June 11, 2015
U.S. hegemony is now as firm as or firmer than it has ever been, and will remain so for a long time to come.
IS RETREAT from global hegemony in America’s national interest? No idea has percolated more widely over the past decade—and none is more bogus. The United States is not headed for the skids and there is no reason it should be. The truth is that America can and should seek to remain the world’s top dog.
The idea of American hegemony is as old as Benjamin Franklin, but has its practical roots in World War II. The United States emerged from that war as the dominant economic, political and technological power. The only major combatant to avoid serious damage to its infrastructure, its housing stock or its demographic profile, the United States ended the war with the greatest naval order of battle ever seen in the history of the world. It became the postwar home of the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. And, of course, the United States had the bomb. America was, in every sense of the word, a hegemon.
“Hegemony” is a word used by social scientists to describe leadership within a system of competing states. The Greek historian Thucydides used the term to characterize the position of Athens in the Greek world in the middle of the fifth century BC. Athens had the greatest fleet in the Mediterranean; it was the home of Socrates and Plato, Sophocles and Aeschylus; it crowned its central Acropolis with the solid-marble temple to Athena known to history as the Parthenon. Athens had a powerful rival in Sparta, but no one doubted that Athens was the hegemon of the time until Sparta defeated it in a bitter twenty-seven-year war.
America’s only global rival in the twentieth century was the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union never produced more than about half of America’s total national output. Its nominal allies in Eastern Europe were in fact restive occupied countries, as were many of its constituent republics. Its client states overseas were at best partners of convenience, and at worst expensive drains on its limited resources. The Soviet Union had the power to resist American hegemony, but not to displace it. It had the bomb and an impressive space program, but little else.
When the Soviet Union finally disintegrated in 1991, American hegemony was complete. The United States sat at the top of the international system, facing no serious rivals for global leadership. This “unipolar moment” lasted a mere decade. September 11, 2001, signaled the emergence of a new kind of threat to global stability, and the ensuing rise of China and reemergence of Russia put paid to the era of unchallenged American leadership. Now, America’s internal politics have deadlocked and the U.S. government shrinks from playing the role of global policeman. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, American hegemony is widely perceived to be in terminal decline.
Or so the story goes. In fact, reports of the passing of U.S. hegemony are greatly exaggerated. America’s costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were relatively minor affairs considered in long-term perspective. The strategic challenge posed by China has also been exaggerated. Together with its inner circle of unshakable English-speaking allies, the United States possesses near-total control of the world’s seas, skies, airwaves and cyberspace, while American universities, think tanks and journals dominate the world of ideas. Put aside all the alarmist punditry. American hegemony is now as firm as or firmer than it has ever been, and will remain so for a long time to come.
THE MASSIVE federal deficit, negative credit-agency reports, repeated debt-ceiling crises and the 2013 government shutdown all created the impression that the U.S. government is bankrupt, or close to it. The U.S. economy imports half a trillion dollars a year more than it exports. Among the American population, poverty rates are high and ordinary workers’ wages have been stagnant (in real terms) for decades. Washington seems to be paralyzed by perpetual gridlock. On top of all this, strategic exhaustion after two costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has substantially degraded U.S. military capabilities. Then, at the very moment the military needed to regroup, rebuild and rearm, its budget was hit by sequestration.
If economic power forms the long-term foundation for political and military power, it would seem that America is in terminal decline. But policy analysts tend to have short memories. Cycles of hegemony run in centuries, not decades (or seasons). When the United Kingdom finally defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, its national resources were completely exhausted. Britain’s public-debt-to-GDP ratio was over 250 percent, and early nineteenth-century governments lacked access to the full range of fiscal and financial tools that are available today. Yet the British Century was only just beginning. The Pax Britannica and the elevation of Queen Victoria to become empress of India were just around the corner.
