By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers
There are decades
where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades
happen.” Those words are apocryphally attributed to the
Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, referring to the rapid collapse of
tsarist Russia just over 100 years ago. If he had said those words, Lenin might
have added that there are also decades when centuries happen.
The world is in the
midst of one such decade. As with other historical hinges, today's danger stems
from a sharp decline in the world order. But more than at any other recent
moment, that decline threatens to become incredibly steep, owing to a
confluence of old and new threats that have begun to intersect.
On the one hand, the
world is witnessing the revival of some of the worst aspects of traditional
geopolitics: great-power competition, imperial ambitions, and fights over
resources. Today, Russia is headed by a tyrant, President Vladimir Putin, who
longs to re-create a Russian sphere of influence and perhaps
even a Russian empire. Putin is willing to do almost anything to achieve
that goal, and he can act as he pleases because internal constraints on his
regime have mostly disappeared. Meanwhile, under President Xi
Jinping, China has embarked on a quest for regional and potentially global primacy, putting itself on a
trajectory that will lead to increased competition or even confrontation with
the United States.
But that is not
all—these geopolitical risks collide with complex new challenges central to the
contemporary era, such as climate change, pandemics, and nuclear proliferation.
And not surprisingly, the diplomatic fallout from growing rivalries has made it
nearly impossible for great powers to work together on regional and
international challenges, even when it is in their interest.
Further complicating
the picture is that American democracy and political cohesion are at risk to a
degree not seen since the middle of the nineteenth century. This matters
because the United States is not just one country among many: U.S. leadership
has underpinned what order there has been in the world for the past 75 years
and remains no less central today. The United States rived internally, however,
will become ever less willing and able to lead on the international stage.
These conditions have
set off a vicious circle: heightened geopolitical competition makes it even
more challenging to produce the cooperation demanded by new global problems,
and the deteriorating international environment further fuels geopolitical
tensions—all at a time when the United States is weakened and distracted. The
frightening gap between global challenges and the world’s responses, the
increased prospects for major-power wars in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, and
the growing potential for Iran to cause instability in the Middle East have
come together to produce the most dangerous moment since World War II. Call it
a perfect—or, more accurately, an imperfect—storm.
To warn of danger is
not to predict the future. Ideally, things will turn out for the better. But
good things rarely happen on their own; on the contrary, left to their own
devices, systems deteriorate. The task for U.S. policymakers, then, is to
rediscover the principles and practice of statecraft: to marshal national power
and collective action against the tendency toward disorder. The goal must be to
manage the collision of old geopolitics and new challenges, to act with
discipline in what is sought, and to build arrangements or, better yet,
institutions where there is sufficient consensus. To do that, Washington will
have to prioritize establishing order over fostering democracy
abroad—simultaneously as it works to shore up democracy at home.
Disorder on the rise
In August 1990,
intent on territorial conquest, Iraq invaded its far smaller neighbor Kuwait.
“This will not stand,” U.S. President George H. W. Bush responded. He was
right. Within weeks, Washington had organized wide-ranging international
support for military intervention around the limited objective of ejecting
Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The 1990–91 Gulf War was marked by extensive
cooperation from China and Russia, fostered by U.S. leadership under the aegis
of the United Nations. In a matter of months, the coordinated response met with
considerable success; Iraqi aggression was reversed, and Kuwait’s independence
was restored at a minimal cost. The major powers upheld that force cannot be
used to change borders, a fundamental element of international order.
Nothing of that sort
could take place in today’s world, as the Ukraine crisis has been made
abundantly clear, and the fact that Russia is a much more powerful, influential
country than Iraq was in 1990 only partly explains the difference. Although
Russia’s invasion has inspired a sense of solidarity and impressive levels of
coordination among Western countries, the war in Ukraine
has yielded nothing resembling the universal embrace of the goals and
institutions of the U.S.-led order that the Gulf War spurred. Instead, Beijing
has aligned itself with Moscow, and much of the world has refused to sign on to
the sanctions imposed on Russia by Washington and its partners. And with one of
the permanent members of the UN Security Council blatantly violating
international law and the principle that borders may not be changed through
force, the UN remains sidelined chiefly.
