The American Way of Victory
Mini Teaser: The twentieth century witnessed, and its course was largely defined by, a trilogy of American wartime victories. But in the aftermath of the first two, the peace was lost. After the Cold War, will it happen again?
The twentieth century, the first American century, was also the
century of three world wars. The United States was not only
victorious in the First World War, the Second World War and the Cold
War, but it was more victorious than any of the other victor powers.
As the pre-eminent victor power, the subsequent strategies of the
United States did much to shape the three postwar worlds. They
therefore also did much to prepare the ground for the second and
third world wars in the sequence. Now, ten years after the American
victory in that third, cold, world war, it is time to evaluate the
U.S. victor strategies of the 1990s and to consider if they will make
the twenty-first century a second American century, this time one of
world peace and prosperity, or if they could lead, sometime in the
next few decades, to a fourth world war.
The First and Second British Centuries
Like America at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Britain in
the early nineteenth century had passed through a century of three
wars that were worldwide in scope--the War of the Spanish Succession
(1702-13), the Seven Years' War (1756-63) and the successive Wars of
the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815). Britain had
been victorious in each of these wars, making the eighteenth century
something of a British one. The victor strategy that Britain pursued
after the Napoleonic Wars laid the foundations for what has been
called "the Hundred Years Peace" (1815-1914), making the second
British century as peaceful as the first one had been warlike.
The central elements of the British victor strategy were four; two
involved international security and two involved the international
economy. The security elements were established immediately after the
victory over Napoleon. They were, first, a British-managed balance of
power system on the European continent, and, second, British naval
supremacy in the rest of the world. The economic elements were
established about a generation later. They involved, third, British
industrial supremacy operating in an open international economy
(Britain serving as "the workshop of the world"), and, fourth,
British financial supremacy, also operating in an open international
economy (the City of London serving as "the world's central bank").
By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, British naval and
industrial supremacy were threatened by the spectacular growth of
German military and economic power. When in August 1914 it appeared
that Germany was about to destroy the Continental balance of power
system with its invasion of Belgium and France, Britain went to war
to stop it. The Hundred Years Peace and the second British century
came to a crashing and catastrophic end with the First World War.
Victory therefore presents a profound challenge to a victor power,
especially to a pre-eminent one: it must create a victor strategy to
order the postwar world in a way that does not lead to a new major
war. The British victor strategy after the Napoleonic Wars was
successful in meeting this challenge for almost a century. But even
this sophisticated strategy ultimately proved inadequate to the task
of managing the problems posed by the rise of a new and very
assertive power. As shall be discussed below, the American victor
strategies after the First and Second World Wars were similar to the
earlier British one in their efforts to combine several different
dimensions of international security and economy; indeed, the
American strategies relied upon some of the same elements,
particularly naval, industrial and financial supremacy. They did not,
however, succeed in preventing the Second World War and the Cold War.
The fundamental question for our time is whether the American victor
strategies after the Cold War will succeed in preventing some kind of
a new world war in the next century.
As it happens, the Spring 2000 issue of The National Interest
contained an array of articles that can help us address this
question. In considering the lessons that can be drawn from the
earlier American experiences of living with victory, I shall be
making use of them. In particular, these lessons underline the
importance of managing the rise of Chinese military and economic
power and of doing so in ways similar to those that Zbigniew
Brzezinski advocates in his "Living With China." They also underline
the danger but potential relevance of the arguments that Robert Kagan
and William Kristol advance in their essay, "The Present Danger."
Living With Victory After the First World War
It took four years of war and the massive engagement of the United
States before, in November 1918, the Western Allies succeeded in
defeating Germany. But even in defeat, the nation whose rise to
military and economic power Britain had failed to manage still
retained most of its inherent strengths. The German problem, which
had been at the center of international relations before the war, was
redefined by the Allied victory, but it was still there, and Western
victory still had to focus upon the German reality.
