The National Interest

A Meaningless Election

Erin Drankoski — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 06:56:00 -0400

Let me say at the beginning that I do not think that the existing mess in Afghanistan at present is the fault of the Obama administration. The president inherited it from George Bush, and simply did not have time between taking power in January and the Afghan elections of this month to carry out a radical change of course. If, however, the administration fails to change course after the (predictable) debacle that these elections have become, then the responsibility for subsequent disasters will indeed rest with President Obama and his team.

The Soviet Abroad

Erin Drankoski — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 01:40:00 -0400

The Leadership Deficit

Cecille Isidro — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 10:55:00 -0500

Talk of the financial crisis and the stimulus package often involves furious debate about the deficits that caused it or those that are likely to result from it. There's discussion of current-account deficits, trade deficits and, of course, budget deficits. But there are other more global deficits created by this crisis that may prove even more central to the future of America's role in the world. They include deficits of capital, ideology, creativity and attention. How the United States addresses these issues will likely

Phillip Longman in the National Interest | 'Battle of the (Youth) Bulge'

Communications — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:58:00 -0400

...As each successive birth cohort comes of age, a larger share of youth will therefore have been raised in more-traditional and religious families. As Phillip Longman, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, observes, “Those who reject modernity would...seem to have an evolutionary advantage...” LINK (subscription required)

Do No Harm

Ron Tang — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500

If you don't know what to do, better to do nothing -- and the United States does not really know what to do in Pakistan. Moreover, things there are not nearly as bad as the Western media and some excitable politicians present. The situation is deteriorating, but the country is not yet close to failing. Although it is a flawed state, menaced by terrorists and insurgents, it is still a largely effective one.

By pushing for particular political outcomes, the United States does more harm than good to its own interests -- because, to put it mildly, the United States is not popular in Pakistan today. And if it keeps meddling, America will strengthen Islamist radicalism and could even help push Pakistan toward disintegration.

The United States urgently needs a new strategy. Washington must get over the idea that it can and should micromanage political outcomes in countries like Pakistan. Trying to produce governments that both uncritically accept all U.S. security requests and also pass our democracy litmus test is hopeless given the fact that the overwhelming majority of voters in Pakistan are hostile to U.S. strategy in the region.

Current U.S. policy is based on an incomplete understanding of the political and ethnic landscape in Pakistan. Just one example of how disastrous U.S. policy can be: the assassination of Benazir Bhutto by Islamist militants who saw her as a U.S. stooge. But this partly U.S.-induced tragedy -- with very dangerous implications for Pakistan's future stability and unity -- may at least help clear up some confusion.

U.S. interference is animated by the fear of state failure and an Islamist revolution in Pakistan leading to militants seizing control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. For a long time to come, however, this will be an extremely unlikely scenario, due to the limited nature of Islamist support and the strength of the Pakistani army and ruling class. The Islamist extremists can certainly cause serious violence and destabilization, but they cannot take over the country. In fact, it is only American military intervention in Pakistan that could make America's worst nightmares happen.

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The Pakistani ruling class is divided by its ambitions but united in its opposition to an Islamist revolution that would destroy its own hold on wealth, power and status. This is a ruling class that in some ways resembles those of late-medieval and early-modern Europe. Though different strands come together to make up Pakistani electoral politics, the most important one by far is the distribution of patronage: not just jobs and contracts, but legal, administrative and, when necessary, physical protection from enemies and rivals provided by the police or the bosses' own gunmen.

The most important political relationship in Pakistan is therefore between the patron and the client. It is patronage more than anything else that determines the political actions and allegiances of most local actors, especially in the countryside, and that holds together (and sometimes splits apart) the varied clans that are the building blocks of Pakistani politics. By contrast, mass parties in the Western sense play only a very limited role, and one that has been reduced still further by the death of Benazir Bhutto and the possible weakening of her dynastic Pakistan People's Party (PPP).

Of course, some of the Islamist political groups -- notably the Jamaat-e-Islami -- are trying to replace the patronage politics of the "feudal" landowners and urban bosses with their own version of modern mass politics, but so far with only limited success. One key reason for their failure to date is the archaic nature of much of Pakistani society; for -- quite contrary to most Western perceptions -- modern Islamist mobilization thrives not on backwardness, but on partially achieved modernity. Thus most Pakistani Muslims reject Islamist appeals not because they are "moderates" in the largely meaningless Western phrase, but because they are traditionalists, attached to local cults and practices, which the Islamists wish to abolish.

As every election has demonstrated, the overwhelming majority of Pakistanis do not support the political, social and ideological agenda of the Islamist parties, and even a majority of the Islamists themselves do not support terrorism and attacks on the army and police. Even in the circumstances of heightened emotion following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the Islamist coalition won less than 15 percent of the total vote, and that was heavily concentrated in the ethnic Pashtun areas of the country (the only area truly at risk of being overrun by extremists).

These numbers are expected to decline sharply come the next election. There is simply no resemblance between the situation in Pakistan today and that in Iran in the late 1970s or even Algeria in the early 1990s. There is no risk of an "Islamist revolution" in Pakistan as a whole for many years to come. Unless, that is, the United States attacks Pakistan, either in the form of a move to occupy the tribal areas or in an effort to seize Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

Absent a U.S. attack, the army will most probably continue to demonstrate the same features that have characterized its behavior since Pakistan was created. These include extreme ruthlessness in the face of serious threats of secession or revolution; considerable pragmatism, caution and flexibility in the face of lesser challenges; a deep conviction that the army is the essential factor in Pakistan's continued survival as a state, and that it deserves to be treated accordingly, both politically and financially; and extremely strong bonds of internal military discipline and solidarity.

If mass unrest in Pakistan continues and spreads, then sooner or later the senior generals will form a delegation and politely and respectfully ask Pervez Musharraf to step down as president, just as they did with General Ayub Khan forty years ago. The military will then conduct a "transition to democracy" and will almost certainly have already decided in private to whom the government should in fact be transferred. If Musharraf and the bitter mutual hostility between him and exiled opposition leader Nawaz Sharif (a Punjabi industrialist and head of one wing of the moderate-conservative Muslim League) are out of the way, that could well be Sharif, but it could equally be some PPP leader.

This move by the army to replace Musharraf will be hastened if really serious mass protests occur in northern Punjab. Any trouble in this region is especially worrying to the high command because a large majority of the ordinary soldiers are recruited from that area. The generals' nightmare is of soldiers refusing to fire on crowds made up of people like them. A severe warning of this possibility has been given by the refusal of a number of Pashtun-majority units to fight against fellow Pashtuns in the tribal areas. This doesn't apply to nearly the same extent when it is a case of soldiers suppressing violence perpetrated by people of ethnicities different from their own.

But whatever happens, the army will remain the most important force in the Pakistani state and a key factor in every future Pakistani administration. The army is Pakistan's only effective modern and meritocratic institution. It is in fact more modern and meritocratic than most of Pakistan's "democratic" civilian politicians, whose beliefs and loyalties are generally centered on traditional family and clan allegiances, and who in many parts of Pakistan have an extremely autocratic attitude toward their tenants, followers and women. And, as long as the army sticks together, it will fight successfully to prevent both Islamist revolution and ethnic secession.

Only if the army splits will Pakistan be in danger of disintegration, as opposed to violent unrest, something which is both containable and, alas, all too common in South Asia. The only really likely scenario for that is a U.S. attack. At that point, as Pakistani sources close to the military told me, there would be a strong risk that sections of the army would mutiny against their generals and march off to fight the United States.

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In the short term, Ms. Bhutto's assassination will probably produce a large sympathy vote for the PPP in the coming election. In the long run, however, it may perhaps further strengthen the military. If Ms. Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, and the bigwigs of the party cannot agree on how to share the party leadership among themselves, then bits of the party will split off.

The PPP is and will probably remain the largest party, but like all other would-be ruling parties, it will still have to cobble together a coalition from other parties, some of which loathe the PPP for historical and dynastic reasons. The deep divisions in Pakistan's political society simply do not allow any one party to gain an absolute majority of either votes or parliamentary seats. This will always give the army tremendous opportunities to shape politics and government by using its powers of patronage and pressure to encourage or block particular coalitions. These opportunities will be strengthened if the military has to deal not with one strong party, but several bits.

One reason why we haven't seen any attempt by PPP leaders to stir up violent mass unrest since Ms. Bhutto's murder is probably that none of the possible successors to Ms. Bhutto want to burn their bridges to the military. Though politicians have falsely accused the army of being responsible for the assassination, they still want the army to help them to power in the future at the expense of political rivals. Once again, this confirms the staying power of the military.

By the time the dust has settled somewhat in Pakistan, a new administration will have taken over in Washington. Ideally, this should provide the opportunity for a fresh U.S. strategy. For now, we should wait to see how things develop on the ground: how bad violence and unrest become, and whether any new leader can emerge in the PPP to credibly replace Ms. Bhutto. Nothing is to be gained by a policy of heavy pressure on Musharraf if the United States has no clear idea of whom it would like to see as Musharraf's civilian partner -- since Musharraf, though technically a civilian since he stepped down as chief of army staff last fall, is still very much a military figure.

