What Happens When America Is No Longer the Undisputed Super Power?

THE TRIFECTA of the worst pandemic in a century, the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, and civil unrest not seen since the 1960s are inspiring predictions of the diminution of American power and an accelerated fin de siècle breakdown of the post-Cold War order. This predicament has given rise to a panoply of essays and reports, a series of them in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs alone, debating “The World After the Pandemic,” with variations on how the United States must, phoenix-like, shape a new order. One recent example that is emblematic of the Washington foreign policy mainstream emanates from the Council on Foreign Relations. It is entitled The End of World Order and American Foreign Policy, by Robert Blackwill and Thomas Wright.

While it articulately sketches the damage wrought by COVID-19, a collapsed economy, and the challenges ahead, like many of its predecessors, it rests on some dubious assumptions. It also appears to substantially discount both the role of the United States as a causal factor—not least, the cost of Donald Trump’s systematic efforts to undo the multilateral system—and the degree of difficulty of repairing a broken U.S. political system that is an impediment to restoring U.S. stature. Similarly underestimated are the costs to the moral authority and legitimacy of U.S. leadership resulting from U.S. political tribalism and behavior in the world this century, qualitatively worsened by the wrecking ball of the current president. Moreover, their recommendations often consist of well-trodden bromides that fail to acknowledge the difficult reforms required to achieve them.

Chief among the flawed assumptions is their belief that perpetual U.S. primacy is both desirable and possible, the “indispensable nation”—a cliché well past its sell-by date that ex-diplomat Nicholas Burns repeated in a recent Harvard Magazine essay. This is a core assumption to most grand strategy plans. They grossly underestimate the degree to which U.S. stature has diminished, while at the same time overestimating U.S. leverage and, crucially, domestic support for it. It is a testament to American leadership in the post-World War II period that so many countries were able to rise, with China chief among them. This redistribution of power is one of the dilemmas of the success of the post-World War II system the United States engineered. There is no denying the shift in wealth and power from West to East, of which U.S.-driven globalization was one of the principal motors. But with developing states comprising a half or more of global gdp—and a large and growing portion of their trade and investment with China and each other—can we really expect that they would fall in line with the United States continuing to run the world forever? After all, Chinese, Russian, Indian, Iranian, and other civilizations predate the United States by several millennia. Samuel Huntington may have been wrong on many counts, particularly in asserting the inevitability of the clash of civilizations, but was right in noting that other nations are apt to think they are superior and wouldn’t want to defer to America forever.

Moreover, the United States hasn’t helped itself in the past two decades by mismanaging the global system, championing regime change and democracy promotion programs that have resulted in failure, and seeding more instability than countering it. The ever-lengthening conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan should have been a wake-up call. But no—the United States and its allies destabilized Libya under the rubric of “humanitarian intervention” and then walked away.

THE PROBLEM with failure is that it seeds the ambitions of others. Simultaneous with the foreign policy failures, the United States all-but brought the global system down in the 2008 financial crisis. At that point, China began to be convinced that the United States was in decline. U.S. incompetence in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced perceptions of decline. While we like to forget, if not forgive ourselves, for our blunders, others are not as charitable. Credibility is a terrible thing to lose.

Domestically, the American public finds the costs of U.S. hegemony too high and the benefits too small. That is one of the lessons of the Trump phenomenon. Written before the eruption of protests inside America, the Blackwill and Wright strategy fails to fathom the magnitude of the problems at home. It understates the depth of U.S. dysfunction this century, its broken political system and the public’s sense of distrust—including of modern medical science—and the difficulty in fixing it. No hegemonic power can effectively run the world while ignoring long-festering domestic schisms and calls for reform. The post-Second World War G.I. bill—which rebuilt the middle class with its low-cost mortgages, low-interest loans to start a business or farm, and tuition payments—was a prerequisite to Truman’s success in convincing the American public to reengage in a global fight against Communism. Finding a scapegoat in China for America’s problems at home and even tariffs against Chinese imports are not a long-term solution for the U.S. middle class. 

Only by dealing directly with the problems of the middle class—slipping educational achievement by its sons and daughters and the lack of well-paying jobs—will we have a chance to rebuild our credibility and standing. The challenge is defining a new social contract. Any proposed strategy must suggest a way out of this predicament, not simply say it should happen, as Blackwill and Wright assert. This sort of facile assertion is similarly an attribute of other prescriptive treatises of this genre.