Germany remained the central nation on the European continent.
Demographically, it had the largest and best educated population in
Europe. (Russia, although it had a larger population, was convulsed
by revolution and civil war.) Economically, it had the largest and
most advanced industry in Europe. Strategically, it faced formidable
powers to the west (France and Britain), but to the east lay only new
and weak states (Poland and Czechoslovakia). In this sense, Germany's
strategic position was actually better after its defeat in the First
World War than it had been before the war began, when to the east it
had faced Russia as a great power. It would only be a matter of time
before Germany recovered its political unity, gathered up its
inherent strengths, and once again converted these into military and
economic power. This was the long-term reality that the victorious
Allies had to consider as they composed their victor strategies.
There were four basic strategies that different allies employed at
different times: territorial dismemberment, military containment,
security cooperation and economic engagement. These were not new
inventions; they derived from the strategies employed by victor
powers after earlier wars. The first two derived from territorial
annexations and frontier fortifications, strategies that the
Continental powers had used against each other in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. The last two derived from the "concert of
Europe", or balance of power system, and the open international
economy that Britain had managed in the nineteenth century. But these
strategies were not obsolescent conceptions; the latter three
prefigured the victor strategies that the United States would employ
after the Second World War and after the Cold War.
Territorial dismemberment and military containment.
One apparent solution to the German problem was territorial
dismemberment. This was the strategy preferred by France. The
dismemberment of a defeated enemy can sometimes be carried out by
victorious powers, and the Allies did so with that other Central
Power in World War I, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. But while this
division destroyed a former adversary, it unleashed a sort of
international anarchy in southeastern Europe that still reverberates
today. Dismemberment is also what happened to the Soviet Union after
the Cold War. Here too, while this division greatly diminished a
former adversary, it has unleashed internal and international anarchy
in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Whatever might be the advantages of dismemberment as a victor
strategy, they were not applicable to Germany in 1919. By that time,
the German nation had become a solid reality with a solid identity;
it could not be permanently undone by artificial territorial
divisions, unless these were enforced by military occupation (which
is how the division of Germany was to be enforced after the Second
World War). There are today a few international analysts who argue
that the United States should encourage the territorial division of
troublesome powers, particularly Russia and China. There are,
however, hardly any specialists on China or even Russia who believe
that a permanent division of these nations is possible.
An alternative but closely related solution to the German problem was
military containment. This was the objective of the Treaty of
Versailles, which set up what was known as the Versailles system to
carry it out. Military containment was another victor strategy chosen
by France, and in the early 1920s the French were quite active at
implementing it, as in their military occupation of the Ruhr in 1923.
The Democratic administration of President Woodrow Wilson advanced a
kinder, gentler version of the Versailles system in its proposals for
a League of Nations and a U.S. security guarantee to France and
Britain. The military containment of Germany embodied in the security
guarantee would be institutionalized and legitimatized in a
collective security system embodied in the League. But, of course,
the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate rejected these proposals, and
the United States never again considered the strategy of military
containment as a solution to the German problem.
Economic engagement and security cooperation.
Instead, a few years later, the United States addressed the German
problem (now accentuated by the unstable French occupation of the
Ruhr) with a strategy of economic engagement. This took the form of
the Dawes Plan, an ingenious project for financial recycling, in
which American banks loaned capital to Germany, Germany paid war
reparations to France and Britain, and France and Britain repaid war
debts to the American banks. The Dawes Plan thus encouraged an open
international economy among the most advanced economies, and it
sought to integrate Germany into this mutually beneficial system.
The Dawes Plan succeeded very well from 1924 to 1929. It formed the
basis for Germany's reintegration not only into the international
economic system but into the international security system as well.
It encouraged France and Britain to develop a new strategy of
security cooperation toward Germany. In 1925 they signed the Lucarno
security treaty with Germany, and in 1926 Germany entered the League
of Nations. The new American strategy of economic engagement seemed
to be working far better than the earlier French strategy of military
containment.