The need for caution applies both to the waning Bush administration and to the politicians seeking to succeed it. There has been a tendency in both parties, but especially among the Democrats, for leading figures to emphasize their toughness vis-à-vis Pakistan. Genuine anger at Pakistan aside, this presumably seems a cost-free way of embarrassing the Bush administration and emphasizing Democratic toughness on security issues and a commitment to spreading "democracy." Threats by Barack Obama to raid Pakistan in pursuit of the Taliban, and by Hillary Clinton to take control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, produced a brief resurgence of mass support for Musharraf when in mid-January he warned the United States publicly, and very strongly, to attempt no such thing.

This game of the Democrats may seem harmless. It is, after all, a game that both parties have played with China when in opposition, only to adopt the pragmatic approaches of their predecessors when they actually come to power. U.S. presidential candidates would be well-advised to understand, however, that in Pakistan they are dealing with a vastly more volatile area than China, where unexpected events on the ground may require rapid and critical choices if they do in fact become president. They should take care lest their present rhetoric trap them in future decisions that they and America will later bitterly regret.

This doesn't mean a totally hands-off approach. Aid to Pakistan should continue and even increase, since nothing is to be gained by helping create an economic crisis that can only serve the Islamist militants. There is great merit to Senator Joseph Biden's (D-DE) suggestion that aid needs to be directed away from the military and toward economic and infrastructure goals. Socioeconomically, Pakistan remains in flux.

And the Pakistani military's contacts with the Taliban need to be seen by the West not simply as a problem, but also as a potential opportunity. It makes little sense to damn Pakistan for maintaining such links at the same time that Britain and the United States are seeking to create them in the hope of splitting the Taliban and drawing some of them into the Afghan administration. However, for a Pakistani government to play this role it would have to be assured that the United States was truly serious about the talks and would not subsequently use Pakistan as a scapegoat for failure.

As every opinion poll demonstrates, the great majority of Pakistanis may not want Islamist rule, but they are bitterly hostile to U.S. strategies in the "war on terror." The Pakistani people do support the government in efforts to curb extremism, since it threatens to destabilize Pakistan. But they also oppose their government acting as a U.S. proxy, which is seen as humiliating and destabilizing. When I talked to ordinary people in the Northwest Frontier Province capital, Peshawar, in May, every single one was opposed to large-scale military action against Taliban supporters in the tribal areas, though fewer than a quarter favored Islamist revolution in Pakistan itself.

No lasting improvement in the Afghan conflict can be achieved without a great deal of Pakistani help, since the Taliban draws so much of its support from the Pashtuns of Pakistan. The Pakistani military's contacts with the Taliban could one day make Pakistan a very important and useful player in bringing an end to the war on terror. But forcing Pakistan to do things to help the fight against the Taliban that would radically destabilize the country would be a fool's bargain.

And to imagine squaring this circle by bringing pro-Western democracy to Pakistan is to engage in an ideologically based fantasy. It is in fact desirable that elections be held and elected politicians be brought into the government, in alliance with the military. But this is because it may help restore some stability to Pakistan itself -- not necessarily because it will have any direct effect on the West's struggle against the Taliban.

Current Western analysis relies too heavily on clichés -- "dictatorship" versus "democracy," "fundamentalism" versus "moderation," "free and fair elections," "corruption" and so on. All too often, such words in a Pakistani context have quite different real meanings from those attached to them. The West should keep in mind that Pakistan will only be able to generate a real democracy if the country's society and economy are transformed and modernized over time.

A rational goal for U.S. strategy toward Pakistan therefore should not be democracy as such -- since Pakistani society at present is incapable of real democracy in our sense of the word -- but a stable working alliance between the military and an effective coalition of civilian forces, capable of acting firmly against the spread of Islamist violence within Pakistan and, ideally, helping to broker a future settlement in Afghanistan. On this basis, it may also be possible to safeguard and continue economic and social development, which alone can help that country make real progress toward prosperity, stability and ultimately democracy.

Black is the New Green

Ron Tang — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The intersection of ongoing structural shifts in international energy markets with strategic trends in global financial markets poses the most profound challenge to American hegemony since the end of the Cold War. In 2006, Pierre Noël and I wrote in these pages about an "axis of oil" -- a loose and shifting coalition of energy-exporting and -importing states, anchored by Russia and China, that is emerging as a counterweight to the United States (so far, most notably in Central Asia and, increasingly, in Iran).¹ The ability of such a coalition to resist American hegemony is now compounded by the vulnerability of the United States to financial and monetary pressure by its major international creditors -- most of which are at least putative members of the axis of oil.

In the past, the United States has exerted financial and monetary pressure on others to leverage their foreign-policy decision-making -- on Britain and France during the 1956 Suez crisis, for instance.² But now -- as the dollar declines to historic lows relative to other major currencies, against a backdrop of substantial expansion in the U.S. budget and current-account deficits in this millennium -- the tables have turned. Half a century after Suez, there is growing potential for a coalition of major energy exporters -- disproportionately concentrated in the Middle East and Russia -- and major manufacturers like China to coordinate the application of financial and monetary pressure on the United States for strategic purposes.

The Axis of Oil and 'Soft Balancing'

The sustained rise in energy prices since 2002 is redistributing wealth -- and, prospectively, economic power -- across the world. The main beneficiaries of this process are major oil exporters and the major industrial exporters -- e.g., China, Japan and Germany, the countries with the three largest current-account surpluses in the world -- that serve them. The principal "loser" is the United States.

This redistribution of wealth and power has significant implications for the global economy. Today, major energy exporters in the Persian Gulf and Russia are, collectively, at least as important to financing global economic imbalances as China and Japan. China's current-account surplus -- already the subject of much concern in the United States -- is now dwarfed by the combined current-account surpluses of Russia and the six countries comprising the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).³

Moreover, as the redistribution of wealth and power proceeds, economic linkages connecting the principal "winners" in this process -- Asian manufacturers and energy exporters in the Persian Gulf and Russia -- are deepening and multiplying. If a "world without the West," as Steven Weber and his associates described recently in these pages,⁴ is indeed taking shape, these linkages are its foundation. These linkages are also adding new economic dimensions to the axis of oil.

Despite significant movement toward the creation of a single, integrated market for crude oil and refined products, there remains a profound degree of "regionalization" in oil-supply relationships. Two-thirds of current oil exports from the Persian Gulf -- or "west Asia," as the Gulf is frequently described in more eastward Asian locales -- are delivered to Asian customers. For Persian Gulf energy producers, the most important "growth" markets for future production lie to the east; Russia and Central Asian producers (Kazakhstan for oil and Turkmenistan for natural gas) also have ambitions to expand exports to Asian markets. For their part, China, Japan and other Asian economies perceive a compelling strategic interest in deepening their energy ties to major oil and gas producers in the Middle East and former Soviet Union.

Now, linkages between Asia and major energy exporters are also taking shape for trade and investment flows. Anchored by China, a rising economic power, and Japan, an established (and recovering) economic powerhouse, Asia has clearly consolidated its position as the "center of gravity" for global manufacturing. To be sure, the United States -- which imports roughly 75 percent more than it exports -- has been a key "engine" for Asia's economic growth. In recent years, however, new markets -- including emerging economies and energy producers -- have become increasingly important to Asian manufacturers. This trend has prompted the current emphasis on Asian regionalism in China's economic and foreign policies. It also reinforces China's interest in building strategic trade ties to energy-producing states in the Middle East (such as Saudi Arabia) and Russia; similarly, China wants stronger investment ties to Iran, Central Asian energy producers and Russia.

Looking in the other direction, major hydrocarbon exporters in the Middle East are turning to Asia as a venue for what will surely be increasing volumes of outbound investment. On a per capita basis or in relation to GDP, the current-account surpluses of major Middle Eastern energy producers are larger than those of Asia's manufacturing powerhouses. These surpluses far exceed what their holders can productively use to pay down official debt, stimulate their domestic economies through infrastructure construction, increase consumption and fund economic-diversification initiatives. And energy producers in the Persian Gulf and Russia now hold more dollars as reserve assets than they need for macroeconomic stabilization.

So, what to do with these excess funds? Increasingly, major energy exporters -- and China as well -- are looking to convert their dollars not only into other currencies but also into other types of international assets -- equities, bonds, private-equity holdings and strategic stakes in investment projects across a range of economic sectors. This has led to an explosion of so-called "sovereign wealth funds" (SWFs) and similar types of state-owned investment channels in recent years. The most important ongoing trend in SWFs' investment flows is diversification away from the United States and toward Asia, which will bolster the consolidation of economic ties joining Asian manufacturers with energy exporters in the Persian Gulf and former Soviet Union.

These developments are playing out against mounting concern over what many states in Asia, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union see as the unilateral and ideological manner in which the United States has exercised strategic leadership in the post–Cold War period. To an impressive degree, these states are using the techniques of globalization -- cultivating trade, telecommunications and investment links disproportionately with one another -- to create a "world without the West." But, in various combinations, these states are also exploring what Robert Pape and other international relations scholars have called "soft balancing": The collaborative development of non-military means to restrain the United States from asserting influence in ways that other important regional and international players see as antithetical to their interests -- the United States as dysfunctional hegemon.

The exercise of financial and monetary leverage over the United States by a coalition of creditor nations -- including China and major energy exporters, the core of the axis of oil -- would constitute a deep intensification of soft balancing. Since the end of World War II, the dollar's status as the world's premier currency has benefited America economically while also bolstering Washington's international leadership. However, the dollar's standing as the leading international transactional and reserve currency is increasingly fragile -- creating a profound strategic vulnerability for the United States.

