I recently read two excellent books. The first was A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order, by Richard Haass that provides a view on challenges to the World Order, and proposals for meeting that challenge. The second book, which is the topic of this post is The World America Made, by Robert Kagan. This book also provides a view deeply informed by history on the world order that America made, the challenges that order faces, and the risk associated with what follows. A lot of strategists have different views of what is most important when it comes to strategy, but I think all strategy is worthless if the nation doesn't have the political will to execute it. This book provides a well reasoned argument on why America must stay engaged in the world.
What follows are some key points in the book:
1. Every international order in history has reflected the beliefs and interests of its strongest powers and every order has changed when power shifted to others with different beliefs and interests. The better idea doesn't win just because it is the better idea, it requires great power to champion it.
2. He provided historical examples when democracy rose and fell as a prevailing political idea, emphasizing that orders are not self-sustaining. What has enabled the prolonged success of democratization the last quarter was the world's greatest power reflected this norm. The U.S. didn't pursue a persistent policy of promoting democracy, in reality the military was employed out principle only twice to install democratic governments (Panama and Haiti). Rather it was the norms that America established. The strategic, economic, political, and ideological were inseparable. If nations wanted to be part of NATO, and later the EU, they had to present democratic credentials.
3. A Chinese strategist argues that the U.S. created “an institutionalized system of hegemony” by “establishing international norms” according to U.S. principles of behavior. Once these norms are accepted by the majority of countries, U.S. hegemony becomes legitimized. Of course we did this while the Chinese were killing millions of their own country men, and putting the rest of them in reeducation camps. If you want a voice in the world, don't be excessively stupid.
4. Kagan warns that we are dazzled by democratization, globalization, and interdependence. We tend to believe these developments have made our world so different. But these trends have been flowing for more than a century, and they have not prevented catastrophic wars. He reminds us that prior to WWI, economic interdependence and the belief that no one would go to war over land prevailed. The outbreak of WWI revealed failed imagination. Today we suffer from similar lack of imagination. Even the arguments are the same.
5. All great powers respond to opportunities and constraints in the international system. It is remarkable (unprecedented) that the U.S. superpower, for all its flaws, its excesses, and its failures has been accepted and tolerated by much of the world to such a degree. It has been more than tolerated, others have encouraged it, joined it, in formal and less formal agreements.
6. International order is no an evolution; it is an imposition.
7. He reminds us of the limits of our power, and when he puts it in historical context, we're really not as weak as we tend to believe. He writes, it is true the U.S. is not able to get what it wants much of the time. But then, it never could. Our image of the past is an illusion. For every great accomplishment during the Cold War, there was at least one equally fundamental set back. Mao winning China, N. Korea's attack on the South, couldn’t stop European allies from recognizing China. Our foreign policy created hatred for the U.S. As a result of 3d world animosity, and the U.S. steadily lost influence in the UN after 1960 (read The Brothers if you want to understand this point, the CIA and its unnecessary unconventional warfare efforts were occasionally successful operationally, but a major strategic failure). Late 60s, Kissinger wrote, “increased fragmentation of power, the greater diffusion of political activity, and the more complicated patterns of international conflict and alignment had sharply reduced the capacity of both superpowers to influence.
The point of all this is we don't see a trend until it is in our rear view mirror, so the new we're dealing with has been around for some time.
8. Many countries looked to the U.S. for leadership and protection throughout the Cold War and in the 1990s. The point is the U.S. was the predominant power in the world, it wielded enormous influence, and it accomplished much, but it was NOT omnipotent—far from it.
Continued
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