Dickson C. Igwe. Photo: VINO/File

This shift of power over the decades began with the Monroe Doctrine that stated that the USA was boss in its region. Then in various wars and skirmishes mainly against Spain and its American possessions, the US took control of the hemisphere and imposed its will on the region.

With the intervention of the USA in World War 1 in 1917, the US began its steady journey to world hegemon. World War 1 began the technological and industrial transformation the USA. With The intervention of the USA in that war, the US supplied Allies such as France and Great Britain with the critical supplies and the millions of troops that defeated Germany.

However, World War 2 was the watershed.

The Second World War converted the USA into the world’s foremost industrial power. The US produced the bombs, guns, trucks, jeeps, tanks, planes, submarines, ships, carriers, heavy-guns, and telecommunications equipment that won the war for the Allies. It converted ploughshares into swords that pushed American productivity into the stratosphere.

In 1945, the Allies won the war, but the US won the peace thereafter. America financed the rebuilding of the entire world from the destruction the war brought. The war and the rebuilding afterwards was financed by the Dollar and debt offered to the west including defeated foes. The Dollar at that time was gold backed.

In another vein, the UK hegemony that started in the 1600s, with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, and the shift of power away from the Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish, defined world history up and until the early 1900s.

The Suez Crisis of 1956 when Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal was the final chapter of the British Empire. An Empire that lasted for 400 years.

For the past 80 years, the USA has been the hegemon. That hegemony is beginning to decline, somewhat, however. Voices in the global south are becoming increasingly important led by China, and symbolized by the old Non Aligned Movement now termed BRICS.

In spite of Donald Trump’s brand of reckless ‘’loose cannon’’ leadership, the US economy roars ahead, and in this writer’s opinion the American hegemony will dominate life on earth for the near future.