But as Charles Kindleberger famously demonstrated in his 1973 book,
The World in Depression 1929-1939, an open international economic
system requires an "economic hegemon" to keep it running, in bad
times as well as good. The economic hegemon performs three essential
functions: (1) providing long-term loans and investments (as in the
Dawes Plan); (2) providing short-term credits and foreign exchange in
times of currency crises; and (3) opening its markets to receive the
exports of economies that are passing through recession. Britain had
performed these functions before the First World War, and they in
turn had provided the economic foundations for the Hundred Years
Peace. After the war, however, Britain no longer had the economic
strength to play the hegemon role, even though it still had the will.
Conversely, the United States now had the economic strength but had
not yet developed the will. The Dawes Plan was only one step in the
right direction, and it was a step in only one dimension. Still, for
a few years in the prosperous 1920s, the international economy seemed
to be operating well enough without an economic hegemon.
The prosperous and open international economic system of the 1920s
allowed the victor powers to engage in a strategy of security
cooperation (or even appeasement, then still an innocuous term).
Given the success of the strategies of economic engagement and
security cooperation, the strategy of military containment appeared
unnecessary or even counterproductive, and it was largely abandoned
even by France. But, with the exception of the Dawes Plan, neither
Britain nor the United States stepped forward to assume leadership in
managing either the German problem or the international economy, in
good times or bad.
With the beginning of the Great Depression (which Kindleberger
ascribed to the failure of the United States to act as an economic
hegemon), the prosperous and open economic system of the 1920s
collapsed and was replaced with the impoverished and closed economic
system of the 1930s. Whereas the prosperity system had permitted a
strategy of appeasement, the poverty system required a strategy of
containment. But for political reasons (polarization between the Left
and the Right), France in the 1930s no longer had the political will
to provide leadership for such a strategy.
Leadership in managing the German problem fell by default to Britain,
which had never been a strong believer in the strategy of military
containment. It chose instead a modest version of the strategy of
economic engagement, at a time when the conditions of the Depression
made this no longer adequate and attractive for Germany. Further,
economic engagement seemed to imply a strategy of security
appeasement, which was now even less appropriate for Germany. As for
the United States, with the collapse of the Dawes Plan it gave up on
any effort to manage the German problem at all.
Thus, by the early 1930s, none of the three victor powers from World
War I--France, Britain and the United States--was pursuing a coherent
and consistent strategy to preserve its victory. With the coming to
power of the National Socialist regime, Germany decided to manage the
German problem in its own way. The Second World War was the result.
On the other side of the world in East Asia, the United States
pursued a quite different strategy. Here it faced the rising power of
Japan, which had been an ally of Britain since 1902 and which was one
of the victor powers in the First World War. Japan's growing military
and economic strengths and its ambitions in China presented a serious
challenge to the dominant powers in East Asia in the early 1920s, the
United States and Britain.
The Republican administration of President Warren G. Harding, and
particularly his secretary of state, Charles Evans Hughes, took the
lead in designing an innovative strategy of security cooperation to
deal with Japan. It convened a conference in Washington in 1921-22,
out of which came the following security elements: the Washington
Naval Treaty, an agreement between the United States, Britain and
Japan to limit the numbers of their battleships; the Four-Power
Treaty, which provided for consultations on security issues among
these three powers plus France; and the Nine-Power Treaty, which
provided for common principles and cooperation in regard to China.
These arrangements, which were later called "the Washington system",
were an elaboration of the U.S. strategy of security cooperation.
However, the United States did not develop a comparable strategy of
economic engagement for Japan, to serve as the basis for this
security strategy. Instead, it largely relied on conventional
international trade between the two nations, which seemed sufficient
in the prosperous and open international economy of the 1920s. But
with the beginning of the Great Depression, this international trade
largely collapsed, and the collapse of the Washington system of
security cooperation soon followed.
