by Robert Kagan
Yet we have less excuse than our forebears to believe that humankind has reached a new level of enlightenment. The optimists of the early twentieth century had not witnessed two world wars, the genocides, and the other horrors of our supposedly advanced era. They had not witnessed the rise of Nazism and fascism. We have seen it all and, in historical terms, quite recently. It was just seven decades ago that the United States was at war with imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and fascist Italy. It was just thirty-five years ago that Henry Kissinger asked Americans to accommodate themselves to the permanent reality of Soviet power, with its thousands of nuclear warheads aimed at American and European cities and thousands of American warheads aimed at Russia. The twentieth century was the bloodiest in all history, and we are but a dozen years into the twenty-first. It is premature for us to conclude, after ten thousand years of war, that a few decades and some technological innovations would change the nature of man and the nature of international relations.
People are right to point to the spread of democracy and the free-market, free-trade economic system as important factors in the maintenance of great-power peace. Where they err is in believing these conditions are either sufficient or self-sustaining. In fact, these are more the consequence of great peace than the cause. In 1914, democracy and prosperity did not put an end to great-power war, but great-power war certainly helped put an end to them.
Pinker traces the beginning of a long-term decline in deaths from war to 1945, which just happens to be the birth date of the American world order. The coincidence eludes him, but it need not elude us. The power of the United States has been the biggest factor in the preservation of great-power peace. It has also been a major factor in the spread of democracy and in the creation and maintenance of a liberal economic order. But America’s most important role has been to dampen and deter the normal tendencies of other great powers in the system to compete and jostle with one another in ways that historically have led to war.
It is hard to measure events that don’t happen, to guess what wars might have broken out had the United States not played the role it has played during the past sixty-five years. The only guide we have is history and a general understanding of the way great powers normally behave. We know, for instance, what Europe and Asia looked like before the United States entered the picture and changed the power equations in both regions. Germany after its defeat in World War I sought to rearm, to regain lost territory and lost honor, to protect itself against former enemies, and to restore itself as a great power. Japan from the late nineteenth century onward sought regional hegemony and coveted territory on the Asian mainland. But when American power was added to these equations after World War II, both nations took entirely different paths, as did the nations around them. Had the American variable been absent, the outcome would have been different.
American power also shaped Soviet behavior throughout the Cold War. The extent of the Soviet reach into Europe was determined by the disposition of military forces at the end of World War II, not by the modesty of Soviet ambitions. Soviet probes in Berlin from 1948 through 1961, had they not been met by the implicit and explicit threat of American force, would have changed the situation in Germany profoundly. The lack of Soviet aggressiveness in Europe thereafter, as well as in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, was a response to red lines drawn by the United States and its allies. Even today, the continuing large gap in power between the United States and the other great powers tends to dampen natural competitive rivalries and deters attempts to establish regional hegemonies by force.
It’s not just that American power is so overwhelming. The United States also enjoys a unique and unprecedented ability to gain international acceptance of its power. In this respect, it violates almost every theory of international relations. One might expect that other nations, faced with this colossus in their midst, would gang up on it and seek collectively to destroy it, weaken it, or at least severely curtail its ability to use its power. That is what both logic and most of history would predict. The Grand Alliance of European powers came together to resist the great power of Louis XIV’s France at the end of the seventeenth century and then to resist Napoléon at the beginning of the nineteenth century; the Triple Entente of Great Britain, France, and Russia, despite a long history of enmity among them, arose in response to the growth of German power at the beginning of the twentieth century; an alliance of great powers rose to fight against Hitler; and in the Cold War an alliance of the advanced industrial democracies balanced, contained, and eventually undid the Soviet Union. Twenty-five hundred years ago, the rise of Persia sent Greek city-states to Athens for help, and then the rise of Athens sent other Greeks scurrying to Sparta. China’s leaders are acutely aware of this long and consistent history, so much so that they have for two decades worked hard to amass power quietly to avoid a similar response, and with only mixed results.
Yet the United States, which has wielded even greater power relative to the rest of the world than these past would-be hegemons, has not spurred the rise of coalitions aimed at balancing against it. On the contrary, the acceleration of American military dominance in the 1980s and 1990s was accompanied by significant reductions in military capacity in both Europe and the former Soviet Union. As American power grew, almost all the other world powers reduced the size of their militaries. The United States thus also defied what international relations theorists call the “security dilemma.” According to this theory, when one nation builds up its forces, even if for defensive purposes, other powers feel compelled to build up their military strength, too, in order to defend themselves. Yet in the teeth of Reagan’s arms buildup, Mikhail Gorbachev sued for peace and began reducing Soviet power, and Russia dramatically disarmed in the 1990s.48 Europe has steadily disarmed in recent decades as American military power has grown. And even China’s arms buildup for most of the past twenty-five years has been driven more by the rhythms of its economic growth, by efforts to “reunite” Taiwan to the mainland, and by changing perceptions of its global interests than by the need to respond specifically to increases in American capabilities, although this has begun to change in recent years.