By comparison, America’s current public-debt-to- GDP ratio of less than 80 percent is relatively benign. Those with even a limited historical memory may remember the day in January 2001 when the then chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, testified to the Senate Budget Committee that “if current policies remain in place, the total unified surplus will reach $800 billion in fiscal year 2011. . . . The emerging key fiscal policy need is to address the implications of maintaining surpluses.” As the poet said, bliss was it in that dawn to be alive! Two tax cuts, two wars and one financial crisis later, America’s budget deficit was roughly the size of the projected surplus that so worried Greenspan.
This is not to argue that the U.S. government should ramp up taxes and spending, but it does illustrate the fact that it has enormous potential fiscal resources available to it, should it choose to use them. Deficits come and go. America’s fiscal capacity in 2015 is stupendously greater than Great Britain’s was in 1815. Financially, there is every reason to think that America’s century lies in the future, not in the past.
The same is true of the supposed exhaustion of the U.S. military. On the one hand, thirteen years of continuous warfare have reduced the readiness of many U.S. combat units, particularly in the army. On the other hand, U.S. troops are now far more experienced in actual combat than the forces of any other major military in the world. In any future conflict, the advantage given by this experience would likely outweigh any decline in effectiveness due to deferred maintenance and training. Constant deployment may place an unpleasant and unfair burden on U.S. service personnel and their families, but it does not necessarily diminish the capability of the U.S. military. On the contrary, it may enhance it.
America’s limited wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were hardly the final throes of a passing hegemon. They are more akin to Britain’s bloody but relatively inconsequential conflicts in Afghanistan and Crimea in the middle of the nineteenth century. Brutal wars like these repeatedly punctured, but never burst, British hegemony. In fact, Britain engaged in costly and sometimes disastrous conflicts throughout the century-long Pax Britannica. British hegemony did not come to an end until the country faced Germany head-on in World War I. Even then, Britain ultimately prevailed (with American help). Its empire reached its maximum extent not before World War I but immediately after, in 1922.
Ultimately, it is inevitable that in the long run American power will weaken and American hegemony over the rest of the world will fade. But how long is the long run? There are few factual indications that American decline has begun—or that it will begin anytime soon. Short-term fluctuations should not be extrapolated into long-term trends. Without a doubt, 1991 was a moment of supreme U.S. superiority. But so was 1946, after which came the Soviet bomb, Korea and Vietnam. American hegemony has waxed and waned over the last seventy years, but it has never been eclipsed. And it is unlikely that the eclipse is nigh.
WHEN PUNDITS scope out the imminent threats to U.S. hegemony, the one country on their radar screens is China. While the former Soviet Union never reached above 45 percent of U.S. total national income, the Chinese economy may already have overtaken the American economy, and if not it certainly will soon. If sheer economic size is the foundation of political and military power, China is positioned for future global hegemony. Will it build on this foundation? Can it?
Much depends on the future of China’s relationships with its neighbors. China lives in a tough neighborhood. It faces major middle-tier powers on three sides: Russia to the north, South Korea and Japan to the east, and Vietnam and India to the south. To the west it faces a series of weak and failing states, but that may be more of a burden than a blessing: China’s own western regions are also sites of persistent instability.
It is perhaps realistic to imagine China seeking to expand to the north at the expense of Russia and Mongolia. Ethnic Russians are abandoning Siberia and the Pacific coast in droves, and strategic areas along Russia’s border with China have been demographically and economically overwhelmed by Chinese immigration. Twenty-second-century Russia may find it difficult to hold the Far East against China. But that is not a serious threat to U.S. hegemony. If anything, increasing Sino-Russian tensions may reinforce U.S. global hegemony, much as Sino-Soviet tensions did in the 1970s.
To the southeast, China clearly seeks to dominate the South China Sea and beyond. The main barrier to its doing so is the autonomy of Taiwan. Were Taiwan ever to be reintegrated with China, it would be difficult for other regional powers to successfully challenge a united China for control of the basin. In the future, it is entirely possible that China will come to dominate these, its own coastal waters. This would be a minor setback to an America accustomed to dominating all of the world’s seas, but it would not constitute a serious strategic threat to the United States.
Across the East China Sea, China faces Japan and South Korea—two of the most prosperous, technologically advanced and militarily best-equipped countries in the world. Historical enmities ensure that China will never expand in that direction. Worse for China, it is quite likely that any increase in China’s ability to project power beyond its borders will be matched with similar steps by a wary, remilitarizing Japan.
