UNEASY GIANT

THE CHALLENGES TO AMERICAN

PREDOMINANCE

PETER W. RODMAN

THE NIXON CENTER

 ABOUT THE NIXON CENTER

The Nixon Center is a non-partisan public policy institution established by

former President Richard Nixon shortly before his death in 1994.
Committed to the analysis of policy challenges to the United States
through the prism of the American national interest, the Center is a
substantively and programmatically independent division of the Richard
Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation.

Major programs of the Nixon Center include the Chinese Studies Program,
European Security Program, Immigration Program, National Security
Program, Regional Strategic Program, and U.S.-Russian Relations
Program. Topics addressed by Center programs range from U.S. relations
with China and Russia to energy geopolitics in the Persian Gulf and
Caspian Basin and European security issues. The Center is supported by
the Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation endowment as well as by
foundation, corporate, and individual donors.

Copyright 2000 The Nixon Center All Rights Reserved

Rodman, Peter W.
Uneasy Giant: The Challenges to American Predominance
by Peter W. Rodman

The Nixon Center

1615 L Street, N.W., Suite 1250
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: (202) 887-1000
Fax: (202) 887-5222
E-mail: mail@nixoncenter.org
Website:www.nixoncenter.org

Prepared by: Meghan Bradley

Order from the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation

1-800-USA-8865
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE

This monograph is the fifth in The Nixon Center’s series of annual

strategic assessments produced by Peter W. Rodman, our Director of National
Security Programs. Unlike his most recent papers in this series, which focused
on particular strategic issues (China, Russia, Europe), this one surveys
America’s global position and the challenges to it. It is a broad yet concise
examination of American strategy and an inquiry into the American national
interest in today’s new post-Cold War conditions. It is also a valuable
contribution to our national debate on foreign policy. Having served in key
foreign policy positions under four presidents – with responsibilities that gave
him a strategist’s global perspective – Peter Rodman is particularly well-
qualified to undertake this task.

Forthcoming Nixon Center monographs will examine problems no

less central to American foreign policy. This fall, we will release a new
monograph by Geoffrey Kemp, Director of Regional Strategic Programs,
reevaluating American policy in the Caspian Basin and the Middle East. In
December, China Studies Director David M. Lampton and Center Assistant
Director Greg May will complete a study assessing the potential for a new
arms race in East Asia and proposing U.S. policies to avoid that outcome
while ensuring the defense of vital American interests in the region.

Dimitri K. Simes
President
The Nixon Center
 CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY………………………………………………..vii

INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………1

I. HOW OTHERS ARE REACTING………………………………………5

The Multipolarity Brigade
Desperately Seeking Autonomy
A World “Unbalanced”
Keeping Our Cool

II. THE HISTORICAL TREND………………………………………….19

Theories of American Decline
How Unipolar? And for How Long?
Problems Nonetheless

III. OUR REAL VULNERABILITIES……………………………………27

Military: Asymmetric Challenges
Economic: Systemic Weaknesses
Political: Centrifugal Forces

IV. STRATEGY FOR A SUPERPOWER…………………………………39

National Interest Makes a Comeback
A Grand Strategy
The Problem of American Unilateralism

CONCLUSION: A NEW GRAND BARGAIN?…………………………..53

NOTES………………………………………………………………..59

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………..69
 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

While Americans celebrate their “unipolar moment” in history, the

rest of the world seems not to be joining in the celebration. On the contrary,
for the world’s other major powers (including our friends), the extraordinary
predominance that America now enjoys is a problem rather than a blessing.
A main theme of their foreign policies today is to build counterweights to
American power. Americans seem strangely oblivious to this trend, and to
the need for a strategy to deal with it.

For many nations, “multipolarity” is the mantra; it is the explicit

rejection of the idea that the world ought to be, or remain for long, unipolar.
The Russians and Chinese have made this a central theme of their foreign
policies. Our European allies, as well, see it as one of the main purposes of
the growing European Union to be a counterweight to the United States and
to reduce Europe’s dependence on us. A number of Third World countries
openly declare their unhappiness with a world that is now “unbalanced”
since the demise of the Soviet Union.

Most likely, this “unipolar moment” will last for a long time. There is
no challenger that will be able to match the scale and range of America’s
global predominance for the foreseeable future. But this does not exhaust the
problem of American foreign policy. In the real world, our predominant
strength is not enough by itself to ensure against a range of potential
disasters. Whether America’s physical preponderance translates into
predominant influence over events depends, for one thing, on a variety of
intangibles – like political will and staying power, the credibility of our
commitments, our perceived willingness or unwillingness to take risks, our
reputation for reliability and competence. All these depend on our actual
performance over time – and could be badly undermined by a policy fiasco
(such as a failed military intervention).

Even if we remain Number One in the GDP standings for a long time,
both we and the international system are more vulnerable than we seem to
realize. In the military dimension, there are potential adversaries pursuing
“asymmetric” strategies, attempting to zero in on our weaknesses. Some, for
example, are pursuing by either advanced conventional weapons or weapons
of mass destruction to raise the risk of American casualties and thereby to
deter us from intervening against regional challenges. In the economic
sphere, the Asian crisis was a warning of the fragility of the international
financial system, and the present prosperity remains vulnerable to crisis. In
the political realm, relations among all the world’s major powers are much
viii Uneasy Giant

more precarious than they were a decade ago in the first euphoric years after
the Cold War.

The United States can defuse some international resentments by a

foreign policy based on the American national interest, rather than a
Wilsonian mission of global improvement. Given the scale of American
predominance, our assertiveness in any cause, no matter how selfless we
perceive it to be, is seen by others – including our friends – as an assertion of
our power. How else to explain the paradox that resentment of the United
States seems to be so high in the time of an Administration so eager to be
virtuous, even to the point of apologizing for much of America’s postwar
foreign policy? A policy grounded in the American national interest,
paradoxically, implies less sweeping American claims and thus a greater
possibility of fruitful collaboration with friendly countries.

Strategically, the United States is in a central, pivotal position. All

other powers either need us for something (protection; economic ties), or are
afraid to cross us, or are afraid to leave us in bed with another power they
fear as a more immediate rival. In addition to maintaining our military
strength and deterring major challenges to peace, therefore, this central
position furnishes the essence of a political strategy for the American
superpower: It gives us flexibility and leverage, and the possibility of having
better relations with the world’s other powers than they have with each other.
It will help us preserve our position of advantage over the long term.

Despite its predominant power, therefore, the United States would be

smart to conduct itself as a good internationalist – helping maintain the
world economic system, meeting its responsibility to preserve the balance of
power, working in concert with capable and like-minded nations and
international institutions wherever possible. On security matters, too, we
should prefer to consult and work with allies. Building and leading an
international consensus is a task at which the United States has demonstrated
great skill over the postwar period.

Yet, all this being said, there are some important security issues on
which we will not be able to sacrifice our freedom of action even if it means
being accused of “unilateralism.” If international pressures on us seem not
based on serious strategic analysis (e.g., to ban all land mines, or to ease
pressures on Iraq, or to constrain all missile defenses) we have a
responsibility to say no. Whether we will be indulged on this score by our
friends, in return for our more dutiful internationalism on all the other issues
– as a new “grand bargain” – remains to be seen.
 INTRODUCTION

A sympathetic European observer, German official Karsten Voigt,

has described in concise terms the unprecedented scale of America’s
present global preeminence – its superiority or overwhelming influence
not only in military but also in economic and cultural affairs:

The USA is the only remaining superpower and for

the first time in history has neither comparable opponents
nor rivals. It is the only country in the world which is in
the position to make lasting global projections of military
strength. It has the strongest economy in the world. Only
the USA is in the position to impose its own norms and
standards (take the Internet for example) on a worldwide
scale. Many Europeans still harbor feelings of superiority
over the USA as far as culture is concerned; but the days
when this was justified are long gone. The USA has long
been setting standards on a worldwide basis, not just for the
general populace, but has been leading the field in the
classic cultural spheres, for example in research and
teaching, or film and modern art. Its global role is rooted in
a hitherto unknown blend of economic power, the ability to
set the global cultural agenda and military superiority.1

Voigt concludes with a pointed comment on the extraordinary freedom of

action that this gives us:

Never before has American self-esteem had less reason to

use benchmarks other than its own as the guiding principle
for worldwide action.2

The nervousness implicit in that last sentence speaks volumes about the
reaction of other nations, even friendly nations, to American preeminence
today. Arnold Toynbee once reportedly compared the United States to “a
large, friendly dog in a very small room – every time it wags its tail, it
knocks over a chair.”3 And that was in the old days of bipolarity.

History has not been kind to dominant powers. In the last 500
years, a number of powerful nations that enjoyed or aspired to imperium
have exhausted themselves by overextension, or provoked a coalition of
other powers against them, or otherwise lost their position of advantage.4
Presumably the United States wishes to avoid such a fate. One thesis of
2 Uneasy Giant

this paper is that the United States is more likely to succeed if it makes the
task of preserving its preeminence a matter of conscious strategy, rather
than leaving the matter to chance or to the usual array of ad hoc, reactive
decisions by which it habitually makes foreign policy.

Warren Christopher once declared that the United States did not
have an overall strategy and, moreover, was not going to get one during
his tenure as Secretary of State. He had learned as a lawyer, he said
proudly, that it was best to handle issues case by case as they arose.5
National security adviser Samuel R. Berger has said the same thing,
doubting whether anything as grand as “grand strategy” ever really
existed.6 This is, to be sure, thoroughly consistent with the pragmatic
tradition in American philosophy (as well as the equally venerable
tradition of appointing lawyers to top national security posts). But the
fluidity and turbulence of today’s world, as well as the cautionary lessons
of history, nonetheless argue for thinking in more coherent fashion (that is,
strategically) about how our preeminence is to be maintained. Happy
endings are not guaranteed, and the world is still a dangerous place.

Charles Krauthammer, a great coiner of apt phrases, was one of the

first to speak of the “unipolar moment” – the extraordinary predominance
that suddenly fell to the United States when Soviet power collapsed. He
wrote this in 1990, when the Soviet Union still existed. But Krauthammer
chose the word “moment” wisely. He did not doubt that this time, as so
often before in history, challenges would soon arise to this American
predominance and its duration could not be predicted.7

He did not have to wait long. Well before the decade was out,
challenges began to appear. The unipolar moment that Americans so
enjoy, it seems, is not universally celebrated elsewhere. The reason goes
far beyond Karsten Voigt’s polite expression of unease. Most of the
world’s other major powers have made it a central theme of their foreign
policy to attempt to build counterweights to American power. This is, in
fact, one of the main trends in international politics today.

Americans seem strangely oblivious to this. There is, of course, a

general apathy about foreign affairs among the American public. But
among the foreign policy elite in this country, which presumably does care
about America’s international leadership, there must be other factors that
explain it. An important one is the traditional Wilsonian bent of American
policy: An America that sees itself as leading and acting in the name of
universal moral principles has a tendency to assume that its leadership is
welcomed by everyone else. Why shouldn’t it be, if we are not acting out
of selfish national interests but in the general interest? Such an America is
genuinely puzzled by the idea that American assertiveness in the name of
Introduction 3

universal principles could sometimes be seen by others as a form of

American unilateralism. Yet unilateralism is precisely one of the charges
being levied against this Wilsonian administration by many countries –
including, again, some of our friends. Our assertiveness, in any cause, is
perceived by others in present conditions as an assertion of our
predominant power.

Therein lies the explanation not only for American obliviousness

to the world’s reaction, but for that reaction itself. How else to explain the
paradox that international resentment of American power seems to be so
high in the time of an Administration so eager to be virtuous and that has
made it standard procedure to apologize for much of postwar American
foreign policy? The fact is, the rest of the world is reacting to American
power in a thoroughly classical, un-Wilsonian, balance-of-power fashion.
The Russians and Chinese, for the past five years, have made it a
centerpiece of their foreign policies to restore what they call
“multipolarity” to the international system. Our Western European
friends, in the Maastricht Treaty of 1993, committed themselves to a
stronger European Union not only in the economic and monetary field but
also in foreign and security policy; the Kosovo war of 1999, instead of
vindicating NATO and American leadership, as it was seen to do in
Administration eyes, had the result of accelerating efforts to build a new
all-European defense organization so that Europe would not remain so
dependent on the United States. Others are reacting similarly.

American military policies which we see as defensive and

necessary, whether on land mines or missile defense, prompt new charges
of unilateralism, which other nations seek to restrain through arms control.
Sentiment is growing that the United Nations Security Council ought to be
restored to the role of principal arbiter of international security that was
envisioned in the UN Charter, and that military interventions are not
legitimate unless the Security Council authorizes them. One of the main
motives for this elevation of the UN Security Council, too, is to restrain
the American superpower.