It is remarkable, even astonishing, that the American superpower, for all its flaws, its excesses, and its failures, has been accepted and tolerated by much of the world to such a degree. Indeed, America’s great power has been more than tolerated. Other nations have abetted it, encouraged it, joined it, and, with surprising frequency, legitimated it in multilateral institutions like NATO and the UN, as well as in less formal coalitions. From a historical perspective, this is unique. Nations have always welcomed the intervention of a foreign power to aid them in their own struggles. But what the United States has often enjoyed when using force is something different: a broad acceptance even by nations with no vital interests directly at stake. The American-led war against Slobodan Milosevic in 1999 was supported by most Europeans, who believed they did have some stake in the Balkan turmoil. It was also supported by the Japanese, Australians, and others who really had no stake, whose support sprang from humanitarian concerns but also, importantly, from a general faith that the United States could be trusted to use its power for acceptable ends.
The fact is, when the United States goes to war, it rarely goes alone. In the Korean War, American forces were joined by those from the United Kingdom, Turkey, Canada, Australia, France, Greece, Colombia, Thailand, the Philippines, Belgium, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. In the unpopular war in Vietnam, Americans had forces working in various capacities beside them from Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Spain. And the habit persisted after the Cold War. In the first Gulf War, American troops were joined by forces from Britain, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, France, Morocco, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bangladesh, Italy, Australia, the Netherlands, Niger, Sweden, Argentina, Senegal, Spain, Bahrain, Belgium, Poland, South Korea, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Denmark, New Zealand, Hung
ary, and Norway. Many nations were actually annoyed when the United States initially invaded Afghanistan in 2001 without inviting in the usual contingent of allies, but eventually more than forty nations took part in the effort. The expectation of this level of global support for American military intervention is so great that in the Iraq war of 2003, Americans were shocked and disturbed when only thirty-eight nations participated in either the invasion or the post-invasion occupation of Iraq. It was almost unbearable to find democratic allies like France and Germany withholding their endorsement.
The fact that Americans want this endorsement is in itself significant. They want it as a way of easing their consciences and reaffirming the justice of their decision to use force. Some measure of international approval gives them greater confidence that they are acting in the world’s interests and not simply being selfish. It also means they won’t be carrying the burden entirely by themselves. It’s no surprise that Americans want this affirmation. More unusual is that other nations so often grant it. They are willing to acknowledge that the United States is indeed engaged in actions that serve the interests of others—that serve world order.
There are few historical parallels to this situation. No other nation in recent centuries has enjoyed such broad acceptance for its use of power. The closest example would be Britain’s use of its navy to limit the slave trade in the 1830s, but even that was accepted only grudgingly by other naval powers, like France, which saw it as an assertion of British naval and economic hegemony. (And of course the slaveholding United States did not approve at all.) In a multipolar world of the kind that existed in the centuries prior to World War II, any exercise of power by one of the leading nations was seen as potentially threatening by others—an attempt to transform the existing delicate balance. In the American-dominated order, with its clear and unchallenged hierarchy, the exercise of American power is less threatening because it generally serves to confirm the existing imbalance.
This broad acceptance of American power should not be confused with helpless tolerance of U.S. predominance. There has been that, too. Nations have sometimes accepted American power because they have little choice. Europeans, including Britain’s pro-American prime minister Margaret Thatcher, did not approve of the American intervention in Grenada in 1983, for instance, but there was nothing they could do to prevent it, so they registered their objections and let it pass. There is not much other nations can do when the United States decides to take military action without their approval, unless they are willing to constrain American power in some active way, which would require dramatically shifting their entire economies toward military spending. But most nations in the world, including the most advanced nations, simply do not feel threatened enough by America’s great power, even when they find it unconstrained and reckless, to warrant major expenditures on their own military forces.
This is a new phenomenon in international affairs. Even when the United States has engaged in what others regard as unjustified and illegal military actions, this has not led to a withdrawal of general support for American power. The 2011 action in Libya was a prime example. Only a few years after the global uproar over the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and with American troops still engaged in that unpopular war, many nations, led by France and Britain, and even the Arab states, were beseeching the United States to deploy its great military power again to unseat yet another Muslim ruler in an Arab country. So many nations supported the United States’ use of force in Libya that two nations that certainly would have preferred not to see American power on display again—Russia and China—felt they had no choice but to acquiesce in the prevailing desire to have the United States once more unsheathe its sword.