In a sense, the two
wars serve as bookends to the post–Cold War Pax Americana. The United States'
preponderance of power was bound to diminish, not owing to American decline but
because of what the commentator Fareed Zakaria
dubbed “the rise of the rest”—that is, the economic and military development of
other countries and entities and the emergence of a world defined by a much
greater diffusion of power. That said, the United States, by what it did and
did not do in the world and at home, squandered much of its post–Cold War
inheritance, failing to translate its primacy into an enduring order.
This failure is
especially noticeable when it comes to Russia. In the years immediately
following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the juxtaposition of vast American
power and staggering Russian weakness made it seem unlikely that, three decades
later, world affairs would once again be dominated by hostility between the
Kremlin and Western capitals. Debates rage about how this came to pass, with
profound disagreements over how much blame the United States deserves and how
much should be attributed to Putin or Russian political culture more broadly.
Today, under Putin, Russian behavior is fundamentally at odds with the most
basic tenets of international order. Putin shows no interest in integrating
Russia into the prevailing order but rather seeks to ignore it when he can—and
when he cannot, to undermine or defeat it. He has repeatedly demonstrated a
willingness to employ brutal military force against civilian populations in
Europe and the Middle East. Putin’s regime does not respect the borders and
sovereignty of other countries, as witnessed by its ongoing invasion of Ukraine
and attempt to annex parts of the country.
Russia’s aggression
has upended many assumptions that influenced thinking about international
relations in the post–Cold War era. It has ended the holiday from history in
which wars between countries were rare. It has hollowed out the norm against
countries acquiring territory by force. And it has demonstrated that economic
interdependence is no bulwark against threats to world order. Many believed
Russia’s reliance on western European markets for its energy exports would
encourage restraint. In reality, such ties did no better in moderating Russian
behavior than they did in preventing the outbreak of World War I. Worse yet,
interdependence proved to be more of a constraint on countries that had allowed
themselves to grow reliant on Russia (above all, Germany) than on Russia
itself.
A Ukrainian serviceman in Kyiv, June 2022
All that said, Russia
will emerge weakened from what promises to be a long war with Ukraine. Unlike
the Soviet Union, Russia is anything but a superpower. Even before Western
countries imposed sanctions on Russia in response to its assault on Ukraine,
the Russian economy was not among the ten largest in the world in terms of GDP;
at least in part because of those sanctions, it is expected to contract by up
to ten percent throughout 2022. Russia’s economy remains heavily dependent on
energy production; its armed forces have revealed themselves to be poorly led
and organized and no match for NATO. Again, it is Russian weakness juxtaposed
against Putin’s willingness and ability to act recklessly with the military and
nuclear strength he possesses that makes Russia such
a danger.
Russia presents an
acute, near-term problem for the United States. China, in contrast, poses a
much more severe medium- and long-term challenge. The wager that integrating
China into the world economy would make it more open politically, more
market-oriented, and more moderate in its foreign policy failed to pay off and has even backfired. Today,
China is more repressive at home and has vested more power in the hands of one
individual than at any time since the reign of Mao Zedong. Rather than being
rolled up, state-owned enterprises remain omnipresent while the government
seeks to constrain private industry. China has regularly stolen and
incorporated the intellectual property of others. Its conventional and nuclear
military might has increased markedly. It has militarized
the South China Sea, economically coerced its neighbors, fought a border
clash with India, and crushed democracy in Hong Kong, and it continues to
increase pressure on Taiwan.
