American power works by inertia, persisting after its cause has vanished.

Evidence

Speeding through Reagan’s America for a Tocquevillian travelogue about “the only remaining primitive society on earth,” Jean Baudrillard noted a paradox about US power in the late 1980s. “America no longer has the same hegemony,” yet “it is, in a sense, uncontested and incontestable.” Presaging the unipolar moment that would follow, he claimed that “American power does not seem inspired by any spirit or genius of its own” but rather “works by inertia.” If the US originally possessed the features of power, was it now “at the face-lift stage?” Or was it rather entering a phase of hysteresis, the process by which something continues to develop by inertia, whereby an effect persists even when its cause has disappeared? — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 2

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces ‘hysteresis’ as inertia-driven persistence of an effect after its cause disappears — a term likely central to Jäger’s framework.
• XREF: Baudrillard’s ‘uncontested and incontestable’ hegemony anticipates the unipolar-moment debates of the 1990s (Krauthammer).