The Iraq War and international relations: Implications for small states

The Iraq War exposes the new shape of world politics. It discredits the idea of a benign hegemon defending world order, content to be an ‘offshore balancer’, exercising its power through multinational institutions and constrained by mutually agreed rules. Rather, the hegemon, facing few external constraints in a unipolar world, is driven by the particularistic interests of its ruling group, in the pursuit of informal empire wherein military force is used to impose client regimes and economic subordination. The impotence of both a realist power balance and of liberal institutions to restrain it calls into question the main bases of global order, leaving imperial overreach as the main limitation on hegemonic power. Small states may be able to adapt to, even temporarily profit from, bandwagoning with the hegemon, but it is they that are potentially most threatened when a hegemonic power undermines the international constraints on the use of power.