Yet China also has
significant internal weaknesses. After booming for decades, the country’s
economy is now beginning to stall, diluting a principal source of the regime’s
legitimacy. It is unclear how the Chinese Communist Party can restore robust
economic growth, given the country’s political constraints hamper innovation
and demographic realities, including a shrinking
labor pool. Meanwhile, China’s aggressive foreign policy has alienated many of
its neighbors. And China is nearly sure to face a problematic leadership
transition over the next decade. Like Putin, Xi has consolidated power in his
own hands in ways that will complicate any succession and perhaps lead to a
power struggle. The outcome is difficult to predict: an internal struggle could
result in diminished international activism or the emergence of more benign
leaders, but it could also lead to even more nationalist foreign policies
designed to rally support or distract public attention.
It is certain that Xi
and other Chinese leaders seem to assume that China will pay little if any cost
for its aggressive behavior, given that others are too dependent on its exports
or access to its market. So far, this assumption has been borne out. Yet a
conflict between the United States and China no longer seems like a remote
possibility. Meanwhile, as Washington’s relations with Moscow and Beijing grow,
Russia and China are growing closer. They share an animosity toward a U.S.-led
international system that they see as inhospitable to their political systems
at home and their ambitions abroad. Increasingly, they are willing to act on
their objections and do so in tandem. Unlike 40 or 50 years ago, the United
States now finds itself the odd man out when it comes to triangular diplomacy.
Mind the gap
As the geopolitical
picture among great powers has darkened, a chasm has opened between global
challenges and the machinery meant to contend with them. Take global health.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the limitations of the World Health Organization
and the unwillingness or inability of even rich, developed countries to respond
to a crisis that they had every reason to anticipate. Some 15 to 18 million
people worldwide have thus far died as a result, millions of them
unnecessarily. And nearly three years after the pandemic began, China’s refusal
to cooperate with an independent investigation means the world still does not
know how the virus originated and initially spread, making it harder to prevent
the next outbreak—and providing a prime example of how old, familiar
geopolitical dysfunctions are combining with new problems.
Among other global
challenges, climate change has arguably received the most international
attention, and rightly so—yet there is little to show for it. Unless the world
makes rapid progress on reducing greenhouse gas emissions during this decade,
it will be much more challenging to preserve and protect life as we know it on
this planet. But diplomatic efforts have come up short and show no sign of
improving. Individual countries determine their own climate goals, and there is
no price for setting them low or not meeting them. Generating post-pandemic
economic growth and locking in energy supplies—a concern heightened by the war
in Ukraine and the disruptions it has yielded in the energy sector—have
increased countries’ focus on energy security at the expense of climate
considerations. Once again, a traditional geopolitical concern has collided
with a new problem, making it harder to contend with either one.
When it comes to
nuclear proliferation, the reality is more complex. Some scholars predicted
that dozens of states would have developed nuclear weapons by now; only nine
have developed full-fledged programs. Many advanced industrialized countries
that could develop nuclear weapons have chosen not to. No one has used a
nuclear weapon since the United States did so in the final days of World War
II. And no terrorist group has gained access to one.
But appearances can
be deceiving: nuclear weapons have attained a new value in the absence of
proliferation. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine gave up the
Soviet nuclear weapons that remained on its territory; since then, it has been
invaded twice by Russia, an outcome that might persuade others that giving up
nuclear weapons decreases a country’s security. Regimes in Iraq and Libya were
ousted after abandoning their nuclear weapons programs, which could make other
leaders hesitant or encourage them to consider the advantages of developing or
acquiring nuclear capabilities. North Korea remains secure as it continues to
expand its nuclear arsenal and the means to deliver it. Russia, for its part,
appears to be, according to nuclear weapons, a more significant role in its
defense posture. And the U.S. decision to rule direct military involvement in
Ukraine out of a fear that dispatching troops or establishing a no-fly zone
could lead to a nuclear World War III will be seen by China and others as
evidence that possessing a substantial nuclear arsenal can deter Washington—or
at least get it to act with more remarkable restraint.
