Regional Domination is a Vital Precursor to Global Hegemony

For all that international relations can be infuriatingly complex and unpredictable, there are certain basic rules that hold true most of the time. In the context of a rising China and an anxious, even neurotic, West, one of these rules is especially pertinent today. Fundamentally, a state can only become a global hegemon once it feels secure in its own neighbourhood.

Take the United States as an example. The US’ power projection capabilities are unmatched; using its global network of over 800 bases, and an annual military budget that exceeds $700 billion, it is able to project its forces into all four corners of the globe at relatively short notice. No other empire has ever had such a genuinely global reach. This, in part, derives from the US’ favourable geography – it has just two land borders and is straddled by the vast Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. For all that modern technology had upended classical geopolitics, these basic geographical facts remain influential. Simply put, they ensure that it is easy for the US to feel safe in its neighbourhood. There are few countries in the Western Hemisphere inclined to challenge the US’ regional dominance, and none with anything approaching the capabilities that such a herculean task would entail.

Of course, the US worked long and hard to attain this level of regional dominance. Despite the frequent mischaracterisation of pre-1941 US foreign policy as ‘isolationist’, the US was proactive and interventionist in its own region long before it became a global power.

Year	Regional Foreign Policy Action
1802	The Louisiana Purchase
1819	The Adams-Onis Treaty
1823	The Monroe Doctrine
1842	The Webster-Ashburton Treaty
1845	The Annexation of Texas
1846	The Oregon Treaty
1846-1848	The Mexican-American War
1848	The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
1853	The Gasden Purchase
1854	The Ostend Manifesto
1867	The Alaska Purchase
1898	The Spanish-American War (including the invasion of Cuba and the annexation of Puerto Rico)
1903	Creation of the Panama Canal Zone
1914	Invasion of Mexico
1915-1934	Occupation of Haiti

The table above – which represents just a snippet of the US’ proactive regional foreign policy in the first 150 years of the country’s existence – is instructive. This extensive list of decisive American foreign policy actions in the Western Hemisphere makes for a stark contrast with the US’ wider international posture. Even as it annexed, expanded, negotiated and provoked in its own neighbourhood, the US rarely intervened in events outside its region. Indeed, in promulgating the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, which is best known for the US’ proscription of any further European colonisation in the Western Hemisphere, the US also explicitly disavowed any intention of intervening in the business of the ‘Old World’. Simply put, it preferred to restrict its foreign policy to its own neighbourhood. Accordingly, before the US attained regional dominance, its foreign policy forays beyond its own neighbourhood were rare and limited. Fundamentally, the US was not willing to begin projecting its power around the world before it was certain that none of its neighbours, close to home, posed a risk.

For this reason, the tendency of media voices and outlets to ruminate on China’s dreams of global dominance are premature. Before China can begin to consider developing global power projection capabilities like those of the US, it will first have to cement for itself a much more solid regional position.

Indeed, a cursory look at China’s neighbourhood reveals imposing obstacles that distinguish it from that of the US. Whereas the US has just two land borders, China is directly bordered by 14 countries. It also shares maritime borders with powerful and populous countries such as Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. Whereas there is no question of the US’ dominance over Mexico and Canada, both weak neighbours, China’s contiguous states are serious challengers in their own right. The combined populations of India, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines and South Korea, after all, add up to nearly 2 billion people. Japan, meanwhile, remains an economic superpower, and Russia retains one of the world’s strongest militaries. And whereas the US’ relations with Mexico and Canada are relatively friendly and uncontentious, China has ongoing border disputes with many of its neighbours, and historically hostile relations with others.

Before China can begin to even consider the kind of global hegemony that the US has attained, it will need to resolve these thorny neighbourhood issues. The US has some 175,000 troops stationed overseas at any given time, both in active war zones and in military bases. With neighbouring powers such as India, Japan and South Korea breathing down its neck, it is difficult to imagine China feeling sufficiently confident about its regional security in the near future to disperse its military forces so widely.

This is not to say that China will never be able to attain global hegemony, but rather that such a moment is not imminent. The US took some 150 years to gradually establish domination over the Western Hemisphere, through a series of annexations, invasions and treaties. Achieving regional hegemony takes time, resources and patience. In other words, despite breathless media speculation about a Middle Kingdom with ambitions of global dominance, China’s foreign policy will likely remain concentrated on its own neighbourhood in the decades to come.