Thus by the mid-1920s, the United States had conceived of some
important elements for a victor strategy. In Europe, the Dawes Plan
echoed the nineteenth-century British use of financial power in an
open international economy. In East Asia, the Washington system
echoed the nineteenth-century British use of naval power and balance
of power management. But there was not much of a U.S. security
strategy in Europe or of a U.S. economic strategy in East Asia. The
U.S. victor strategies after the First World War had not added up to
a grand design. They failed to prevent the Great Depression and the
ensuing Second World War.
Why did the United States fail to adopt a coherent and consistent
victor strategy after World War I? The traditional explanation blames
American immaturity and "idealism", and the resulting "isolationism."
A related explanation blames the isolationism and protectionism of
the Republican Party. However, the Dawes Plan and the Washington
system were quite sophisticated projects (even by British standards)
that can hardly be described as isolationist--and these were projects
advanced by Republican administrations.
The main reason why the United States did not have a coherent and
consistent victor strategy was that its victory in 1918 was too
complete. As a result, in the 1920s the United States faced no
obvious great power adversary or "peer competitor", which could have
concentrated the American mind and provided the desirable coherence
and consistency. Conversely, in the 1930s the Great Depression
produced a real American isolationism. It also produced real great
power adversaries (Germany and Japan), but these posed quite
different strategic threats in quite different regions. This too made
it difficult for the United States to compose a coherent and
consistent strategy.
Living With Victory After the Second World War
The United States learned profound lessons from the failure of the
Versailles and Washington systems to manage the German and Japanese
problems and to prevent the Second World War. As it turned out, these
lessons were largely expanded versions of the lessons that the Wilson
administration, the Harding administration and the American bankers
had already learned from the First World War. As World War II was
drawing to a close, the United States took the lead in establishing a
number of international institutions that would complete the first
but abortive steps taken after the previous war.
Security cooperation and economic engagement.
On the security dimension, the United Nations was to succeed and
perfect the League of Nations. On the economic dimension, three
organizations were to help the United States perform the role of
economic hegemon, one for each of the three functions identified by
Kindleberger. The task of long-term lending would be promoted by the
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the World
Bank); the task of short-term currency support would be promoted by
the International Monetary Fund; and the task of opening trade would
be promoted by an International Trade Organization (ITO). Together,
the three organizations were known as the Bretton Woods system. As it
happened, the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate rejected the ITO
treaty in 1947, but a less institutionalized arrangement, the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, took its place. (Almost fifty years
later, the World Trade Organization was established, and this at last
completed the original grand design.) The overall victor strategy of
the United States was one of security cooperation based upon economic
engagement.
This strategy--and its elaborate United Nations and Bretton Woods
systems--might have been perfect for dealing with the German and
Japanese problems that existed after the First World War. But the
problems that now existed were altogether different. Whereas after
the first war Germany was not defeated enough, after the second it
was defeated too much. The victorious allies, including the United
States, could easily, and almost automatically, impose the
alternative and simpler victor strategy of territorial division and
military occupation, and at first they did so.
Conversely, whereas after the first war Russia was in a sense doubly
defeated (first by the German army and then by the chaos of the
Russian Revolution and Civil War), after the second it was doubly
victorious (first by defeating Germany and then by occupying or
annexing--along with its soon-to-be involuntary allies, Poland and
Czechoslovakia--the eastern half of it). The German problem suddenly
ceased to be the central problem of international security and
instead became a subordinate part of the new central problem, which
was the Russian one.
The United States initially tried to apply its overall strategy of
security cooperation and economic engagement to this new Russian
problem. But it was crucial to this strategy that it be implemented
through international institutions led by the United States, i.e.,
the United Nations and the Bretton Woods system. Both the strategy
and its systems were incompatible with the interests of the Soviet
Union, as those were defined by Stalin. Security cooperation and
economic engagement required some degree of an open society and a
free market, and these contradicted the closed society and command
economy that characterized the Soviet Union. Instead, the worldwide
reach of the American system was aborted by the Cold War and the
establishment of the Soviet bloc.