No wonder, then, that
Iran is putting in place many of the prerequisites of a nuclear weapons program
amid negotiations meant to revive the 2015 nuclear deal from which the United
States withdrew in 2018. The talks seem to have hit a wall, but even if they
succeed, the problem will not disappear, as the accord features several sunset
clauses. It is thus more a question of when, not if, Iran makes enough progress
to provoke an attack intended to prevent Tehran’s nuclear capability from
fruition. Or one or more of Iran’s neighbors might decide they need their own
nuclear weapons to counter Iran should it be able to field nuclear weapons with
little warning. The Middle East, for three decades the least stable region of
the world, may well be on the cusp of an even more dangerous era.
Trouble at home
As new and old
problems collide to challenge the U.S.-led order, perhaps the most worrisome
changes are taking place inside the United States itself. The country retains
many strengths. But some of its advantages—the rule of law, orderly transitions
of power, the ability to attract and retain talented immigrants on a large
scale, socioeconomic mobility—are now less certain than they once were, and
problems such as gun violence, crime in urban areas, drug abuse, and illegal
immigration have become more pronounced. In addition, the country is held back
by political divisions. A widespread refusal among Republicans to accept the
results of the 2020 presidential election, which led to the attack on the
Capitol on January 6, 2021, suggests the possible emergence of an American
version of Northern Ireland’s “Troubles.” Localized, politically inspired
violence might well become commonplace in the United States. Recent Supreme
Court decisions and the diverging domestic reactions to them have reinforced
the impression of a Disunited States of America. As a result, the American
political model has become less appealing, and democratic backsliding in the
United States has contributed to backsliding elsewhere. Making matters worse,
U.S. economic mismanagement led to the 2008 global financial crisis, and more
recent missteps have allowed inflation to skyrocket, further damaging the
country’s reputation. Perhaps most worrisome is the erosion of faith in
Washington’s basic steadiness. Without a consensus among Americans on their
country’s proper role in the world, there have been wild swings in U.S. foreign
policy, from the George W. Bush administration’s catastrophic overreach in Iraq
to the Obama administration’s debilitating underreach in the Middle East and
elsewhere, to the Trump administration’s incompetence and transactionalism,
which led many to doubt whether precedent or standing commitments mattered
anymore in Washington. The Biden administration has done much to prioritize
alliances and partnerships. Still, it has at times reinforced doubts about
American steadfastness and competence, especially during the chaotic withdrawal
of U.S. forces from Afghanistan last year.
The fact that it is
impossible to predict who will occupy the Oval Office in the future is nothing
new; what is new is that it is impossible to assume much about how that person
will approach the United States’ relationship with the world. The result is
that U.S. allies and partners increasingly have no choice but to weigh
continued reliance on Washington against other alternatives, such as greater
self-sufficiency or deference to powerful neighbors. An additional risk is that
Washington’s ability to deter rivals will diminish as its foes come to see the
United States as too divided or reluctant to act.
One big idea?
In the face of the
geopolitical tumult and global challenges that seem sure to define this decade,
no overarching doctrine or construct for American foreign policy will be able
to play the role that containment did during the Cold War when the concept
provided a good deal of clarity and consensus. Such constructs help guide
policymakers, explaining policies to the public, reassuring allies, and
signaling adversaries. But the contemporary world does not lend itself to such
a simple frame: today, there are simply too many challenges of different sorts
that do not sit inside a single construct. Accounting for this judgment is the
reality that it is no longer possible to speak of world order as a single
phenomenon. There is the traditional geopolitical order reflecting balances of
power and the extent to which norms are shared, and one might term the
globalization order reflecting the breadth and depth of joint effort to meet
challenges such as climate change and pandemics. World order (or the lack of
it) is increasingly the sum of the two.
That does not mean
that the United States should simply wing it and approach every foreign policy
issue in isolation. But instead of a single big idea, Washington should use
several principles and practices to guide its foreign policy and reduce the
risk that the coming decade will produce a calamity. This shift would translate
into a foreign policy based mainly on alliances to deter Russian and Chinese
aggression and selective partnerships of the like-minded to address global
challenges that the United States cannot ignore or handle on its own. In
addition, democracy promotion at home rather than abroad should be the focus of
U.S. attention since there is more to build on and more to lose if the effort
fails.