One can’t blame Moscow or Beijing for being unhappy and reluctant backers of American military action, in Libya and elsewhere. Neither of those two great powers has ever enjoyed similar international support for their use of force. When Russia goes to war, it goes alone, at least since World War II. There are no votes at the UN or in any other multilateral organization sanctioning Moscow’s use of force. When Russia sent its troops into Georgia in 2008, even its own version of NATO, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, would not give its blessing. When the Soviets intervened in Afghanistan in 1979, they went in without Polish or other Warsaw Pact troops beside them. Ironically, when Polish troops finally did go fight in Afghanistan a little over two decades later, it was alongside American troops.
When China intervened in Korea in 1950, it, too, went in alone. It has not used force since it began to reemerge as a great power, but would it receive international blessing if it did? Today, even as China lends a few ships to antipiracy efforts off the coast of Africa, it spurs a bit of nervousness among local powers, like India. Chinese strategists sometimes marvel at what the United States can get away with. As the strategic thinker Yan Xuetong puts it, the Americans have created “an institutionalized system of hegemony” by “establishing international norms” in accordance with American principles of behavior. Once these norms are “accepted by a majority of countries,” American hegemony becomes “legitimized.”49 But what the Chinese find really upsetting is the extent of America’s military alliances, for, as Yan Xuetong notes, “America has more than 50 formal military allies, while China has none.”50 This gives the United States an enormous advantage.
Other countries do enjoy international support when they use force: France and Great Britain, for instance, in Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, and Libya; Australia in East Timor. But they are not great powers and do not wield anything like the kind of military power the United States does. Moreover, they are part of the still-dominant global democratic club, which alone has been able to bestow some international legitimacy on military action. As a rule, either nations have possessed great power but enjoyed low international acceptance of its use, or they have enjoyed high international acceptance for their use of force but had relatively little of it to use. And it makes sense. Why should weaker nations encourage the strongest nations to use their power? The United States has been an anomaly in this respect. Since the end of World War II, it has held a near monopoly of legitimated military power, and it still does today.
Why has the world been so accepting of American military power? It is not because that power has been used either sparingly or unerringly or always in accord with international law or even always in consultation with allies. Some argue that the international system established by the United States after World War II was based on rules and institutions to which Americans bound themselves as well as others. According to this theory, other nations could trust the United States to abide by these rules, especially those governing the use of force, and to work within the institutions like the United Nations and NATO. This gave other nations a measure of confidence that the United States would not abuse its power.51
In fact, however, the United States has not always felt constrained by either laws or institutions, even those of its own creation. From the overthrow and attempted overthrow of governments in Iran, Guatemala, and Cuba, to the Vietnam War and the intervention in the Dominican Republic, to the invasion of Panama and the war over Kosovo, the United States under both Democratic and Republican presidents often defied or ignored international laws and institutions, both during the Cold War and in the two decades afterward.
Nor have Americans, though usually committed in principle to multilateralism, allowed themselves to be hemmed in very much by their allies or by institutions like the United Nations. The Founders’ admonitions against “entangling alliances” have echoed down through the centuries, as has a very American suspicion of international institutions and any perceived constraint on American sovereignty. These have provided a counterpoise to American affection for international laws and institutions. The United States, moreover, as a very powerful nation, has been no more willing than past powerful nations to be entirely constrained by weaker nations. The United States did not hesitate to go to war over Kosovo in 1999, despite failing to gain app
roval at the UN Security Council, or to bomb Iraq in 1998, despite loud objections from close democratic allies like France. Even during the Cold War, as one scholar has noted, America’s rhetorical commitment to “multilateralism generally masked the substance of unilateralism.”52 As a general rule, the United States has sought approval for its military actions only when confident it could get it, as when Truman sought UN authorization for the intervention in Korea while the Soviet Union was boycotting the Security Council, or when George H. W. Bush sought UN authorization for the war against Iraq in 1991 at a time when he knew the Soviet Union, weakened and on its last legs, would be compliant. Does anyone believe Bush would have refrained from acting had the Soviet Union disapproved? When he ordered the invasion of Panama in 1989 to remove Manuel Noriega, he was undeterred by the fact that the UN General Assembly condemned the action as a violation of international law, the Organization of American States passed a resolution deploring it, and at the UN Security Council a draft resolution demanding the immediate withdrawal of American forces had to be vetoed.
This sometimes cavalier attitude toward allies and institutions has been apparent on economic matters, too. When Richard Nixon took the United States off the gold standard in 1971, thus putting an end to the Bretton Woods system the United States had devised after World War II, he did so without even consulting America’s closest allies. It is hard to believe the rest of the world has regarded the United States as consistently abiding by the rules of the international system it helped devise. Although Americans would claim otherwise, and although they are among the most legalistic people in the world, the order they have sustained has never been based strictly on law, but rather on Americans’ perception of their interests and on their judgments about right and wrong.