ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the fourth part of the contemporary Global System of Power and Accumulation: terrorism and the unipolar/unilateral trend of military relations. During the 1950s and the 1960s, the United States exerted financial, commercial, and production dominance in the world (Wallerstein 1983). This led to the generation of US hegemony (and a military balance with the USSR), which promoted stability and leadership for the (Western) world for 2 or 3 decades. Samuel Bowles et al. (1992) and others have seen this system of Pax Americana as one of the postwar social structures of accumulation (SSAs) that provided a foundation for stable growth and development. US hegemony declined in the 1970s as it was defeated in Vietnam, lost a productivity edge to Europe and Japan, and underwent domestic challenges as well. While hegemony promoted national and regional growth and accumulation, the loss of hegemony during the 1970s and 1980s had a negative influence on socioeconomic performance of the advanced capitalist economies with the decline in this SSA.