The good news is that we have an opportunity. COVID-19 has almost been as bad as the Great Depression in turning 20 percent or more out of work. Populism, resulting in Trump’s 2016 election, was built on the anger and resentment of former workers in the manufacturing sector seeing their jobs disappear. Even if COVID-19 doesn’t make many salaried workers redundant, automation and AI may soon eliminate or disrupt the job market for much of the workforce. This is a problem facing workers from the factory floor to the professions everywhere. If the United States could be a leader in reforming its social protections, upping educational achievements, and instituting lifelong training opportunities, then maybe it could be a model for helping other countries to adapt to the modern super-charged technological age.

Then there is the issue of diversity. Anti-immigration sentiment and racism are on the upsurge. America used to welcome immigrants, providing the country with a huge demographic and economic advantage. We made great strides in the 1960s on civil rights and allowing non-whites to find a home in America. The United States does have an opportunity to show the world how to tackle this major issue tearing at the social fabric in most advanced economies. It is a mistake to underestimate U.S. resilience. The protracted national protests this summer, sparked by the police killing of George Floyd, and polls indicating substantial shifts in views on racial injustice, may be a glimmer of such resilience ahead. But it’s way overdue to think about the domestic and foreign policies as two sides of the same coin. The more we can turn ourselves back into a model for others, showing how deep-seated problems can be tackled, the better able we will be to re-attract followers. 

Unfortunately, COVID-19 has had the opposite effect. The U.S. response, viewed as pitiable incompetence, also looks miserly towards others in the developing world, granting China fertile ground to expand its influence. The Trump administration has made it clear that Americans come first in line for any vaccine—even if the United States must commandeer suppliers from foreign producers. If China leapfrogs ahead in this zero-sum competition for vaccine development, where would that leave the United States?

If we revert to becoming the shining example for others, then we have a chance of recovering our leadership, though not as the unipolar power. Moreover, we can show to the world and ourselves that democracy works. More true democracies elsewhere would be good for our interests. But we should not delude ourselves into thinking, as have the authors of the strategy paper and numerous other prescriptive essays, that an alliance of democracies will do the trick, ending the need to deal with others who don’t share our values. Just as we must find a modus vivendi for dealing peaceably with diversity at home, so it is the same for devising a winning foreign policy. The current downward spiral of mutual vilification and all-out confrontation in U.S.-China relations seems to preclude diplomatic efforts to find such an equilibrium. Stable coexistence shouldn’t require China to embrace Western values. We need to define the terms of competition and set redlines so that competition does not turn into conflict. Right now, we don’t even have the same brakes against head-on confrontation that were put in place with the Soviets after the Cuban Missile Crisis.

BLACKWILL AND Wright are right to revisit the writings of Henry Kissinger. But they seem to idealize what constitutes world order and hence conclude, perhaps accurately, that constructing one may not be possible. They cite Kissinger in A World Restored as explaining that order and stability result not from a desire to pursue peace or justice, but from a “generally accepted legitimacy” and are “based on an equilibrium of forces.” That is to say, the acceptance of a common framework of agreed rules and understandings among the major powers—including adversaries and rivals—of permissible behavior and a balance of power that enforces them.

A rough balance of legitimacy and power—requiring periodic adjustments—persisted over the past seventy years. The bipolar world of the Cold War balanced two separate competing systems; from 1989 until recently, the liberal rules-based order, globalized with the demise of the Soviet empire, constituted a system that yielded unprecedented global prosperity and stability among major powers. Of critical importance, domestically, from Harry S. Truman to George H.W. Bush, there was a core bipartisan consensus for Cold War containment; from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama, ample bipartisan support for the rules-based liberal order. Of late, the cumulative damage from the U.S. 2003 invasion of Iraq, the 2008 financial crisis, the rise of China, a rejuvenated Russia, and the downside of globalization have torn the connective tissues of that world. The scales are tipped toward power, with diminished legitimacy.

Understanding the causality of an unraveling system is the first step toward shaping a viable order. But in sourcing the causes of a fraying order since 9/11, the authors attribute it to “a combination of great power ambition, American withdrawal and transformational changes that left many nations unmoored from old certainties.” They offer a long list of mainly Russian and Chinese transgressions—from Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, intervention in Syria, and the 2016 U.S. elections, to Beijing’s assertiveness in multilateral fora, economic coercion, and aggression in the South China Sea.

All true. But absent from the list is any U.S. agency: the hubris of the “unipolar moment” in “humanitarian interventions,” blind faith in globalization, expanding nato to Russian borders and discounting predictable consequences. Post-9/11, there was the invasion of Iraq, creating a cascade of events destabilizing the entire region; the 2008 financial crisis which helped foster the surge of populism; the Libya fiasco, and more—all certainly causal factors. Yet with regard to U.S. agency, only an amorphous “withdrawal” is cited as a factor. But from where, exactly? By any metric, U.S. roles in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East have not qualitatively diminished, however irrelevant to ameliorating the region’s multiple conflicts. Trump’s “America First” has certainly torn the fabric of the U.S.-designed post-World War II economic and security system and created perceptions of U.S. retreat. Yet all those pivotal developments of the previous two decades preceded it, and their interaction with, and impact on, other major powers certainly led to the current condition.

