Dollars, Arms, Words: Barack Obama and the Dilemmas of American Hegemony

Abstract

This article discusses the foreign policy of Barack Obama and the basic elements and contours of what can be described as a putative “Obama Doctrine”. It argues that, while never precisely stated and outlined, this doctrine constituted an attempt to come to terms with the final manifestation of some ingrained and, after the 2008 global economic crisis, inescapable contradictions and flaws of the model of hegemony the United States had built and projected since the 1970s. To address this novel situation, and the multiple arcs of crisis the U.S. was facing, a radical strategic, diplomatic and discursive shift was needed. Cognisant of it, Obama pursued this change, although not always consistently or successfully, achieving results that appear all the more remarkable when compared with the foreign policies of his predecessor and, after almost two years in office, his successor.