The countries on China’s southern border are so large, populous and poor that it is difficult to imagine China taking much interest in the region beyond simple resource exploitation. Chinese companies may seek profit opportunities in Cambodia, Myanmar and Pakistan, but there is little for China to gain from strategic domination of the region. There will be no Chinese-sponsored Asian equivalent of NATO or the Warsaw Pact.
Farther abroad, much has been made of China’s strategic engagement in Africa and Latin America. Investment-starved countries in these regions have been eager to access Chinese capital and in many cases have welcomed Chinese investment, expertise and even immigration. But it is hard to imagine them welcoming Chinese military bases, and equally hard to imagine China asking them for bases. The American presence in Africa is in large part the legacy of centuries of European colonialism. China has no such legacy to build on.
Above all, however, the prospects for future Chinese hegemony depend on the prospects for future Chinese economic growth. Measured in per capita terms, China is still poorer than Mexico. That China will catch up to Mexico seems certain. That China will continue its extraordinary growth trajectory once it has caught up to Mexico is less obvious. In 2011, when the Chinese economy was growing by more than 10 percent a year, I predicted that China was headed for much slower growth. At the time, the IMF was projecting a long-term growth rate of 9.5 percent. Today, the same IMF projections assume 7 percent growth.
Even at 7 percent annual growth, the Chinese economy would account for more than half of total global output by 2050. The United States in its post–World War II heyday never achieved that level of dominance. But exponential extrapolations are inherently tricky. If China continues to grow at 7 percent while the world economy as a whole grows by 3 percent per year, China will account for 90 percent of global economic output by 2100 and 100 percent by 2110. After that, China’s economy will be even larger than the world’s economy, which of course is impossible unless China moves a large portion of its production off-planet.
A more reasonable assumption is that China’s economic growth will eventually settle down to global average rates. The only question is when. Existing demographic trends make it almost certain that the answer is: soon. The U.S. Census Bureau has projected that China’s working-age population would reach its peak in 2014 and then go into long-term decline. In the twenty years from 2014 to 2034, China’s working-age population will fall by eighty-seven million, while its elderly population will rise by 149 million. In the language of economic punditry, China will “grow old before it grows rich.”
The U.S. population, by contrast, is young and growing. In 2034, the U.S. population is projected to be growing at a rate of 0.6 percent per year (compared to -0.2 percent in China), with substantial immigration of talented, productive people (compared to net emigration from China). The U.S. median age of 39.2 will be significantly younger than the Chinese median age of 44.8. Over the long term these trends may change, but the twenty-year scenario is almost certain, because for the most part it has already happened. Economic trends can turn on a dime, but demographic trends are mostly immutable: tomorrow’s child-bearers have already been born.
IN THE ancient Mediterranean world, Rome rose to regional hegemony a century or two after the passing of the Athenian empire. The hegemonic Roman Republic was a hybrid political entity. It consisted of Rome itself, Roman colonies, Roman protectorates, cities conquered by Rome and cities allied to Rome. For four hundred years before 91 BC, the Italian cities allied to Rome were effectively part of the Roman state despite their formal political independence. They participated in Rome’s wars under Roman command. They did not pay taxes or tribute to Rome, but they were fully incorporated into a political system centered on Rome. When Hannibal crossed the Alps in 218 BC, most of the Italian cities did not rise up against Rome as he expected. They stood with Rome because they were effectively part of Rome.
In a similar way, the effective borders of the American polity extend well beyond the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. If the Edward Snowden leaks have revealed nothing else, they have shown the depth of intelligence cooperation between the United States and its English-speaking allies Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. These are the so-called Five Eyes countries. These English-speaking allies work so closely with the United States on security issues that they resemble ancient Rome’s Italian allies. Despite their formal political independence, they do not make major strategic decisions without considering America’s interests as well as their own.