WE ARE told that the “fundamental strategic problem the United States faces with respect to world order is how it should respond to the breakdown in agreed arrangements between the major powers.” Yes, but all breakdowns are not equal, and in some respects, the United States is the outlier. Is there a breakdown in arrangements with Europe, India, and Japan? Is American retreat from otherwise functioning institutions (the Paris Climate Accord, UNESCO, WHO, Iran nuclear deal, TPP, etc.) a strategic problem requiring U.S. agency to fix, or an own goal? Is a world where China, Thailand, and the UK join TPP—an increasingly likely scenario as multilateral Free Trade Agreements continue to expand—a disorder problem? Similarly, the confrontations between Turkey and Russia to shape outcomes in Libya and Syria illustrate new geopolitical dynamics in the Middle East, sans Washington.

 These developments reflect a shifting global distribution of power, and a reality that American abdication of leadership and perceptions of unreliability have pushed many, including U.S. allies and partners, to develop post-U.S. coping/hedging policies. This is evidenced in frenzied EU free trade arrangements with Japan, ASEAN, Vietnam, Mexico, MERCOSUR, among others. Similarly, the growing intra-Asian security cooperation networks—Japan-India-Vietnam-Australia-Philippines—in response to concerns about China are unprecedented and exemplify this trend.

When it comes to Russia and China, an unsustainable, increasingly unrestrained economic and geostrategic competition is emerging. Let us put aside, for now, the wisdom of defining both China and Russia—two of the world’s largest militaries, nuclear weapons states, and in China’s case, the world’s number one trading power, capital exporter, and a leading high-tech state—as adversarial competitors. To be fair, both Xi Jinping’s radical totalitarianism and Vladimir Putin’s Eurasian chauvinist regime constitute problems for much of the world.

But what to make of the suggestion that reconstituting an inclusive world order may be too difficult, so instead, perhaps the United States should, the authors argue, “concentrate on improving its own ordering options in accordance with its values regardless of whether China, Russia or others go along.” The United States should,” they add, “rebuild the core coalition of like-minded liberal democratic states.” The appeal of an order of “like-minded” democracies as a default world order, a view gaining wide appeal, is well articulated by John Ikenberry in Foreign Affairs. It is worth recalling Henry Kissinger’s analysis of the post-Versailles Treaty world: 

Two overlapping and contradictory postwar orders were coming into being: the world of rules and international law, inhabited primarily by Western democracies in their interactions with each other; and an unconstrained zone appropriated by powers that had withdrawn from this system of limits to achieve greater freedom of action … the Versailles order achieved neither legitimacy or equilibrium.

Mobilizing U.S. allies and like-minded partners into a coalition to shape updated rules and norms is, indeed, the requisite beginning of any viable U.S. strategy. It could build the leverage to shape much-needed new rules, norms and the terms of competition/coexistence—China is only 16 percent of the global economy. But as a successor to the post-World War II order, it is deeply problematic. First, there is Lord Palmerston—nations have “permanent interests” rather than permanent allies or adversaries. Democracies may have a community of values—an important factor—but geography, economics, and culture are also powerful forces shaping perceived interests, often in tension with values. Look no further than the array of U.S.-Europe disputes, from climate policy, global health, Iran, China, the Nordstream II pipeline, and so on, to name a few. Not to mention, as the report points out, a trend of illiberal democracies—Turkey, Hungary, Poland, for starters. Then there is the underestimation of how much U.S. behavior has dissipated its legitimacy and reliability, the global perceptions of what the authors call a “dysfunctional superpower—one unable to pass budgets, manage its debt, ratify treaties, or carry out a coherent and consistent foreign policy.” Some might add, an inability to put medical science ahead of polarized, tribal politics.

More importantly, has there been a stable world order in the history of civilization that did not include some balance and shared assumptions about expected behavior among major powers? In the pre-nuclear, pre-automobile/plane/train, pre-information and communications technologies era, mostly separate, parallel orders were possible. For example, the peace of Westphalia did not include Russia or Chinese tributary systems or the Muslim Ottoman Empire, which largely operated in separate spheres. Even then, they bumped up against each other—consider the Ottoman invasions of Europe. But is that possible today? Can they find “another way toward a stable and acceptable equilibrium and marginalize major powers like China and Russia?”

