EVENTS

Two traditions have always pulled at American foreign policy—the self-preserving republican tradition and the expansionist imperial tradition—driving its trajectory from a great power to a hegemon in a pattern of “two steps forward, one step back.” This Wednesday Seminar’s presentation explores how after World War II, the United States built an institutional order centered on the United Nations and a network of international institutions. During the Cold War, this order operated primarily within the Western bloc; after the Cold War, it expanded globally under U.S. unipolarity. Yet hegemony itself has sown the seeds of decline; internal contradictions such as industrial hollowing out and strategic overreach erupted after 2008, giving rise to Trump’s “table- flipping” foreign policy. Against this backdrop, the presentation examines how the United States is ending its hegemony in a rare way—not by external defeat, but by actively dismantling the system it built, trapped in the core dilemma of being unwilling to bear the costs and constraints of liberal internationalist hegemony while still wanting to enjoy its benefits.

Speaker

Da Wei is the Director of the Center for International Security and Strategy (CISS) and a Professor in the Department of International Relations at Tsinghua University. His research focuses on Sino-US Relations as well as US security and foreign policy.

Discussant

Alka Acharya is currently the Director of the Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi. She was previously Professor and Chairperson at the Centre for East Asian Studies (Chinese Studies), SIS JNU. Her current research focuses on India-China-Russia Trilateral Cooperation and comparing the Indian and Chinese strategies of regional engagement.

Chair

Hemant Adlakha is Vice-Chairperson and Honorary Fellow at the ICS, Delhi. He was professor of Chinese at the Centre for Chinese and Southeast Asian Studies, JNU, New Delhi. His areas of research include political discourse in the PRC and modern Chinese Literature and Culture. He is on the editorial board of China Report.

Please register here