Before going any further, I should state some of my assumptions

up front. I believe it is in America’s interest to preserve its preeminent
position, without either vainglory or false modesty. It affords us the
extraordinary luxury of a great influence over events, with which to serve
and advance our interests. Nor are the costs excessive. In the turbulent
new global environment after the Cold War, moreover, American
leadership still seems the most efficacious means of organizing
international responses to serious challenges. Until the world evolves into
a more balanced and harmonious international system, American
4 Uneasy Giant

abdication is more serious a danger than American “hegemonism” (and I

suspect that most other friendly nations, when being honest, agree). Nor
must the United States renounce its own judgment or interests just because
it encounters resentment. Much of the resistance to us is structural – the
inevitable and natural reaction of others to a single power’s predominance.

Nonetheless, there are two basic questions we must try to address:

First, are we handling it right? While much of the resistance to

us may be unavoidable, there are also legitimate issues of style as well as
substance that call for a genuine collaboration with others. There is a
smart way to be a superpower and a dumb way. This will also bring us
back to the basic question of whether there is a strategy for the United
States that will best head off some of the challenges we will discuss.

The second key question is: What is our real vulnerability? Is it

long-term decline? Imperial “overstretch”? Counter-coalitions forming
against us? Or (as I believe), something less theoretical and more
mundane – namely, the risk of near-term policy failures?

In Chapter I, we will examine the challenges to American

predominance that are already evident in the reactions of much of the
world – China, Russia, Europe, and other significant international players
– that are attempting to build counterweights to our power. How seriously
should we take all this?

Chapter II will attempt to put the problem in perspective and assess

the historical trend: What about the theories of American decline we heard
so much about a few years ago? How inevitable is it that the American
“unipolar moment” will end soon?

Chapter III will consider a range of more specific challenges to the

American position – military, economic, and political. Our overall power
may endure, but we are not invulnerable. What are those vulnerabilities?

Chapter IV will explore some broad issues of American strategy,

suggesting an approach to mastering these challenges. It will examine,
among other things, the problem of American “unilateralism.”

The Conclusion will offer specific recommendations.

 I. HOW OTHERS ARE REACTING

THE MULTIPOLARITY BRIGADE

In the summer of 1997, TIME reported on the G-7 Summit in
Denver:

As soon as it happened, the incident became legend.

Germans called it “the boots fiasco.” French commentators
sniggered over it. On June 21, as Bill Clinton was playing
host to world leaders in Denver, the guests were asked to
trick themselves out for the banquet in jeans, cowboy hats
and boots. Though fancy dress was meant just to break the
ice, the idea went as wrong as a garden party at the O.K.
Corral. Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany, who weighs
in at Panzer proportions, balked at the whole rig, but
especially the boots. “We had a long discussion about
boots, and Kohl said he would never wear them, absolutely
never,” Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said later.
President Jacques Chirac of France also refused. A man
who very rarely wears jeans, and has never been seen in
any kind of hat, Chirac had made a solemn deal with Kohl
to stick together on “the vestimentary question.”8

It was a trivial episode in the grand scheme of history, but there

was a wave of resentful media commentary in Europe. In European eyes
it was of a piece with other aspects of the Denver Summit, such as
watching White House aides gleefully hand out charts contrasting the high
economic growth in the United States with the weak performance of
Europe and Japan. All the triumphalism about the “American model” was
hard to take.9

Europeans also complain about peremptory American impositions

of policy – the insistence on only three new admittees to NATO in the first
round at the 1997 Madrid Summit after some allies had publicly
committed themselves to five; the abrupt U.S. veto of Germany’s first
nominee for IMF director this year. Whatever the substantive merits of
the U.S. position, the style rankles. The leftist German weekly Der
Spiegel has complained:
6 Uneasy Giant

The Americans are acting, in the absence of limits put to

them by anybody or anything, as if they own a blank check
in their “McWorld.” Strengthened by the end of
communism and an economic boom, Washington seems to
have abandoned its self-doubts from the Vietnam trauma.
America is now the Schwarzenegger of international
politics: showing off muscles, obtrusive, intimidating.10

It is not hard to accumulate evidence for the proposition that much

of the rest of the world, and not only leftists, see American preponderance
as a problem, rather than a blessing. The mantra for this point of view is
“multipolarity” – the explicit rejection of the idea that the world ought to
be, or remain for long, unipolar.

The Russians and Chinese were the first to develop this theme.
There is some irony here in that the Clinton Administration for a long time
congratulated itself on its “strategic partnerships” with both countries. A
“strategic alliance with Russian reform” was how President Clinton once
characterized his policy towards Boris Yeltsin’s Russia.11 He could
visualize, or so it seemed, a natural Wilsonian affinity between a
progressive American administration and a reformist Russian leadership.
A “constructive strategic partnership” was also often said to be the aim of
American policy toward China.12

Yet, if there has been any consistent theme in Russian foreign

policy in the post-Cold War period, it is its categorical rejection of
American leadership. Yevgenii Primakov, then Foreign Minister,
expressed it this way in his address to the UN General Assembly in
September 1996. One of the basic conditions for achieving a durable
peace, as he saw it, was:

the emancipation from the mentality of “those who lead”

and “those who are led.” Such a mentality draws on
illusions that some countries emerged as winners from the
Cold War, while others lost it. But this is not the case.
Peoples on both sides of the Iron Curtain jointly got rid of
the policy of confrontation. Meanwhile the mentality of
“those who lead” and “those who are led” directly paves
the way for a tendency to establish a unipolar world. Such
a world order is unacceptable to the overwhelming majority
of the international community.13

Boris Yeltsin often hailed the trend toward multipolarity that he

professed to see gaining ground in the world. “This trend in universal
Chapter I: How Others Are Reacting 7

development has been formulated by Russia,” he boasted in May 1998.

“Most of the countries have agreed with it.” And since, as Yeltsin
insisted, attempts were still being made to foist the interests of one state or
group of states on the world community, “[t]he time has come to
understand that in the present-day world, particularly in the 21st century,
no state, however strong, can impose its will on others.” Yeltsin described
Russia’s aim as a relationship of equality with the United States, but also
without “yielding” to American dictation:

Equal interaction with the United States is being

established after a period of certain illusions and
extravagant expectations. Positive dynamics in relations
with the United States should be preserved, while there
should be no yielding to the United States.14

“Striving for a multipolar world” is a main theme of Vladimir

Putin’s foreign policy line, as part of the continuity he has promised.15

There is nothing objectionable in such declarations. Russia’s

independence, and even its reemergence as a great power, are not
intrinsically threatening to the United States. Nonetheless, Russo-
American relations ought to be viewed by Americans without the
sentimentality of the early post-Soviet years – just as they are now viewed
by Russians. Whatever Wilsonian affinity the Clinton Administration may
have been assuming it had with Russian “reform,” Russians themselves
have been thinking in more classical terms about how to define their own
national interests in the extraordinary circumstances in which they now
find themselves. Resisting American dominance seems clearly to be a part
of that definition.

The Chinese have expressed the same passion for “multipolarity.”

Liu Huaqiu, a Vice Foreign Minister serving as the chief national security
adviser to the President and Premier, expressed similar confidence in 1997
that world trends were moving toward multipolarity, with China in the
forefront:

A multipolar world has become the growing trend, and

China has developed into a main force.…The international
status of socialist China has strengthened; its reputation has
grown, and its influence has expanded. China will develop
into an important role in the future multipolar world.16

Nor is it surprising that Russia and China have come together on

this theme. When Yeltsin visited Beijing in April 1996, the rhetoric on
8 Uneasy Giant

both the Russian and Chinese sides was extraordinary in its bluntness.
The joint communiqué of that visit, signed by Yeltsin and Jiang Zemin,
came close to branding the United States a threat to peace:

[T]he world is far from being tranquil. Hegemonism,

power politics and repeated imposition of pressures on
other countries have continued to occur. Bloc politics has
taken up new manifestations.17

Yeltsin in his own remarks in China warned of an attempt by certain other

countries to “dominate” and celebrated the fact that “Russia and China are
[as] one in creation of a new world order, in which no one will aspire to a
monopoly in world affairs.”18 When Chinese Premier Li Peng visited
Yeltsin in Moscow at the end of December 1996, their joint communiqué
stressed their strategic cooperation in the cause of multipolarity:

The sides are unanimous that….a partnership of equal

rights and trust between Russia and China aimed at
strategic cooperation in the 21st century…promotes the
formation of a multipolar world.19

The joint communiqué of Yeltsin’s last visit to Beijing, in December

1999, offered more of the same, only updated after Kosovo:

[N]egative momentum in international relations

continues to grow, and the following is becoming more
obvious: The forcing of the international community to
accept a unipolar world pattern and a single model of
culture, value concepts and ideology, and a weakening of
the role of the United Nations and its Security Council; the
seeking of excuses to give irresponsible explanations or
amendment to the purposes and principles of the UN
Charter; the reinforcing and expanding of military blocs;
the replacing of international law with power politics or
even resorting to force; and the jeopardizing of the
sovereignty of independent states using the concepts of
“human rights are superior to sovereignty” and
“humanitarian intervention.” 20

I, for one, take this Russian-Chinese collaboration seriously. If

there is any relationship that deserves the name “strategic partnership,” it
is this one. It reflects a geopolitical convergence of view – contrary to
ours – on a wide range of issues, from missile defense and humanitarian
intervention to Chechnya and Taiwan. It includes Russian arms sales to
China that already pose a danger to U.S. forces (see Chapter III below).
Chapter I: How Others Are Reacting 9

These arms sales reflect a kind of Gaullist strategic decision by Russia that
building up China’s power is a good thing. “The stronger China becomes,
the more peace and stability in the region will benefit,” Yevgenii
Primakov declared a few years ago.21

DESPERATELY SEEKING AUTONOMY

More surprising, and therefore perhaps more significant, is the
degree to which this reaction to American predominance is also a feature
of some contemporary European attitudes. The dependence that marked
the last 50 years was the source of accumulating resentments on both sides
of the Atlantic, and the end of the Cold War danger has led our allies to
seize the opportunity to expand their autonomy. The new European
“identity,” of course, is also the product of a long-standing and thoroughly
positive project – that of European integration – which the United States
has supported from the beginning. This has produced historic
reconciliations on the Continent, and enormous economic progress.
Western statesmen after World War II were exceedingly wise to seek to
avoid the political and economic debacle that followed the more punitive
peace after World War I. Yet, there is no mistaking that in present
conditions Europe is seeking to define its identity at least in part by
differentiation from the United States. A common theme of European
rhetoric, even of the friendliest of our allies, is that it is time for Europe to
build itself into an equal of the United States, to be a counterweight to the
United States, to achieve greater autonomy from the United States, to
lessen its dependence on the United States, and so on.

The French, as often, express this the most sharply. Foreign

Minister Hubert Védrine has labeled the United States not only a
superpower but a “hyperpower,” for the unique range of its dominance in
the political, military, economic, and cultural realms. The need for Europe
to counterbalance this power is, for France, a self-evident axiom. To a
conference of French ambassadors in 1997, Védrine declared:

Today there is one sole great power – the United States of

America. …When I speak of its power, I state a
fact…without acrimony. A fact is a fact. …But this power
carries in itself, to the extent that there is no counterweight,
especially today, a unilateralist temptation … and the risk
of hegemony.

France’s policy, he went on to say, was:

10 Uneasy Giant

to contribute….to the emergence of several poles in the

world capable of being a factor of equilibrium. …Europe is
[such] an actor, a means of influence absolutely necessary
for such a multipolar world to come about.22

In an interview in 1998, Védrine complained again that “a major factor in

the world today” was “the overriding predominance of the United States in
all areas and the current lack of any counterweight.” He urged his fellow
Europeans to step up to the task of being that counterweight:

We have to have nerves of steel. We have to persevere.

We have to methodically broaden the basis for agreement
between Europeans. We have to coordinate with the
United States all along the line on a basis agreed by all
European states, combining a friendly approach with the
need to be respected, and defending organized
multilateralism and the requirements of the Security
Council under all circumstances. Finally, we have to plan
politically, institutionally, and mentally for the time when
Europe has the courage to go farther.23

When President Jacques Chirac visited Beijing in May 1997, he

joined with Jiang Zemin in insisting on “multipolarity” in the global
system and in opposing “domination”:

Both parties [China and France] have decided to … foster

the march towards multipolarity, to support efforts to create
wealth and well-being on the basis of respecting plurality
and independence, …and to oppose any attempt at
domination in international affairs.24

Building “counterweights.” The “risk of hegemony.” Opposing

“attempts at domination.” If anyone thought that the end of the Cold War
meant the end of “old-fashioned” balance-of-power thinking, this is as
classical as one can get.

