Great Powers

Nixon's Great Departure

Paul R. Pillar — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:34:19 +0000

David Ignatius has a column noting that this month marks the fortieth anniversary of one of the landmark events in the history of U.S. foreign policy: President Richard Nixon's trip to China. Observing the anniversary is appropriate. Nixon's opening to China was one of the truly great foreign policy initiatives by a U.S. president. Regardless of what else it is appropriate to think about Nixon, he deserves much credit for this achievement.

I differ with Ignatius, however, in his couching of the China initiative as a demonstration of the virtues that come from a political leader demonstrating inconsistencies over time. Ignatius even seems to draw a comparison between Nixon's move of four decades ago and the flip-flopping of presidential candidates today. In fact, there is no comparison at all. Sure, Nixon had an earlier reputation as a fervent anti-communist, going back to his days on the House Committee on Un-American Activities. And “Nixon to China” has joined the political lexicon as a phrase applicable to any move by a leader whose previous reputation pointing in a different direction gives him political cover to make the move. But what led to Nixon's China opening was less a change in Nixon's own outlook than in geopolitical circumstances that he was striving to exploit. The careful thought that Nixon put into his China gambit was the antithesis of the flip-flopping and pandering that we hear on the campaign trail today.

Progressive Grand Strategy

The Editors — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:00:33 +0000

The Editors

Can America develop a grand strategy that’s above ideology? According to Georgetown professor Charles Kupchan, maybe not. In a symposium on “America and the World” from the current issue of Democracy, Kupchan argues for a "progressive grand strategy."

After the collapse of the bipartisan Cold War consensus, Kupchan says, only Democrats are well equipped to lead on foreign affairs. Republicans are in two camps: isolationist Tea Partiers and neoconservatives, with the latter now discredited in the wake of Iraq. Watching the recent primary campaign suggests that Kupchan is correct; besides ineffective attempts by Jon Huntsman, Republicans have offered no foreign policy outside these two extremes.

But for a progressive, Kupchan is remarkably unimaginative about the future of American politics. What if the Democratic Party someday also evinces more isolationist sentiment? Might conservatives eventually reconcile their split personality on international affairs? They could even look to a realist grand strategy, accepting limited interventions while avoiding the neocon overextensions. And wouldn't progressives benefit from a genuine sparring partner, a school of engagement more compatible with political conservatism?

Charles Kupchan

Democracy

Understanding America's Fall

Robert W. Merry — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Robert W. Merry

Robert Kagan has produced a fascinating cover piece in the February 2 New Republic entitled, "Not Fade Away: Against the myth of American decline." It’s an excerpt from his forthcoming book entitled The World America Made, due out soon from Knopf. Kagan specializes in diminutive volumes, with small pages and few of them, that pack tight, provocative arguments. A previous such book was Of Paradise and Power, which compared the United States as Mars with Europe’s Venus. It was a huge success. Now he marshals his analytical and writing skills on behalf of the argument that rumors of American decline are vastly exaggerated.

He makes a compelling case, and Kagan’s foray into the breach could serve as a bit of a corrective to much of what’s being written today under the voguish consensus that America is roughly equivalent to Great Britain circa 1910. It would be a positive development if Kagan’s essay brought forth a bit more rigor from some of those positing the consensus argument of decline.

But Kagan’s essay doesn’t say much about what kind of foreign policy America should pursue in its next decades of lingering global dominance. And, whatever merit one sees in his analytical framework, it certainly doesn’t serve as a blueprint for the kind of foreign policy that the neoconservative Kagan has been championing since the end of the Cold War. One could almost suggest that Kagan has a vested interest in American global power since he always displays such abandon in advocating its use.

Bursting the Chinese Bubble

The Editors — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:56:55 +0000

The Editors

America is finished as a superpower. Or so you might think from the recent discussion in the U.S. media. Popular books lament that “that used to be us” and that the United States is committing “suicide.” Meanwhile, a majority of Americans believe that China has already passed Washington as “the leading economic power in the world today,” according to a 2011 Gallup poll.