Dropping the Dollar

The dollar has enjoyed a long run as "the world's money." Following the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in the early 1970s -- when the world moved to a monetary regime based on floating exchange rates for most major currencies -- the dollar consolidated its position as the world's leading transactional currency, including for international oil trading. It also became the world's dominant reserve asset, effectively replacing gold as the ultimate international store of value and best instrument for settling deficits in countries' external accounts.

The dollar's unique standing has, among other things, enabled the United States to cover its current-account deficits and pay for growing and increasingly expensive oil imports by issuing debt instruments denominated in its own currency. Essentially, foreigners have underwritten America's credit card purchases with no credit limit, and the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve have been able to manipulate the interest rate on Washington's "account" to U.S. advantage.

But with the dramatic expansion of global economic imbalances, will countries with enormous current-account surpluses and burgeoning foreign-reserve assets continue financing America's "twin deficits" (current account and federal budget), providing critical support for the dollar's value and international standing? Or will there be, at some point, a slowdown in foreign financing of America's deficits, prompting flight from the dollar on a scale that would do long-term damage to its value and, effectively, displace the greenback as the world's top currency?

Dollar "optimists"⁵ argue that the comparative attractiveness of the United States as a venue for foreign investment and the relatively small percentage of global savings needed to finance America's current-account deficit mean that foreigners will continue to buy dollar-denominated debt instruments. Additionally, optimists argue that because manufacturing giants such as China and major energy exporters hold a high percentage of their reserve assets in dollars, they cannot move too far away from the dollar without seriously undermining the value of those assets. Dollar "pessimists"⁶, on the other hand, argue that the ratio of debt to GDP in the United States will, at some point, reach a level making continued financing of that debt economically unattractive to foreigners. At that point, declining demand for U.S. assets will prompt a fall in their prices -- including the value of the dollar itself.

It remains to be seen which of these two sets of economic arguments offers more accurate predictions about the future. But neither perspective adequately addresses the non-economic factors that could motivate creditor nations to act to undermine the dollar.

Foreign government agencies -- central banks and, more recently, SWFs -- have surpassed private purchasers of U.S. assets as the most important sources of financing for America's twin deficits. Today, the central banks of major creditor nations seem to be focused primarily on macroeconomic stabilization and managing the value of their currencies in the near term, and most SWFs seem to be focused on maximizing the long-term value of their assets. But, looking ahead, there is no guarantee that state-controlled entities will not base decisions about asset allocation on strategic calculations as well as economic considerations.

The imperatives of soft balancing will almost certainly influence China's approach to financial and monetary issues. Under the rubric of its "new diplomacy," the current Chinese leadership is committed to avoiding a military confrontation with the United States, as such a confrontation would retard China's continued economic development and growth. But in recent months, Chinese officials have said that Beijing might use China's dollar holdings as a "bargaining chip" -- particularly to deter the imposition of U.S. sanctions if the Chinese currency, the renminbi (RMB), does not appreciate as quickly as Washington wants.

Moreover, as China seeks to enhance its regional and international influence, the cultivation of financial and monetary power -- inevitably, at America's expense -- will be an increasingly important feature of Beijing's policies. In the near term, the Chinese leadership clearly intends to maintain tight control over the pace at which the RMB appreciates. Beijing's stance in this regard is driven to a considerable degree by economic motives -- in particular, an interest in keeping the price of Chinese exports relatively low to preserve China's comparative advantage in the global marketplace. But Chinese officials speak privately about their longer-term ambitions to form an Asian economic "zone" organized around China, in which the RMB would emerge as a leading transactional and reserve currency. These ambitions are driven by a mix of economics and strategy, including an interest in reducing America's dominant influence in the Pacific basin.

There is an important monetary component to China's efforts. The RMB is starting to appear in the reserve-asset holdings of some Asian countries; over time, as Beijing allows the RMB to appreciate in value and, ultimately, to "float" relative to other major currencies, the RMB's profile as a reserve currency is likely to rise substantially. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the RMB is already replacing the dollar as the preferred transactional currency in several Asian markets. And there are growing indications that Chinese financial institutions are already beginning to "sell down" the dollar. Again, there are near-term economic motives for this, but, in the longer term, these moves will limit the reduction in the value of Beijing's own reserve assets as the RMB appreciates and pushes the dollar further aside in Asia -- critical steps in China's emergence as a regional financial and monetary power.

The imperatives of soft balancing will likewise affect the financial and monetary calculations of major energy producers -- not only with regard to the disposition of their reserve assets, but also regarding the dollar's role in international oil trading. Historically, the primary economic justification for trading oil in dollars has been the dollar's position as the world's leading reserve currency. Outside the United States, trading oil in dollars while refined products are sold in national currencies exposes producers, refiners and traders to currency risk. Bearing that risk may have been worthwhile for non-U.S. actors -- to accrue the benefits of a more efficient, liquid and transparent market -- so long as the dollar was seen as a secure store of value. But, as the dollar's value becomes questionable, energy exporters -- particularly those that import more from the eurozone and Asia than from the United States -- and non-U.S. energy importers have stronger incentives to trade oil through instruments denominated in other currencies. Although there would be "transition costs" associated with introducing supply and spot purchase contracts denominated in currencies other than the dollar, such a move would shift much of the currency risk associated with international oil trading to the United States.

But, beyond economics, changes in the currency regime for international oil trading would be a significant blow to the dollar's standing -- and, thus, to America's strategic position. Already, some major energy producers are exploring ways to use such initiatives as a form of soft balancing against U.S. hegemony. In this regard, Iran's attempts in recent years to shift the currency regime for international oil trading away from exclusive reliance on the dollar clearly reflect Tehran's interest in maximizing the strategic position of the Islamic Republic vis-à-vis the United States. Senior Russian officials say privately that Moscow is exploring the introduction of oil-supply contracts denominated in rubles rather than dollars; while there are plausible economic arguments for such a move -- the ruble is effectively pegged to the euro, and Russia buys far more of its imports from the eurozone than from the United States -- the Kremlin's interest in finding ways to "push back" against what it views as excessive U.S. unilateralism in international affairs is also a factor.

So far, the United States has benefited from the actions of traditional allies in stemming the tide. One reason that European financial centers have not launched euro-based instruments for oil trading -- including not only supply contracts but also instruments for forward and futures trading, options and derivatives -- is concern by European governments that such a step would be perceived as hostile to U.S. interests.

Similarly, Saudi Arabia's continuing commitment to the dollar -- both as the currency for international oil trading and as the "peg" currency for the riyal -- reflects what Saudi officials explicitly describe as a "strategic" decision by the kingdom. In early 2005, as the dollar continued an already year-long decline toward what were then historic lows against the euro, a senior official of a small Gulf Arab state with close security ties to the United States said privately that, if the dollar's value declined another 10–15 percent against the euro, his country would support a shift in the currency regime for international oil trading "on economic grounds alone." Soon political developments in Europe -- in particular, rejection of the European constitution by Dutch and French voters -- caused the euro's value to fall, relieving economic pressure on Middle Eastern energy producers to consider shifting away from the dollar. But during 2004 and early 2005, Saudi Arabia's strategic loyalty to the dollar was an important safeguard for America's financial and monetary interests.

More recently, however, as the monetary-policy imperatives of the United States and Gulf Arab states with their currencies pegged to the dollar have diverged, economic pressure has mounted on these states to drop their dollar pegs. Kuwait took this step in May 2007, and expectations rose in regional and international financial markets that other GCC states might do the same. Once again, Saudi leadership and continuing commitment to the dollar -- reflected in a November 2007 decision by the Saudi central bank to cut interest rates in tandem with the Federal Reserve (even though rising inflation in the kingdom meant that raising interest rates was a more appropriate Saudi policy response) -- delayed any wholesale movement by GCC states away from their dollar pegs. That same month, at an extraordinary OPEC summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia fended off pressure from Iran and Venezuela to move away from pricing oil exclusively in dollars; in a closed session, a microphone accidentally left on picked up Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal warning that the dollar would "collapse" if currency issues were even mentioned in the summit's final declaration.

But how long will Saudi Arabia be willing to defend the dollar? Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks -- and, more intensively, since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 -- the Saudi leadership has been reevaluating the kingdom's long-standing strategic partnership with the United States. Although there is a range of views among influential members of the royal family regarding the future direction of Saudi policy toward the United States, on balance the leadership believes that Riyadh must "hedge" against a precipitous deterioration in relations with Washington. The kingdom is thus diversifying its economic partners and cultivating what Saudi officials openly describe as a "strategic" relationship with China. The evolution of Sino-Saudi relations -- and, more broadly, the consolidation of an axis of oil encompassing Asian manufacturing powers and major energy exporters in the Middle East and former Soviet Union -- is emerging as a critical factor that will shape the management of global economic imbalances in coming years.

Strategic Risks and Policy Responses

The expansion of economic linkages between Asian manufacturers and energy exporters in the Middle East and Russia is adding important monetary and financial dimensions to the axis of oil, strengthening its capacity to act as a counterweight to the United States. Depending on how America behaves internationally in the near-to-medium term, a coalition of creditor nations -- encompassing major manufacturing powers and major energy exporters -- could decide to take action to undermine the dollar's international status. Such action could take a variety of forms: restricting the flow of financing for the U.S. current-account deficit, further diversification away from the dollar as a reserve asset or broadening the currency regime for international oil trading to include currencies other than the dollar.

