In the coming weeks, the euphoria over Barack Obama's election as president will die down, and politics will take a temporary backseat to governance.
So when the dust finally clears and Barack Obama is inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States on January 20, exactly what sort of polity will the President-elect inherit, and what will be its position in the international community?
We need not belabor the point that the United States of 2009 is not the United States of 1999. Just about every facet of our country’s domestic, fiscal and foreign policy has evolved during the past ten years.
Yet perhaps some thought ought to be devoted to tying some of these observations to something theoretical that we, and President-elect Obama’s future cabinet, might be able to use to shape future policy.
To that end, the principles of Robert Gilpin’s
War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge UP, 1981) seem eerily relevant to today’s state of affairs.
Gilpin there argues that a frightening cause of large-scale war is related to the concept of “declining states.” That is, in any permutation of a fluctuating international system of balanced power (which for the sake of this article we will accept as an accurate description of the international constellation) Gilpin claims that the dominant polity of that system (read: the United States) will eventually face a “challenge” to its dominance. At this point, the costs of maintaining the status-quo will be higher than the costs of challenging it because the dominant hegemon, unlike the challenger, is encumbered by numerous “commitments” to external wars and security operations.
The dominant state will then need to evaluate its position in the international system and decide whether it can muster any more resources to support its commitments (by raising taxes, annexing new resource rich areas, or increasing productive efficiency) or whether it would be better to simply shed some of its obligations. The former is more desirable, though it is less practicable, while the latter, though easier to execute, is considered a dangerous and unwanted declaration of weakness and vulnerability to the international community.
Perhaps most worrisome of all is that there is another option.
Quite often, though not always, states in this predicament will choose a preemptive “hegemonic war” against its challenger defined by its totality in scope and consequence. These are wars like World War I-II that involve all nations. They are fought to determine the future alignment of the international system and even the sovereignty of the war’s principal agents. From these decisive political stakes, it follows that hegemonic wars are necessarily bloody, incredibly destructive, and tend towards the extreme.
Now, could the United States of America be this sort of teetering hegemon? If so, what steps can the next administration take to avoid the horrors of hegemonic war?
The Three Criteria of a Declining StateGilpin’s declining state seems to have three components: first, an overextension of military commitments entangled in a bevy of external conflicts; second, an artificially strong economy resting on a bubble of confidence that bursts; and third, a foreign threat seeking to dethrone it. In a case study of Great Britain in the decades before World War I (his declining state exempli gratia) Gilpin notes this phenomenon and writes that,
“At the same time that the costs of protection were increasing, both public and private consumption were also increasing because of greater affluence. Superficially the economy appeared strong, but rates of industrial expansion, technological innovation, and domestic investment had slowed. Thus the rise of foreign challenges and the economic climacteric led to a disequilibrium between British global commitments and British resources.”
With regard to military over-extension, a January 2006 Pentagon report warned that the continued deployment of US military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan had strained American military resources. The 136-page report, written by retired Army official Andrew Krepenevich, cites the extended re-deployment periods and frequent troop rotations from the Reserves, National Guard, and other foreign stations as having stretched American military forces to a “thin green line.” By all accounts, this line is likely ever-thinner after the 2007 troop “surge” in Iraq. The United States may have the resources to fight a war in Afghanistan or Iraq while maintaining presence around the globe, but it seems to be increasingly exhausting to fight them both.
Gilpin’s second criterion, an illusive economy that experiences a period of great affluence only to have its bubble burst in a series of market failures, may very well describe the United States economy from the late 1990s until the present. From the technology bubble fueled by over-confidence in Silicon Valley that burst in 2000, to the gradually inflating current account deficit, to the confluent housing, credit, and financial crises of the present, it is not too difficult to draw parallels between the United States and the failing economies of typical declining states.
The third component of Gilpin’s declining state is the most difficult to pin on the US. From all accounts, it seems that Gilpin’s understanding in 1981 of a challenging power was limited to that of a rising nation-state or states, and not, say, a coalition of trans-national militant groups colluding with select rogue regimes.
Unlike the German challenge to British power at the end of the 19th century, it is not entirely clear who is challenging the United States here at the dawn of the 21st century, or what the nature of that challenge might be.
Still, some pundits like Christopher Hitchens and David Horowitz have argued that quasi-state sponsored global terrorist networks (“Islamofacists”) have proven to be potent actors, despite lacking a single formally recognized state. According to them, the years after 9/11 are proof that there exists some challenging force to American power in the penumbra of rogue nations and militant groups, even if that force is not explicitly identifiable in the traditional sense.