But the French are not the only Europeans to think in these terms.
In the economic realm, the strengthened Economic and Monetary Union
(EMU) brought about by the Maastricht Treaty had the explicit goal of
making the EU a stronger economic bloc in the competition with other
powers. Helmut Kohl, no enemy of the United States, put it this way in a
speech in Louvain in 1990:

[W]e all need Europe to be competitive in the

global market. Only together are we able to assert
Chapter I: How Others Are Reacting 11

ourselves against the trade blocs of the Far East and North
America, and with the Mercosur pact that Latin America
will join as well.25

Joschka Fischer, now German Foreign Minister, summed up the

significance of the EMU in an address to the European Parliament in
January 1999:

The introduction of a common currency is not

primarily an economic, but rather a sovereign and thus
eminently political act. With the communitarization of its
money, Europe has also opted for an autonomous path in
the future and, in close collaboration with our transatlantic
partners, for an autonomous role in tomorrow’s world.26

Likewise Wim Kok, Dutch Prime Minister: “EMU can develop into a
cornerstone for Europe’s further political integration – forming the
foundation for Europe’s increased power in the world.”27

Making Europe into a “counterweight to the United States” (as

Wim Kok put it on yet another occasion) is even more evidently the goal
of Europe’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, also mandated by
Maastricht.28 The Kosovo crisis only intensified this. In the early days of
the Kosovo diplomacy, in late 1998, Tony Blair – perhaps America’s
closest friend among European leaders – cited Kosovo as a reason for the
European Union to develop a defense institution of its own. This was a
major reversal of British policy that had always insisted on NATO as the
exclusive organization for Western security. In a speech in Edinburgh in
November 1998, Blair complained that Europe had been “hesitant and
disunited” over Kosovo; it was time for Europe to develop a capacity for
autonomous action so it would not always be so dependent on the United
States.29

The Kosovo war in the spring of 1999, as already noted, only

intensified this impulse in Europe. While the air campaign was a
remarkable demonstration of transatlantic solidarity and a dramatic
success of an American-led Alliance operation, the breathtaking scale of
American technological dominance had a paradoxical if not perverse
effect. For many European governments, particularly those of a center-left
coloration, participation in any American-led war was political agony;
governments were bitterly assaulted by anti-American leftists (and
Gaullist rightists in France), though the anti-Milosevic cause was enough
to sustain public support. The conclusion drawn by many Europeans,
across the political spectrum, was that Europe needed to accelerate its own
12 Uneasy Giant

technological development and its creation of a European defense

institution, precisely in order that it not be in such a position again.

An official German account of the Bremen meeting of the Western

European Union in May 1999 reported:

Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and Defense Minister

Rudolf Scharping urge a rapid buildup of common EU
forces to master crises and conflicts in Europe even without
participation of the United States. The Kosovo conflict
expresses how urgent and indispensable this buildup will be
for the future of Europe, declared Fischer….30

At the Helsinki summit of the EU last December, the Europeans decided

on the goal of fielding an all-European force of 50-60,000 men by 2003, to
handle middle-range military tasks of peacekeeping, crisis management,
and humanitarian intervention. While the position of all the allies is that
the North Atlantic Alliance remains the foundation of European security,
German Greens have hailed the EU’s defense project as the beginning of
Europe’s “emancipation” from the United States. As they see it:

Especially in the context of the war in Kosovo, many

voices have called for the emancipation of the European
states from the USA, and the development of an
independent European security policy.31

Japan’s attitude to American preeminence is somewhat more

complicated. While the end of the Soviet threat led many in Japan to
question why the Americans were still around, the North Korean menace
and the emergence of China have supplied an answer to the question.
Japan’s assertiveness on many issues has also probably been dampened by
the disappointment of its economic performance in recent years. Yet, the
experts agree that Japanese nationalism is also reemerging.

Japanese government officials now stress “autonomy” from the

United States as a central theme. Japan “must paint its own self-portrait”
in security relations with the United States, they argue.32 Other Japanese
are calling on their country to rewrite its American-drafted Constitution; to
forge a new identity as a bridge between East and West, not just an
appendage of the West; to seek a greater influence and empowerment vis-
à-vis the United States by becoming more active in the United Nations;
and to challenge U.S dominance of international economic policy.
Kyofuku Fukushima of Nomura Research Institute, for example, has
complained that “American control of the strategic decision-making in
important international economic organizations” has given rise to a
Chapter I: How Others Are Reacting 13

“Market Fundamentalism and idealization of the Anglo-American type

capitalism” that is “dangerous and counterproductive.”33

In its own way, the debacle of the Seattle meeting of the World
Trade Organization last December may have had some of the same impact
in Japan as the Kosovo crisis had in Europe. “The failure poured cold
water on the overconfidence of the United States,” trumpeted Asahi
Shimbun in an editorial. “The conference was an occasion that the other
developed countries and developing countries said no to the United States,
which is selfish and over-proud of itself as the sole superpower of the
world.”34

A WORLD “UNBALANCED”
Many countries in the Third World, as well, see the emergence of
the United States as the sole superpower as a mixed blessing. During the
Cold War, many of them had played off the two superpowers against each
other, or were able to claim much of the superpowers’ attention while the
competition raged. (There was even a period, in the 1950s and ‘60s, when
Washington and Moscow seemed to believe the whole East-West conflict
would be decided in the Third World, though this panic gradually faded.)
In any case, the Soviet collapse has left the international system too
“unbalanced” for some countries’ taste.

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Amre Moussa, in a revealing 1996

interview in Middle East Quarterly, let the cat out of the bag. There was a
“lack of international balance,” he lamented, now that the Soviet Union
was gone. The following exchange took place:

Interviewer: And the negative side [of the Soviet collapse]?

Moussa: Its negative aspects center around the lack of international
balance.
Interviewer: You’re telling us that the United States is too strong?
Moussa: You can take it as you like.
Interviewer: This is a remarkable comment; America’s foremost
Arab partner says it misses the balance provided by the Soviet
Union!35

This was indeed a remarkable shift from the policy of Anwar Sadat, who
had expelled the Soviet presence from Egypt and thrown in Egypt’s lot
with the United States, calculating (even while the Soviet Union still
existed) that America held “most of the cards” in the Middle East. Egypt
now tends to align itself, ironically enough, with its old adversary Syria, to
counterbalance what it sees as a U.S.-Israeli-Turkish-Jordanian axis.
14 Uneasy Giant

The conservative Mexican daily Ocho Columnas expressed its

resentment at U.S. domineering and presumption, due in part, according to
the newspaper, to the lack of a counterweight to U.S. power:

As the step before establishing the universal new world

order and as a successor to manifest destiny…the U.S. has
revoked international laws and now certifies other nations
in every possible area…from drug trafficking to internal
political affairs…. This happens for two reasons: The
corrupt leaders of the developing nations, who fall prey to
the pressures of powerful U.S. interest groups, and because
of the absence of balancing forces in the world to oppose
the United States.36

A more passionate statement comes from Mahathir Mohamad,

Prime Minister of Malaysia. Mahathir’s speech to the UN General
Assembly last September was a long diatribe to the effect that the
international system was totally unbalanced without the Soviets. Now the
West was dominant and developing countries’ independence was
threatened. Their economies were subject to capitalist diktat under the
banner of globalization; their internal affairs were the object of brazen
interference on human rights pretexts; and Western culture and civilization
were to be imposed on everyone. This indictment is worth quoting at
length:

The destruction of the Eastern bloc was complete.

It could never again militarily challenge the Western liberal
democratic free marketeers. Now there would be only one
choice for the world and no defection would be possible for
the countries of the world, big or small. With this the
liberal democratic free market capitalists see no more need
to be gentle in spreading their systems or in profiting from
them. No one would be allowed any other political or
economic system except what is prescribed by the sole
dominant bloc. The true ugliness of Western capitalism
revealed itself, backed by the military might of capitalism’s
greatest proponent.

For the small countries the demise of the Eastern

bloc is a major disaster. Now they are exposed to pressures
which they cannot resist.…Soon their political freedom was
also subverted and many had to accept political direction
by the IMF or the loans would not be made available. For
practical purposes there was no independence.…
Chapter I: How Others Are Reacting 15

[T]he principle that prevailed in the third quarter of

th
the 20 Century was that no one should interfere in the
internal affairs of a nation. That in fact was the essence of
independence. As long as the world was divided into
Eastern and Western blocs this principle was respected.

But then a President decided that his country had a

right and a duty to oversee that human rights are not abused
anywhere in the world irrespective of borders and the
independence of nations. No one conferred this right on
this crusading President. But small things like that was
[sic] not going to stop him.

The claimed victory of the West in the Gulf War

was regarded as a moral endorsement of the right of the
powerful to interference in any country’s internal affairs.
…Soon it was not just human rights. Systems of
Government and the administration of justice, of the
financial and commercial systems came under the scrutiny
of the powerful countries. They insist that there must be
only one way of administering a country and that is the
liberal democratic way. They insist that there can be only
one economic system for the whole world and that is the
free market system.

For the poor and the weak, for the aspiring tigers
and dragons of Asia, the 21st Century does not look very
promising. Everything will continue to be cooked in the
West. Just as Communism and Socialism came from the
West, liberal democracy, globalisation, a borderless world,
deregulation, unfettered free flows of capital and their
flights to quality, the disciplining of Governments by the
market and by currency traders and a host of other ideas all
come from the West. And what is from the West is
universal. Other values and cultures are superfluous and
unnecessary. If they remain there will be a clash of
civilisations. To avoid this there should be only one
civilisation in the world. Everything should be
standardised according to Western best practices.37

Mahathir is an extreme case, to be sure, but it is not so certain that

these resentments on his part are an isolated phenomenon or whether he
merely says openly what other Third World leaders, perhaps in a less
16 Uneasy Giant

overwrought form, privately believe. Indeed, there is an echo of

Mahathir’s diatribe against “globalization” in the more polite statement
with which the President of India greeted President Clinton in Delhi last
March. Mr. Clinton got an earful from President Narayanan about how
American dominance in the world required a strengthening of the United
Nations:

[T]he other dominant fact is the emergence of the United

States of America as the major economic, technological
and military factor in the world. The USA holds a
tremendous responsibility for strengthening peace and
stability in the world. For that purpose, the United Nations
organization should be strengthened and made the
centerpiece of the new global architecture.

And about how India was determined to protect its identity and
independence from the “hegemonistic” forces of globalization:

But for us, globalization does not mean the end of history
and geography, and of the lively and exciting diversities of
the world. As an African statesman has observed to us, the
fact that the world is a global village does not mean that it
will have only one village headman.…

Globalization means that global societies should be

sustained by each unit – the nation states, groups, families
and individuals who have their own inextinguishable
identities and unique characteristics.…In such a globalized
world society, there would be no place for hegemonistic
controls or cutthroat competition.38

KEEPING OUR COOL

Much of this reaction is inevitable, given the extraordinary degree
of American preponderance. In some contexts, there is even a healthy
aspect to it.

For our allies, in particular, as suggested, it is an opportunity to

restore some balance to a relationship of dependency. Relationships of
dependency are by their nature corrosive; they breed resentments on both
sides. A U.S. Congress that has been complaining for years about
inequitable “burden-sharing” should be pleased if allies now seek a greater
self-reliance. The issue with the Europeans, then, becomes a narrower
one. The Atlantic Alliance remains important, and valued, on both sides
of the Atlantic. (Even the French avow this.) Therefore, the task of policy
Chapter I: How Others Are Reacting 17

is to develop the European Union’s new defense policy and structure in a

way that complements the Alliance and remains in its broad framework
rather than disrupting Western unity.39 Assuming the anti-American
rhetoric in Europe can be kept under control, the result could be positive –
especially if the Europeans actually develop effective military capabilities
for handling a variety of crises and peacekeeping chores that the
Americans would be glad to pass on to them. With Japan, similarly,
sufficient dangers exist to justify continuation of the security alliance, but
a more equal strategic partnership would be healthy.

As for the general foreign complaint that the world is

“unbalanced,” there is not much the United States can do about this, short
of collapsing or abdicating its international role. The demise of the Soviet
Union did, alas, vindicate market economics and the idea of freedom; if
this is painful for governments that would prefer to govern by contrary
principles, then they have a problem we cannot solve for them. The laws
of economics apply to everyone, and we live in an age when every
authoritarian regime faces a problem of legitimacy. We could not shield
others from these forces even if we wanted to.

