Everyone knows that the United States is special but there is little agreement as to whether being special has been a net positive for the United States and even less agreement about what it has meant for the world. The default position is to view America as unique because, unlike Great Powers in the past, it has used its dominance to everyone's benefit. The claim is not simply that there are positive externalities as a result of the hegemon's supply of public goods but that most of the benefits accrue to other states who, even though they do not pay for public goods, cannot be excluded from enjoying the benefits associated with them. 2 This is known as hegemonic stability theory, and is a belief in the benevelont hegemon. While this approach has been challenged in the past under the headings coercive, malevolent, and exploitative hegemony, none of these labels fits easily with the incentives behind American hegemony or its consequences. Although the literature is replete with objections to the characterization of the United States as a benevolent hegemon, I am not aware of any other work that gives a theoretically and empirically grounded account of precisely how the United States reaps disproportionate benefits across multiple issue areas.

In this book, I understand American hegemony as being broadly beneficial and especially beneficial for the United States. To be sure, my claim is not that the United States comes out ahead in every imaginable situation but that it benefits disproportionately most of the time, and as a direct result of structural advantages.