, or world disarmament, or freedom of expression, or freedom of religion-or even good business … Such a peace would bring no security for us or for our neighbors. Those, who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
• The United States has agreed to treaties obligating it to the defense of 51 countries:
  • 28 countries in NATO, which is essentially a defense umbrella for Canada and most of Europe
  • 18 through the Rio Treaty that applies to most of Central and South America
  • ANZUS Treaty with Australia and New Zealand
  • A bilateral treaty with Japan
  • A bilateral treaty with South Korea
  • A bilateral treaty with the Philippines.
• The theory behind most of these treaties derived from the lessons of World War I and II and especially the isolationist period between those two wars. Essentially, the underlying idea for these agreements is to halt aggression early rather than letting it metastasize and potentially overcome the United States.

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