Some of the complaints about American imposition have a familiar

ring. It has often been the case that other countries’ leaders found it
convenient to use Uncle Sam as a scapegoat for problems created by their
own failings, or as an excuse for painful (and necessary) decisions. In
fact, being a useful foil in this manner is a service we have provided for
other countries for many decades.40

Yet, all this being said, the United States has a problem too.
Americans need to understand that other countries will not all
automatically and happily fall into line under our tutelage. Europe is the
continent where the balance of power was invented; for most nations the
fact of a single predominant power triggers the reflex to build
counterweights. We shouldn’t take it so personally; it is a survival instinct
of smaller countries throughout history. It is a law of geopolitics –
something that should be a surprise only to those who know not
geopolitics.

The first question we must now turn to is: How serious is this
trend, or aspiration, to build counterweights to American power? Is there
a countercoalition forming, as Russia, China, Europe, and other key
countries find common cause in blocking U.S. predominance? Will this,
in the end, mean a reduction of U.S. dominance and an end to the
“unipolar” world?
 II. THE HISTORICAL TREND

Anyone writing about the durability of America’s preponderance

of power needs, first of all, to try to separate the ephemeral from the
fundamental. Much of America’s seeming invincibility, no doubt, is a
function of its present, brilliantly successful economic performance. If so,
one must ask: How dark a shadow over this picture would be cast by the
next economic downturn, or the next energy or financial crisis? And
wasn’t it Alan Greenspan who warned in 1996 that at least part of the U.S.
economy’s current boom was fueled by “irrational exuberance” in the
stock market?41

On the other hand, it is the same Alan Greenspan who has been
repeatedly affirming his wonderment at the extraordinary phenomenon we
are witnessing in the U.S. economy – several years of accelerating
increases in productivity, the result of a technological revolution
(particularly in information technology) which, he believes, may still be in
its early stages.42 If that is the case, then the economic basis for American
strength would seem to have a robust future, regardless of temporary
fluctuations.

Which is the real Alan Greenspan, and what can one sensibly say
about the basic trend of international power relations – about America’s
absolute, and relative, strength?

THEORIES OF AMERICAN DECLINE

Not long ago, the idea of “American decline” was very much in
fashion. An important influence was Paul Kennedy’s 1987 opus, The Rise
and Fall of the Great Powers,43 which surveyed the past 500 years and the
experience of Habsburg Spain and Austria, the Netherlands, France under
Louis XIV and Napoleon, Britain and Germany, among others. The
lesson Kennedy drew was that “imperial overstretch” doomed all these
powers. Their military overextension eventually sapped the economic
dynamism that had given rise to their imperial drive in the first place:

[W]ealth is usually needed to underpin military power, and

military power is usually needed to acquire and protect
wealth. If, however, too large a proportion of the state’s
resources is diverted from wealth creation and allocated
instead to military purposes, then that is likely to lead to a
20 Uneasy Giant

weakening of national power over the longer term. In the

same way, if a state overextends itself strategically – by,
say, the conquest of extensive territories or the waging of
costly wars – it runs the risk that the potential benefits from
external expansion may be outweighed by the great
expense of it all – a dilemma which becomes acute if the
nation concerned has entered a period of relative economic
decline.44

Kennedy was not shy about applying his analysis to the contemporary
United States. Writing during the heyday of the Reagan military buildup,
when we were spending more than 6 percent of our GDP on defense,
Kennedy was convinced the United States was weakening itself –
especially vis-à-vis other powers (like Japan) whose relative economic
dynamism, he thought, foreshadowed their eventual rise to superpower
status.45

History played a cruel trick on Professor Kennedy. Within a few

short years of his publication came the Soviet collapse and Japan’s
economic crisis. In addition, even as he was writing, the Information
Revolution was transforming the technological base of the global
economy – and the United States was leading it. The good professor
seems to have been guilty of some “intellectual overstretch” of his own.

Walt Rostow wrote a perceptive critique of the Kennedy thesis

very soon after it appeared. First of all, he criticized Kennedy for making
no distinction in his historical survey between powers that had hegemonial
ambitions (like Napoleonic France) and powers that merely pursued a
balance-of-power policy to block other, would-be hegemons (e.g., 19th-
century Britain). Rostow thought the American case was closer to the
British model and that this was a much less exhausting role. Britain’s
imperial decline came from causes other than pursuit of a hegemonic
dream in Europe. The gradual rise of other economic powers – another
key factor that eroded Britain’s preponderance – similarly, in Rostow’s
view, had nothing to do with Britain’s “imperial overstretch.”46

Another important corrective came from Joseph Nye. In his 1990

book, Bound to Lead, Nye demonstrated that America’s post-Cold War
proportion of the world’s gross domestic product – about 22 percent – was
in the same range as in the period between World Wars I and II. In other
words, nothing had really changed in America’s global position over the
course of the 20th century. What some misinterpreted as an American
“decline” was really the world’s rebound from the immediate aftermath of
World War II, when the U.S. share of the world economy had reached an
extraordinary one-third to one-half – due to the exhaustion of Europe and
Chapter II: The Historical Trend 21

Japan. Once they recovered, things went back to where they were
before.47

Nor can it plausibly be argued that the “costs of empire” are

exhausting to the United States. Its defense budget is now only 3 percent
of GDP – the lowest since before Pearl Harbor. (For purposes of
comparison, the figure averaged around 10 percent in the Eisenhower
Administration and around 9 percent in the Kennedy period.)48 The
modest recent increases notwithstanding, the country is still benefiting
from the “peace dividend” provided by the Soviet collapse – a defense
budget 33 percent lower in real terms than the 1985 peak of the Reagan
buildup.49

HOW UNIPOLAR? AND FOR HOW LONG?

There are many who warn the United States against the sin of
hubris, and such warnings should always be taken to heart. Christopher
Layne, for example, has written:

In the real world,…this unilateral dominance – what

political scientists call hegemony – is self-defeating. In the
first place, hegemony cannot be sustained. Secondly,
attempts to do so may ultimately prove more harmful than
beneficial to American interests.
Careful students of world politics know that
hegemony has never proven to be a winning strategy.
When one state becomes too powerful, other states become
fearful and unite to “balance” against it.50

Who are the potential balancers? Who are the potential peer
competitors? Two in particular come to mind – China and the European
Union.

China has achieved an extraordinary explosion of economic

growth since Deng Xiaoping’s reforms began in 1979. China’s GDP
growth has averaged 8 percent a year since then – more than quadrupling
the size of its economy.51 In 1992, the then-chief economist of the World
Bank, Lawrence Summers (now U.S. Treasury Secretary) predicted that
China’s GDP (measured by purchasing power parity) would exceed that of
the United States by 2003.52 By 1996, to be sure, the World Bank was
moderating its projections and deciding that China’s moment of
overtaking the United States was somewhere between 20 and 40 years
off.53 But the sheer size of China – harnessed to its economic dynamism
and nationalistic energy – suggests this is not so fanciful. Not since early
22 Uneasy Giant

in the last century have we Americans even had to conceive of another

country with an economy the same size as ours. China’s vast scale makes
it, too, an 800-pound gorilla in the world trading system; it is also a
transforming factor in the regional order. By that definition, it is an
emerging superpower.54 “The size of China’s displacement of the world
balance,” Lee Kuan Yew observed in 1993, “is such that the world must
find a new balance in 30 to 40 years. It’s not possible to pretend that this
is just another big player. This is the biggest player in the history of
man.”55

Chinese strategists, as it happens, have shown an eager if not

morbid fascination with the subject of American decline, encouraged by
Paul Kennedy’s book. It has become a sub-genre of Chinese strategic
analysis. Writers in Beijing are looking hard for American military
vulnerabilities; they are convinced that America’s relative predominance
is bound to erode as other powers gain in strength; they believe our allies
will gradually distance themselves from us; they see our social ills
mounting at home. “A dying camel always thinks it’s stronger than a
horse,” some Chinese like to crack.56

But even the Chinese do not seriously see U.S. decline as

imminent. Especially in light of our recent economic performance, they
give us a good 50-year run or so, before history catches up with us.57 In
the meantime, they make do with what they can achieve diplomatically to
foster “multipolarity” in the international system.

The European Union is already an $8 trillion economy, on a par

with the United States. The advent of Economic and Monetary Union in
1999 – the new common currency – has further consolidated its unity and
its capability as an economic competitor to the United States. Similarly,
its new aspiration to develop a common foreign and security policy and
the institutions to go with it. Measured by ability to marshal resources,
range of cultural influence, and experience of global policy, in addition to
military and technological sophistication, Europe should probably be
viewed as the candidate with the greatest potential to be a global peer
competitor (China having a more regional impact).58 If the EU had the
political will to establish a more unified decision-making and to develop
its military strength, then it would indeed increase its global influence. It
is very far from this at the moment, however.

The fact is, despite Christopher Layne’s warnings against

American hubris, the trend of the last ten years has been to revise upward,
in the common view, the assessment of the relative American position.
Henry Kissinger, writing in 1993-1994, saw the world in political and
Chapter II: The Historical Trend 23

economic terms as re-acquiring the classical characteristics of a multipolar

system:

The end of the Cold War has created what some observers
have called a “unipolar” or “one-superpower” world. But
the United States is actually in no better position to dictate
the global agenda unilaterally than it was at the beginning
of the Cold War. America is more preponderant than it was
ten years ago, yet, ironically, power has also become more
diffuse. Thus, America’s ability to employ it to shape the
rest of the world has actually decreased. …

America will be the greatest and most powerful

nation, but a nation with peers; the primus inter pares but
nonetheless a nation like others….Americans should not
view this as a humbling of America or as a symptom of
national decline. For most of its history, the United States
was in fact a nation among others, not a preponderate
superpower. The rise of other power centers – in Western
Europe, Japan, and China – should not alarm Americans.
After all, sharing the world’s resources and the
development of other societies and economies has been a
peculiarly American objective ever since the Marshall
Plan.59

As the last decade progressed, however, observers seemed to

change their view of how durable the American ascendancy would be.
Samuel Huntington, in a 1998 lecture, described the emerging world as
neither unipolar nor multipolar but still in some sort of transition from one
to the other – a hybrid which he termed “uni-multipolar”:

A uni-multipolar world…is one in which resolution of key

international issues requires action by the single
superpower plus some combination of other major states,
and in which the single superpower is able to veto action by
a combination of other states.

My central thesis this evening is that global politics

has now moved from a brief unipolar moment at the end of
the cold war into one or perhaps more uni-multipolar
decades on its way toward a multipolar twenty-first
century.60
24 Uneasy Giant

Another distinguished scholar, Coral Bell, writing even more

recently, put even more emphasis on the American ascendancy. Her
recommendations for U.S. policy are similar to Huntington’s and
Kissinger’s – namely, that the United States would be smart not to throw
its weight around and to act in concert with other like-minded big powers
and international institutions – but she has no doubt about calling the
reality “unipolar.”61

Perhaps the definitive word on the question of the durability of

American preeminence, however, comes from William C. Wohlforth, who
analyzes the subject in depth in the journal International Security in the
summer of 1999. Wohlforth surveys the historical and theoretical
literature and finds a widespread scholarly consensus that the present
world is not really and truly unipolar; that a unipolar system is inevitably
unstable if not dangerous, because of the inevitability of challenges to it;
and that it cannot last in any case.62 Wohlforth refutes the consensus on
all these points:

• In a nutshell, he sees the United States as too strong to be

counterbalanced. By a variety of military, economic, and
technological measurements and historical comparisons, he
concludes: “The U.S. combination of quantitative and
qualitative material advantages is unprecedented, and it
translates into a unique geopolitical position.”63

• Second, he argues that a unipolar system, if it is as

unambiguous as the present situation, discourages major-
power challenges and is therefore a stable rather than unstable
arrangement.

• Third, he points out how difficult it actually is to form counter-

coalitions when the unipolar leader is in a position to frustrate
them by its rich repertoire of carrots and sticks.

• In addition, the power of many would-be rivals is more

constrained by their own regional competitors than is the
power of the unipolar leader. These regional balances of
power are likely to kick in, heading off a regional would-be
hegemon, before anyone is in a position to tackle the United
States.