Displacement of the dollar as the world's leading transactional and reserve currency would hurt the United States economically, by reducing seigniorage benefits accruing to the U.S. Treasury from foreigners holding dollars -- in effect, an interest-free loan for the U.S. government. More importantly, it would raise the costs of financing America's twin deficits. By extension, these economic losses -- whether actually imposed or only threatened by a critical mass of America's creditors -- could constrain U.S. "freedom of action" internationally, in a manner reminiscent of America's exercise of leverage over British decision-making during the 1956 Suez crisis.

Trends in global financial markets in coming years will almost certainly further weaken America's financial and monetary position. Unless current trends in global energy markets are purely cyclical -- and, therefore, the price of oil drops substantially in the near-to-medium term -- energy market developments will exacerbate this vulnerability. Preventing creditor nations from exploiting that vulnerability is one of the most important challenges facing the United States during the next decade.

Unfortunately, this challenge is almost completely overlooked in current debates about the direction of U.S. foreign policy -- still often defined by some conservatives' continued attachment to America's unilateral prerogatives or by the shared belief of some neoconservatives and liberal internationalists that a "Concert of Democracies" can replace the UN Security Council as the legitimator of U.S. military initiatives. These notions overlook a critical reality: A "community" of largely non-democratic manufacturing powers and energy exporters is already laying the groundwork for real strategic collaboration, aimed at limiting America's ability to carry out precisely such hegemonic agendas.

Minimizing the strategic risks associated with America's financial and monetary vulnerability is going to require hard foreign-policy choices. First, the United States must recognize that, fundamentally, this vulnerability is rooted in perceptions that American strategic initiatives and positions are increasingly threatening to the interests of key creditor nations. These initiatives and positions include the Iraq War, feckless stewardship of the Arab-Israeli peace process, refusal to pursue serious diplomacy with Iran, support for "color" revolutions in former Soviet states and lackluster vision in managing China's rise.

Second, the United States should make the cultivation of mutually beneficial strategic partnerships with major energy producers, such as Russia and Saudi Arabia, a much higher foreign-policy priority. As Dimitri Simes has argued, successive U.S. administrations have crafted policy toward Russia on the basis of an increasingly unrealistic assumption that Moscow has no choice but to tolerate whatever America wants to do.⁷Similarly, U.S. policymakers continue to operate as if Saudi Arabia somehow needs America more than America needs Saudi Arabia.

The United States can no longer afford to maintain these illusions. The next U.S. administration will need to establish broad-based strategic understandings with Russia, Saudi Arabia and other important energy exporters to raise confidence in the benefits of America's continued international leadership. With regard to Russia, the United States should make clear that, while the Kremlin will not have a veto over U.S. policy in Central and Eastern Europe, Washington recognizes that Moscow has important interests in the post-Soviet space. With regard to Saudi Arabia, the United States should work to restore Saudi leaders' perceptions that American hegemony in the Middle East is strongly positive for the kingdom's interests; this will require serious dialogue with Saudi leaders about how U.S. policy can accommodate Saudi interests and initiatives on Arab-Israeli peacemaking and regional security.

Finally, the United States needs a long-term strategy for accommodating China's economic and political rise that assures Beijing of America's respect for legitimate Chinese interests while also protecting America's most important interests in Asia. This will require a much more robust American effort to shape the evolution of existing multilateral institutions in Asia -- and to create new ones, especially for energy and security issues.

The rise and evolution of the axis of oil is a watershed development in the history of American primacy. This development is rooted in structural shifts in the global energy balance and global financial flows; the next U.S. administration will not be able to escape the strategic consequences of these shifts by fatuous invocations of "energy independence" or "putting our economic house in order." The continuation of America's international primacy now truly depends on Washington's ability to take account of the perceptions and interests of others in its foreign-policy decision-making.

The author is grateful to Hillary Mann Leverett, Pierre Noël and Øystein Noreng for their indispensable contributions to his analysis and understanding of the issues treated in this article, and to Sameer Lalwani for outstanding research assistance.

1. Flynt Leverett and Pierre Noël, "The New Axis of Oil," The National Interest, No. 84 (Summer 2006).

2. In 1956, the Eisenhower Administration -- opposed to the Anglo-French campaign to seize the Suez Canal in cooperation with Israel -- orchestrated a run on sterling that compelled the Eden government to secure financing from the International Monetary Fund to defend the pound's value. Washington then refused to back the loan unless Britain withdrew its forces from Suez; in short order, decisions were taken in London and Paris for British and French troops to leave Egypt.

3. The GCC includes three of the so-called "OPEC Five" states -- Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates -- as well as Qatar, the world's leading producer and exporter of liquefied natural gas. (Bahrain and Oman are also members.)

4. Naazneen Barma, Ely Ratner and Steven Weber, "A World Without the West," The National Interest, No. 90 (Jul./Aug. 2007).

5. Dollar "optimists" include prominent academic economists and policy experts such as Richard Cooper, Ronald McKinnon and current Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

6. Dollar "pessimists" include a number of prominent academic economists, policy experts at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Morgan Stanley's Stephen Roach, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

7. Dimitri K. Simes, "Losing Russia: The Costs of Renewed Confrontation," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 86, No. 6 (November/December 2007).

The Changing of the Guard

Ron Tang — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The view that sometime during this century a “changing of the guard” will occur, when China will displace the United States in much the same way as America did Britain, is widely held. It unites liberals and conservatives, optimists and pessimists, most of whom accept the proposition that “the East is back”, with China leading the pack. The debate is over when the shift will happen and what a world that currently bears an American stamp will look like after China has become Mr. Big.

The main problem with the narrative about China’s challenge to American supremacy (the limits of which are being illustrated in Iraq, just as they were thirty years earlier in Vietnam) is its linear, deterministic quality. Even under the most favorable conditions, China has a long way to go before it catches up with the United States. Consider some typical measures of power. China’s GDP, rendered in current exchange rates, was $2.5 trillion in 2007, less than one-fifth of America’s $13.2 trillion. The gap is even wider if one takes account of those states (India, the major West European states and Vietnam) most likely to join the United States in a countervailing coalition against a “revisionist” China. Then there is the matter of America’s peerless capacity for technological innovation; China is in no position to close that gap anytime soon.

The same disparity is evident in military power. The American defense budget was $518 billion in 2005, roughly 43 percent of global military spending and equal to those of the next 47 countries combined. By contrast, China’s was $81 billion. Even assuming that Chinese spending is understated by 50 percent, the American military budget is four times larger. True, money is not the measure of all things, but a meticulous assessment of the Chinese armed forces by Anthony Cordesman and Martin Kleiber demonstrates that China lags far behind in more specific elements of military power as well. The People’s Liberation Army relies heavily on armaments that are knockoffs or modernized variants of Soviet systems from the 1950s and 1960s and are no match for their American equivalents in range, firepower, speed, accuracy and overall technological advancement. The Chinese leadership’s dogged efforts to create a modern military force by cutting manpower; upgrading the technological caliber of armor, aircraft, missiles and ships (with massive purchases from Russia); and investing in electronic and information warfare have not changed this picture -- and will not for decades to come.

The one advantage that Beijing has is that the United States has chosen to assume worldwide military commitments, while China concentrates its forces closer to home. The most important consequence of this contrast, itself indicative of the gap in power between America and China, is that while China would still be defeated in any confrontation over Taiwan, it has raised the risk that the United States would have to run to protect Taiwan.

The Chinese leadership would have to be extremely reckless and willing to jeopardize China’s galloping economic growth to initiate a war with the United States, and there is no evidence that it is made up of wild-eyed gamblers. Rather, Beijing, as Bates Gill shows, has chosen moderation of late and has sought to allay regional fears about its ascendancy by stressing that it is engaged in “peaceful development”, taking a leaf right out of Bismarck’s playbook.

One might counter that talk is cheap and dismiss the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) soothing messages as proof of its well-honed propaganda skills. But beyond the words, there have been real changes in Beijing’s deeds. Once suspicious of multilateral approaches to east Asian problems, China has begun to embrace them. For example, it has become an active participant in the ASEAN Plus-5 forum and an advocate of regional security structures for consultations. China has also begun to favor multilateral approaches to confidence building and territorial disputes. Beijing once derided the hypocrisy and double standard behind calls for nuclear non-proliferation but now supports efforts to stop the spread of nuclear arms and other Weapons of Mass Destruction; it has, for example, played a pivotal part in the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program. Likewise, it once viewed terrorism as a manifestation of class struggle and a weapon of the oppressed but now sees it as a scourge, no doubt partly because of sporadic attacks in the Turkic-Muslim Xinjiang Autonomous Region. By and large, this strategy of reassurance has worked, allaying east Asian fears that Chinese dominance will bring upheaval and bullying in its wake. Moreover, in some parts of the region, Washington, not Beijing, is deemed the greater threat to peace.

Yet the expectation that China will remain responsible rather than turn revisionist, even as the balance of power starts to tip in its favor, could be upended by events. For one thing, it does not allow for the unexpected, most notably a latter-day Sarajevo-style syndrome, in which a crisis spins out of control, culminating in a large-scale conflict that nobody wanted, or even anticipated. Susan Shirk offers the latest version of this argument, stressing the Chinese leadership’s desire to exploit rising nationalism for its own ends. The CCP has done so because it faces a very big problem: It needs a new source of legitimacy. The arid slogans of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism have lost whatever appeal they may once have had for the populace, and the party has little to offer when it comes to building a 21^st-century economic system and making it more innovative. With its censorship of the Internet and other dysfunctional proclivities, it is more of an obstacle to innovation than a spur. The party leadership has adapted by leaning heavily on nationalism, stoking it during crises, and using it more generally to articulate the theme that China under its stewardship has erased the humiliations of the 19^thcentury and is fast becoming a front-rank power, respected by all, pushed around by none.

