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SLIDE 1
This week we’re going to do some collective thinking about the future of U.S. Power.
SLIDE 2
In the next slide there is a graphic that illustrates the proliferation of academic and think-tank literature that argues that U.S. Power and influence around the world is shrinking dramatically.
SLIDE 3
The next slide continues that symbolism, some arguing that we are becoming just another graveyard of fallen empires. But I think, to be more optimistic in the next slide, some are writing our obituaries a bit prematurely. I like this definition of what a superpower is and what it requires or what it takes to be a super power. And I think if you kind of cogitate on that a little bit, study it a little bit, after the lecture, I think you’ll agree this applies to the United States and no other country in the world at the present time.
That last bullet indicates some hesitation, a big “but”, there are other variables. I think the problem is a paradox of power. Power today no longer translates into an immediate ability to influence, and the reason for that, many argue, is that historically emerging multi-polar systems are much more unstable than a bipolar or unipolar world might be. There is an emerging multipolar system which I think we face today. Greater diversity, growing power, and less cohesiveness. Emerging countries want a greater share, a greater say, and they reject the notion that any single power has the ability to be a global hegemony. In a very colorful language of a French diplomat, he argued this case by saying we need allies but not chaperones or adult supervision.
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The next slide is based on an article written several years ago by Barry Posen and Andrew Ross called “Competing Images of Global Strategy”. I want to go through these as an exercise in strategic thinking. There are really no right or wrong answers for our purposes and our goal is to get each of you to pull together some of our previous course tools and apply them to some good strategic thinking. And these are the strategic postures that we’ll look at: Neo Isolationism, Selective 2
Engagement, Cooperative Security, Primacy, and then I’ll add off-shore balancing which doesn’t come from Posen and Ross but from another article that I will talk about and you will be reading.
SLIDE 5
The next slide then looks at the posture of neo-isolationism. Their argument is that we simply can’t afford the cost of World Order, they take a very minimalist defense posture, low defense budgets based upon what you see there. They argue that geography makes us secure from peer threats. There is little public support for this posture. Libertarians hold this and if you’ve been paying attention or did pay attention to the republican primary you know that Ron Paul represented this point of view. Commentator Pat Buchannan would be another one who represents this particular point of view. Of course I think their real argument or to critique it, you would have to really analyze that last bullet, does disengagement make us more or less safe? Before I would dismiss this posture altogether, as I don’t think it’s as realistic, but it was our posture for better part of 200 years of our history. We weren’t so much isolationists but we were hemi spherically isolationists, we tended to dominate the western hemisphere with a brief dabbling in imperialism during the Spanish-American war. But it really wasn’t until 2002 that we took on a global posture with global responsibilities.
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The next slide shows the selective engagement option and here the focus is on our vital interests and the dynamics among the major powers. We have finite resources and we can’t afford leadership in a unipolar world. We really need to engage in a hard-headed case by case assessment and public debate and intervention must be related to those vital interests. This school of thought regime change, nation building, can’t afford wars of choice (in relation to the Iraq war). They would argue that the missionary approach where we strongly promote our values simply creates some resentment and pushback to American efforts to spread their values abroad. They, like many others in contemporary times, believe that it’s time to leave NATO to the Europeans and let them do much more for their own defense.
SLIDE 7
The next slide: leadership in cooperative security. Here the argument is that Peace is indivisible and affects U.S. interests. And because it’s indivisible, we must really rely on multilateralism using collective security and collective defense. The United Nations, NATO are examples of that. “Rogue States” are minor powers and can usually be manage by U.S. and high tech military without invasion or regime change. They do favor humanitarian Interventions, and this group tends to lean in favor of the missionary model, yet at the same time they are cautious about over-extension and “mission creep” or getting into situations that result in protracted efforts.
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The next slide talks about Primacy and we’ve looked at this in the context of the Bush Doctrine and the Bush National Security Strategy. No peers, we are the sole superpower by way of a strong, strong defense. Unilateralism when required. Aggregating power via alliances and coalitions is not 3
always reliable. Those pesky allies want to have a vote and a say at the table, and I’m being a little facetious but it’s really hard unilateralism is part of that primacy formula. Still the focus is on the major powers and under the Bush administration the focus was on keeping peace and a balance among the peer competitors, but at the same time making certain that the U.S. maintained its primacy. They would argue that protracted conflicts in non-critical areas should be avoided. This certainly was a failure in Iraq but perhaps that failure was a lesson learned. The last bullet, primacy tends not to address the challenges of asymmetric warfare, and as we have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan small groups of insurgents are capable of inflicting enormous amounts of damage, either through IEDs or those kinds of challenges, cyber-warfare in the future, acquisition by small states of some kind of WMD are other examples. So those are areas that I think that the advocates and the cycles of primacy really need to address and to take into their model.