The greatest
immediate threat to global order stems from Russian aggression against Ukraine.
Properly managing the war will require a delicate balance that blends
determination with realism. The West must provide extensive military and
economic support to Ukraine to ensure its continued viability as a sovereign
state and to prevent Russia from controlling more territory than it already
holds. Still, the West must accept that military force alone cannot end the
Russian occupation. That outcome would require a political change in Moscow and
the arrival of leadership willing to reduce or end Russia’s presence in Ukraine
in exchange for sanctions relief. Putin will never accept such a deal. And to
offer a worthwhile compromise to a hypothetical future regime in Moscow,
Washington and its partners would need to levy far more draconian sanctions on
all Russian energy exports—above all, a ban on natural gas exports to Europe.
A Russian tank moving through Popasna,
Ukraine, May 2022
In China, the United
States needs to strengthen the foundations of regional order. That means
prioritizing its alliance with Japan, the Quad (Australia, India, Japan, and
the United States), and the AUKUS grouping
(Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States). Applying the lessons
gleaned from watching Europe’s awkward dance with Russia, the United States
needs to reduce its interdependence with China—which, in too many instances,
looks like dependence on China. This would mean scaling back economic relations
so that imports from China and exports to it become less essential to the
economic health of the United States and its partners—which will make it easier
to stand up to China or even sanction it if need be. The United States and
other Western countries must bolster the resiliency of supply chains in
critical materials through diversification and redundancy, stockpiling, pooling
arrangements, and, when necessary, increased domestic production. This is not
economic decoupling so much as economic distancing.
Washington and its
partners must also respond forcefully if China moves against Taiwan. Allowing
China to capture the island would have massive ramifications. Every American
ally and partner would reconsider its security dependence on the United States
and opt for either appeasement of China or some form of strategic autonomy,
which would likely involve obtaining nuclear weapons. A conflict over Taiwan
would also lead to a profound global economic shock owing to Taiwan’s dominant
role in manufacturing advanced semiconductors.
Preventing such a
scenario—or, if required, defending against a Chinese attack—calls for
Washington to adopt a posture of strategic clarity on Taiwan, leaving no doubt
that the United States would intervene militarily to protect the island and put
in place the security and economical means to back up that pledge. More
international involvement, not less, will be required, which should entail, at
a minimum, coordinating a robust sanctions package with European and Asian
allies.
Relations with Russia
and China will remain complex, as they will not be one-dimensional even if they
are primarily competitive or adversarial. High-level, private strategic
dialogues should become a component of both bilateral relationships. The
rationale for such dialogues has less to do with what they might accomplish
than what they might prevent, although, in the case of China, there could be
greater scope for exploring rules to guide relations between the two powers.
Diverging and competing U.S., Russian, and Chinese attitudes and ambitions may
rule out more than limited collaboration on world order. Still, these fault
lines arguably make communication among the three countries all the more vital
to reduce the chance of a grave miscalculation on geopolitical matters.
Meanwhile, U.S. policy
should not seek to transform Russia or China, not because doing so would be
undesirable but because advocating for regime change would likely prove
irrelevant or counter-productive. The United States must deal with Russia and
China as they are, not as Washington would prefer them to be. The principal
focus of U.S. foreign policy toward Russia and China should not be to reshape
their societies but to influence their foreign policy choices.
Over time, it is
possible that limiting their external success and avoiding confrontation with
them will build pressures inside their political systems, which could lead to
desirable change, much as four decades of containment did with the Soviet
Union. But Washington ought not to pose an existential threat to either government
lest it strengthen the hands of those in Moscow and Beijing. They argue that
they have nothing to lose by acting recklessly and that there is nothing to be
gained from working selectively with the United States.