This is a risky gambit, though; China’s materialistic youths are also very nationalistic (though hardly unique in that regard). They monitor whether the regime is delivering on its bravado and whether it is standing up to adversaries, especially Japan and the United States. Prominent examples include the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the war over Kosovo in May 1999, the collision between a Chinese fighter jet and an American EP-3 surveillance aircraft in April 2001, and Japanese leaders’ visits to the Yasukuni shrine and sugarcoating of past imperialism.

Not only is the regime aware that it is judged by its performance rather than its pronouncements, it knows that mass demonstrations occasioned by perceived slights to China -- and such large-scale protests occurred during the incidents just mentioned -- could turn into mass protests aimed at the regime itself. This fear is not paranoiac; there is no dearth of kindling to stoke the fire. Today’s China is rife with revolts, some involving clashes with the security services, by workers and peasants -- and other segments of society -- over a range of issues: job losses, land seizures, rising socioeconomic inequality, corruption, environmental degradation and the ineffectiveness of courts. Moreover, the protests are growing in number and size and are becoming better organized. According to official Chinese data, the number of protests increased from 58,000 in 2003 to 85,000 in 2005 (almost four million people took part in 2004), and the Ministry of Public Safety likened the sharp upswing since the latter half of the 1990s to a “violent wind.” The true number -- tightly guarded by the authorities -- is quite likely to be much higher.¹

The question is whether the regime will be able to ride the nationalist wave during crises by showing the toughness needed to placate its citizenry, while also avoiding a conflict with potential adversaries like the United States or Japan. This is something of a high-wire act, particularly because the ability of the Chinese population to mobilize itself has been transformed by the Internet and mobile phones, themselves important symbols of the modernization that has followed Deng Xiaoping’s ditching of Maoist nostrums. Just recall how the Falun Gong faithful organized rallies and, following the regime’s crackdown, used the Internet to publicize their plight.

The possibility of conflict is all the more unpalatable for Beijing because China’s economic miracle is the result of shedding autarky and embracing economic interdependence or, in its turbo-charged variant, globalization. For example, if China were to unload its dollar holdings and opt for the euro as its main reserve currency, it would damage the American economy (the U.S. government would have to hike interest rates to keep attracting dollars). But Beijing would also wound itself. While Americans certainly benefit from the relatively inexpensive goods that U.S. companies import from China, it is no less true that a reliable American market is important to China. Its exports to the United States totaled $287 billion in 2006, making the United States the number one foreign destination for Chinese goods; on top of that, the United States is the fifth-largest source of foreign direct investment in China.

So, the costs of willfully creating instability -- indeed, of upheaval unrelated to Chinese actions -- have risen now that China’s economic engine is powered by capital inflows, global markets and reliable energy supplies. And the constraints imposed by such dependence will not diminish even though China will be less susceptible to economic sanctions as rising incomes expand the internal market.

Another side effect of economic success that is far more challenging for Beijing is the extent to which Deng’s reforms have transformed Chinese society. To ensure its survival, the CCP needs to maintain a monopoly on political power, a litany of social controls and communist ideology, all increasingly at odds with a complex, modern and materialistic society. This contradiction will have to be resolved. The far-reaching transformation of China will aggravate the tension between a static and repressive polity on the one hand, and a dynamic society and economy on the other, which are not only jettisoning the avowed ideals of the CCP, but also rendering the party itself an anachronism. Whether this occurs through sporadic clashes between the rulers and the ruled (the Tiananmen massacre was an early harbinger of this possibility, and recurrent protests by workers and peasants show that that event was not necessarily an aberration), the shedding of totalitarianism for a light-touch Singapore-style authoritarianism, the gradual emergence of a democratic polity or the breakdown of the system is hard to predict. But the problem is as substantial as it is undeniable.

Very few of the Sinologists who have been daring enough to venture predictions about China’s future have picked the last of these outcomes; rather, most assume that the regime will manage the problems it faces and that they are a sideshow to the main event: China’s emergence as a superpower. Not Gordon Chang. He believes China is headed for a crack-up and offers a long list of problems to back his claim. The banking system, forced for political reasons to lend money to sustain loss-making, state-owned enterprises -- millions are employed in these companies -- is vulnerable to what in the antiseptic language of economics are called “non-performing” loans, and Chang is convinced that the banks’ insolvency will spark an economic crisis. Along with the benefits it brings, accession to the WTO introduces competition from abroad, affecting production and employment at home. China’s rapid economic growth has raised living standards for millions, but has also created deep divides between the coastal regions and the interior and west, as well as between the poor peasants and workers and urban elite, something that the leadership and Chinese academics have noted with growing concern, viewing these chasms not only as unfortunate by-products of the economic boom, but also sources of social strife. These concerns are well-founded, judging by the increasing incidence of demonstrations -- some violent -- by poorer Chinese who feel that they have been denied their fair share of the burgeoning wealth or who have been evicted from their lands to make way for new homes and factories. Chang, like Shirk, also argues that an increasingly nationalistic generation of Chinese places pressure on the leadership to stand tall when tested by foreign adversaries -- or to lose what is fast becoming its principal source of legitimacy.

One manifestation of the inequality accompanying the skyrocketing economy is the so-called “floating population” of 140 million, consisting primarily of people who have fled the poverty of the countryside only to find themselves living on the margins of life in large cities, without rights to permanent residence and identity cards, and lacking reliable sources of income, decent housing and access to social services. Moreover, city dwellers view them, not without justification, as contributing to the increase in crime and believe that their willingness to work for less pushes wages down.² Perhaps sustained economic growth will solve such problems. To ensure this -- a precondition for social stability -- the regime needs investment capital, but there will be other claims on such funds. Now that birth rates have fallen sharply for the past several decades (on average, Chinese women now have 1.7 children, less than the 2.1 needed to maintain the current size of the population), the aged account for an increasing proportion of China’s population (the median age was 22 in 1980 but is estimated to increase to 41 in 2030).³ They must be cared for by the state or entrusted to their children, reducing net savings and investment in either case. Then there are environmental problems: It will also be exceedingly expensive to ameliorate the health problems rampant pollution is producing; water shortages are becoming severe and will worsen as a result of further economic growth and urbanization. The price tag of the multiple effects of environmental damage is estimated to be between 8 and 12 percent of China’s GNP, and continued economic growth will surely increase the burden.⁴ Finally, there is what might be called the Tiananmen–Falun Gong problem. The increasingly modern and educated citizenry created by the economic miracle will start chafing under the regime’s panoply of political restrictions and gain the confidence to make its dissatisfaction known, the more so if socioeconomic inequality and environmental problems continue to increase, widening and deepening popular discontent.

None of these difficulties in themselves will necessarily bring down the regime. Indeed, its success in managing numerous problems is striking. But their persistence and combined effects could take China down a road not anticipated by the orthodox “China rising paradigm.” The Soviet Union’s rapid disappearance should serve as a cautionary tale: The unexpected can occur, catching everyone off guard, and China’s current rulers, like their predecessors, could lose the “mandate of heaven.”

No matter what happens, Japan cannot help but be affected. If China’s ascent is uninterrupted, no other state will feel the consequences more, given the realities of demography (China’s huge advantage in population), geography (China’s proximity to Japan) and history (the legacies of conflict between China and Japan). So what will Japan do in the face of a China that seeks to rearrange the regional balance of power and defies the predictions of those who claim that its common sense and growing stake in stability will lead it to choose statesmanship over saber-rattling? Two important books, Securing Japan by Richard J. Samuels and Japan Rising by Kenneth Pyle, superbly assess the choices Japan is likely to make, while placing them in historical context.

Most observers expect little or no change in the way Japan has pursued security since 1945 and predict that it will continue a variant of the Yoshida Doctrine, promulgated by Japan’s first post–World War II prime minister, Yoshida Shigeru, which involved concentrating on economic development and trusting in American protection.

But while Japan may continue this “trading state” strategy, the assumption that it has no other realistic choice is not borne out by its history, a case that I have also made recently, and that Samuels and Pyle develop in more detail. (Though they do not believe that Japan will shift course as dramatically as I do -- going beyond beefing up its military power toward a strategy of autonomy, propelled by an increasing awareness that the American commitment to defend Japan is becoming less reliable.)⁵

The two most important conditions that could place Japan on a new path are China’s emergence as a front-rank power and Japan’s loss of confidence in America’s protection, or even its robust presence in northeast Asia. The Japanese officials and experts who believe that the American guarantee could become unreliable are not of one mind. Some believe that economic conditions in the United States (persistent budget and current-account deficits and mounting social problems) may prompt it to scale back military spending and commitments. Others doubt that the United States can be counted on to the degree it has been in the past because China’s growing might will require it to take increasing risks on behalf of its allies in the North Pacific.

To this list I would add the possibility that the United States will recast its own grand strategy. As I argue in The End of Alliances, for most of its history, the Republic was led by individuals who were chary of the expenses and obligations that accompany permanent alliances. Seen thus, the Cold War strategy of assuming expansive military commitments and forging open-ended alliances changed the prior pattern of American statecraft; since it was a fundamental change, a new orientation could scarcely be excluded. While neither Pyle nor Samuels predict so far-reaching an American reassessment -- that is not the purpose animating their books -- they show that the possibility is much discussed in Japanese national-security circles these days.