Curiously, America’s English-speaking allies resemble the United States in their demographic structures as well. While East Asia’s birthrates have fallen well below replacement levels and parts of continental Europe face outright depopulation, the English-speaking countries have stable birthrates and substantial immigration. The most talented people in the world don’t always move to the United States, but more often than not they move to English-speaking countries. It doesn’t hurt that English is the global lingua franca as well as the language of the Internet.
One surprising result of these trends is that the once-unfathomable demographic gap between China and the English-speaking world is narrowing. According to U.S. Census Bureau projections, in 2050 the U.S. population will be 399 million and rising by 0.5 percent per year while the Chinese population will be 1.304 billion and falling by 0.5 percent per year. Throw in America’s four English-speaking allies, and the combined five-country population will be 546 million—nearly 42 percent of China’s population—with a growth rate of 0.4 percent per year. No longer will China have the overwhelming demographic advantage that has historically let it punch above its economic weight.
Is it reasonable to treat America’s English-speaking allies as integrated components of the U.S. power structure? Of course, they are not formally integrated into the U.S. state. But the real, effective borders of countries are much fuzzier than the legal lines drawn on maps. The United States exercises different levels of influence over its sovereign territory, extraterritorial possessions, the English-speaking allies, NATO allies, other treaty allies, nontreaty allies, client states, spheres of influence, exclusionary zones and even enemy territories. All of these categories are fluid in their memberships and meanings, but taken together they constitute more than just a network of relationships. They constitute a cooperative system of shared sovereignty, something akin to the power structure of the Roman Republic.
No other country in the world possesses, has ever possessed, or is likely to possess in this century such a world-straddling vehicle for the enforcement of its will. More to the point, the U.S.-dominated system shows no signs of falling apart. Even the revelation that America and its English-speaking allies have been spying on the leaders of their NATO peers has not led to calls for the dissolution of NATO. The American system may not last forever, but its remaining life may be measured in centuries rather than decades. Cycles of hegemony turn very slowly because systems of hegemony are very robust. The American power network is much bigger, much stronger and much more resilient than the formal American state as such.
A RECURRING meme is the idea that the whole world should be able to vote in U.S. presidential elections because the whole world has a stake in the outcome. This argument is not meant to be taken seriously. It is made to prove a point: that the United States is uniquely and pervasively important in the world. At least since the Suez crisis of 1956, it has been clear to everyone that the other countries of the world, whether alone or in concert, are unable to project power beyond their shores without American support. Mere American acquiescence is not enough. In global statecraft, the United States is the indispensable state.
One widely held definition of a state is that a state is a body that successfully claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a territory. The German sociologist Max Weber first proposed this definition in 1919, in the chaotic aftermath of World War I. Interestingly, he included the qualifier “successfully” in his definition. To constitute a real state, a government cannot merely claim the sole right to use force; it must make this claim stick. It must be successful in convincing its people, civil-society groups and, most importantly, other states to accept its claim.
In the twenty-first century, the United States effectively claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of force worldwide. Whether or not it makes this claim in so many words, it makes it through its policies and actions, and America’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force is generally accepted by most of the governments (if not the peoples) of the world. That is not to say that all American uses of force are accepted as legitimate, but that all uses of force that are accepted as legitimate are either American or actively supported by the United States. The world condemns Russian intervention in Ukraine but accepts Saudi intervention in Yemen, and of course it looks to the United States to solve conflicts in places like Libya, Syria and Iraq. The United States has not conquered the world, but most of the world’s governments (with the exceptions of countries such as Russia, Iran and China) and major intergovernmental organizations accept America’s lead. Very often they ask for it.
This American domination of global affairs extends well beyond hegemony. In the nineteenth century, the United Kingdom was a global hegemon. Britannia ruled the waves, and from its domination of the oceans it derived extraordinary influence over global affairs. But China, France, Germany, Russia and later Japan continually challenged the legitimacy of British domination and tested it at every turn. Major powers certainly believed that they could engage independently in global statecraft and acted on that belief. France did not seek British permission to conquer its colonies; Germany did not seek British permission to conquer France.
