Great Powers

by Thomas P. M. Barnett

  Thus, in my mind, trying to cast China’s “charm offensive” as generating a new model for controlling the international system is a stretch. China is basically playing the “good cop” working his own beat opposite that of the “bad cop,” leveraging the latter’s “badass” reputation. To the extent China succeeds at this, there’s little harm, even as there are likely to be many “fouls” in terms of corrupt business practices. Indeed, it can be argued that China plays the implicit role of America’s “limited-liability” or “silent” partner throughout much of the Gap, inherently limiting our strategic liability in those off-grid locations unlikely to elicit a security response from us, even under conditions of extreme and widespread violence. Sudan offers a good example of this: We don’t want to go there, and neither does China in a security sense (although it is inevitably being forced to), but as long as China’s investments continue generating a boom in parts of the country, our liability is somewhat reduced. Not a great system, but it beats having no economic connectivity whatsoever.

  The trick for the United States is to figure out how to harness China’s expanding economic presence across the Gap in a more explicit good cop, bad cop routine. Because what we’ve got right now is (1) a seemingly unprincipled Leviathan that, not caring in any way whatsoever about global law, roams the planet at will, shooting up bad neighborhoods and leaving them perhaps more safe but definitely less connected than it found them, and (2) a seemingly unprincipled SysAdmin that, not caring whatsoever about human rights, roams the planet at will, building up infrastructure in bad neighborhoods and leaving them definitely more connected but perhaps more corrupt than it found them.

  Put these two characters together and we’ve got ourselves a full-service superpower far more capable of shrinking the Gap.

  THE INESCAPABLE REALIGNMENT: REBRANDING A TEAM OF RIVALS

  For years I have said, in response to questions about the differences in working with the executive branch during the Clinton and the George W. Bush eras, that each administration fielded strong but unbalanced teams—Clinton doing better on economics and Bush better on security. Clinton ignored a lot of global security while helping to spread globalization with a speed that can legitimately be described as radical/reckless, and Bush is rightly accused of just the opposite. If we put these two strengths together, we’ll end up with the foreign policy this country needs: clearly focused on expanding the global economy but aggressive in addressing the security situations that naturally arise as a result. As the two administrations have amply demonstrated, there is little use in getting out way ahead on one element and hoping the other will catch up in its own time. The results in each instance are simply too destabilizing.

  But just as clearly, it seems to me, the time has passed when America can, by itself, account for such balance on an international scale. We need, then, to build a team of rivals who can cover our weaknesses as we cover theirs. When Doris Kearns Goodwin described the personal skills that Abraham Lincoln brought to the presidency in 1861, she captured much of what’s missing in American grand strategy today:

  This, then, is a story of Lincoln’s political genius revealed through his extraordinary array of personal qualities that enabled him to form friendships with men who had previously opposed him; to repair injured feelings that, left untended, might have escalated into permanent hostility; to assume responsibility for the failures of subordinates; to share credit with ease; and to learn from mistakes. . . . His success in dealing with the strong egos of the men in his cabinet suggests that in the hands of a truly great politician the qualities we generally associated with decency and morality—kindness, sensitivity, compassion, honesty, and empathy—can also be impressive political resources.

  If I were to put America’s recent grand strategy on the couch, I could come up with no better diagnosis or prescription. We don’t need primacy to prove our importance or secure our future; that perceived need has been overtaken by the success we’ve experienced in spreading our American System-cum-globalization around the planet. But we do face the great possibility that this house will once again be divided against itself, primarily because we have been unable to deal with countries that have previously opposed us, sensing in their lack of political similarity (and by extension their diplomacy) an intention to oppose us on security, when a more empathetic reading of today’s highly competitive economic landscape yields a less harsh judgment of their motives. Indeed, if we were truly honest with ourselves, we would see ourselves—younger, more desperate, more ambitious—in these emerging powers and put aside our ego to accommodate theirs. In that sense, we don’t need to feel their pain but recognize their ambition.

  Again, some will say we must stick with those friends we know—to wit, Robert Kagan’s “league of democracies” argument, which inadvertently dismisses his previous claim that Europe and America see the world differently. But frankly, we’ll be waiting for those Godots forever. By rescuing Germany and Japan following WWII and remaking them in our image, we created friends out of enemies, building lasting alliances in the process. But we also freed Europe and Industrialized Asia to evolve in ways both wonderful and alien to our thinking, and detrimental to our global responsibilities. Trying to turn back the clock on these allies will be a fruitless effort, especially since the regional integration tasks they—and only they—must address are intimidating, whether it’s Europe’s need to reach out to Muslims both at home and around the Mediterranean littoral, or Industrialized Asia’s task of shaping a regional security environment that, for the first time in history, must accommodate both a strong Japan and a strong China. America has long engaged regions diplomatically by focusing our attention on lesser powers made nervous by larger neighbors. Now we need to focus on emerging powers made nervous by a global order they feel no longer addresses their core concerns. We need to make them co-drivers in this globalization process, and not merely keep them passengers. We need to expand our definition of “team” to accommodate these obvious economic rivals.