Moreover, despite tariffs, sanctions, and a decoupling push, China remains the top U.S. trading partner. Similarly, Beijing is the largest trading partner of the EU and most U.S. allies and partners in Asia, as well as a leading exporter of capital, as its $1.2 trillion Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) underscores. How does a world order absent China work? The authors argue that the “gap between the U.S. and China is too large to bridge.” Perhaps. But has diplomacy to narrow that gap and define the terms of competition been exhausted?

Beijing’s policies are not necessarily set in stone. Xi Jinping’s radical revolution changed China’s policies, walking back from his own market-focused reforms agreed to at the 19th Party Congress. If the costs outweigh the benefits, they could be altered once more. The point is to test whether China’s unacceptable aspirations and what Beijing can ultimately live with are two different things. The current tit-for-tat, mindlessly escalating confrontation has, so far, precluded that.

The collective weight of the other 84 percent of the global economy could provide leverage to roll back some of Xi’s predatory mercantilist policies. By not assembling a coalition (e.g.; EU, Japan, Australia, Republic of Korea) to push back against China’s breaching of norms in the WTO, UN Law of the Sea Treaty, and other norms, the Trump administration has turned what should be a “China vs. the World” problem into a United States vs. China problem—even as a still inchoate global backlash against Beijing’s imperious behavior is surging.

Then there is the issue of nuclear weapons, which require some core accepted rules and redlines. The unraveling of the architecture of restraint vis-à-vis Russia, and the prospect of 1960s-like renewed arms races, though this time with China as a complicating factor, is a danger. The global commons—air, sea, space, cyber—are increasingly contested. Moreover, emerging technologies—AI, offensive cyber, anti-space, and hypersonic missiles—all create new threats to crisis stability, with the ability to put second-strike capabilities at risk. Not least, there are pressing transnational threats—pandemics, climate change, the oceans, food/water, natural disasters, terrorism, narcotrafficking—that are mutual vulnerabilities and require international cooperation to redress.

BUT ARE there competing visions of world order that obviate the possibility of finding a stable, minimally acceptable balance among the major powers? China has been selectively revisionist and what we would call invented irredentist, reclaiming territories—e.g.; in the East and South China Seas—it imagines were Chinese “since ancient times.” Beijing has largely accepted most multilateral institutions—the UN system, IMF, WTO, WHO, etc.—predictably seeking to bend the rules in its interests. Beijing’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, for example, has so far appeared more as another regional development bank, working closely with the Asian Development Bank and World Bank/International Finance Corporation rather than upending established institutions. However, the BRI is a macro-example of Beijing’s efforts to build Sino-centric arrangements and influence on the Eurasian landmass, though the jury is still out on it.

Putin’s Russia appears less focused on an alternative global order than on its irredentist agenda—Crimea being the most ostentatious—to glue together as many pieces of the former USSR as possible and re-establish itself as a world power—and a potential spoiler if it is ignored. Its Eurasian, ethno-nationalist, Russian Orthodox traditionalism has generated some international appeal among white nationalists, but it appears primarily a domestic political device to rationalize Moscow’s kleptocracy—one increasingly challenged by COVID-19, demographic decline, and economic stagnation.

Both Russia and China are pursuing spheres of influence. In Moscow’s case, this is the former Soviet Union, along with a larger footprint in the Middle East and globally. Beijing, while prioritizing East Asia, through its BRI it seeks to build influence across the Eurasian landmass, and with massive loans and investment in Africa and Latin America as well. In addition, its “united front” tactics seek to build networks of influence in the United States and elsewhere. Its assertive maritime activities, in defiance of international law, is “enforcing sovereignty” over contested reefs and islets in the South China Sea, creating a fait accompli, a bit like Crimea, reclaiming islets with a “great wall of sand” and military installations.

In theory, the United States opposes sphere of influence geopolitics, which the U.S.-enforced rules-based order had, until recently, largely precluded. But as Graham Allison has argued, the United States has de facto opted to live with many of the spheres of influence carved out in this century (and in the previous century, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968). In the cases of Crimea and previous Russian actions toward Georgia, the United States has not defined them as vital interests to go to war over; with regard to China, despite increasingly high-profile freedom of navigation operations and escalated military deployments, the United States, while rejecting the legality of Beijing’s territorial claims, as did the World Court at the Hague in 2016, has not contested the revised status quo China is creating in the South China Sea. In effect, there appears to be something of a hybrid system, fraying multilateral rules-based institutions and norms, growing major power competition and a grudging toleration of spheres of interest in a world of a diffused distribution of power. What are China’s legitimate interests, and what sort of bigger footprint can the United States live with? Similarly, with regard to Russia, what is required for a business-like modus vivendi?