The United States therefore was only able to apply its strategy and
system to the Free World, especially the First World. In Europe, the
United Nations was replaced by NATO, and the Bretton Woods system was
reinforced by the Marshall Plan. NATO represented a sort of second
coming of Wilson's abortive security guarantee to France and Britain,
as was the Marshall Plan a second coming of the Dawes Plan. In East
Asia, the United States concluded a series of bilateral security
treaties and bilateral economic aid programs (including the Dodge
Plan for Japan). The ensemble of security treaties echoed the earlier
Washington system, and since it was based upon U.S. naval supremacy
in the Pacific, it also echoed earlier British strategies based upon
naval supremacy.
This American strategy and this system, whose prototypes had been
aborted after the First World War and whose applications were
confined to only half the world after the Second World War, were
extraordinarily successful where they did operate. They certainly
helped to solve a good part of the old German and Japanese problems.
However, they could not solve the new Russian problem (some
historians think that they even accentuated it). The result was the
Cold War.
Military containment.
The Russian problem was addressed by a version of the alternative
victor strategy, military containment--in this case, containment not
of the recently defeated enemy but of the victorious ally. By 1948
there had already been the sudden reversal of the alliance between
the Western Allies (Britain and the United States) and the Soviet
Union against Germany into an emerging alliance between the Western
Allies and Germany against the Soviet Union. The rapidity of the
transformation was quite breathtaking, but it was readily accepted by
the American public. (In his famous novel, 1984, written in 1948 as
this transformation was being completed, George Orwell portrayed the
sudden reversal of the alliance between Oceania and Eastasia against
Eurasia into an alliance between Oceania and Eurasia against
Eastasia.)
When the communists came to power on the Chinese mainland in 1949,
they presented a new security problem. For a brief time, the Truman
administration was inclined to hope that some version of the strategy
of security cooperation (perhaps based upon traditional Chinese
suspicions of Russia) and economic engagement would work to solve
this new Chinese problem, but this hope was aborted by Mao's alliance
with Stalin in January 1950, the Chinese entry into the Korean War in
November 1950, and the closed society and command economy that
characterized communist China.
The prosperous and open international economic system of the 1920s
had permitted a strategy of security cooperation or appeasement
toward Germany and Japan. But this was because these two nations had
capitalist economies and were willing to engage with a prosperous and
open international economy. When the international economy ceased to
be so, the basis for a strategy of security appeasement disappeared;
the only effective alternative would have been a strategy of military
containment.
The Soviet Union and communist China in the 1940s-50s, on the other
hand, were command economies. Because of this, they were not willing
to engage with an open international economy, even one that was
prosperous. Consequently, there was no basis for a strategy of
security cooperation (or appeasement). The alternative strategy of
military containment therefore became necessary. But although
containment of the Soviet Union and communist China was necessary, it
did present problems of its own. Military containment once led to
defeat for the United States (the Vietnam War) and once led to near
disaster for the world (the Cuban Missile Crisis). And military
containment by itself was not sufficient to defeat the Soviet Union,
to reform communist China, and to bring about a U.S. victory in the
Cold War. The successful and sustained operation of the free market
and open international economy in the First or Free World, in
contrast with the gradual but steady exhaustion of the command and
closed economic systems in the Second or Communist World, exerted a
magnetic force upon the Soviet Union and China, and drove them by the
1980s, each in its own way, to reform their economies and to engage
in the American-led international economic system. But of course this
did not happen quickly or easily. Forty years of Cold War and
military containment were the price.
