American Grand Strategy and China's hegemonic challenge with Dr Zeno Leoni

War Studies

There is widespread agreement that world order is in transition. The Liberal International Order (LIO), established in the aftermath of World War II, is in decline. In the summer of 2008, just 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, China’s lavish opening ceremony at the Olympic Games in Beijing showed the world a ‘glorious civilisation’ with a desire to reconquer what was lost. Just a few weeks later, on 15 September, Lehman Brothers crashed, and the West was thrown into a deep financial crisis. With American hegemony and its interventionist strategy of spreading liberalism around the globe on the back foot, so too is the LIO. But what’s causing these major global shifts and how might they shape global politics going forward? In this episode of the podcast, Dr Zeno Leoni, Teaching Fellow in the Defence Studies Department at King’s, joins us to discuss his new publication, American Grand Strategy from Obama to Trump: Imperialism After Bush and China's Hegemonic Challenge. He shares what it says about the rise of China and the decline of the US, how recent US governments have attempted to stem the tide of change, and why he’s approached all of this through a Marxist reading of imperialism and foreign policy.