The US hegemony, East Asia and global governance

This article studies the US hegemony with particular focus on its dominant role in East Asia and compares conventional thoughts with different views provided by the two books reviewed. Reich and Lebow considered that American hegemony has started to erode when other nations regained their economic strength and political stability during the postwar decades. Acharya’s main argument is focusing on the decline of the American world order, rather than the decline of the US. Authors from the two books jumped out from the conventional zero-sum game between the rising China and the declining US power and consider other regional players in constructing the world order. However, this article argued that if China was not able to challenge the US power presence, there is no reason to assume the IS power decline. The establishment of the institutionalized network with involvement of several countries would only to strengthen the US dominance, rather than to weaken it.