Samuels delves deep into Japanese political dynamics and reveals how Yoshida’s game plan, while still dominant, is now fiercely contested. Those who favor minimal additions to Japan’s military budget and forces still hold positions of power and the belief that there is no need to supplant a solution that has worked so well for so long is shared by most Japanese. Moreover, there are some points of convergence between Yoshida’s disciples and the pacifist left, particularly when it comes to preserving Article IX of the constitution, which commits Japan to renouncing the implements of war. (Japan skirted the literal wording of this provision in response to Washington’s reassessment -- particularly evident after the Korean War -- that its earlier decision to demilitarize Japan had to be abandoned because of the threats posed by China, the USSR and North Korea. Yoshida acceded to American wishes with great reluctance but insisted that Japan’s military power and obligations be placed within narrow bounds.)

But by the 1980s, a segment of Japan’s political class and foreign-policy community -- which has become particularly influential following the Cold War -- was arguing that while Japan should hold firm to the American alliance, it should strengthen its military capabilities. This segment also argued that Japan should undertake defensive missions further from the homeland, participate in UN peacekeeping operations and provide greater assistance to American forces in the Pacific. They advocated revising Article IX, discarding the self-imposed limits on defense spending (the 1 percent of the GNP ceiling that soon attained sacrosanct status) and the ban on exporting arms and military technology, and acquiring armaments that would provide Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) more muscle and reach. Apart from such specific changes, the advocates of a stronger military with a more ambitious mandate want Japan to stop what they consider its self-flagellation for past misdeeds, abandon its pacifist security blanket and become a “normal country.”⁶

The extent to which this school has moved Japan away from the Yoshida consensus, while also strengthening the alliance with the United States, was evident even before the tenure of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, but its influence became particularly pronounced once he was elected. Calls for rethinking Article IX have become standard. The Defense Agency gained ministerial status in 2007, and its influence has grown as the controls exercised by the powerful Cabinet Legislative Office have been diminished. Japanese ships provided logistical support for U.S. forces operating in Iraq and Afghanistan. Senior officials stated that pre-emptive attacks were justified to parry the threat presented by North Korea’s ballistic missiles and nuclear program. A small contingent from the JSDF was deployed to Iraq. Even the nuclear option, once a taboo, is now part of the national-security debate.

Political currents within Japan could also take Tokyo’s defense policy in a new direction. Those who favored unarmed neutrality, principally the Socialist Party, have become marginalized. Meanwhile, another group, although it certainly does not represent mainstream thinking, has become more prominent. Its adherents favor far more radical changes, including an end to the alliance with the United States, which they consider a symbol of subordination. The governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, is the best-known advocate of these positions, but Samuels shows that they are supported by a number of other prominent thinkers, who present a coherent, if somewhat overwrought, appraisal of the growing threats facing Japan -- China in particular -- and stress America’s unreliability. Japan, these nationalists warn, will find itself alone and vulnerable unless it ditches the Yoshida Doctrine and goes well beyond the bounds envisaged by the “normal country” folks. But even if they prove to have little influence, the fact remains that the Nakasone-Koizumi line is well established and has already made a difference that would have appeared quite unlikely as late as the 1970s.

If the United States, for whatever reason, reduces its military presence in the North Pacific, China begins to throw its weight around and the comity between Tokyo and Washington starts to erode, Pyle’s argument will almost certainly be validated. The idea that external shifts will bring about major changes in the theory and practice of Japan’s military policy may even exceed what he envisions -- the gap between the “normal country” proponents and nationalist groups that Samuels analyzes could close and public opinion could come to favor a reevaluation of the limits placed on the JSDF. This scenario goes beyond what even Pyle expects, and far beyond what Samuels foresees, but it is hardly improbable, certainly not if one considers the long sweep of Japanese history and the major recalibrations that have occurred in the balance of power over the centuries.

Would northeast Asia become a more dangerous place if there were to be so radical a change? The mainstream view is that it would, and it certainly cannot be dismissed. But if in fact China proves the optimists wrong -- does not collapse as Gordon Chang expects and instead surpasses the United States much more rapidly than he envisaged and sets out to alter the balance of power aggressively -- Japan’s choices are not limited to minimalism or militarism. It can develop a far more capable military and, together with a coalition that could include the United States, India, Vietnam, Indonesia and Australia (and perhaps Russia, depending on whether it chooses to help balance China or to safeguard its sparsely populated and hard-to-defend Far East by placating Beijing), create a new equilibrium.

There are already some signs that new alignments are jelling in anticipation of a stronger China. After decades of estrangement during the Cold War, India and the United States are forming a strategic partnership, with Washington violating its non-proliferation policy to help consolidate the alliance. American arms manufacturers are eyeing an Indian market once dominated by the Soviet Union, anticipating that India will need to modernize its armed forces and have the cash to buy what it needs. India and Japan have begun military-to-military contacts and have also held joint naval exercises and operations in which Australia and the United States have participated. The United States and Vietnam have moved from enmity to cooperation. Leaders in these countries deny that China has anything to do with all this (and Indian officials, eager to dispel the notion that they are colluding with Washington, will doubtless point to an India-China naval exercise), but such protestations are scarcely persuasive, for the historical record is unambiguously clear: When a state makes dramatic gains in power, it provokes an opposing coalition. And there is no doubt who is the rising power.

The replication of this process in Asia would be neither an aberration nor, necessarily, something to fear. Imagine a China that continues to shed its revolutionary past, adopts pragmatism and stability as its watchwords, and becomes ever more intertwined with the global economy. The awareness that the intemperate quest for a Pax Sinica would inevitably provoke a countervailing alignment, tax China’s resources and overextend its military power should restrain Beijing. Conversely, a belligerent China’s freedom of action would be reduced by an opposing coalition, especially one that stretches Chinese resources across several widely separated fronts. Everyone benefits if a state bidding to become the new hegemon treads lightly -- including the putative hegemon itself. That is a lesson offered by both Sun Tzu and Bismarck.

Books Discussed in this Article

Anthony H. Cordesman and Martin Kleiber, Chinese Military Modernization: Force Development and Strategic Capabilities (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2007), 226 pp.

Bates Gill, Rising Star: China’s New Security Diplomacy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2007), 267 pp.

Susan L. Shirk, China: Fragile Superpower (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 336 pp.

Gordon Chang, The Coming Collapse of China (New York: Random House, 2001), 346 pp.

Kenneth B. Pyle, Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose (New York: PublicAffairs, 2007), 420 pp.

Richard J. Samuels, Securing Japan: Tokyo’s Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), 277 pp.

Notes

1. Thomas Lum, “Social Unrest in China”, Congressional Research Service, May 8, 2006, available at http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33416.pdf; “China Grows More Wary over Rash of Protest”, washingtonpost.com, August 10, 2005; the quotation is from Sinologist Dorothy Solinger, “Worker Protest in China -- Plentiful but Preempted”, Taipei Times, February 18, 2005.

2. T. Wing Lo and Guoping Jiang, “Inequality, Crime, and the Floating Population in China”, Asian Criminology, Vol. 1 (2006), pp. 112.

3. Data from Nicholas Eberstadt, “Will China Continue to Rise?” (unpublished manuscript).

4. Elizabeth Economy, “The Great Leap Backwards”, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 86, No. 5 (September/October 2007), pp. 47.

5. Rajan Menon, The End of Alliances (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

6. The JSDF has capabilities that are much greater than its innocuous-sounding name would suggest. Japan may spend barely 1 percent of its GDP on defense, but given the size of its economy, its military budget is the fourth highest (or fifth, depending on the year) in the world, which means that even a small increase in the proportion devoted to the military can make a considerable difference. Furthermore, its technological prowess gives it the capacity to manufacture modern weapons that few other states can.

Steve Clemons Appears in National Interest Story on U.S. and Russia

Communications — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 11:02:00 -0500

Only a few years ago, Russia and the United States seemed to be headed towards a mutually-beneficial partnership in the common fight against international terrorism. But Russia’s recent behavior has left many wondering about its intentions, particularly when it comes to the United States. Fundamental disagreements on key issues and strong anti-American sentiment among the Russian population leave little doubt the relationship is strained. The threat of a renewed Cold War—or, worse, yet, military confrontation—has put the two former rivals back at the forefront of debate. At a luncheon discussion, Dimitri K. Simes, president of The Nixon Center and publisher of The National Interest, offered both an explanation for the strained interaction, as well as some answers about where it may be headed. Steven Clemons, Senior Fellow and Director of the American Strategy Program at The New America Foundation, moderated the discussion. ...

For the complete article, please follow this link.

Beyond American Hegemony

Cecille Isidro — Thu, 31 May 2007 09:25:00 -0400

That the foreign policy of George W. Bush has been a catastrophic failure is disputed by none today except for a dwindling number of diehards on the neoconservative right. But there is no consensus on the scope of the failure. Has a sound global grand strategy been poorly implemented, at the operational and tactical level, in Iraq and elsewhere? Or is the failure much deeper than that? Is the grand strategy the Bush Administration has pursued inherently flawed?

