Uluslararası İlişkiler Dergisi - Akademik Dergi

Volume 3, Issue 12, Winter 2006 - 2007

Bülent Sarper AĞIR 

ABSTRACT

The pattern of distribution of power has a crucial impact on the international system. After the Cold War, the USA, as a sole superpower in the international system, tried to pursue its current position in the context of a strategy that is conceptualized as benign hegemony. This paper analyzes the theoretical bases of the transition of American foreign and security policy from benign hegemony to global hegemonic stability search efforts. In this extent, systemic power components which enable the pursuit of a unipolar structure of international system is of guest great importance for the USA. In the context of the arguments of democratic peace theory and preventive war been that have been employed by the USA for a war against terorism, impacts of its unilateral actions on relations with significant international actors such as Russia, the EU and China and implications for international normative order will be analyzed respectively.

Keywords: Hegemony, Hegemonic Stability, Democratic Peace Theory, International Normative Order, Preventive War