There evidence is biased – the economic benefits of hege are hyped – even by academics

ECONOMY

Indict

There evidence is biased – the economic benefits of hege are hyped – even by academics

This article evaluates whether the economic benefits of military preeminence and deep engagement are as great as proponents suggest. This evaluation begins by breaking down the arguments that military primacy yields economic returns into the most commonly articulated causal mechanisms. It then assesses what the scholarly literature and evidence can conclude about those causal mechanisms. The three most plausible pathways are the geo- economic favoritism that foreign capital inflows provide for military superpowers; the geopolitical favoritism gained from an outsized military presence; and the public goods benefits that flow from hegemonic stability. Each of these arguments is less empirically persuasive than is commonly articulated in policy circles. There is little evidence that military primacy yields appreciable geoeconomic gains. The evidence for geopolitical favoritism is much more robust during periods of bipolarity than it is under unipolarity, which suggests that primacy in and of itself does not yield material transfers. The evidence for public goods benefits is strongest, but military predomi- nance plays a supporting role in that causal logic; it is only full-spectrum unipolarity—a condition in which a single actor is universally acknowledged to be the dominant actor across a variety of power dimensions—that yields ap- preciable economic gains. The economic benefits from military predominance alone seem, at a minimum, to have been exaggerated in policy and scholarly circles. While there are economic benefits to possessing a great power military, diminishing marginal returns are evident well before achieving military pri- macy. The principal benefits that come with military primacy appear to flow only when coupled with economic primacy. These findings have signiacant implications for theoretical debates about the fungibility of military power, and should be considered when assessing U.S. ascal options and grand strat- egy for the coming decade.