Dependency concept has lengthy centered on the structural subordination of the World South to the industrialized North. Far much less consideration, nevertheless, has been paid to relations of dependency throughout the superior capitalist world itself. Ali A. Mazrui was one of many few thinkers to determine and theorize this uncared for dimension. Mazrui (1981, 329) argued that the publish–Second World Conflict worldwide order was characterised not solely by North–South dependency but additionally by a equally hierarchical type of dependency working contained in the World North itself — one centered on america. He known as the latter macrodependency.
Mazrui’s intervention challenged a liberal framework in Worldwide Relations (IR) that was subsequently to grow to be influential: the idea of advanced interdependence related to Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye (1977). Whereas Keohane and Nye emphasised mutual dependence and reciprocal vulnerability amongst superior industrial states, Mazrui insisted and highlighted that this interdependence was deeply asymmetrical. In his view, postwar interdependence was structured round American dominance by which allies had been built-in into U.S.-led establishments that constrained their autonomy whereas reinforcing U.S. primacy. In response to Mazrui (1976; 1981), macrodependency within the postwar worldwide order assumed three principal and mutually reinforcing varieties. Collectively, these varieties structured a particular hierarchy throughout the World North — one which differed from classical imperial domination, but nonetheless produced sturdy patterns of dependence.
The primary type was financial, institutionalized most clearly by means of the Marshall Plan starting in 1948. The European Restoration Program is usually celebrated as a benevolent act of American generosity that enabled Western Europe’s fast reconstruction after the devastation of the Second World Conflict. Mazrui didn’t deny the fact or significance of European restoration. Quite the opposite, he acknowledged that the Marshall Plan succeeded in stabilizing currencies, rebuilding industrial capability, and stopping political collapse. But, he emphasised that restoration got here at a structural value. Western Europe was reinserted into the worldwide financial system by means of establishments and guidelines overwhelmingly formed by america. Greenback hegemony, U.S. management within the Bretton Woods establishments, and American affect over commerce liberalization embedded European economies inside a U.S.-centered monetary and financial structure. Financial revival thus coincided with a reconfiguration of dependence, not its elimination.
The second type of macrodependency was army, consolidated by means of the creation of NATO in 1949. Formally, NATO was a collective protection alliance amongst sovereign equals. Substantively, nevertheless, it institutionalized American strategic management over Western Europe. Safety ensures had been indispensable, notably within the context of Soviet energy — however they got here with limits on European strategic autonomy. Key choices relating to nuclear deterrence, pressure posture, and alliance priorities rested largely with Washington. NATO exemplified how dependence may very well be normalized and legitimized by means of multilateral establishments. Navy safety diminished vulnerability to exterior threats, however concurrently entrenched reliance on U.S. management and constrained the emergence of impartial European safety doctrines.
The third type was technological and strategic, most clearly embodied within the US–Japan relationship following the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty. Japan’s postwar settlement built-in it firmly into an American-led safety system. Underneath the U.S. nuclear umbrella, Japan was in a position to focus on financial development and technological growth whereas sharply limiting its army capabilities. Mazrui interpreted this association as a very revealing case of macrodependency: Japan gained safety and entry to superior know-how, however solely by accepting long-term restrictions on strategic autonomy. Japan’s financial dynamism and its army dependence on the US thus superior collectively. Japan’s spectacular rise didn’t contradict dependency concept. It as an alternative illustrated a variant of dependency working amongst superior industrial states.
Taken collectively, these financial, army, and technological preparations produced a hierarchical order throughout the World North. Western Europe and Japan had been neither colonies nor peripheral economies. But neither had been they totally autonomous nice powers. They occupied an intermediate place: structurally dependent companions embedded inside a system managed, stabilized, and finally underwritten by america. This configuration essentially contradicts liberal narratives of postwar worldwide politics that emphasised concord, mutual profit, and equality amongst superior capitalist states. It was exactly this contradiction that led Mazrui to query the prevailing liberal idea of interdependence. Whereas theorists of advanced interdependence emphasised rising mutual reliance as a pressure that diminished battle, Mazrui insisted that not all interdependence was created equal. As Mazrui (1976, 119) famous in one in every of his most theoretically prescient passages:
[A symmetrical] interdependence is one which mixes sophistication with symmetry. The sophistication comes from enhanced technological capabilities and expanded social and mental consciousness; the symmetry emerges out of a brand new egalitarian morality mixed with a extra balanced capability for mutual hurt. The completely different events … should not solely want one another; their completely different wants additionally should be on a scale that permits extreme mutual dislocations in case of battle. The mix of an egalitarian ethic and reciprocal vulnerability …
This formulation made clear that interdependence solely turns into politically equalizing when it produces reciprocal vulnerability. If one social gathering can soak up disruption extra simply than one other, interdependence turns into a supply of leverage reasonably than mutual restraint. Dependence, on this case, doesn’t disappear underneath interdependence. It’s merely redistributed. This perception locations Mazrui effectively forward of mainstream IR concept. Solely a lot later, after the rise of Donald Trump, did Keohane and Nye (2025, 70) revisit their framework to acknowledge explicitly that “uneven interdependence confers a bonus on the much less dependent actor in a relationship”. Mazrui had already articulated this logic 5 many years earlier. What he grasped was that interdependence may simply as simply reproduce hierarchy as dissolve it. As he put it succinctly: “…interdependence may both create or destroy equality. The important issue considerations the exact nature of that interdependence” (Mazrui 1975, 118).
