P/P/95. Dissertation. USA hegemony in the world and its new National Security Strategy (NSS)

The aim of the dissertation is to analyse the implications of the USA's hegemonic position in the world. The author's objective is to show that by projecting power over other countries in search of security, the USA makes the world less secure and encourages the return of competition between great powers. The study is based on an extensive literature review with a focus on the works by R. Gilpin, who comes up with the theory of hegemony, and G. John Ikenberry who develops this theory and looks at different versions of hegemony. Using the method of analysis and generalisation the author gives definitions of the key terms, such as ásecurity, áhegemony, áunipolarity, ápre-emption, etc. applying them to the USA in the existing international situation and projecting the analysis to the historical background, which shows that there have been no major conflicts since the period of the Cold War. Discussing Americas search for security the paper focuses on the Bush Doctrine, or new National Security Strategy (NSS), that acts to spread US liberal values towards the periphery. The dissertation concludes that the main obstacle to the new NSS is unilateralism that gives reasons for seeing the USA as ápolicing the world; the increased use of unendorsed power decreases the benign nature of the USA, the most striking example being Iraq War in 2003.