Why did the United States succeed in adopting a generally coherent
and consistent victor strategy after the Second World War? The main
reason was that its victory was in some sense a Pyrrhic one. The
German enemy was replaced almost immediately by the Russian one, and
the Japanese enemy was soon replaced by the Chinese one. Even more,
since both enemies were communist and initially were in alliance,
they could easily be seen as one enormous enemy. This wonderfully
concentrated the American mind into a generally coherent and
consistent strategy in the late 1940s and 1950s.
Living With Victory After the Cold War
The circumstances of victory and defeat after the Cold War had more
in common with those pertaining after the First World War than those
after the Second.
The redefined Russian problem.
Russia was more defeated after the Cold War than Germany after the
First World War (but less defeated than Germany after the Second). As
the Soviet Union was reinvented as Russia, it lost a quarter of its
territory and half of its population. The Russian economy in the
1990s was beset both by deep depression and by high inflation, and
the Russian military was beset by weakness and incompetence, with
only an arsenal of nuclear weapons remaining as the legacy from the
era of Soviet power. The strategic position of Russia was removed
from the center to the periphery of the European continent, and it
remained the central nation only in the emptiness of Central Asia.
The Russian problem was redefined from being one of organized power
into one of organized crime. Only in 2000--with a new president,
Vladimir Putin, modest economic recovery and ambiguous military
success in the Chechnya war--are there signs that Russia may have
begun a revival to the degree that Germany did in the mid-1920s.
The U.S. victor strategy toward this "Weimar Russia" has been a
variation of that adopted toward Weimar Germany, a new version of the
strategy of security cooperation and economic engagement. Russia's
generally positive role in the United Nations echoes Germany's role
in the League. However, the enlargement of NATO into Eastern Europe
(really a form of military containment of Russia) echoes Wilson's
abortive security guarantee to Western Europe (really a form of
military containment of Germany). The extensive U.S. and
international economic aid to Russia echoes the Dawes Plan (although
it has not been nearly as extensive and effective as the Marshall
Plan). But just as the U.S. victor strategy toward Germany in the
1920s depended upon integrating that nation into an international
economy that remained open and prosperous, so too does the
contemporary U.S. victor strategy toward Russia. It would fail if
either the international economy collapsed into one that was closed
and depressed (like the 1930s), or if the Russian economy reverted
into one that was closed and command (like the 1940s-70s).
The new Chinese problem.
In East Asia, the United States faces the rising power of China, a
situation not unlike that it faced with Japan after the First World
War. China's growing economic and military strengths, and its goals
regarding Taiwan and the South China Sea, have presented a serious
challenge. Indeed, the Chinese problem after the Cold War has been an
even greater challenge for the United States than the Japanese
problem was after the First World War (although it is not nearly as
threatening as the Russian problem was after the Second).
The U.S. strategy toward China that evolved in the 1990s has in some
sense been an inversion of the U.S. strategy toward Japan in the
1920s (and an expansion of the U.S. strategy toward Weimar Germany).
Whereas the strategy toward Japan provided for an elaborate system of
security cooperation (the Washington system) but only for relatively
simple economic engagement (conventional international trade), the
strategy toward China provides for an elaborate system of economic
engagement ("the Washington consensus", including the admission of
China into the World Trade Organization), but for relatively simple
security cooperation (conventional military visits). In a more
important sense, however, the U.S. strategy involves an innovative
combination of economic engagement and military containment
(particularly in respect to Taiwan and the South China Sea). But
since China thinks of Taiwan as being properly part of China, what
the United States perceives as its strategy of military containment,
China perceives as a strategy of territorial dismemberment.
Probably the most difficult single challenge facing the contemporary U.S. victor strategy is how to sustain this innovative and complex combination of economic engagement and military containment in regard to China. The article by Zbigniew Brzezinski, "Living With China", is a sustained and eminently sensible analysis of this problem. In essence, he hopes that the Taiwan independence question can be dissolved into the World Trade Organization, that the tensions from military containment can themselves be contained by the rewards of economic engagement. His proposals are thus very different from those of Robert Kagan and William Kristol in "The Present Danger", who hardly consider the international economy at all. Consequently, they advocate a pure strategy of military containment toward China, including U.S. efforts to bring about a "regime change."