In the latest issue of International Security, Michael Beckley argues strongly that this is all wrong—as his title, “China’s Century? Why America’s Edge Will Endure,” indicates. Beckley, a research fellow at Harvard, brings empirical facts and cool analysis to an issue often dominated by overheated rhetoric. His main target is the idea that we can measure China’s rise solely based on its rising levels of GDP.

Michael Beckley

International Security

Zakaria's Alternate Reality

The Editors — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

The Editors

Writing in the Washington Post, foreign-policy writer Fareed Zakaria touts his own book, The Post-American World, in a column addressed to GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. He suggests Romney should rethink is oft-expressed criticism of President Obama for believing “that this next century is the post-American century.”

The theme of America moving into a less hospitable world less subject to American power is getting a lot of attention. And, based on Zakaria’s past writings, it’s safe to speculate that his book makes a worthy contribution to this literature.

But he pulls from the book a quote that should give any geopolitical analyst pause: “This is a book not about the decline of America but rather about the rise of everyone else.”

This can’t be. While societies can generate new wealth through wise economic policies, they can’t generate political power. A fundamental rule of politics, as ironclad as the law of gravity, is that every polity has a finite quantity of political power. The only question is how it will be distributed. This is true of the local school board, the Vermont legislature, the United States of America and the world of nations.

Fareed Zakaria

The Washington Post

Realism and Foreign Policy Strategies

Brendan R. Green — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:39:25 +0000

Brendan R. Green

My friends Sebastian Rosato and John Schuessler (R+S) recently penned an interesting article on applying realism as a prescriptive foreign-policy theory. Some have attacked their analysis on nonrealist grounds, positing that liberalism is a productive part of U.S. security, disputing their historical case studies, contending that realism plays a greater role in public policy than (whinging) realists imagine and arguing that realists have no special claim to policy rectitude.

This debate is essential to improving both IR theory and American foreign policy. And since I mainly agree with R+S’s arguments on the points just mentioned, I would like to propose an “internal” critique. R+S’s prescriptive project will impoverish realism as a predictive theory of world politics. In fact, structural-realist premises cannot produce a single strategic prescription for all great powers. But don’t stop reading yet—these theoretical complaints yield an important policy conclusion: America should follow a different set of prescriptions than what R+S suggest.

The (Almost) Triumph of Offshore Balancing

Christopher Layne — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:16:47 +0000

Christopher Layne

Although cloaked in the reassuring boilerplate about American military preeminence and global leadership, in reality the Obama administration’s new Defense Strategic Guidance (DSG) is the first step in the United States’ adjustment to the end of the Pax Americana—the sixty-year period of dominance that began in 1945. As the Pentagon document says—without spelling out the long-term grand-strategic implications—the United States is facing “an inflection point.” In plain English, a profound power shift in international politics is taking place, which compels a rethinking of the U.S. world role.

The Perils of Militarized Diplomacy

Franz-Stefan Gady — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Franz-Stefan Gady

In a speech on U.S. foreign policy in October 2011, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney outlined an aggressive agenda for American leadership in the world. “In an American century, America has the strongest economy and the strongest military in the world. If you do not want America to be the strongest nation on Earth, I am not your president. You have that president today.” Like Mitt Romney, many pundits lament the diminishing influence of the United States in the world. In international politics, influence is linked directly to power, the sum of components such as the threat of force, economic magnitude, cultural vibrancy and effective diplomacy. In the case of the United States, however, influence in international politics is especially dependent on military operations.

Neither trade nor traditional diplomacy explains U.S. influence over foreign governments. China is the second-biggest trading partner of the United States, yet its influence over China is relatively small. The United States entertains its biggest diplomatic mission in Iraq, more than sixteen thousand strong, yet it fails to influence Prime Minister Maliki’s sectarian politics. That leaves only the military to act as both stick and carrot. U.S influence is strongest in countries that actively need military support—and Washington will increasingly have trouble gaining leverage in countries with little or no need of U.S. military assistance. A prosperous Western-style democracy facing no direct threats and not interested in joining interventions “in search of monsters to destroy” has little use for the superpower’s militarized diplomacy.