Wohlforth acknowledges that the end of the Cold War has

loosened the U.S. alliance system and thus seemingly attenuated U.S.
influence. But this does not, in his view, change the structural essence of
the matter:
Chapter II: The Historical Trend 25

The fact that some important states have more room to maneuver
now than they did under bipolarity does not mean that unipolarity
is already giving way to some new form of multipolarity. The end
of the bipolar order has decreased the security interdependence of
regions and increased the latitude of some regional powers. But
polarity does not refer to the existence of merely regional powers.
When the world was bipolar, Washington and Moscow had to
think strategically whenever they contemplated taking action
anywhere within the system. Today there is no other power whose
reaction greatly influences U.S. action across multiple theaters.
China’s reaction, for example, may matter in East Asia, but not for
U.S. policy in the Middle East, Africa, or Europe. However, all
major regional powers do share one item on their political agenda:
how to deal with U.S. power. Until these states are capable of
producing a counterpoise to the United States, the system is
unipolar.64

PROBLEMS NONETHELESS
Wohlforth’s is a convincing analysis. Structurally speaking,
America’s position of unipolar preponderance seems impregnable for the
foreseeable future. But that, alas, does not exhaust the problem of
American foreign policy.

It cannot be pleasant or healthy, first of all, to conduct American

foreign policy in an environment in which all other countries are driven by
their resentments into a posture of distancing themselves from us or
actively blocking American initiatives. One does not have to be a
Wilsonian zealot to note that American internationalism since World War
II has been an extraordinary exercise in coalition-building and institution-
building. We have identified our national interest in expansive terms of
global responsibility, and we have not been merely self-serving in doing
so. In the new, post-Cold War environment, when the American people
are less eager than before to “bear every burden,” there is probably an
even greater premium on acting in concert with others if we wish to
promote progress and peace in accordance with our interests.65

Thus, a world in which American leadership is resisted more than

it is followed, while not an immediate threat to America’s global
preponderance, would be a very different world – almost unrecognizable,
in fact – and probably one much more turbulent and disordered than today.
It cannot be welcome. How the United States can conduct itself to head
26 Uneasy Giant

off such an evolution is the large question of strategy to be discussed

below in Chapter IV.

In the meantime, there is yet one more foreign policy problem that
is not allowed for in Wohlforth’s analysis. That is, in a word, the kind of
vulnerability that can come from failed performance.

Policy ineptitude is capable of making American power much less

impressive. Whether our physical preponderance translates into
predominant influence over events depends on a variety of intangibles –
like our political will and staying power; the credibility of our
commitments; our perceived willingness or unwillingness to take risks;
our reputation for reliability and competence. All these depend on our
actual performance over time. They could be badly weakened by a major
policy fiasco (such as a failed military intervention) or by a significant
turning inward (as after Vietnam, or in an economic recession). Our top
position in the GDP rankings would remain unmatched. But in such
circumstances, nevertheless, we might discover that other countries’
impulse to distance themselves from us could graduate from the merely
rhetorical to something of serious practical consequence. Our influence
could erode.

What might be the challenges that could precipitate such a policy

debacle? To that question we now turn.
 III. OUR REAL VULNERABILITIES

Speaking concretely, the vulnerabilities of American power come

in three areas – military, economic, and political. We will take these in
turn.

MILITARY: ASYMMETRIC CHALLENGES

This is not the place for a comprehensive discussion of the flaws in
the U.S. force posture. But there are a few broad categories of
vulnerability that come to mind.

One is the concept that the Pentagon refers to as “asymmetric

strategies” – that is, strategies by which the weaker can aspire to defeat the
stronger. It can attempt this by exploiting its own comparative advantages
while zeroing in on the vulnerabilities of the stronger power. This is a
classic principle of warfare going back to Sun Tzu, not to mention
Achilles and his heel. Having recently commemorated the 25th
anniversary of the fall of Indochina, Americans can recall the frustrations
of attempting to counter a guerrilla insurgency that exploited its
advantages of mobility, dispersal, and ability to blend in among the
population. In the post-Cold War world, the challenge may take the form
of terrorism – even, conceivably, terrorism against the American
homeland and involving chemical or biological weapons of mass
destruction. As one military expert puts it:

In a way, seeking asymmetries is fundamental to all

warfighting. But in the modern context, asymmetrical
warfare emphasizes what are popularly perceived as
unconventional or nontraditional methodologies.

For most potential adversaries, attacking the United States

asymmetrically is the only warfighting strategy they might
reasonably consider for the foreseeable future.66

Unconventional means are not the only possible asymmetrical

means. Given the vital importance of power projection in U.S. strategy,
this too is a vulnerability in a new era when advanced conventional
weapons are also proliferating. Our dominance of the air; our dependence
on the sea lanes and on forward bases; our increasing reliance on space
and cyberspace – all are subject to challenge by adversaries fielding
28 Uneasy Giant

advanced but all-too-widely accessible new technologies. The

independent National Defense Panel in 1997 listed the various kinds of
things a resourceful adversary could attempt to do:

• Employ military tactics that cause high casualties among

U.S. forces and civilians to raise the cost and possibly deter
U.S. involvement;

• Turn to weapons of mass destruction and ballistic and

cruise missiles to neutralize forward ports, bases, and
prepositioned assets and to inflict heavy casualties on us
and our allies;

• Attack our information systems, seeking to debilitate them;

• Counter our control of the sea by seeding key straits and

littorals with large numbers of mines and by subjecting any
forces therein to missile salvos;

• Counter our control of the air with speed-of-light weapons

and extensive anti-aircraft systems;

• Target fixed installations and massed formations within the

range of their weapons and seek greater stand-off ability
with those systems;

• Attack the underlying support structures – both physical

and psychological – that enable our military operations;

• Deny us access to key regions and facilities;

• Use terror as a weapon to attack our will and the will of our
allies, and to cause us to divert assets to protect critical
installations, infrastructures, and populations.67

Chinese strategists, for example, have devoted a considerable

amount of time to analyzing the 1991 Gulf War and looking for the
weaknesses of the U.S. strategy in that conflict. Lt. Gen. Li Jijun, Vice
President of the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences, has pointed out
the following:

U.S. Armed Forces revealed many weak points. For

example, the combat consumption was too great, and it
could not last long. There was great reliance on the allied
Chapter III: Our Real Vulnerabilities 29

countries. The high-tech equipment was intensive and its

key links rather weak; once they were damaged, combat
effectiveness was greatly reduced. Also, if the adversary of
the United States was not Iraq, if the battle was not fought
on the flat desert, if the Iraq armed forces struck first during
the phase when U.S. Armed Forces were still assembling,
or if Iraq armed forces withdrew suddenly before the U.S.
Armed Forces struck, then the outcome of the war might
have been quite different.68

The Chinese are also looking for the Achilles heel in the American
reliance on advanced computer and telecommunications technology –
what the Pentagon calls the “Revolution in Military Affairs.” The Chinese
know they are generations behind the United States in this technology, and
therefore cannot match us in any foreseeable period. But they can look for
vulnerabilities – ways to cripple an opponent’s information systems
through viruses, jamming, and electromagnetic pulses; weapons to attack
satellite communications systems; radar techniques that might detect
stealth, etc. The Chinese have research and development programs in all
these areas.69

It is also likely, as a general rule, that many potential challengers

are looking at nuclear, chemical, and/or biological weapons as a great
“equalizer.” Even a rudimentary arsenal of such weapons could have – for
Iraq, or North Korea, or Iran – a powerful benefit. As was the case in the
classical era of nuclear deterrence, a challenger’s mere possession of such
a capability could make the world safe for conventional aggression.
Should a local crisis arise, the United States would be deterred from
intervening, or might well be. This is clearly Saddam Hussein’s
calculation as he goes all-out to build chemical or biological weapons and
the means to deliver them, shielding his plans from the prying eyes of
international inspectors.

There is no doubt that the Chinese too have this in mind as they
seek, by both nuclear and conventional means, to raise the potential costs
to the United States of intervening in a future Taiwan crisis. Being able to
blow the U.S. Seventh Fleet out of the Pacific is not the standard that the
Chinese must meet. Already, with their new acquisition of advanced
Russian anti-ship missiles and torpedoes, they are in a position to increase
the risk of American casualties and thereby to increase the inhibitions of
an American President who contemplates such an intervention. This is a
significant shift in the regional balance.
30 Uneasy Giant

The United States is attempting in various ways to prepare itself

for asymmetrical challenges. Independent experts are placing new
importance on protecting the American homeland against new-era
unconventional threats like terrorism, possibly including weapons of mass
destruction.70 The U.S. Secretary of Defense is calling for redoubled
efforts to build a versatile “full spectrum” force that can counter
asymmetrical military threats.71

The problem of asymmetrical challenges, however, is not solely a

matter of military structure. It is also built into the structure of
international politics. Given American preponderance, almost every
challenge will be by definition asymmetric. And given the scope of
American interests and commitments abroad, these challenges are likely to
be many in number.

Nor should anyone doubt how serious such a challenge could be,
or how precarious our ability to defeat it. Part of the problem is
psychological. In most of these potential crises – say, Iraq, North Korea,
Taiwan – the local challenger is counting on the fact that the issue in
dispute is of much more intense interest to him than to the United States,
for whom all these issues are part of a generic responsibility for
international security. If the threat of weapons of mass destruction can be
brought to bear against us (even a rudimentary capability), as already
noted, a potential crisis could be a doozy. It will not suffice for us to wave
a copy of International Security in Saddam’s face and insist that the world
is still unipolar.

It boils down to intangibles of political will. Will we have it in

sufficient degree? Deterrence depends on a reputation for being
formidable. And that depends on credibility. In practice, no matter how
secure our Number-One ranking in the GDP tables, our influence in a
given case will depend on whether our challengers believe our warnings
and whether our allies believe our assurances. A Western unwillingness to
risk casualties is thought by Edward Luttwak to be a distinguishing feature
of a new era of conflict, given social, demographic, and cultural changes.72
And the American unwillingness to risk casualties – as allegedly
demonstrated by the outcomes in both Indochina (1975) and Lebanon
(1984) – was precisely what Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi leaders
constantly invoked before the Gulf War as reasons not to believe
American warnings.73 Credibility, once lost, had to be re-earned the hard
way – by going to war again, and winning.

In recent years, both Iraq and North Korea have outmaneuvered us

– Iraq by shutting down the effective and vitally important UN inspection
system, and North Korea by blackmailing us into an agreement that gives
Chapter III: Our Real Vulnerabilities 31

us no direct restraint on its clandestine nuclear weapons program (or its

missile program). These are bad omens. A new military fiasco of some
kind could have a serious, perhaps disproportionate, political impact. It
could accelerate whatever trend there might be among other countries to
distance themselves from us or attempt to organize against us. All
challengers would be emboldened. All our military problems could
become simultaneously more complicated and more acute, and our ability
to remedy them by new technology and new doctrine could take years.
Powerful as we are, it is not clear how much margin for error we really
have.

ECONOMIC: SYSTEMIC WEAKNESSES

Other factors that could deflate the current euphoria are economic.
Again, the long-term, underlying forces of U.S. technological innovation
and growth seem strong. Yet, a brief economic downturn could bring
Americans down to earth as well as generate a number of foreign policy
problems for the United States.

Alan Greenspan’s caution about the “irrational exuberance” of the

stock market has been noted at the beginning of Chapter II. Yet, many
economic experts have commented on how the “wealth effect” of these
stock market gains is playing an unusually large role in sustaining
consumer and investor confidence in present circumstances. Robert J.
Samuelson has pointed out how many of the features of today’s “New
Economy” are unprecedented and poorly understood – the new importance
of the stock market in economic growth; the durability of technological
advance and productivity gains; the relation between growth,
unemployment, and inflation; globalization and the impact of foreign
economic developments on the U.S. economy. The economic experts
“(and we) don’t know whether, in the long run, these forces make the
economy more or less stable. But not one admits this,” Samuelson says.74

For our purposes here, the implications are manifold. The

extraordinary performance of the U.S. economy over the last 18 years –
not only its growth but its technological innovativeness – underlies much
of this country’s present formidableness as the sole superpower; a
recession, even if short-lived, could dampen some of the euphoria. The
recent spike in energy prices may be the omen of a new long-term trend as
global demand builds. The Asian financial crisis revealed the
interconnectedness of the new global economy and the ease with which
financial crises can spread; though the United States escaped the contagion
the last time, the international system is not so well understood that we can
be sure of such good fortune the next time around. Thus, the vulnerability
32 Uneasy Giant

of the American economy only compounds, and is compounded by, the

vulnerability of the international economic system.

A recession could reduce Americans’ willingness to carry

international burdens. It would dampen Congressional enthusiasm for
much-needed increases in the defense budget. It would strengthen
protectionist forces in domestic battles over trade policy (e.g., "fast-track"
legislation) that are remarkably bitter even in these good times. A
recession here that spreads abroad (as it inevitably would) would
demoralize allies, destabilize a number of weaker economies, and add
generally to international turbulence and tensions.

