Dependency theory has long focused on the structural subordination of the global South to the industrialized North. Far less attention,though,has been paid to relations of dependency within the advanced capitalist world itself. Ali A. Mazrui was one of the few thinkers to identify and theorize this neglected dimension. Mazrui (1981, 329) argued that the post-Second World War international order was characterized not only by North-South dependency but also by a similarly hierarchical form of dependency operating inside the Global North itself – one centered on the United States. He called the latter macrodependency.
mazrui’s intervention challenged a liberal framework in International Relations (IR) that was later to become influential: the theory of complex interdependence associated with Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye (1977). While Keohane and Nye emphasized mutual dependence and reciprocal vulnerability among advanced industrial states, mazrui insisted and highlighted that this interdependence was deeply asymmetrical. In his view, postwar interdependence was structured around american dominance in which allies were integrated into U.S.-led institutions that constrained their autonomy while reinforcing U.S. primacy.According to Mazrui (1976; 1981), macrodependency in the postwar international order assumed three principal and mutually reinforcing forms. Together,these forms structured a distinctive hierarchy within the Global North – one that differed from classical imperial domination,yet nonetheless produced durable patterns of dependence.
The first form was economic, institutionalized most clearly through the Marshall Plan beginning in 1948. The European Recovery Program is often celebrated as a benevolent act of American generosity that enabled western Europe’s rapid reconstruction after the devastation of the Second World war. Mazrui did not deny the reality or meaning of European recovery. In contrast, he acknowledged that the Marshall Plan succeeded in stabilizing currencies, rebuilding industrial capacity, and preventing political collapse. Yet, he emphasized that recovery came at a structural cost. Western Europe was reinserted into the global economy through institutions and rules overwhelmingly shaped by the United States. Dollar hegemony, U.S. leadership in the Bretton Woods institutions, and American influence over trade liberalization embedded European economies within a U.S.-centered financial and monetary architecture. Economic revival thus coincided with a reconfiguration of dependence, not its elimination.
The second form of macrodependency was military, consolidated through the creation of NATO in 1949. Formally, NATO was a collective defense alliance among sovereign equals. Substantively, however, it institutionalized American strategic leadership over Western Europe. Security guarantees were indispensable,notably in the context of Soviet power – but they came with limits on European strategic autonomy. Key decisions regarding nuclear deterrence, force posture, and alliance priorities rested largely with Washington. NATO exemplified how dependence could be normalized and legitimized through multilateral institutions. Military protection reduced vulnerability to external threats, but simultaneously entrenched reliance on U.S. leadership and constrained the emergence of autonomous European security doctrines.
The third form was technological and strategic,most clearly embodied in the US-Japan relationship following the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty. Japan’s postwar settlement integrated it firmly into an American-led security system. Under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, Japan was able to concentrate on economic growth and technological development while sharply limiting its military capabilities. Mazrui interpreted this arrangement as a particularly revealing case of macrodependency: Japan gained security and access to advanced technology, but only by accepting long-term restrictions on strategic autonomy. Japan’s economic dynamism and its military dependence on the US thus advanced together. Japan’s extraordinary rise did not contradict dependency theory. It instead illustrated a variant of dependency operating among advanced industrial states.
Taken together, these economic, military, and technological arrangements produced a hierarchical order within the Global North. Western Europe and Japan were neither colonies nor peripheral economies. Yet neither were they fully autonomous grate powers. They occupied an intermediate position: structurally dependent partners embedded within a system managed, stabilized, and ultimately underwritten by the United States.This configuration fundamentally contradicts liberal narratives of postwar international politics that emphasized harmony, mutual benefit, and equality among advanced capitalist states. It was precisely this contradiction that led Mazrui to question the p
style, diplomatic missteps, or short-term policy divergence. They stem from the long-term consequences of a hierarchical order whose asymmetries were sustainable only so long as the U.S. role remained mutually acceptable.
Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye (2025, 70) wrote:
…the decline underway may not be a mere temporary dip; it may be a plunge into murky waters. In his erratic and misguided effort to make the united States even more powerful, Trump may bring its period of dominance—what the American publisher Henry Luce first called “the American century”—to an unceremonious end.
Keohane and Nye may be right. Indeed, the disruption associated with the Trump presidency should not 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 on asymmetry and structural imbalance. For decades, U.S. hegemony rested not simply on power, but on consent institutionalized through economic assistance, military protection, and technological leadership. But this arrangement was hierarchical interdependence rather than genuine reciprocity.what Trump did — often seemingly haphazardly — was to strip this hierarchy of its legitimating language. By demanding that allies pay more, trade less freely, and assume greater strategic autonomy, the Trump administration accelerated the erosion of the very dependencies that had sustained U.S. leadership.
the signal indicates a transition toward a more fragmented and less centralized global order, one in which power is increasingly negotiated, an order akin to what Amitav Acharya (2025, 22) has called the “global multiplex.” In “global multiplex,” Acharya (2025, 348) noted “… new forms of interdependence and interactions will shape world order.”
References
Acharya, Amitav. 2025. the Once and Future World Order: Why Global Civilization Will Survive the Decline of the West. London: Basic books.
Keohane, Robert O., and Joseph S. Nye Jr. 1977. Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition. Boston: Little, Brown.
Keohane, Robert O., and Joseph S. Nye Jr. 2025. “The End of the Long American Century: Trump and the Sources of U.S. Power.” Foreign Affairs, July/august: 68–79.
Mazrui, Ali A. 1975. “The New Interdependence: From Hierarchy to Symmetry.” In The U.S. and World Development: Agenda for Action 1975, edited by James Howe, New York, Washington, London: Praeger Publishers.
Mazrui, Ali A. 1980. “Technology, International Stratification, and the Politics of Growth.” International Political Science Review 1 (1): 68–79.
Mazrui, Ali A. 1981. “Micro-Dependency: The cuban factor in Southern Africa.” India Quarterly 37 (3): 329–345.Sanger, David E. 2025. “Power, Money and Territory.” New York Times, March 13, A5.
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