Current shifts in U.S. international coverage underscore the persevering with relevance of Mazrui’s perception. The Trump administration’s strategy to alliances and commerce will be interpreted as an try — maybe unintended—to unravel the very structure of macrodependency that america itself had constructed after 1945. By demanding better protection spending from allies, renegotiating commerce agreements, and withdrawing from multilateral preparations that constrained U.S. autonomy, Trump is looking for to extract instant benefits from America’s place because the least dependent actor in uneven relationships. But this technique uncovered a deeper paradox. Macrodependency had by no means functioned solely by means of American energy. It depended equally on American willingness to behave as system supervisor — absorbing prices, supplying public items, and sustaining establishments that reassured allies and normalized asymmetry.
When U.S. management underneath Donald Trump appeared conditional, transactional, or unreliable, the political legitimacy of macrodependency started to erode. In consequence, even long-standing allies started reassessing their reliance on Washington. Statements calling for strategic autonomy, protection independence, or diminished dependence on america — as soon as unthinkable in the course of the Chilly Conflict —have grow to be more and more widespread. Shortly earlier than assuming Germany’s chancellorship, Friedrich Merz declared that his prime precedence could be “to realize independence from the USA” (quoted in Sanger 2025). Comparable views are murmured in Japan, too, the place considerations about alliance reliability have fueled discussions about better strategic self-reliance. In reference to the 1951 safety treaty between Japan and the US, Mazrui (1981, 330) described the outcome as “a case of self-castration within the army discipline.”
This second doesn’t signify a sudden collapse of American energy. Fairly, it represents a delayed reckoning with the contradictions of macrodependency. The US derived monumental advantages from a system of asymmetrical interdependence, however that system required restraint, predictability, and a long-term dedication to management. As soon as the worth of that position started to be questioned by America itself, the hierarchical foundations of the postwar order and the self-love of the liberal optimism embedded within the concept of advanced interdependence had been uncovered. This doesn’t imply {that a} coherent post-American order has already emerged, nor does it suggest the approaching disappearance of U.S. affect. What’s unfolding as an alternative is a chronic interval of recalibration. Allies are looking for to scale back vulnerability, diversify partnerships, and renegotiate their place inside a extra fluid and contested worldwide system. The erosion of macrodependency is uneven and incomplete, nevertheless it displays structural shifts that Mazrui anticipated way back.
The idea of macrodependency can thus be a helpful analytical software for comprehending why up to date tensions throughout the World North can’t be diminished to management model, diplomatic missteps, or short-term coverage divergence. They stem from the long-term penalties of a hierarchical order whose asymmetries had been sustainable solely as long as the U.S. position remained mutually acceptable.
Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye (2025, 70) wrote:
…the decline underway might not be a mere short-term dip; it might be a plunge into murky waters. In his erratic and misguided effort to make america much more highly effective, Trump could deliver its interval of dominance—what the American writer Henry Luce first known as “the American century”—to an unceremonious finish.
Keohane and Nye could also be proper. Certainly, the disruption related to the Trump presidency shouldn’t be understood merely as an episode of nationalist populism or diplomatic eccentricity. It represents a late-stage rupture in an American-centered system of macrodependency based mostly on asymmetry and structural imbalance. For many years, U.S. hegemony rested not merely on energy, however on consent institutionalized by means of financial help, army safety, and technological management. However this association was hierarchical interdependence reasonably than real reciprocity. What Trump did — typically seemingly haphazardly — was to strip this hierarchy of its legitimating language. By demanding that allies pay extra, commerce much less freely, and assume better strategic autonomy, the Trump administration accelerated the erosion of the very dependencies that had sustained U.S. management.
The sign signifies a transition towards a extra fragmented and fewer centralized international order, one by which energy is more and more negotiated, an order akin to what Amitav Acharya (2025, 22) has known as the “international multiplex.” In “international multiplex,” Acharya (2025, 348) famous “… new types of interdependence and interactions will form world order.”
References
Acharya, Amitav. 2025. The As soon as and Future World Order: Why World Civilization Will Survive the Decline of the West. London: Fundamental Books.
Keohane, Robert O., and Joseph S. Nye Jr. 1977. Energy and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition. Boston: Little, Brown.
Keohane, Robert O., and Joseph S. Nye Jr. 2025. “The Finish of the Lengthy American Century: Trump and the Sources of U.S. Energy.” Overseas Affairs, July/August: 68–79.
Mazrui, Ali A. 1975. “The New Interdependence: From Hierarchy to Symmetry.” In The U.S. and World Improvement: Agenda for Motion 1975, edited by James Howe, New York, Washington, London: Praeger Publishers.
Mazrui, Ali A. 1980. “Expertise, Worldwide Stratification, and the Politics of Development.” Worldwide Political Science Evaluate 1 (1): 68–79.
Mazrui, Ali A. 1981. “Micro-Dependency: The Cuban Consider Southern Africa.” India Quarterly 37 (3): 329–345.Sanger, David E. 2025. “Energy, Cash and Territory.” New York Occasions, March 13, A5.
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