This matters because what has become known as the "Bush Doctrine" did not originate with George W. Bush. Rather, it is rooted in a bipartisan consensus that America’s temporary Cold War hegemony in Western Europe and east Asia should be converted into permanent U.S. global hegemony. True, the elder Bush and Bill Clinton viewed the United States as a status quo power whereas the younger Bush has been more inclined to use U.S. power to revise and change the international order, especially in the Middle East. Nevertheless, all three administrations shared the same essential strategic goal of consolidating U.S. global hegemony by averting the "renationalization" of German and Japanese military policy and preventing Russia and China from competing with the United States as "peer competitors." The perpetual "dual containment" of Germany and Japan, coupled with the not-so-secret containment of Russia and China, means that U.S. post-Cold War strategy represents less a break with U.S. Cold War strategy than a continuation of it, in a subtler form.

Hegemony’s Descensus Avernus

During the Cold War, the United States was the stronger of two superpowers in a bipolar world. The anti-Soviet alliance was not a traditional alliance of equals, but a hegemonic alliance centered on the United States. West Germany, Japan and South Korea were semi-sovereign U.S. protectorates. Britain and France were more independent, but even they received the benefits of "extended deterrence," according to which the United States agreed to treat an attack on them as the equivalent of an attack on the American homeland. America’s Cold War strategy was often described as dual containment -- the containment not only of America’s enemies like the Soviet Union and (until the 1970s) communist China, but also of America’s allies, in particular West Germany and Japan. Dual containment permitted the United States to mobilize German and Japanese industrial might as part of the anti-Soviet coalition, while forestalling the re-emergence of Germany and Japan as independent military powers.

The Cold War officially ended in Paris in 1990, but the United States has continued to pursue a dual containment strategy based on three principles: dissuasion, reassurance and coercive non-proliferation.

Dissuasion -- directed at actual or potential challengers to the United States -- commits the United States to outspend all other great military powers, whether friend or foe. This policy’s goal -- in the words of the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance draft leaked from then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney’s Pentagon -- is the dissuasion or "deterring [of] potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role."

By the end of the 1990s, as Charles Krauthammer noted in these pages four years ago:

"The result is the dominance of a single power unlike anything ever seen. Even at its height Britain could always be seriously challenged by the next greatest powers. Britain had a smaller army than the land powers of Europe and its navy was equaled by the next two navies combined. Today, American military spending exceeds that of the next twenty countries combined. Its navy, air force and space power are unrivaled."

This approach flies in the face of the strategy usually adopted by traditional status quo great powers, which sought to ensure that they belonged to alliances with resources that exceeded those of potential challengers. It is no surprise that, despite the absence of any threat to the United States equivalent to that of the Soviet Union, our defense spending today, as a share of our total GDP, is nearly at the Cold War average.

High levels of defense expenditures are not merely to overawe potential challengers. (In outlining possible competitors, Krauthammer noted, "Only China grew in strength, but coming from so far behind it will be decades before it can challenge American primacy -- and that assumes that its current growth continues unabated.") To again quote from the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance, "we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order." Reassurance, the second prong of the hegemonic strategy, entails convincing major powers not to build up their military capabilities, allowing the United States to assume the burdens of ensuring their security instead.

In other words, while outspending allies like Germany and Japan on defense, the United States should be prepared to fight wars on behalf of Germany and Japan, sparing them the necessity of re-arming -- for fear that these countries, having "renationalized" their defense policies and rearmed, might become hostile to the United States at some future date. For example, even though the threats emanating from the spillover of the Balkan conflicts affected Germany and its neighbors far more than a geographically far-removed United States, Washington took the lead in waging the 1999 Kosovo war -- in part to forestall the emergence of a Germany prepared to act independently. And the Persian Gulf War was, among other things, a reassurance war on behalf of Japan -- far more dependent on Persian Gulf oil than the United States -- confirmed by the fact that Japan paid a substantial portion of the United States’ costs in that conflict. Today, the great question is whether or not two other Asian giants -- India and China -- will eschew the development of true blue-water navies and continue to allow the United States to take responsibility for keeping the Gulf open.

Finally, the global hegemony strategy insists that America’s safety depends not on the absence of a hostile hegemon in Europe, Asia and the Middle East -- the traditional American approach -- but on the permanent presence of the United States itself as the military hegemon of Europe, the military hegemon of Asia and the military hegemon of the Middle East. In each of these areas, the regional powers would consent to perpetual U.S. domination either voluntarily, because the United States assumed their defense burdens (reassurance), or involuntarily, because the superior U.S. military intimidated them into acquiescence (dissuasion).

American military hegemony in Europe, Asia and the Middle East depends on the ability of the U.S. military to threaten and, if necessary, to use military force to defeat any regional challenge-but at a relatively low cost. This is because the American public is not prepared to pay the costs necessary if the United States is to be a "hyperpower."

Given this premise, the obsession with the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and other Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) makes perfect sense. WMD are defensive weapons that offer poor states a possible defensive shield against the sword of unexcelled U.S. conventional military superiority. The success of the United States in using superior conventional force to defeat Serbia and Iraq (twice) may have accelerated the efforts of India, Pakistan, North Korea and Iran to obtain nuclear deterrents. As an Indian admiral observed after the Gulf War, "The lesson is that you should not go to war with the United States unless you have nuclear weapons." Moreover, it is clear that the United States treats countries that possess WMD quite differently from those that do not.

So proliferation undermines American regional hegemony in two ways. First, it forces the U.S. military to adopt costly and awkward strategies in wartime. Second, it discourages intimidated neighbors of the nuclear state from allowing American bases and military build-ups on its soil.

With this in mind, proponents of the hegemony strategy often advocate a policy of preventive war to keep countries deemed to be hostile to the United States from obtaining nuclear weapons or WMD. Preventive war (as distinguished from pre-emptive attack to avert an impending strike) is not only a violation of international law but also a repudiation of America’s own traditions. Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson all ruled out preventive wars against the Soviet Union and China to cripple or destroy their nuclear programs, and President Ronald Reagan, along with Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, denounced Israel’s 1981 attack on Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osirak. Yet, by 2002, a bipartisan majority in the Congress authorized President George W. Bush to wage the first -- and to date the only -- preventive war in American history against Iraq. Although it turned out to be a disaster, it was perfectly consistent with the radical neoconservative variant of U.S. global hegemony strategy.

A Dirty Little Secret

Precisely because the hegemony strategy is so alien to American and international foreign policy traditions, and so potentially costly in its open-ended strategic and budgetary commitments, many of its supporters have suggested that it should be kept secret from the wider American public, since it is so at odds with what most Americans think. In the January/February 2007 issue of The National Interest, Daniel Drezner summed up the general public’s view:

To be sure, Americans are comfortable with the idea of America as a superpower. This does not mean, however, that the public endorses unilateral American leadership... .[I]n every Pew survey since 1993, fewer than 15 percent of Americans endorsed the idea that America should be the "single world leader"... .Americans do not shrink from uses of force to advance security interests, but it is far from the first resort for the public. When acting abroad, polling demonstrates robust American support for acting in concert with allied countries and, to some extent, multilateral institutions."

Michael Mandelbaum concedes, in his book The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the World’s Government in the 21st Century, that the case for U.S. global hegemony might not "persuade the American public, which might well reject the proposition that it should pay for providing the world with government services. American citizens see their country’s foreign policy as a series of discrete measures designed to safeguard the interests, above all the supreme interest of physical security, of the United States itself. They have never been asked to ratify their country’s status as the principal supplier of international public goods, and if they were asked explicitly to do so, they would undoubtedly ask in turn whether the United States ought to contribute as much to providing them, and other countries as little, as was the case in the first decade of the twenty-first century."

So he concludes that it may be necessary to keep the American public in the dark because "the American role in the world may depend in part on Americans not scrutinizing it too closely."

Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, noted in a recent issue that "America is a global power with global reach and responsibilities" and that, as a result, "the United States inevitably will be called upon to act." Yet, unwilling to explain the actual reasons for military interventions flowing from America’s hegemonic strategy of reassuring allies, dissuading potential peer competitors and preventing proliferation, American presidents and their allies have relied on misleading public rationales: rogue states, terrorists, WMD and genocide.

"Rogue state" is a term of emotional propaganda, not sober analysis. The rogue-state rationale is employed when American leaders wish to rally support for a policy whose actual purpose -- increasing or reinforcing American military hegemony in its European, Asian or Middle Eastern sphere of influence -- cannot be explained to the public. Instead, the American public is told that this or that rogue state -- North Korea, Iran or Iraq -- is a direct threat to the American people and the American homeland, as it will be able to lob missiles at the United States or to give terrorists nuclear bombs or other WMD for use on American soil.

In the case of North Korea, for example, U.S. policy is motivated largely, although not solely, by the fear that if Japan loses confidence in America’s willingness to protect it, Japan may obtain its own nuclear deterrent and renationalize its foreign policy, emerging from the status of a semi-sovereign U.S. protectorate to that of an independent military great power once again. But no president can tell the American public that the United States must be willing to lose 50,000 or more American lives in a war with North Korea for fear that Japan will get nuclear weapons to defend itself. Therefore the public is told instead that North Korea might give nuclear weapons to non-state actors to use to destroy New York, Washington and other American cities, or that North Korean missiles can strike targets in North America.

