ABSTRACT
Hegemonic overreach provides a third possibility of a transformative force, whether it is the
product of the expenditures from military interventions in Iraq or Afghanistan, or from the sheer
costs of maintaining US military expenditures at the levels necessary to maintain military
primacy. Both can exact a punishing cost on the economic basis of the unipolar moment. A
related candidate emerges from the logic of US counter-terrorism efforts. The extent to which
the USA has expanded its global surveillance capacity has only begun to emerge with the
Snowden revelations and the challenges they present to the basis of political liberalism on
which democracy rests. They have also induced a state-based counter-effort to restrict use of
the Internet, a development that could ultimately enhance state capacity to restrict access at
the national level, giving authoritarian states a basis for limiting or reversing democratic
movements.