  So it’s not a “league of democracies” that’s called for right now but a league of capitalist powers committed to making capitalism, expressed in the American System-cum-globalization, truly and finally workable on a worldwide stage. Having achieved the most difficult part, or waiting out all serious opponents to markets, we now need to make global markets work in a way that keeps them reasonably open to all comers and tolerant of the catch-up strategies many states must employ to protect themselves and their populations in this flat-world competitive landscape.

  I see five main reasons why we need to build this team of rivals.

  The first is the most obvious: Each time the West squares off against a rogue, we find many of these emerging powers sitting on the wrong side of the negotiating table. Whether it’s Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Sudan, or Uzbekistan, it seems that whenever we run into behavior we’d rather not tolerate, there stand several rising powers whose empathy for such tactics seems to know no bounds, even as they themselves, in their growing success, realize their own need to move beyond such behaviors. As such, these great powers can do more for us than simply obstruct our instinct to punish, because serving as back-channel conduits for negotiations simply isn’t enough anymore. They must, over time, step into serious mentoring roles that the United States, operating in its “bad cop” Leviathan guise, often cannot and should not embrace. We need to find suitable “Nixons” to journey to all the would-be “Chinas” out there.

  Second, these rising pillars give off all the signs of being the right people at the right time. Nayan Chanda’s history of globalization throughout the ages, Bound Together, provides us the four basic characters in search of an author for their implied grand strategy of spreading globalization: “traders” in the form of financial markets and chain-building enterprises, “adventurers” in the form of bottom-of-the-pyramid-serving firms and resource-capturing multinationals, “preachers” in the form of nongovernmental organizations and private-volu
ntary organizations, and “warriors” in the form of peacekeepers and private security corporations. In each instance, we’re seeing New Core pillars—slowly but surely—step to the forefront of these activities, often in ways that make us uncomfortable but must be inevitably harnessed. Whether it’s an Indian industrialist who wants to build and market cheap cars throughout the Gap, or Russia’s nuclear industry planning to build a reactor in every regional hot spot, or South Korean missionaries entering today’s version of the lion’s den, or the People’s Liberation Army contradicting the very promise of its name by increasingly playing bodyguard to China’s overseas investments, these are profound connecting forces that cannot and will not be denied.

  Third, in many instances inside the Gap, these emerging pillars are superseding, as a result of their burgeoning requirements for resources and markets, the role of the West’s preferred international financial institutions, such as the IMF and the World Bank. China’s soft-loan foreign aid is already eclipsing the World Bank’s portfolio in places like Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa and has become highly competitive with U.S. foreign aid even in Latin America—our strategic backyard. As economist Adam Lerrick recently pointed out, “Nations moving up the economic ladder are weakening the [World Bank’s] hold.” China, Brazil, India, and Russia are funding infrastructure for even the poorest countries, to lock in access to raw materials and export markets. China alone will send $25 billion to Africa over the next three years, 50 percent more than the funds coming from the bank. Bank staffers label these latest lenders “rogue creditors.” I call them “adventure capitalists,” willing to go where no reputable banker has gone before. But guess what? That’s how frontiers are settled. You want it done fast, the way the American West was integrated? Well, you’re going to need a lot of “edge” players, or firms willing to take risks others will not, playing by the rules of rough-and-ready capitalism, rules that mature players dare not embrace.

  Fourth, all these rising players are thinking—right now—about what it means to become a world power, or in Russia’s case, to return to world power. As Financial Times Washington bureau chief Edward Luce writes of India, “In recent years it has become commonplace to talk of the country as being on the verge of superpower status.” Now is the time for the United States to influence such discussions by making explicit how our grand strategy complements the countries’ own. A while back I had the opportunity to have dinner in Beijing with the high-ranking foreign policy expert who produced China Central Television’s twelve-part documentary series exploring the history of nine nations that had previously risen to world-power status. His argument was simple: China can no longer ignore the path it’s currently taking and must address, on both an elite and a societal level, what it means to be a major world power. Naturally, this official, a longtime observer of America, was most concerned with how Washington would view this emerging debate. Deng had long counseled that China must hide its ambitions so as to avoid triggering a balancing response from others. But that day has passed for China, as it now passes for India, Russia, Brazil, and others. Engaging these governments while their grand strategies are still in their formative phase gives us an opportunity to shape them instead of hedge against them.

  Finally, most of these rising powers have militaries that are hopelessly trapped in strategically myopic mindsets that limit their development. China’s PLA obsesses primarily over Taiwan. India’s military focuses unduly on Pakistan (and vice versa). Russia’s strategic vision does not extend beyond its so-called near abroad of Central Asia and the Caucasus. South Korea’s military has but one mission: manage North Korea’s inevitable collapse. None of these nations can currently step up to the plate, but all will be forced to in coming years. Before long, we’ll need them all punching at their natural weight.