The breakup of last November’s Seattle meeting of the World

Trade Organization (WTO) pointed to serious divisions among the world’s
economic powers. Developing nations, led by India and China, resisted
what they saw as dictation by the advanced industrial countries. They
particularly objected to the American attempt to link further trade
liberalization to improvements in labor and environmental standards in the
Third World, viewing this as a protectionist ploy. The WTO meeting was
also a forum for developing countries to display continuing resistance to
what they see as Western imposition of market-oriented reforms in the
name of globalization (as we saw in Chapter I). There were also the usual
trade policy divisions between the United States and the European Union,
especially over agriculture. Thus the Seattle meeting was a missed
opportunity to organize the world community around a positive agenda of
trade liberalization and reform. And that was the fiasco occurring inside
the hall.

Outside the hall, the radical demonstrations in Seattle (and later at

the April World Bank/IMF meeting in Washington) were a symptom of a
deeper political malaise beneath the surface of the current prosperity. On
one level, it is a rebellion of classical protectionist forces against anything
that smacks of trade liberalization. But there is also, inchoate, an
ideological challenge reemerging – against capitalism, against
multinational corporations, against international financial institutions, and
against everything that is known as globalization, for their alleged
indifference to the fate of poorer countries and the environment.75

The intellectual incoherence of this neo-Leftism is no barrier to its

spread. Protectionism is extremely regressive in its effects. Economic
growth in the Third World is a precondition for environmental
improvement there. The World Bank and IMF have been promoting (not
always effectively, to be sure) the structural reforms without which
developing countries have no hope of progress at all. The street
demonstrations were a mixture of frivolousness and nihilism. All this may
Chapter III: Our Real Vulnerabilities 33

be true – yet the psychological rebellion against economic change is real.

Globalization, even as it makes possible unprecedented prosperity,
inevitably produces economic and social dislocations; it also produces a
profound political unease given that national governments – which are
politically accountable – have less and less control over these forces that
affect their peoples’ well-being so powerfully.76 Since much of the
innovation originates in the United States, much of the resentment is
directed at the United States. All this will take even more virulent form if
a global economic downturn should occur.

Reforming and ensuring the stability of the international economic

system in the new era of globalization is an urgent task for the industrial
democracies, and an opportunity for a creative American contribution.

POLITICAL: CENTRIFUGAL FORCES

Even more than the economic trends, the political vulnerabilities
that are relevant to this discussion are not so much vulnerabilities of the
United States as vulnerabilities of the international system. It is a simple
fact that the end of the Cold War has resulted in a number of structural
changes in international politics. To the extent that the United States and
Soviet Union imposed a sort of discipline over their clients in the Third
World, for example, and that the dangers of that competition also imposed
a certain cohesion in the Western alliance system, that discipline and
cohesion have eroded. Friendly countries, friendly as they may continue
to be, now have more “space” to themselves, safe from any overriding
danger and usually eager to reclaim some freedom of action.

One of the most important phenomena of the current period is the

precariousness of relations among the world’s major powers. We have
come a long way from 1990-1991, when the Gulf crisis saw an
extraordinary harmony in the UN Security Council – a Russia (still then
Soviet Union) that endorsed a U.S.-led coalition; a China quiescent in its
post-Tiananmen funk. It was that remarkable great-power harmony that
inspired hopes of a benign and lasting “new world order.” Today, that
harmony is badly frayed. We saw this in Chapter I. The point to make
here, though, is not the counterbalancing against the United States but the
weakening of the international structure.

A dramatic case is the European Union. It was the Maastricht

Treaty that launched the EU on the course of a stronger Economic and
Monetary Union as well as in the direction of a common foreign and
security policy. That Maastricht was signed in 1992 was not a
coincidence. We saw in Chapter I that much of its motivation was to
34 Uneasy Giant

make Europe more of a counterweight to the United States in the post-

Cold War world and to carve out more autonomy from the United States.
The 1999 war in Kosovo only accelerated this; while this war was a
common enterprise, the Europeans chafed at the scale and extent of
America’s military/technological superiority and at the degree of
dependence it implied.77

The North Atlantic Alliance had sought in 1996 to create a

structure for the European members of the Alliance to take military action
autonomously, in the NATO framework. But by 1998 and 1999, the
Europeans had decided to pursue this instead in the EU framework. In a
historic reversal of British policy, which had hitherto stressed the primacy
of NATO in the security sphere, Prime Minister Tony Blair took the
initiative in late 1998 to promote the idea of an EU defense organization.
If the EU aegis inspires the Europeans to do more on defense, all to the
good. Both the Clinton Administration and the Republican Congress have
expressed a general support for this EU enterprise, coupled, however, with
a concern that it not be pursued in a way that complicates NATO
cohesion.78

There are those in the United States who are less concerned that
this EU project will disrupt NATO, mainly on the grounds that the
Europeans, in the end, are unlikely to spend the money or the effort to give
themselves a truly modern military capability. But the danger is that we
could end up with the worst of both worlds – an independent EU defense
organization that provides no effective new capabilities but that disrupts
NATO decisionmaking and the unity of the West.

The centrifugal forces at work in the world are hardly limited to

Atlantic relations. U.S. relations with Russia and China have also
deteriorated over the past decade.

Russia’s post-Communist transition has been a painful one. Its

evolution toward a modern market economy and normal democratic
politics has been far less smooth than those in Central Europe. This is a
reflection of Russia’s different historical circumstances and its erratic
leadership. But, whatever the uncertain course of Russia’s internal
evolution, the direction of its foreign policy seems already clear: It is a
classical Russian nationalism, stressing a recovery of Russian
preeminence in its immediate sphere and (as we saw in Chapter I) a
“multipolar” international environment that reduces American dominance.
This is how Russia now defines its national interest.

Vladimir Putin promises a more vigorous and tenacious version of

this policy. It is not necessarily hostile to the United States, especially
Chapter III: Our Real Vulnerabilities 35

given Russia’s present weakness. But neither is there the emotional

affinity for the United States that seemed evident in the first few years of
the Yeltsin era. In a multitude of areas – selling arms to China and Iran;
cultivating former clients in Iraq; attempting to constrain U.S. missile
defenses; objecting to NATO’s enlargement and to NATO policies in the
Balkans – Russia perceives its national interest in terms that conflict, often
sharply, with U.S policies.

Relations with China have deteriorated most of all over the past
decade. While there have been policy blunders on both sides, the
underlying problem is, as usual, structural. The Soviet menace that
propelled China and the United States together three decades ago is no
more. Indeed, China and Russia have enjoyed a significant
rapprochement, dating back to Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit to Beijing in
1989. The Tiananmen crackdown in 1989 dealt a blow to U.S.-China
relations from which they have not yet recovered. Taiwan’s
democratization has enormously strengthened American public and
Congressional support for Taiwan, even while the population on Taiwan
gives voice to a diminishing interest in reunification with the mainland –
all of which exacerbates the relationship across the Taiwan Strait as well
as the U.S.-China relationship. Finally, China’s emergence as a potential
superpower in its own right puts it on somewhat of a collision course with
a United States that remains committed to the protection of millions of
people around China’s periphery who are increasingly worried about
Chinese regional dominance.

These U.S.-China tensions are manageable, by a combination of

deterrence and engagement. The relationship remains precarious,
however, and highly vulnerable to crisis.

Amid these centrifugal forces among the major powers, there has
been an international effort in the past decade to build a consensus on
norms of behavior. This is reflected in the increasing activism of the
United Nations and a new effort to develop the corpus of international
law. Remarkably, nearly 40 percent of all the UN Security Council
resolutions since 1945 have occurred in the Clinton Administration.79 The
cause of human rights has led to a new conviction – at least in the West –
that national sovereignty can no longer provide a protective shield over
gross violations of human rights.

The road to this new international order has proved a rocky one,
however. The attempt to construct a new international criminal law, for
example, has run up against a number of obstacles, in particular from the
American perspective. A new International Criminal Court, as negotiated
36 Uneasy Giant

by an international conference in Rome in 1998, went beyond what even

the Clinton Administration could tolerate. The Court’s sweeping assertion
of “universal jurisdiction” even over countries not parties to the treaty
would overturn hundreds of years of treaty law; its prosecutor would have
broad discretion to indict without the restraint of Security Council
authorization. The Administration was legitimately concerned that U.S.
military personnel – already covered by the U.S. Uniform Code of
Military Justice – could be subjected to politically motivated prosecution.

Similarly, the fiasco of the indictment and attempted extradition of

Augusto Pinochet illustrated the need for political accountability; initiated
by an individual Spanish judge, the process in the UK threatened to
undermine Chile’s fragile democratic consensus and to complicate
relations among a number of countries involved. The cause of
international criminal law did itself yet another disservice when the chief
UN war crimes prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, let it be known she was
reviewing NATO’s 1999 air campaign against Serbia for possible war
crimes charges;80 the uproar was immediate.

One of the most important themes of this new order is the need to
elevate the UN Security Council to the role of principal arbiter of
international peace and security as envisioned by the framers of the
Charter. The Russians and Chinese have made this a central theme of
their common policy. On Boris Yeltsin’s last summit trip to Beijing last
December, in the aftermath of NATO’s Kosovo war, the Russian-Chinese
joint communiqué stressed:

that one diplomatic priority for both China and Russia is

safeguarding the authoritative role of the United Nations
(UN) in international affairs….Also, the two sides believe
that the UN Security Council takes prime responsibility for
safeguarding international peace and security, so that its
status and function should not be doubted or lessened under
any circumstance.81

But it is not only Russia and China that were upset at NATO’s
bypassing of the UN Security Council in the Kosovo conflict. For our
European allies, too, this was a source of much anguish and guilt, even as
they went along with an “emergency exception” because of the enormity
of Serbian violations of human rights. The Social Democratic/Green
coalition that governs Germany found it particularly troublesome. Foreign
Minister Joschka Fischer told the UN General Assembly:

A practice of “humanitarian interventions” could evolve outside

the UN system. This would be a very problematic development.
Chapter III: Our Real Vulnerabilities 37

The intervention in Kosovo, which took place in a situation where

the Security Council had tied its own hands after all efforts to find
a peaceful solution had failed, was intended to provide emergency
assistance and, ultimately, to protect the displaced Kosovo
Albanians. The unity of the European states and the Western
Alliance, as well as various Security Council resolutions, were of
crucial significance here. However, this step, only justified in this
special situation, must not set a precedent for weakening the UN
Security Council’s monopoly on authorizing the use of legal
international force. Nor must it become a license to use external
force under the pretext of humanitarian assistance. This would
open the door to the arbitrary use of power and anarchy, and throw
the world back to the 19th century.82

The unease about bypassing the Security Council is not due only to
an abstract devotion to international order. In the post-Cold War
environment, it is almost certainly a response to the American
predominance. In a passage quoted in Chapter I, the President of India
told President Clinton openly last March that it was the preeminent power
of the United States that required the strengthening of the United Nations.
Because we were so strong, he said, we had a “tremendous responsibility”
– which we could best fulfill by making the UN “the centerpiece of the
new global architecture.”83

If, for most of the world, the most important way to bring order to
a disordered planet is to rein in the United States, then we (by “we” I don’t
mean only the United States) have a major problem. This brings us back
to where this essay began. The world’s concept of the requirements of
international order may not coincide with Americans’. An America that
wishes to remain an international leader – and to have followers – will
have to cut through these contradictions. Centrifugal forces among the
major powers are a source of danger for the international system. Yet
America’s ability to lead others is turning out to be more complicated than
one would have expected in the “unipolar” era.

In the next chapter, we will come to some conclusions about

American strategy.
 IV. STRATEGY FOR A SUPERPOWER

The problem for American foreign policy can be summarized as

follows: Our political strength is unequaled, and will be for some time, but
its exercise seems also a source of increasing resentment. In the absence
of an overriding threat, the protective umbrella we have provided is no
longer sufficient incentive to allies and friends to accept American
leadership as (relatively) unquestioningly as they once did. On the
contrary, they see a long-awaited opportunity to assert their independence.
The international system, rather than being totally dominated by a pax
Americana, is being pulled apart by centrifugal political forces even as its
economic foundations are also increasingly vulnerable. Adversaries we
still have, who are probing for our weaknesses even in the military
dimension in which our superiority is most assumed.

Meanwhile, the American public seems not all that interested in

exercising the hegemonic domination of which their country is accused.
The result is an American policy that is erratic, capable of unilateral action
(because others cannot stop it), but less effective at leadership – leadership
being something quite different from possessing overwhelming power.
The American ability to shape an international consensus or lead
coalitions seems in question. (Kosovo may look like a successful U.S.-led
coalition, except that the allied reaction has the air of “never again.”)