I am not sure if these forces alone constitute what could be considered a legitimate challenge to American dominance of the international system, but they may be a considerable part of a larger and more complex entanglement of globalized interests coalescing sub-rosa. Even if this threat is derived multilaterally from odd bedfellows (states or otherwise) who oppose American influence unconventionally, it is still an extant challenge to American dominance of the international system and thus a legitimate threat.
To that end, in this post-Hiroshima era, “mutually assured destruction” may prevent formal polities from conventionally challenging the sovereignty of other nations, especially those with nuclear capabilities. As it is inherent that modern dominant powers hold just such nuclear weapons, issuing this sort of an unconventional threat may be the new method of challenging hegemony and realigning power balances.
The Declining States of America?So if the United States of 2000-2009 fits the description of a declining state, what course of action can the US take to stave off its decline without resorting to hegemonic war? Three plausible ideas come to mind, and some have already been tried: 1) limited war, 2) increased productive efficiency, or 3) retrenchment of armed forces and military commitments.
If you believe Oliver Stone’s depiction of the Bush administration in his film “W.,” then the first option was precisely what the White House had in mind when it “planned” (I hesitate to use that word) the Iraq War in 2002 and 2003. The possible benefit of a limited war is that it will weaken our challengers before they can assemble at full strength against us. By denying them strategic advantages (access to natural resources, clear lines of communication, popular support) we impede their organization and decrease the probability that their challenge will be successful. Veiled behind the notion of “spreading democracy,” this may have been the motivation behind the Iraq saga.
The problems here abound. For one, it is expensive to fight a limited war. In the short-run, fighting such a war will only further strain our resources against additional commitments. Moreover, the nature of our present challengers is such that it is difficult to identify them and even more difficult to identify their strategic points of interest. At worst, as with the Iraq War, this strategy costs a lot, provides little, and creates the potential for a long-term fixed cost with the risk for escalation into total hegemonic war.
The second option is to increase productive efficiency, by either increasing output or reducing the costs of production. Again, the Bush White House and its oilmen-at-large may have had the latter in mind when it considered the value of the oil reserves in Iraq before the 2003 invasion. Nonetheless, a cheaper alternative to “blood-for-oil” campaigns intended to increase productive efficiency might include investing in clean American energy, education, as well as research and development in production technology.
Increasing efficiency like this will be expensive and startup costs will require large amounts of capital and generous credit lines which may not be available for quite some time. Government will thus need to bear the burden of this re-investment, further straining our resources, and even then there is still no assurance as to how long it might take to reap the rewards, if there are any. Still, it seems the better option than limited war.
Finally, another option is to retrench troops and eliminate extraneous commitments draining our resources. According to National Priorities Project, pulling out of Iraq alone will save $125 billion a year. (The Wall Street “bailout,” by comparison, was $700 billion, or a little more than the cost of five years of war.) Retrenchment like this will allow troops to be reallocated to vulnerable stations or put on reserve status back in America.
The maneuver would fortify our lines and re-equilibrate our resources and commitments. Given the context of a would-be Iraq withdrawal, I do not see this sort of retrenchment as a signal of weakness. Unlike withdrawing troops from, say, Turkey, South Korea, Germany and Japan, the message does not indicate vulnerability, but rather a sign of restored leadership.
Ultimately, even this option may not curb a state’s decline. Though downsizing commitments may reduce strain, it seems a successful state must ultimately be able to increase its resources so that it is prepared to manage unavoidable costs and commitments that may arise in the future.
It seems implicit in Gilpin’s argument that, if reversing the decline of a state is at all possible, the best strategy is a combination of the latter two options. It is not so unsurprising then that President-elect Obama’s campaign was so successful. Its message of ending the war in Iraq to liberate the resources necessary to support a new “green” energy-based economy seems to fit will into this schematic.
With the Bush years behind us, there seems to be a real opportunity for America to find its stride and reassert its position as the dominant force in world politics. Perhaps avoiding a McCain administration was a good first-step to avoiding hegemonic war, but it certainly will not be the last.
How President Obama manages America’s commitments and resources in the next several years will determine the future of the international system and the fate of the
Pax Americana. The euphoria over the election is inspiring and hopefully it will provide 44 with the political capital to mange effectively.
But even with an Obama presidency the threats to our nation are still strong. With each and every decision he makes, the specter of Gilpin’s hegemonic war looms ominously overhead.
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