Attacks on McFaul Reveal Bigger Reset Issues

Paul J. Saunders — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:34:20 +0000

Paul J. Saunders

Michael McFaul wrote in a blog entry on Russia’s popular LiveJournal web site that his first day as U.S. ambassador to Moscow “started with a bang.” In fact, the real bang came on the second day, when the new ambassador was harshly denounced on Russia’s principal state-television channel after meeting with opposition politicians and civil-society activists. Though U.S.-Russian relations will surely survive the incident, it puts the fundamental challenges and dilemmas of the reset, and previous efforts to improve the relationship, into sharp focus.

Mikhail Leontiev, a television personality known for his inflammatory commentary, attacked McFaul at length on his program Odnako (“However”) on ORT, Russia’s Channel One, assaulting the new ambassador’s career as a scholar and an advocate for democracy in Russia and elsewhere. Leontiev also asked rhetorically whether McFaul had arrived to “finish the revolution” in Russia (a play on the title of one of McFaul’s scholarly books, Russia’s Unfinished Revolution). Leontiev’s commentary followed video footage of opposition leaders and activists leaving the U.S. embassy in Moscow, as if in reaction to the meetings. Given how Russia’s state-television channels operate, the broadcast was likely coordinated with government officials.

China in the Persian Gulf

Paul R. Pillar — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 02:56:27 +0000

Paul R. Pillar

Be careful what you wish for regarding how other powers react to the latest effort to ratchet up pressure on Iran. Especially when the other power is as potent a competitor as China. China depends on Iran for 11 percent of its imported oil. The idea of joining in a de facto embargo of Iranian oil through ostracism of the Iranian central bank thus naturally discomfits the Chinese. It is still unclear exactly how Beijing will play this one, as it considers how the issue affects both its relations with the United States and the state of its energy-thirsty economy. An obvious response is to work ever harder to shore up China's relations with the other Persian Gulf oil producers. That is largely what Chinese premier Wen Jiabao's current trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates is about.

Chinese diplomacy is not necessarily always opposed to U.S. interests, but the overall pattern as China has endeavored to secure sources of energy for itself has not been encouraging. Getting oil has taken precedence over issues important to the international community. China's major investment in the Sudanese oil industry (from which China gets another 5 percent of its imported oil) has gotten in the way of any Chinese help on the Darfur problem. (More recently, however, with the secession of South Sudan, China's interest in keeping the oil flowing may give it an incentive to be helpful. It dispatched a mediator last month to help resolve a dispute between Sudan and South Sudan over arrangements for exporting the South's oil through the North.)

The Future of Sino-American Relations

David Gompert, Phillip Saunders — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

David Gompert

Phillip Saunders

East Asia has again become a top priority for America following a decade of preoccupation with terrorism. Much has changed: China is now an economic, technological and military power second only to the United States. This ascendance poses new challenges for U.S. friends and interests in the region and raises the strategic stakes for the United States. Though its nuclear doctrine emphasizes deterrence and no first use, China is fielding second-generation nuclear forces that can overwhelm U.S. missile defenses and strike the United States. Of greater concern, China is developing capabilities to attack satellites and computer networks on which U.S. prosperity and security depend. For all its power, the United States is increasingly vulnerable to strategic attack.

Yet China likewise faces the paradox of power, whereby greater strength brings greater vulnerability. The main reason is that—in the three strategic domains of nuclear, space and cyberspace—technology favors strategic offensive capabilities over strategic defensive capabilities. As each power becomes more reliant on data flowing though space and cyberspace, there follows an increasing potential harm from attacks on satellites and networks, including Chinese satellites and networks. If the Chinese think that being more powerful makes them less vulnerable, they are wrong.

Schemes That Set the Desert on Fire

David Ignatius — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 09:00:00 +0000

David Ignatius

James Barr, A Line in the Sand: The Anglo-French Struggle for the Middle East, 1914–1948 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2012), 464 pp., $29.95.

