Dependency theory has long focused on the structural subordination of the Global South to the industrialized North. Far less attention, however, 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 subsequently 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 significance of European recovery. On the contrary, 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, particularly 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 independent 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 spectacular 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 great 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 prevailing liberal concept of interdependence. While theorists of complex interdependence emphasized growing mutual reliance as a force that reduced conflict, Mazrui insisted that not all interdependence was created equal. As Mazrui (1976, 119) noted in one of his most theoretically prescient passages:

[A symmetrical] interdependence is one which combines sophistication with symmetry. The sophistication comes from enhanced technological capabilities and expanded social and intellectual awareness; the symmetry emerges out of a new egalitarian morality combined with a more balanced capacity for mutual harm. The different parties … must not only need each other; their different needs also must be on a scale that enables severe mutual dislocations in case of conflict. The combination of an egalitarian ethic and reciprocal vulnerability …

This formulation made clear that interdependence only becomes politically equalizing when it produces reciprocal vulnerability. If one party can absorb disruption more easily than another, interdependence becomes a source of leverage rather than mutual restraint. Dependence, in this case, does not disappear under interdependence. It is merely redistributed. This insight places Mazrui well ahead of mainstream IR theory. Only much later, after the rise of Donald Trump, did Keohane and Nye (2025, 70) revisit their framework to acknowledge explicitly that “asymmetric interdependence confers an advantage on the less dependent actor in a relationship”. Mazrui had already articulated this logic five decades earlier. What he grasped was that interdependence could just as easily reproduce hierarchy as dissolve it. As he put it succinctly: “…interdependence could either create or destroy equality. The critical factor concerns the precise nature of that interdependence” (Mazrui 1975, 118).

Recent shifts in U.S. foreign policy underscore the continuing relevance of Mazrui’s insight. The Trump administration’s approach to alliances and trade can be interpreted as an attempt — perhaps unintended—to unravel the very architecture of macrodependency that the United States itself had constructed after 1945. By demanding greater defense spending from allies, renegotiating trade agreements, and withdrawing from multilateral arrangements that constrained U.S. autonomy, Trump is seeking to extract immediate advantages from America’s position as the least dependent actor in asymmetric relationships. Yet this strategy exposed a deeper paradox. Macrodependency had never functioned solely through American power. It depended equally on American willingness to act as system manager — absorbing costs, supplying public goods, and sustaining institutions that reassured allies and normalized asymmetry.

When U.S. leadership under Donald Trump appeared conditional, transactional, or unreliable, the political legitimacy of macrodependency began to erode. As a result, even long-standing allies began reassessing their reliance on Washington. Statements calling for strategic autonomy, defense independence, or reduced dependence on the United States — once unthinkable during the Cold War —have become increasingly common. Shortly before assuming Germany’s chancellorship, Friedrich Merz declared that his top priority would be “to achieve independence from the USA” (quoted in Sanger 2025). Similar views are murmured in Japan, too, where concerns about alliance reliability have fueled discussions about greater strategic self-reliance. In reference to the 1951 security treaty between Japan and the US, Mazrui (1981, 330) described the result as “a case of self-castration in the military field.”

This moment does not signify a sudden collapse of American power. Rather, it represents a delayed reckoning with the contradictions of macrodependency. The United States derived enormous benefits from a system of asymmetrical interdependence, but that system required restraint, predictability, and a long-term commitment to leadership. Once the value of that role began to be questioned by America itself, the hierarchical foundations of the postwar order and the shallowness of the liberal optimism embedded in the theory of complex interdependence were exposed. This does not mean that a coherent post-American order has already emerged, nor does it imply the imminent disappearance of U.S. influence. What is unfolding instead is a prolonged period of recalibration. Allies are seeking to reduce vulnerability, diversify partnerships, and renegotiate their position within a more fluid and contested international system. The erosion of macrodependency is uneven and incomplete, but it reflects structural shifts that Mazrui anticipated long ago.

The concept of macrodependency can thus be a useful analytical tool for comprehending why contemporary tensions within the Global North cannot be reduced to leadership 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.

Further Reading on E-International Relations