The next model that we’ll look at is off shore balancing. And this basically is a resurgence of neorealism, a reaction to the Bush doctrine and the basic theme is that we can achieve better security by a diminished global presence. They’re probably closest to their posture in the philosophy of selective engagement and I’m having you read an article by Stephen Walt, who along with many others, like John Mearsheimer are leading advocates of the neorealist point of view. Now they do admit as the first bullet shows, primacy has been effective in reducing great power competition and has helped shape a more tranquil international environment. But their major points are in the second two bullets: no state or empire has ever been able to remain on top, power is eventually eroded for a variety of reasons and we may suffer what is called Imperial overstretch and that is illustrated in the next slide.
I think this is a pretty good graphic of Paul Kennedy’s well debated book, the rise and fall of great powers. He argued that all potential powers and this is a risk to the United States, declined because of imperial overstretch. And the real question is how long can the United States continue to be the world’s policeman, bank man, and political organ donor?
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The next slide goes back to filling out what this really mean in terms of off shore balancing. Again, this school of thought focuses on clear priorities. What he means by primacy precluded difficult choices is that if you have primacy, an unlimited defense, expenditures, you don’t really stop to keep a calculation of your interests. You try to do it all and they’re very critical of the bush effort to engage in regime change and spreading democracy by force, if necessary, that according to Walt was an indulgence in altruism. They argue that off-shore balancing and support for regional balances of power is a much more realistic way an era of more limited resources.
SLIDE 10
The next slide sort of fleshes this out a bit more. Basically the argument is shifting more burdens to our allies and the 1999 model there of off-shore balancing, the rapid deployment joint task force. And forgive me the acronym, but this was something set up by Jimmy Carter after the fall of Iran. And this is their model that is the neo-realist model of offshore balancing. Under the Carter rapid deployment force we increased our naval presence in the Indian Ocean and in the gulf region and 4
we negotiated basic access to the region. We didn’t take over bases, or occupy bases, but negotiated rights to use that basis in the event our intervention was necessary. Kind of some historic examples of offshore balancing; During the Cold War we supported Iran under the Shaw and built up Iran’s military power as a major balancer against communism in the Middle East. After 1979, we then tilted toward Iraq particularly during the very long protracted eight year war between Iran and Iraq. What really changed the dynamics in the region was the 1991 Gulf War and after that and up to the invasion in 2003, we occupied bases, we had a very, very large military presence, the central command came into being, and we had an extraordinary large and visible military presence in the region. This was part of the Al-Qaeda narrative; part of their goals for using the tactic of terrorism was to get the United States military out of the region. Now according to the off-shore balancers what we might do now is more support of regional allies: the Saudis, the 6th states and the Gulf-Cooperation Council, Israel, and this gets a little bit fuzzy, I know, but the wild card to those who favor this is the Arab transition and where Arab states like Egypt are going and whether Iran’s future threat can be contained by a less visible U.S. presence.
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I think the next slide plausible model of off-shore balancing and that would be our shift to Asia. Here as a result of China’s regional assertion, particularly acting as a hegemon in the South China Sea., that has really driven all other Asian powers to the United States in a natural alliance and support for South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and virtually all of our Asian allies could be a model of how we use other allies to assist in balancing the power of China without perhaps getting directly involved. We would be there if that balance got upset but in the short term we would push most of the balancing off on our allies. Whether or not you think any of these ideas are plausible, I think that third bullet represents what’s really key. The new world whether it’s unipolar, bipolar, or multipolar, the United States is going to be one of those poles and first among equals. And then the Walt article kind of ends with something interesting to consider: whether than building fewer Bagrams (that’s an Arabic place in Afghanistan) we need to spend more of our resources polishing that city on a hill. This would be a nod toward the exemplary strategy on American Exceptionalism.
SLIDE 12
In the next slide, I bring in another source that I didn’t have you read but it’s something you could look up if you’re interested and that is Global Trends 2025. It’s put together and updated by the United States Intelligence Council a body that represents all agencies of American Intelligence and they use a futures methodology where they have some very elaborate measures and predictors using Gross Domestic Product, Defense spending, population and both its quantitative and qualitative terms, levels of technology, and areas like this.
SLIDE 13
In the next slide, and I’ve tried to make this as large as possible, this is one of their key findings where they look at 2025 and measures of state power as a percentage of global power. As you can see there, their estimates show only a slight decline in U.S. power. China, as predicted, goes up but still behind the United States. Europe union is down, India is up, Japan is down, Russia and Brazil 5
are up very slightly – but I think in the case of Russia the dependent variable is the future stability and prices of oil and gas since this is the major source from which Russia is deriving its wealth and still has a major failure in diversifying its economy.
SLIDE 14
The next slide is intended to show the really high-water mark of American power. 1991 was the fall of Communism, it represented the triumph over Liberal Democracy or communism. It represented the optimism for global prosperity as a result of the globalization trends and there was an unchallenged military superiority as we demonstrated in the 1991 Gulf War where allies rallied around us. We were able to deploy 400,000 American forces and in a very short ground war we demonstrated the military capabilities that we had been building for a war in central Europe against the soviets. But all of this represented one of the high water marks of American power.
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