If Iran were to obtain nuclear weapons, its purpose almost certainly would be defensive -- to deter the United States, Israel or any other state from attacking it. The American public would not support a preventive war against Iran on the lunatic theory that it would cheaper to attack Iran before it gets nuclear weapons than to attack Iran after it gets them. Therefore, neoconservative hawks seek to persuade the public that Iran, like North Korea, might either bombard Kansas or give nuclear weapons to Islamist terrorists, or that Iran’s viciously anti-Semitic leadership might use nuclear weapons against Israel. (Annihilating Israeli Arabs and Palestinians alongside Israeli Jews would seem to be an odd way to promote the Palestinian cause -- but then, Iran’s leaders, like the leaders of any country that opposes the United States, are said to be "insane.")

In the Balkans, a major strategic goal of the Kosovo war was reassuring Germany so it would not develop a defense policy independent of the U.S.-dominated NATO alliance. But Milosevic’s Yugoslavia could not be accused of developing WMD, so it had to be accused of something else if the American public were to support the war. In fact it was guilty of a war crime -- ethnic cleansing. But the Clinton Administration and supporters of intervention talked about "genocide", a much more serious charge. Needless to say, criminal as it is, ethnic cleansing -- using terror to frighten an ethnic group into leaving a country -- is the opposite of genocide, the extermination of an ethnic group, which requires that they be trapped, not expelled. When the Nazis settled on the Final Solution, they took measures to prevent Jews from escaping Europe.

The point is not to argue that ethnic cleansing should not be discouraged and punished by the international community, or that proliferation is not a problem or that the regimes called rogue states are not threats to their neighbors and world order. The point is rather that these phenomena have been used as public rationales for recent wars and threatened wars whose real purpose was either the reassurance of regional allies like Germany and Japan or the dissuasion of potential enemies like Russia and China (Kosovo, North Korea), or the removal of regimes that threatened America’s military freedom of action as the post-Cold War hegemon of the Middle East (the Iraq War). The genocide in Rwanda was real, but the United States did not intervene because -- unlike America’s would-be permanent protectorates in Europe, Asia and the Middle East -- Africa contains no great powers or critical power resources, and therefore is marginal to the U.S. hegemony strategy. Pakistan fits the definition of a rogue state, but it is a U.S. ally -- and as long as it remains friendly to the United States, it can be permitted to retain nuclear weapons.

This kind of hypocrisy is made inevitable by the hegemony strategy itself. Because the American public would not support wars and threats of war in the interest of reassuring allies, dissuading competitors and preventing proliferation, its supporters have a choice between abandoning the strategy or deceiving the public about the true ends of U.S. foreign policy. For the last 15 years, they have chosen the latter.

Beyond Hegemony

It is possible that U.S. foreign policy will continue to be guided by the post-Cold War hegemony strategy. If the United States eventually withdraws from Iraq, and the costs of U.S. foreign policy decline significantly, then the public might be as willing to defer to the bipartisan foreign policy elite that supports the hegemony strategy as it was in the 1990s, when the costs were low.

In the long run, however, the rise of China -- and possibly other new powers like India -- is certain to create a multipolar world. At some point the cost of out-spending all other great powers combined will become prohibitive, if it is not already. At that point the hegemony strategy, always unwise, will be unaffordable, and even its proponents will be forced to seek an alternative.

One might be a balance-of-power strategy that takes the form of an alliance including the United States in a bipolar or multipolar world. Thomas Donnelly, a neoconservative associated with the Project for a New American Century, suggests that a less expensive alternative to U.S. hegemony would be an alliance of the United States, Japan, India and Britain, which he describes as "the de facto plan of the Bush administration, though officials dare not speak its name." The inclusion of Britain cannot conceal the fact that this is a plan for a U.S.-Japanese-Indian alliance against China. As a response to genuine aggression by China, such an alliance might be necessary. But to create an anti-Chinese alliance merely as a response to the gradual growth of Chinese wealth and power, without any provocation on China’s part, would be to launch -- if I may coin a phrase -- a "cold war of choice." Britain is no longer an east Asian power, and India, by cultivating ties with China as well as the United States, has shown no interest in the role assigned to it by some American neoconservatives as America’s junior partner in the encirclement of China.

Another option favored by some realists and libertarians, an offshore-balancing strategy, is unlikely to be adopted and would be unwise. The offshore-balancing strategy would have the United States intervene only at the last moment to "tip the balance" against one side in a contest among Eurasian great powers -- China versus Japan, or Russia versus Germany or the European Union. It would be far better for the United States to maintain a role in diplomacy and security in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, in the hope of defusing conflicts and deterring aggressors, rather than to intervene belatedly, as it did in the two world wars.

The option that seems to be the best way to preserve America’s global leadership without committing the United States to pursue global hegemony would be a concert-of-power strategy. A concert of power is a coalition of great powers that lack deep divisions among themselves and are willing to cooperate to promote shared security and other common interests. The members of a great-power concert need not be warm friends, but they would not view each other as enemies.

A concert-of-power strategy would permit the United States to continue to play a role in Eurasian power politics, without any need to treat some Eurasian great powers as allies and others as de facto or formally identified enemies. Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, along with thinkers like Edward House and Walter Lippmann, all saw a concert of power as an alternative to recurrent world wars among rival alliances (they did not imagine that U.S. global hegemony was possible). FDR’s hope for a post-World War II concert of the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and nationalist China was thwarted. But the conditions are more promising today than they have ever been. The conflicts of interest among the United States, China, Russia, Japan, India, Germany, France and Britain are limited, and they share common interests in combating terrorism, anarchy and aggression by lesser states.

The concert-of-power strategy is not a magic cure for all problems. Some problems cannot be cured, only ameliorated. And aggression on the part of one or more great powers would make a balance-of-power strategy necessary, if only until the aggressor was defeated or changed its policy.

It goes without saying that the concert-of-power strategy places limits on U.S. discretion. Unlike the UN Security Council, informal regional concerts of power need not be paralyzed by the recalcitrance of one member. Two or more great powers could cooperate in common efforts, even if others chose not to take part. And America would reserve the right to act unilaterally in unusual circumstances. For the most part, however, the United States should prefer to act in partnership with other military great powers. The sacrifice in flexibility this might entail would be more than compensated for by America’s ability to share the burden of international security in regions outside of North America with non-aggressive regional powers that have a far greater stake in the outcome than the United States itself. Even better, the concert-of-power strategy would permit the United States to maintain its role as a major Asian power, a major European power and a major Middle Eastern power, without the need to wage reassurance wars on behalf of allies, to bankrupt itself on unilateral arms races, to dissuade potential rivals or to pursue coercive non-proliferation in the interests of regional U.S. military hegemony by means of invasions, as in Iraq, or air attacks, like a possible strike against Iran.

The Debate America Needs

The potential for high costs has always been implicit in the strategy of U.S. global hegemony. The first Bush and Clinton were lucky, in that the cost of the Panama invasion, the Gulf War, the Balkan interventions and the invasion of Haiti were relatively minor. It was the misfortune of George W. Bush that the Iraq War proved to be the most costly debacle since Vietnam. The Iraq War was a war of choice, and might have been avoided by another president committed to another version of the hegemony strategy. But sooner or later the United States would have been confronted with the need to abandon the hegemony strategy, or pay the full costs of it. Sooner or later there would have been an "Iraq," if not in Iraq itself.

That is why the present moment is so crucial in the life of the American republic. Unfortunately, at present the debate among the 2008 presidential hopefuls focuses narrowly on the Iraq War, rather than on the larger hegemony strategy that produced it. And to make matters worse, criticism of the Bush Administration’s handling of the occupation of Iraq tends to narrow the debate even further, by changing the subject from the decision to invade Iraq.

If the consensus emerges that U.S. hegemony remains a sound strategy, and is not discredited by the regrettable and avoidable Iraq adventure, which might be justified in retrospect as a good idea tragically bungled by the incompetence of Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, then the country will be on the road to similar disasters in the future. This moment, then, is very important indeed. If the Iraq War is seen as merely a bad application of a fundamentally sound U.S. grand strategy of hegemony, the United States will set itself up for other self-inflicted disasters in the future. If, on the other hand, the Iraq War is seen as the predictable outcome of a fundamentally flawed grand strategy, then there will be an opportunity for debate about alternative grand strategies, in particular the concert-of-power strategy, that can achieve U.S. security and world-order goals at far less cost. Much depends on whether the debate about the Iraq War becomes a long-overdue debate about American grand strategy as a whole.

National Interest Cites Anatol Lieven on U.S.-Russia Relationship

Communications — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 19:58:00 -0400

This letter is an appeal to Democrats, now a congressional majority, to propose a ore positive, constructive relationship between the United States and Russia-less for Russia than for the United States.At virtually any point between 1947 and 1991, if any serious thinker had proposed that we could form a strategic relationship with Russia but should refuse to do so, he or she would have been considered misguided at best and slightly deranged at worst. Yet that has happened today...

In recent months two developments on the U.S. side stand out. First is the policy of the Bush Administration, largely promoted by Vice President Richard Cheney, to adopt a confrontational stance toward Russia...

Second, more surprisingly, is an unreflective reaction among foreign policy elites, particularly the Council on Foreign Relations ("Russia's Wrong Direction", March 2006), to endorse this policy...

Still, no argument is given to justify this animosity. Whatever the reason-lingering nostalgia for the Cold War's relative clarity, desire for a tangible nation-state opponent in a world of stateless terrorism-it should be set forth.

Numerous Russia experts, including Stephen Cohen at New York University, Anatol Lieven at the New America Foundation and Graham Allison at Harvard's Kennedy School, have challenged what they… more