The appropriate American response to this is, in part, a question of

style. Someone once defined “style” in this context as the deference that
confidence pays to uncertainty, or the capacity to speak with conviction
while listening sincerely to the views of others.84 A little subtlety
wouldn’t hurt us – a little less official crowing about being the
“indispensable nation” or our ability to “stand taller and see farther” than
others.85

This is not a new idea. Theodore Roosevelt, after all, suggested

that we “speak softly” while wielding our power. Shakespeare advised us:

O, it is excellent
To have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.86

Arrogance does not suit the kind of leadership that we Americans have
always thought of ourselves as providing. And it is avoidable.
40 Uneasy Giant

But a big part of the problem is not avoidable; it is the natural

reaction of others to our disproportionate strength. Nor can we defer to
others on every issue of importance. This problem requires of us not just
more politesse but a more systematic approach to sustaining our central
position. There is a way, as we shall see, for a power in our situation to
head off mischievous organizing against us and otherwise to deflect (if not
defuse) resentments.

As we consider an appropriate American response, we start with an

observation about the home front. The domestic debate in this country has
taken an interesting turn.

NATIONAL INTEREST MAKES A COMEBACK

The Clinton Administration has embodied a version of Wilsonian
liberal internationalism, aspiring to base world affairs on moral principles
rather than geopolitics, and with a heavy emphasis on what Walter
McDougall calls “global meliorism” – that is, an agenda for political,
economic, social, and cultural improvement.87 Promotion of democracy,
economic development, human rights, and other American values in the
world is an important part of the Clinton Administration’s ideological
makeup. “Enlargement of the democratic world” was a major theme of its
early public statements,88 and its activism expressed itself in a long series
of humanitarian interventions from Somalia and Haiti to Bosnia and
Kosovo to East Timor. Functional issues – support for international
institutions and international law; the environment; multilateral arms
control – have also been high on its agenda.89 This is classic
Wilsonianism.

The Administration’s performance has been weaker, however, on

classical hard-ball geopolitical challenges like those from Iraq and North
Korea, and in the handling of big-power relations with Russia and China.
The President was reported by Jim Hoagland to dismiss narrow emphasis
on geopolitics and strategic interests as “Old Think.”90

The moral component of this enthusiasm is ironically shared with

the neoconservatives on the other side of the political spectrum. The
neoconservatives represent, in fact, a Reaganite variant of Wilsonianism.
They share the liberals’ ideological enthusiasm for the promotion of
democracy and human rights and for humanitarian interventions led by the
United States. On the other hand, they combine this ideological outlook
with a more muscular strategic view – wanting a powerful military, for
example, and being more comfortable about using it – and with an
unapologetic advocacy of a benign American hegemony.91 The liberals
feel guilty about American power; the neocons are enthusiastic about it.
Chapter IV: Strategy for a Superpower 41

For better or worse, however, neither Congress nor the country

exhibits a great eagerness right now for indiscriminate humanitarianism.
This is an important feature of the current American mood. The
Administration’s early stumbling in Somalia, Bosnia, and Haiti in 1993
forfeited credibility, and it has been on the defensive on these issues of
intervention ever since. The more expansive definition of America’s
moral mission in the world has not taken root. The Clinton interventions
have led Americans to ask: What is our national interest in this? Sam
Donaldson of ABC News, whom I take as vox populi on these issues,
insisted: “That’s the main [argument] – self-interest,” during a 1995
discussion of the arguments for and against U.S. intervention in Bosnia.92
And during the 1999 Kosovo crisis, Donaldson said:

The United States national interest ought to be involved.

The President has asserted this by talking about a wider war
and the need to contain it. But he should make that the
number-one reason for being there. Otherwise, why
weren’t we in Rwanda? Why weren’t we in all the other
places?…. So if our idea is that we will go and stop killing
where we find it, I’m for that, but at what price? And
where’s the national interest?93

In none of these Clinton-era humanitarian interventions – Somalia,

Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor – was the military action backed by a
Congressional resolution of support. Congress did not thwart them, but
did not endorse them (or purport to “authorize” them under the terms of
the 1973 War Powers Resolution) as it had done for the 1991 Gulf War.
This is an important measure of the thinness of the domestic support for
these kinds of intervention. In the conflict over Kosovo in 1999,
moreover, President Clinton’s fear of permitting even one American
casualty was the clearest possible indicator of how thin even he judged the
public support to be.

Whether the American people will tolerate the risk of casualties in

a conflict is impossible to answer in the abstract. It is worth recalling,
however, that before the Gulf War there was an exaggerated expectation
of how costly that war would be, and yet the public was clearly persuaded
that the stakes were high enough for the United States to warrant the risk.
One ingredient missing in the later cases, it would seem, was a persuasive
showing of the American national interest.

Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, in an important national

security speech in January, outlined an internationalist position on a
42 Uneasy Giant

variety of issues, including free trade, maintaining U.S. military and

intelligence capabilities, and combating terrorism and drugs. But the use
of U.S. military power, he stressed, needed to be guided by the standard of
the national interest:

When we, as Republicans, ask the President to explain to us

why intervention is in our national interest – why such
intervention is necessary to protect our freedom and our
way of life – those are not the questions of isolationists.
Rather they are the voices of commonsense Americans. It
is a legitimate question that is fully consistent with
traditional American thinking.94

More recently, a bipartisan commission established by Congress to

examine American long-term strategy declared the following:

Strategy and policy must be grounded in the national

interest. The national interest has many strands – political,
economic, security, and humanitarian. National interests
are nevertheless the most durable basis for assuring policy
consistency. Gaining and sustaining public support for
U.S. policy is best achieved, too, when American principles
are coupled with clearly visible national interests.95

The commission was chaired by former Senators Gary Hart and Warren
Rudman and included such diverse figures as Newt Gingrich, Lee
Hamilton, James Schlesinger, Leslie Gelb, and Andrew Young.

Additional evidence of the new mood can be found in the

Congress’s treatment of foreign aid. In the 1970s, during the anguish over
Vietnam, a liberal Congress began insisting that U.S. economic and
especially military assistance be given only to countries with a good
record in human rights, and humanitarian purposes were preferred over
geopolitical ones.∗ Today, the priorities are reversed. U.S. foreign
assistance has been sharply reduced, but Congress clearly prefers to give it
to countries in which we have a more concrete stake – Israel, Egypt,
Jordan, Ukraine, Colombia, Peru, and the like.

∗
That is when the annual State Department reports on human rights
began: They began as report cards on the moral worthiness of recipients of U.S.
aid. This had a certain tendentious impact – our ally South Korea was lambasted
without any reference to North Korea – so this was later “cured” by including
everyone else.
Chapter IV: Strategy for a Superpower 43

Realism, in other words, is making a comeback. There is some

irony here. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger attempted to educate the
country in a more classical and less moralistic approach to international
affairs; in a period buffeted by Vietnam and Watergate passions, this
attempt failed (indeed spawning the resurgence of Wilsonianism that was
reflected, in different ways, in both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan).
But now Bill Clinton’s misadventures have triggered a reaction to
Wilsonianism. The pendulum is swinging back.

For our purposes here, the point is not to dwell on the historical
irony but to note one of the possible implications of the renewed emphasis
on national interest. The idea of the national interest may, in the common
perception, have a connotation of national egoism and strategic self-
aggrandizement. But in this context, and properly conceived, it is
paradoxically a principle of restraint. Wilsonianism is an ideology, a set
of moral principles assumed to be universal, whose application is thought
to be universal and therefore constitutes the agenda for a global American
mission. Like any ideology, it makes absolute claims; in theory, at least, it
recognizes no limits. In practice, of course, we have ended up making
distinctions between the Kosovos and the Rwandas and the Chechnyas,
but only inviting accusations of hypocrisy and “double standard” in the
process. The result is an exuberant unpredictability.

A policy grounded in a sense of the national interest, properly

understood, deals in finite criteria and thereby allows for
acknowledgement of the national interests of others. A little more honesty
is possible about distinctions that have to be made. Business can be
conducted among states if no one is making absolute claims.
Compromises become more possible if less weighed down by imputations
of moral betrayal. Steadiness and reliability are enhanced. This principle
of classical diplomacy was stated by Hans Morgenthau:

For minds not beclouded by the crusading zeal of a political

religion and capable of viewing the national interests of
both sides with objectivity, the delimitation of these vital
interests should not prove too difficult….A nation can only
take a rational view of its national interests after it has
parted company with the crusading spirit of a political
creed. A nation is able to consider the national interests of
the other side with objectivity only after it has become
secure in what it considers its own national interests.96

This may be part of the answer to the paradox mentioned in the

Introduction to this essay: that other countries’ resentment of American
44 Uneasy Giant

power is so high during an Administration that desperately insists on its

virtuous intentions, even to the point of apologizing for much of postwar
U.S. foreign policy. Its Wilsonian idealism not only leaves it naked to
charges of hypocrisy on the margin; its motivation comes across as self-
righteousness rather than humility, as an assertion of an unlimited mandate
for forcing global improvement. Given the fact of America’s
overwhelming power, the reaction of others to this assertiveness is bound
to include an element of trepidation, at the very least, whatever the
purported selflessness of the American motivation.

A more strategic-minded approach, which unapologetically

defined U.S. geopolitical interests, would inevitably embrace such
principles as the need to maintain alliances and to manage, vigilantly but
coolly, relations with potential rivals. And the need to lead. But
paradoxically such an approach would imply more modest American
claims, even if it also included a more muscular and unrepentant defense
of them. Other nations, themselves schooled in the classical tradition of
international politics, would understand better what they were dealing
with. Wilsonian Presidents drive them crazy – and have done ever since
Woodrow Wilson.

A GRAND STRATEGY

When absolutely forced by events, Americans have not done badly

at grand strategy, as when we adopted “containment” as a strategy for
waging the Cold War. Today, however, there is no similarly obvious and
compelling circumstance, and this seeming ultra-permissiveness of the
international environment is one of the factors that conspire, in Josef
Joffe’s view, to discourage systematic strategic thinking in the United
States.97 Nevertheless, as we saw in Chapter III, we are hardly free of
dangers. Policy disasters could render American power much less
formidable and produce, rather quickly, a deterioration in American global
influence and in the health of the international environment more
generally.

A more positive way of saying this is that the United States has a
vital interest in the health of the international system, and in those aspects
of it that underlie both global well-being and our own.98 Systematic
thinking about all this is certainly called for.

History offers two models for an American grand strategy, Joffe

suggests. One is the model of 18th_ and 19th_century Britain, which played
a “balancing” role in Europe. Britain could stay aloof from European
alignments for much of the time, but intervened to redress the balance of
Chapter IV: Strategy for a Superpower 45

power on the Continent whenever some would-be hegemonial power

threatened to upset it. Whether against Philip II of Spain, or Louis XIV of
France, or Napoleon, or Kaiser Wilhelm, or Hitler, Britain’s tradition was
to join in a coalition with the weaker powers to defeat the stronger. Over
the centuries, the adversaries would change; Britain’s definition of its
strategic interest would not.99

This is often cited as the model for the United States. In World
Wars I and II, and in the Cold War, it is a good explanation of what we, in
fact, did. And perhaps it is an apt model to follow today in the particular
matter of military intervention. Given the unadventurous public mood,
and the reasonable desire not to exhaust ourselves by indiscriminate
humanitarian interventions, some principle of selectivity is essential.
What the British example provides is a criterion of fundamental strategic
interest, a principle that U.S. intervention is truly called for when the basic
condition of the international structure is at issue, such as if a hegemonic
threat should arise in some vital region (Europe, East Asia, the Gulf).
Other interventions are electives; these are the compulsories.

Joffe argues, however, that there is a more relevant model for

American policy overall, namely Bismarck’s Germany. Because of
Germany’s vulnerable central location in Europe, it did not have the
option, as Britain had, of only intermittent engagement in the European
balance of power. Bismarck’s response was to engage all the other
powers in a complex network of political-military alliances – often
mutually contradictory, but serving the purpose of keeping European
alignments continuously confused and avoiding what he called the
“nightmare of coalitions.” The United States, says Joffe, is more like
Germany than like Britain – doomed to permanent engagement with all
the other powers and therefore obliged to have a strategy for managing
those relations:

Briefly, the key issue for the United States is not balancing
against rivals real or latent but bandwagoning with them in
favor of the status quo. There is no clear and present
danger; there are only ambiguous and potential challenges
to America’s exalted position. And these are best tackled
by forestalling them now, rather than combating them later,
by undercutting ex ante both the motives and opportunities
for confrontation. The point is insurance rather than
intrusion.100
46 Uneasy Giant

Joffe’s metaphor for such an international structure is the hub of a wheel

and the spokes: The United States is in the central position; the spokes are
its links with the other powers.