  How did America rebrand its military? We picked our initial targets carefully, like the faltering Spanish in the 1890s, and we waited until we had sufficient naval power-projection capability before we took them on. In the nation-building that ensued (Cuba, Philippines), we learned many hard lessons but stuck with it, moving far up the learning curve on counterinsurgency operations. When Europe went to war in 1914, we bided our time, waiting to see how things would unfold and picking our moment for decisive entry. The end result was stunning: In about four decades we went from nobody to a world military power that could not be ignored, only to thereupon walk away from that role and subsequently be forced to pick it up again—and permanently so—following WWII. Rising powers like India and China don’t have four decades to elevate their game, not with their rising dependence on foreign energy sources (and, soon enough, overseas food sources). That’s why we need to encourage their rebranding as quickly as possible, so their militaries can likewise access future regional crises without their appearance adding to the tension. They need to become an accepted global brand, just like the U.S. Marines.

  Yes, many American national security experts will decry this suggestion as naïve or premature, stating that we must “hedge our bets” in the meantime. But the “meantime” is a lot shorter, in grand strategic terms, than most of them realize. Globalization is rushing into regions previously held off-line from its connectivity, like the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and Central Asia, none of which has the regional security schemes necessary for in-region pillars to manage the inevitable security issues, much less for outside powers to readily access the resulting crises in anything but the most haphazard manner.

  We all saw how long it took the “advanced” NATO to deal with the Balkans in the 1990s. Does anyone think the embryonic Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is anywhere near being up to the task of managing something similar in Central Asia, much less next door in Afghanistan/ Pakistan, where NATO’s identity as an extra-regional force is figuratively coming apart at the seams? When Turkey responds to Russia’s invasion of Georgia with a call for a Caucasus Union, Ankara is instinctively reaching for such a rule-setting great-power venue. As for the Middle East, the United States is unable to forge any sort of regional security dialogue, and in Africa, the African Union displays its weakness with every uncredible response it undertakes (e.g., Sudan, Somalia). As one Army War College professor, Colonel Joseph Núñez, has argued, “One NATO is not enough.” Indeed, there should be one that corresponds to every American regional combatant command (Latin America, Europe, Middle East, Africa, East Asia), meaning we’re at least four short and probably could use two more beyond that (South Asia, Central Asia).

  How can we trust these emerging great powers to do the right thing? First, by expecting them to be exactly who they are. Don’t expect the Chinese to be anything but Chinese, or the Russians to be anything but Russian, or the Indians to be anything but Indians. Assuming identity of interests, much less world outlooks, simply because such countries join an American-engineered coalition is unrealistic in the extreme. Why? Because there is no reason for any of them to expect the Americans are going to be anything but American—through and through.

  But here’s the main reason we can trust them over time: The West’s “war” against radical Islam is a war of discipline, not survival. There is zero chance that the West will be overcome in this conflict. Indeed, the far more likely outcome is that the Islamic Middle East will devolve into complete and total crisis. However, while radical Islam’s global insurgency cannot derail the already rich West, it can cause enough turbulence in the global economy (e.g., a profound disruption of oil production) to effectively stall globalization’s advance. In that case, most if not all of the New Core economies face the prospect of persistent decline, leading to fractious domestic political instability. For these states, this long war against radical extremism is a war of survival. Torch globalization tomorrow and America remains a rich country. So do Europe and Japan. But Russia? China? India? Brazil? These and other emerging economies would be devastated, perhaps derailed as functioning great powers for the foreseeable future.

  The longer America insists on holding
on to twentieth-century enemies, the harder time we’ll have in dealing with twenty-first-century threats and challenges—our implied grand strategy falling increasingly out of sync with the dynamics of this globalization era. Our logical “team of rivals” is staring us in the face, and once assembled, there’s no question that our oldest friends will come along for the ride as best they can muster. This isn’t about making it a fair contest but about putting together a team that robs our enemies of the opportunity to divide us and, by doing so, delaying the “conquering” that must inevitably happen, not by force but by something far more transformative—the globalization process that sprang naturally from our American System.

  THE BETTER NORMAL: THE SERVICE-ORIENTED ALLIANCE

  Those who wage war adapt their strategies to new domains (e.g., terrain or “playing fields”) as they are presented throughout history. For example, technological advance created the domain we call the Internet. That domain naturally evolves into a venue for warfare—cyberwar or information operations. As these domains multiply, form follows function: army is complemented by navy, then amphibious forces (Marines), then air forces, and so on. Each added domain allows for new combinations that, in turn, open up avenues for restructuring the force and rethinking its operational ethos. The rise of information technology had, and is continuing to have, such an effect on U.S. military forces, with advocates of “network-centric warfare” arguing that our forces are structured for industrial-era war when they should be optimized for information-age operations. First-generation advocates of such change within any field typically meet huge resistance, for what they propose amounts to grafting new technologies onto old platforms. This resistance ends when subsequent generations emerge: generations that have grown up inside this new reality and see its potential in full.