We have seen that the U.S. strategies toward Germany and Japan in the 1920s depended upon integrating those nations into an open and prosperous international economy, and that the U.S. contemporary strategy toward Russia depends upon the same. To an even greater extent, the U.S. strategy toward China has as its foundation the integration of that giant nation--one with more and more of a nationalist mentality--into such a global economy. If the global economy were to exclude China from its benefits, or if it were to become a closed and depressed one, the entire complex U.S. strategy toward China would collapse. The United States would be driven, at best, to the classic alternative, a simple strategy of military containment, or, at worst, as was the case in the 1930s in regard to both Germany and Japan, to no strategy at all. At that point, the proposals of Brzezinski would become obsolete, and the proposals of Kagan and Kristol could appear to be necessary. The management of the new China problem therefore de pends upon the management of the new global economy, and the development of any real Sino-American security cooperation depends upon the performance of the United States as the global economic hegemon.
Challenges to the Victor
The culminating point of victory.
EVEN when a victor power conceives a victor strategy that is sound and appropriate to the military and economic realities of the time, there will be challenges that arise from how it is implemented. The first of these challenges is to determine what is, in Clausewitz's phrase, "the culminating point of victory", and to not go beyond it. Victor powers are prone to succumb to "the victory disease"; they continue to pursue the strategies that brought them victory in the utterly new and inappropriate circumstances that the victory has created. Concentration in war becomes compulsion in victory. The most famous example of the twentieth century was Hider following his successful blitzkriegs of Poland and France with his disastrous invasion of the Soviet Union. The most familiar American example was MacArthur following his successful landing at Inchon and recovery of South Korea with his disastrous drive to the Yalu River and the Chinese border, resulting in China's entry into the war.
A contemporary American example of going beyond the culminating point of victory could be the enlargement of NATO. Although the admission of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary may not have passed that point, a "second round of enlargement" including the Baltic states and reaching the most sensitive borders of Russia probably would do so. This kind of victory disorder may also be developing with the U.S. promotion of human rights over national sovereignty, and especially with the use of military force for the purpose of humanitarian intervention. The 1995 U.S.-led humanitarian intervention in Bosnia was accepted by all of the other major powers. The 1999 U.S.-led humanitarian intervention in Kosovo was greatly resented, and in some measure rejected, by Russia and China. A third such intervention anytime soon, especially in a country traditionally in the sphere of influence of Russia (e.g., the Caucasus and Central Asia) or of China (e.g., the South China Sea), very likely would go beyond the culminating p oint of victory; it would represent a humanitarian disease.
The realistic range of opportunities.
The second challenge for the victor power is in some sense the opposite of the first. It is to determine what is the realistic range of opportunities resulting from victory. The victor power is suddenly in a position where all things seem possible, where there are too many options. It may erratically pursue this objective, then that, and then another. Versatility in war becomes diffusion, even dissipation, in victory. This is an error to which pluralist democracies, with their different interest groups, are especially prone.
It has often been argued that Britain succumbed to this victory disorder in the nineteenth century. The British continued to expand their colonial empire, one of the opportunities that came with their victory in the Napoleonic Wars, until they entered into the condition of "imperial overstretch." One result was that Britain had to undertake numerous and continuous military operations on "the turbulent frontier." Another result, more serious in its long-run consequences, was that the ample British investment capital was diffused across a wide range of colonies and foreign countries, rather than concentrated upon the development of new technologies and industries within Britain itself. Such new technologies and industries would have better suited Britain for its competition with Germany.