The current situation appears to be a downward spiral of incremental disorder and confrontation. The evidence strongly suggests that a stable equilibrium, perhaps even human survival, requires some fundamental constraints, agreed standards and rules among major powers. It is difficult to conceive of a stable, prosperous bifurcated world order, with a core of like-minded democratic states shaping rules and norms, and a hope that China, Russia, and their clients would simply be rule-takers. Rather, it would more likely resemble a less functional version of current reality, careening toward greater misfortune.

This is not to say avoiding such a fate will be quick or easy. Indeed, it may take a catastrophic shock before the major powers bottom out and gain a new sobriety. The recommendations the authors, and many similar treatises offer are mostly sensible, but much easier said than done. They tend to understate U.S. political malaise and buoyant populist nationalism worldwide impeding corrective action and assume an inflated sense of U.S. leverage. To their credit, they point out that the United States has an over-militarized foreign policy and has failed to coherently employ the tools of national power to maximize its leverage, and recognize that a radically different approach to U.S. allies and partners is required. However, some are well-trodden ground or too facile: phase down in the Middle East; ramp up the U.S. military posture in Asia to increase leverage with China; condition dialogue with Russia on non-interference in U.S. elections and resolution of the Ukraine conflict; reform and strengthen multilateral institutions; enhance ties to India; and create a “competent model of U.S. governance.”

The point is that many analysts have pointed to the direction things need to go in order to avoid worst-case scenarios. It is not enough to simply issue a wish list. The challenge is to explain how movement toward desired outcomes can be made possible. Rejuvenating the U.S. political system, of course, but how to end the rot of tribal politics?

RECLAIMING U.S. leadership requires redefining it. It requires a new mental map and an adjustment in U.S. strategic culture. Strategy is the aligning of means and ends, otherwise, it is just hallucination. This requires reassessing and recalibrating vital U.S. interests in light of past failures and changing global dynamics.

That, in turn, requires understanding the changing nature of power, and not least, understanding the limits of power. Power is the ability to obtain desired outcomes. Look no further than the failed U.S. policies toward Iran, North Korea, or Venezuela—not to mention the endless Middle East wars. One lesson from Iraq and Afghanistan is that military prowess, more often than not, does not necessarily translate into policy outcomes. As former Secretary of State James Baker wrote in his political memoir, “Effective US leadership often depends on the ability to persuade others to join us so we can extend our influence; to build a coalition, a diplomat needs to appreciate what objectives, arguments, and trade-offs are important to would-be partners.” Contrast that with tariffs, sanctions, and demands for surrender, the hallmark of Trump foreign policy.

Power has diffused, and is situational: 5+1 Iran nuclear talks and the six-party talks on North Korea are good examples. Ad hoc multilateralism, coalitions of the willing with partners assembled based on what they bring to the table on a given issue, is key to problem solving. For all its flaws, the G20, which represents 85 percent of the world population and 80 percent of the global economy, played an important role in the 2008–09 financial crisis. Reform to increase functionality, perhaps by adding an executive committee of major powers, could result in a more useful forum for building consensus and legitimizing power. Such variable geometry may be as important as longstanding alliances in many cases. This may mean including non-state actors in some cases, whether the Gates Foundation on global health issues or Big Tech companies on cybersecurity in some cases.

There remains a broad desire for credible U.S. leadership, and no clear, widely-accepted alternative. But reclaiming U.S. leadership requires moving beyond the assumption of primacy, which, in reality, has already been dissipating, to a new model. The one that comes to mind is primus inter pares, a sharing of power and responsibility. It requires a more agile mentality, one that challenges U.S. political culture and the tyranny of the familiar. This first among equals approach would restore a broad sense of legitimacy to U.S. power, pooling it with others that would gain a greater sense of enfranchisement. The flip side is that burdens would be more shared. Gulf oil goes mainly to China, Japan, and India; why should the United States be the guardian of the Gulf? This sense of shared responsibility would also be likely to garner more domestic support. Aligning U.S. politics to foreign policies is crucial to establishing a stable domestic foundation for a future U.S. role in the world.

Mathew Burrows, a former career intelligence official and author of The Future Declassified, is Director of the Atlantic Council’s Foresight, Strategy and Risks Initiative.

Robert A. Manning is a senior fellow of the Scowcroft Center for International Security at the Atlantic Council. He served as a senior counselor to the undersecretary of state for global affairs from 2001 to 2004, a member of the U.S. Department of State Policy Planning Staff from 2004 to 2008, and on the National Intelligence Council’s Strategic Futures Group, 2008–2012.