THERE’S A knotted strand of Arab conspiracy thinking that goes roughly as follows: The modern Middle East is a plot hatched by colonialists and Zionists. Israel was implanted in Palestine by Western imperialists for their own cynical reasons. The Arabs have been manipulated and deceived by the West at every turn. Their history is a narrative framed by spies and saboteurs.

I’ve been listening to versions of this paranoid story during more than thirty years of traveling in the Middle East. Often, such Arab complaints of perpetual victimization seem part of a broken political culture. Not to mention that it’s tedious listening to so much whining about plots by outsiders.

But here’s the strange thing: This theme of victimization is surprisingly accurate, at least in terms of the early twentieth century. Life for Arabs has, in fact, been shaped by the conspiratorial plots and schemes of Western imperialists. If the Arabs are passive and sullen toward Israel and the West, it’s partly because they have been objects of history rather than its subjects. Their narrative, or at least its early twentieth-century chapters, was written in secret, by others.

The Contradictions of George Kennan

Christopher Layne — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 09:00:00 +0000

Christopher Layne

John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (New York: Penguin, 2011), 800 pp., $39.95.

GEORGE F. KENNAN—diplomat, foreign-policy analyst, historian, social critic, memoirist—has been the focus of much scholarly attention. But it seems safe to say that Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis’s comprehensive biography comes as close as any book ever will to being the final word on Kennan. Based in part on extensive interviews with his subject over a quarter century, George F. Kennan: An American Life provides a rich, warts-and-all (and warts there were) portrait of a man widely regarded as the author of America’s grand strategy of containment at the dawn of the Cold War. Meticulously researched and wonderfully written, Gaddis’s opus works on two levels: it penetrates Kennan’s complex psychology and personality with deep insight, and it offers up an intellectual history of the Cold War, seen through the prism of how Kennan’s views influenced, and failed to influence, American foreign policy during that tension-filled epoch.

Obama and the GOP on Foreign Policy: Reactive vs. Frivolous

Dimitri K. Simes — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Dimitri K. Simes

It was a bad year for U.S. foreign policy. Public-opinion polls suggest that more Americans approve than disapprove of President Barack Obama’s handling of foreign affairs—49 percent to 44 percent. On issues such as terrorism and Iraq, Mr. Obama is doing even better. Unfortunately, the optimistic assessments reflect the American preoccupation with the economy and a lack of attention to the world in the absence of a major war. The simplistic and spotty nature of our international coverage, combined with the pitiful level of Republican presidential debates, contribute to our lack of alarm as to the direction in which America is going internationally.

After President Obama’s nearly three years in office, it’s hard to find a single area where he was able to significantly advance U.S. national interests. The Noble Peace Prize winner cannot claim with a straight face that the world has become more stable and harmonious on his watch.

The president did have his share of victories. But they were not strategically significant, and many came with serious unintended consequences. The killing of Osama bin Laden was a personal triumph for Obama. But, while the number-one terrorist deserved to die, he was yesterday’s mastermind. Bin Laden’s operational control from his Pakistani hiding place was limited, and most of his charisma among Arabs and Muslims was gone, as the Arab Spring persuasively demonstrated.

Washington’s Clumsy China Containment Policy

Ted Galen Carpenter — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:54:50 +0000

Ted Galen Carpenter

Although U.S. officials have insisted for years that they do not regard China’s rise to great-power status as a threatening development, Washington’s statements and actions increasingly belie those assurances. Any doubt on that point disappeared following President Obama’s November 17 speech in Canberra, Australia. In his address to the Australian parliament, Obama boldly asserted that “the United States is a Pacific power, and we are here to stay.” Observers in Australia and throughout the region interpreted that comment as sending a message to China that the United States was not about to quietly relinquish its hegemony in East Asia and let the PRC become the leading power.

The Canberra speech was not the only measure that suggested that Washington was adopting a harder line toward Beijing on security issues. Just hours before his address to parliament, Obama announced that the United States would send military aircraft and as many as 2,500 Marines to northern Australia over the next few years to develop a training hub to assist allies and protect American interests throughout the region.