Twenty-first-century America dominates the world to an extent completely unmatched by nineteenth-century Britain. There is no conflict anywhere in the world in which the United States is not in some way involved. More to the point, participants in conflicts everywhere in the world, no matter how remote, expect the United States to be involved. Revisionists ranging from pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine to Bolivian peasant farmers who want to chew coca leaves see the United States as the power against which they are rebelling. The United States is much more than the world’s policeman. It is the world’s lawgiver.
The world state of so many fictional utopias and dystopias is here, and it is not a nameless postmodern entity called global governance. It is America. Another word for a world state that dominates all others is an “empire,” a word that Americans of all political persuasions abhor. For FDR liberals it challenges cherished principles of internationalism and fair play. For Jeffersonian conservatives it reeks of foreign adventurism. For today’s neoliberals it undermines faith in the primacy of market competition over political manipulation. And for neoconservatives it implies an unwelcome responsibility for the welfare of the world beyond America’s shores.
In fact, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the United States has become an imperial world state—a world-empire—that sets the ground rules for smooth running of the global economy, imposes its will largely without constraint and without consideration of the reasonable desires of other countries, and severely punishes those few states and nonstate actors that resist its dictates.
No one ever likes an empire, but despite Ronald Reagan’s memorable phrase, the word “empire” is not inseparably linked to the word “evil.” When it comes to understanding empire, history is probably a better guide than science fiction. Consider the Roman Empire. For several centuries after the ascension of Augustus, life under Rome was generally freer, safer and more prosperous than it had been under the previously independent states. Perhaps it was not better for the enslaved or for the Druids, and certainly not for the Jews, but for most people of the ancient Mediterranean, imperial Rome brought vast improvements most of the time.
ANCIENT ANALOGIES notwithstanding, no one would seriously suggest that the United States should attempt to directly rule the rest of the world, and there is no indication that the rest of the world would let it. But the United States could manage its empire more effectively, which is something that the rest of the world would welcome. A winning strategy for low-cost, effective management of empire would be for America to work with and through the system of global governance that America itself has set up, rather than systematically seeking to blunt its own instruments of power.
For example, the United States was instrumental in setting up the International Criminal Court, yet Washington will not place itself under the jurisdiction of the ICC and will not allow its citizens to be subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC. Similarly, though the United States is willing to use UN Security Council resolutions to censure its enemies, it is not willing to accept negotiated limits on its own freedom of action. From a purely military-political standpoint, the United States is sufficiently powerful to go it alone. But from a broader realist standpoint that takes account of the full costs and unintended consequences of military action, that is a suboptimal strategy. Had the United States listened to dissenting opinions on the Security Council before the invasion of Iraq, it would have saved hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives. The United States might similarly have done well to have heeded Russian reservations over Libya, as it ultimately did in responding to the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
A more responsible (and consequently more effective) United States would subject itself to the international laws and agreements that it expects others to follow. It would genuinely seek to reduce its nuclear arsenal in line with its commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It would use slow but sure police procedures to catch terrorists, instead of quick but messy drone strikes. It would disavow all forms of torture. All of these policies would save American treasure while increasing American power. They would also increase America’s ability to say “no” to its allies when they demand expensive U.S. commitments to protect their interests abroad.
Such measures would not ensure global peace, nor would they necessarily endear the United States to everyone across the world. But they would reduce global tensions and make it easier for America to act in its national interests where those interests are truly at stake. Both the United States and the world as a whole would be better off if Washington did not waste time, money and diplomatic capital on asserting every petty sovereign right it is capable of enforcing. A more strategic United States would preside over a more peaceful and prosperous world.
In pondering its future course, Washington might consider this tale from the ancient world: When Cyrus the Great conquered the neighboring kingdom of Lydia, he allowed his army to loot and pillage Lydia’s capital city, Sardis. The deposed Lydian king Croesus became his captive and slave. After Cyrus taunted Croesus by asking him how it felt to see his capital city being plundered, Croesus responded: “It’s not my city that your troops are plundering; it’s your city.” Cyrus ordered an immediate end to the destruction.
Salvatore Babones is an associate professor of sociology and social policy at the University of Sydney and an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.
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