There is another
reason for prioritizing the promotion of order over the promotion of
democracy—one that has nothing to do with Russia and China. Efforts to build
international order, be it to resist aggression and proliferation or combat
climate change and infectious disease, have broad support among
non-democracies. A world order premised on respect for borders and joint
efforts on global challenges is preferable to a liberal world order premised on
neither. That so many countries have not participated in sanctioning Russia is
revealing. Framing the crisis in Ukraine as one of democracy versus
authoritarianism has, not surprisingly, fallen flat among many illiberal
leaders. The same logic applies to the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia,
which the Biden administration is belatedly working to repair: a preference for
democracy and human rights is one thing, but a foreign policy based on such a
preference in a world defined by geopolitics and global challenges is unwise
and unsustainabe.A similarly clear-eyed view should
determine how Washington approaches cooperation on global challenges.
Multilateralism is far preferable to unilateralism, but narrow multilateralism
is far more promising than universal or broad forms of collective action that
rarely succeed; witness, for example, the course of climate-change diplomacy
and trade. Better to pursue realistic partnerships of the like-minded, which
can bring a degree of order to the world, including specific domains of limited
order, if not quite world order. Here, too, realism must trump idealism.
This observation has
direct implications for dealing with climate change. Climate change poses an
existential threat, and although a global response would be best, geopolitics
will continue to make such collaboration difficult. The United States and its
partners should emphasize narrower diplomatic approaches, but progress on
mitigation is more likely to stem from technological breakthroughs than from
diplomacy. That owes not to a lack of possible policy tools but rather to a
lack of political support in the United States and other countries for those
measures or for trade pacts that could encourage mitigation by imposing taxes
or tariffs on goods derived from fossil fuels or manufactured through
energy-inefficient processes. As a result, the goal of adapting to climate
change should receive more attention and resources, as should exploration of
the technological possibility of reversing it.
Forging ahead
Three last
considerations fall most directly on the United States. As it works to untie
the knots that bind old geopolitical dilemmas to newer problems, the United
States will face several serious threats, not only from Russia and China but
also from Iran and a number of failed states that could provide oxygen to
terrorists in the greater Middle East, and from North Korea, whose conventional
military and nuclear capabilities continue to grow. Security, therefore, will
require Washington to increase defense spending by as much as one percent of
GDP: still considerably below Cold War levels, but a significant step up. U.S.
allies will need to take similar steps.
In dealing with the
many threats that will define this decade, the United States must act with
greater caution and boldness in the economic realm. There is as yet no serious
alternative to the dollar as the world’s de facto reserve currency. Still, that
day may come, especially if Washington continues to weaponize the dollar
through the frequent imposition of sanctions, particularly those targeting
central banks. If a competitor currency emerges, the United States will lose
its ability to borrow at low rates and inflate its way out of its massive debt,
which currently stands at more than $30 trillion. Even now, this debt threatens
to crowd out more productive government spending since the cost of servicing it
will rise along with interest rates. But fiscal caution should be combined with
a more assertive approach to trade, which would ideally mean joining the
Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and
fleshing out newly announced frameworks in the Indo-Pacific and the Americas so
that they lower barriers to trade in goods and services, set standards for
data, and meaningfully address climate change.
Ultimately, however,
the most significant risk to U.S. security in the coming decade is to be found
in the United States itself. A country divided against itself cannot stand, nor
can it be effective in the world, as the fractious United States will not be
viewed as a reliable or predictable partner or leader. Nor will it be able to
tackle its domestic challenges. Bridging the country’s divisions will take
sustained effort from politicians, educators, religious leaders, and parents.
Most desired norms and behaviors cannot be mandated, but voters have the power
to reward or penalize politicians according to their behavior. And some
changes, including expanding civics education and opportunities for national
service, could be formally introduced.
Navigating a decade
that promises to be as demanding and dangerous as this one—a decade that will
present old-fashioned geopolitical risks alongside growing global
challenges—calls for a foreign policy that avoids the extremes of wanting to
transform the world or ignoring it working alone or with everyone. It will ask
many U.S. policymakers and diplomats at a time when the country they work for
is deeply divided and easily distracted. Certainly, the course of this decade
and decades to come will depend on the quality of officials’ political skills
at home and their statecraft abroad.
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