US Hegemony is bad

Well first: the entire purpose of multipolarity is multiple world powers. US hegemony cannot coexist without backlash or counterbalancing from other countries. In other words, a benign US hegemony does not work, other countries inevitably get angered. There is a ton of evidence saying that hegemony causes negative side effects. Extend the 4 offensive reasons. I'll definitely win proliferation though -- other countries feel the need to back themselves up with WMDs if we are the world hegemony. Proliferation causes nuclear war. Your defense on prolif isn't true though. We have not been the hegemon for 100 years, it was just after the cold war, and it has been declining since 9/11. There is an article by Khanna, came out on january 3rd I think (10 page article) saying that we're now in a multipolar world. Other countries are just as powerful as the US. WMDs have only existed in the past 20 years really, and obviously they haven't been used since the US WAS the hegemon but now that we're in a multipolar world, it forces us to adopt multipolar responses. Hegemony is the source of american values -- the idea that we're supreme is what generates negative feelings towards us. Its easy for terrorists to gain access to dirty bombs etc. Hegemony doesnt benefit: a) Other countries can intervene, and multipolarity solves your offense -- we can still intervene, just not be the major police man making unilateral decisions b) Actually kills relations and causes counterbalancing either in soft power or hard power counterbalancing c) We aren't untouchable when WMDs hit US homeland or terrorists deploy dirty bombs in the white house. I have a tournament at harvard so I probably wont be able to respond for a while. . . But look at this in a non biased lens -- the US must accept its not the world leader. We can still solve world problems, just in a multilateral sense working with other nations. Here is the uniqueness in the article I talked about: The New York Times January 27, 2008 Waving Goodbye to Hegemony By PARAG KHANNA http://www.nytimes.com... Turn on the TV today, and you could be forgiven for thinking it's 1999. Democrats and Republicans are bickering about where and how to intervene, whether to do it alone or with allies and what kind of world America should lead. Democrats believe they can hit a reset button, and Republicans believe muscular moralism is the way to go. It's as if the first decade of the 21st century didn't happen — and almost as if history itself doesn't happen. But the distribution of power in the world has fundamentally altered over the two presidential terms of George W. Bush, both because of his policies and, more significant, despite them. Maybe the best way to understand how quickly history happens is to look just a bit ahead. Here is counterbalancing: The web of globalization now has three spiders. What makes America unique in this seemingly value-free contest is not its liberal democratic ideals — which Europe may now represent better than America does — but rather its geography. America is isolated, while Europe and China occupy two ends of the great Eurasian landmass that is the perennial center of gravity of geopolitics. When America dominated NATO and led a rigid Pacific alliance system with Japan, South Korea, Australia and Thailand, it successfully managed the Herculean task of running the world from one side of it. Now its very presence in Eurasia is tenuous; it has been shunned by the E.U. and Turkey, is unwelcome in much of the Middle East and has lost much of East Asia's confidence. "Accidental empire" or not, America must quickly accept and adjust to this reality. Maintaining America's empire can only get costlier in both blood and treasure. It isn't worth it, and history promises the effort will fail. It already has. Would the world not be more stable if America could be reaccepted as its organizing principle and leader? It's very much too late to be asking, because the answer is unfolding before our eyes. Neither China nor the E.U. will replace the U.S. as the world's sole leader; rather all three will constantly struggle to gain influence on their own and balance one another. Europe will promote its supranational integration model as a path to resolving Mideast disputes and organizing Africa, while China will push a Beijing consensus based on respect for sovereignty and mutual economic benefit. America must make itself irresistible to stay in the game.