A contemporary American example of the error of diffusion or dissipation seems to be developing with the U.S. promotion of every aspect of the American way of life in every part of the world. The promotion of economic globalization may be inherent in the U.S. performance as economic hegemon, but it does weaken the economic conditions and social bonds of many Americans. Even more, the promotion of social and cultural globalization--of the American way of expressive individualism, popular culture and the dysfunctional family--has generated resentment and resistance in a wide arc of countries in the Middle East, South Asia and East Asia. This, it seems, is the American way of producing a turbulent frontier.
The balancing effect.
The third challenge is the most familiar and the most fundamental, although Americans are inclined to think that they are exempt from it. It is derived from the well-known balancing effect. Victory brings the pre-eminent victor power hegemony, which in turn can initiate a realignment of the lesser victor powers against it (perhaps joined by the defeated one). The balancing effect was always especially pronounced among the continental powers of Europe. However, since Britain was an offshore power with no ambitions for territorial acquisitions on the continent, its victories did not initiate this balancing process. Indeed, its role as an "offshore balancer" helped it on occasion to exercise a sort of offshore hegemony.
The United States has served as an offshore or rather overseas balancer for Europe and also for East Asia. Even more than Britain, its remote position has permitted it to exercise an overseas hegemony over the nations of Western Europe (while balancing against the Soviet Union) and over those of East Asia (while balancing against China). Indeed, the United States continues to exercise this overseas hegemony, now over all of Europe, even with the collapse of the Soviet Union and with no other power to balance at all. By historical comparison with the European past, this hegemonic security system is an extraordinary achievement on the part of the United States. Were America located on the continent where France is, or even thirty miles offshore where Britain is, it probably would not have occurred; it can exist because the United States is located an ocean away and in another hemisphere. The U.S. hegemonic security system in East Asia continues to include Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and the problematic Taiwan; it provides the basis for any strategy of military containment of China.
The overseas location of the United States thus enables it to avoid the balancing effect and instead to perform the role of security hegemon in Europe, parts of East Asia and, in more complicated conditions, parts of the Middle East (as in the Gulf War and the continuing air strikes against Iraq). Of course, the United States also acts as the security hegemon in Latin America, where there is no prospect of a balancing effect against "the colossus of the North" (a case of an opposite phenomenon, which international relations specialists call the "bandwagoning effect").
Hegemony versus hyper-victory.
The U.S. role as the security hegemon in several regions of the globe complements the U.S. role as the economic hegemon in the global economy. America's security hegemony is acceptable because of its unique overseas location and the sustained peace that it has provided. Its economic hegemony is acceptable because of the unique economic functions that it performs and the sustained prosperity that it has produced. The United States has operated the security and economic dimensions of hegemony together to consolidate and preserve its great victory after the Cold War. It does so in ways reminiscent of Britain coordinating the security and economic dimensions of its supremacy to consolidate and preserve its great victory after the Napoleonic Wars.
This splendid achievement of the United States could be undermined, however, by its own actions. The victory disorders of compulsion and dissipation could eventually overcome even the powerful U.S. advantages of overseas position and economic performance, and drive some major powers--most obviously China and Russia--into the balancing effect and even into a sort of containment policy directed at the United States. This was the prospect put forward by Samuel Huntington in his famous argument about the "clash of civilizations." Huntington was concerned that American excesses could bring about a Sino-Islamic alliance or even "the West versus the Rest." These prospects would become even more likely if the prosperous and open international economy should turn into a poor and closed one--if the "New Economy" of the 1990s, based upon the computer and the Internet, should suddenly collapse, as the "New Era" economy of the 1920s, based upon the automobile and the radio, had done.
Whatever form a balancing effect or containment coalition might take, however, at its core would be China. It would be the new Central Power on the Eurasian land mass, just as it was once the Middle Kingdom. The arrival of this coalition on the international scene would mean that the U.S. victory after the first cold war would have been followed by a second cold war (or worse), and this in turn would mean another war on a global scale. This alone makes living with China the single most important challenge facing a United States that is still living with victory, and which is still expecting to do so for decades to come.
Essay Types: Essay