Obviously there are historical differences between Bismarck’s

Germany and the present-day United States, especially the degree to
which Bismarck’s unification of Germany unbalanced Europe and created
the problem that Bismarck was struggling to solve. But the analogy with
Bismarck’s diplomacy is instructive. Operationally, it means that the
United States enjoys (or is in a position to achieve) better relations with all
the other powers than they have with each other. Each of them needs us
for something (protection; economic ties), or is afraid of us, or is afraid of
leaving us in bed with one of the other powers that it fears as an
immediate rival. (Recall William Wohlforth’s point in Chapter II that
before any new potential hegemon achieved a position from which it could
threaten us, a regional balance of power would kick in in the form of its
regional rivals organizing to stop it.)

In Asia, China and Japan fear each other. Each one looks to us for
some reassurance that the other will not threaten it. Similarly, to some
degree, China and India. Russia and China currently flaunt their
alignment against us, but many Russians worry about China’s growing
power and don’t want to lose their Western option. The Russians are also
dependent on Western economic aid, and China, while nominally
Communist, is much more dependent on its integration into the global
economy (and on the U.S. market) than the Soviet Union ever was.

In Europe, for all Europe’s vaunted new independence, the U.S.

military presence provides a necessary hedge against the possible
resurgence of a Russia that still disposes of over 20,000 nuclear weapons.
The U.S. presence continues to provide a certain reassurance within
Western Europe as well, as a disproportionately strong Germany begins to
assert its own national interest more forcefully. (European integration is
one part of the solution to the German problem, but the peace of mind
provided by the U.S. security presence has always been another.) Nor is
Europe yet able by itself to handle serious military conflicts in turbulent
regions of the Continent like the Balkans.

In other pivotal regions (the Gulf; Northeast Asia) where other

major powers have a major stake and where conflict could easily break
out, the only country in a position to assure stability or organize a response
to crisis is the United States. To use the current jargon of international
relations theory, our maintenance of the balance in these places is one of
the “public goods” we provide, on which the international system depends.
Chapter IV: Strategy for a Superpower 47

This central position we occupy in the international system of

security and prosperity, moreover, embodies our extraordinary political
leverage over all the other major powers. It is an important reason why
the persistent efforts of others to build counterweights to U.S.
predominance (which we saw in Chapter I) have not made much headway.
“[T]he game does not work,” Joffe concludes.101 As Anwar Sadat said,
America holds most of the cards.

To take another example: A few years ago, there was talk of

Russia’s organizing a bloc with China and India as another counterweight
to the United States. It never amounted to anything, in large part because
of depth of the Sino-Indian rivalry.102 But the Indians were also reluctant
to lose their links to the United States. The Hindu newspaper had
explained the Indian perspective:

The quest for a “multipolar world” has a great appeal in

India. But the particular consequences of a deepening
alliance between China and Russia may not turn out in its
favor….India, Russia and China are…all looking for
greater freedom of action in dealing with the sole
superpower, the U.S. …. Even as India deepens its political
engagement with Russia and China, [however,] it must
recognize the importance of a continuous strategic dialogue
with the U.S. and Japan on the Asian strategic scenario.103

Bismarck’s entangling alignments are the order of the day. And we are
the pivot of most of them.

This is a brilliant position to be in. But its benefits don’t come

automatically. On the contrary, it imposes certain requirements. It is, first
of all, a classical “realist” kind of strategy: It aims at maintaining a certain
geopolitical balance, not at ideological uniformity or moral improvement.
It also means that the United States needs to maintain its political,
economic, and other links with the other powers so that they have
something to lose. Pure deterrence of hegemonial ambition is necessary
but not sufficient under this strategy; it is a more subtle mix of deterrence
with maintenance of positive links as well. In other words, it will work
better as a conscious strategy than if left to the reactive improvisation that
usually characterizes American policy.

The hard case at the moment is China, which some Americans see
as a looming danger. But the premise of the strategy is that China’s
foreign policy is no longer that of a revolutionary state driven by ideology
to overthrow the existing order, but of a classical new power emerging on
48 Uneasy Giant

the global stage driven by old-fashioned nationalism. In this light, it is a

manageable problem. This is an accurate description of the case. If there
is ideology in the present U.S.-China rivalry, it comes from an American
discomfort at sharing the planet with the last great Communist autocracy.

In any case, the “hub-and-spokes” strategy is a rationale for

maintaining normal U.S. diplomatic and economic relations with China,
such as granting it WTO membership and Permanent Normal Trade
Relations status in the United States. In a major crisis precipitated by
China, of course, all bets would be off. But, short of that, our real (and
growing) security concerns can be dealt with by classical means – by
maintaining our own military primacy in the Western Pacific, the vigor of
our alliances, and the credibility of our commitments in the region; we can
present China with both incentives for a constructive evolution and
disincentives for attempting to upset the regional status quo by force
(including in Taiwan). Whatever its ambitions, it is China that already
confronts a number of counterweights to its power in the region – Japan,
India, Russia, an expanding ASEAN, as well as the U.S. presence. The
United States and its Asia/Pacific friends and allies are in an advantageous
position to shape the regional environment into which China is emerging
and to which it will have to adapt.104

A similar analysis is offered by the Australian scholar Coral Bell.

She sees the world as essentially unipolar, but she takes note of the
persistent efforts of other powers to resist U.S. dominance. In her view,
the smart American response is to preserve and strengthen our existing
alliances with Europe and Japan, to seek to draw Russia into the Western
community, and to manage the China problem in the classical manner
roughly as I have suggested. In other words, her recommendation for U.S.
strategy is that “the unipolar world should be run as if it were a concert of
powers.”105 We should do what we can to preserve valuable institutions
of Western solidarity like the North Atlantic Alliance and the G-7; she
sees merit also in multilateral institutions like the United Nations, the
WTO, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
These mechanisms, in new conditions, suit our purposes in networks that
link others to us and help defuse opposition to U.S. leadership.

This is, Bell concludes, the formula for extending the present
unipolarity for many, many decades into the future.

THE PROBLEM OF AMERICAN UNILATERALISM

Such a strategy, as noted earlier, implies American restraint,
discipline, and subtlety; it eschews hectoring or ideological crusading. It
assumes a degree of American acceptance of the fact that other powers
Chapter IV: Strategy for a Superpower 49

will not follow American dictation – the Europeans and Japanese aspiring
to more autonomy, Russia and China in a more nationalistic phase as they
go through their difficult transitions. While we will seek to preserve our
alliances, they are bound to be a little looser. The United States is to
preserve its position less by imposing its will and more by managing a
concert of nations.

These are all virtuous principles, which I endorse. There is one

particular problem, however, that will not so easily be wished away – the
problem of American unilateralism. For many in the world these days,
including our allies, this is one of America’s principal sins. Karsten Voigt
describes it as follows:

Primarily the USA itself is to decide when, with what

means and with the help of which institutions it will further
the global breakthrough of its self-defined values and
interests of universal application.…[T]here has been
growing acceptance for the idea that America can also
legitimately use its power without the support of its
partners or even without their agreement, should national
interests require it. The awareness of unique moral and
military superiority reinforces this reflex.106

Sometimes the complaint is about Executive Branch action:

Europeans remember the Carter Administration’s boycott of the Moscow
Olympics or the Reagan Administration’s attempt to block a Soviet gas
pipeline to Europe. More often recently, the complaint is about U.S.
policies imposed by Congress, like the 1996 attempts to impose sanctions
on European companies for doing business with Iran, Libya, or Cuba; or
the refusal to pay arrearages in dues owed to the United Nations. The
Senate’s rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and the U.S.
refusal to join the International Criminal Court or the convention banning
anti-personnel land mines, are other examples cited of the United States
being out of step with the world. The prospect of U.S. deployment of
defenses against ballistic missiles and possible withdrawal from the ABM
Treaty is seen by some as a case of American high-handedness in ignoring
the concerns of others. To prove that it is capable of being a true partner,
says Hubert Védrine, the United States will have to “give up unilateralism
for multilateralism.”107

The danger for the United States, some say, is the risk of isolation.
As the United States heads toward deployment of ballistic missile
defenses, a recent UN conference supposedly devoted to reviewing the
status of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty turned into a forum
50 Uneasy Giant

for mass denunciations of the United States.108 William Hartung of the

liberal World Policy Institute declared: “I have never seen a moment
where the U.S. seemed so isolated from the mainstream of international
opinion on the nuclear weapons issue.”109

There is, alas, a major dilemma here for the United States, and if I
had to guess I would say that this problem will get worse.

For one thing, a more precise vocabulary is called for. It is not so

easy to “isolate” the United States; that may not be the most accurate
word. If we are the 800-pound gorilla, as everyone says, we can perhaps
be outvoted in some forums, widely criticized, diplomatically lonely, etc.,
but we cannot be deprived of our freedom of action. Our leadership role
may pay some price, as has been suggested. But the United States remains
essentially free to decide whether and when it is worth the price.

And – especially on security issues – the purported preferences of

the world community are not always intellectually compelling. The most
egregious recent example was the international convention banning anti-
personnel land mines. The United States still relies on land mines as a
means of defense in certain circumstances, especially along the deadly
Korean DMZ. During the negotiation the United States therefore asked
for certain exemptions, or for a seven-year delay before the ban went into
effect. These requests were simply dismissed out of hand.

It happens that the United States uses only land mines that self-
destruct after a limited period; it scrupulously follows the rules of war that
require mapping of mine fields so they can be cleared after a conflict is
over. The United States is in the forefront of developing better technology
for mine-detection and mine-clearing. (We even cleared the mines we laid
in North Vietnam, as part of the 1973 Paris Agreement.) The land mines
ripping the limbs off the world’s children are therefore not American
mines. At the same time, it is our country’s armed forces to which
everyone turns, and on which everyone relies, when there is serious
trouble. Whenever a major threat or emergency arises, we are asked to do
the heavy military lifting. And yet our judgment of what we needed to
fulfill these responsibilities was given short shrift in an international forum
driven by unaccountable advocacy groups and celebrities like the Princess
of Wales. This cannot be taken seriously.

More recently, as noted earlier, a UN conference devoted to

reviewing the status of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty turned into a
forum for denouncing the United States – for its failure (along with
Russia) to disarm itself and for its plans to deploy missile defenses. “Have
the nuclear-weapons States party to the Treaty indeed fulfilled their
Chapter IV: Strategy for a Superpower 51

commitments to eliminate nuclear weapons, prevented their proliferation

or helped non-nuclear States harness nuclear power to peaceful purposes?”
asked the Syrian delegate in a complaining tone.110

These arguments, too, must be taken with a grain of salt. It cannot

be seriously believed that India, Pakistan, Israel, Iraq, North Korea, Iran,
and any other new seekers after nuclear weapons are affected one iota by
the state of U.S.-Russian strategic arms control. India’s nuclear program
is driven by fear of China, Pakistan’s by fear of India, Israel’s by the
existential threats it still faces in its region, Iran’s and Iraq’s by fear of
each other and aspirations for regional dominance, and North Korea’s by
paranoia about regime survival. The last decade in U.S.-Russian relations
has seen the most drastic reductions in central strategic arsenals in all of
human history. Yet the same period saw the India-Pakistan nuclear blasts
and the serious weakening of restraints on the rogue states mentioned.
The argument that an inadequate big-power commitment to arms control is
a cause of or justification for Third World proliferation is specious, and
always was. It is trotted out in international forums (like the NPT Review
Conference) to play on the guilt of gullible Westerners, particularly
Americans.

Lately, as noted, the fashionable villain is U.S. missile defense.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan charged that this “is jeopardizing the
ABM Treaty – which has been called the ‘cornerstone of strategic
stability’ – and could well lead to a new arms race, setbacks for nuclear
disarmament and non-proliferation, and create new incentives for missile
proliferation.”111 While there are legitimate questions that arise for
strategic relations, especially among the major powers, the relevance of
this to the Non-Proliferation Treaty review is remote – except to the extent
that proliferating ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction in the
hands of Third World states are the main reason we need missile defense!

Iraq is another example: The United States is said to be

increasingly isolated with respect to the policy of containing Iraq or
seeking to change its regime. The British have been with us in various air
strikes that attempted to salvage the UN inspection system or otherwise
prevent Iraq from breaking out of its post-Gulf War constraints. But
others (including allies) are critical of this U.S. policy and unwilling to go
along with it. Some of them point out, with some justice, that the Clinton
Administration’s military actions have not been of the kind that promises
any decisive impact. On the other hand (and there is a long history of this
going back to the problem of Libyan terrorism), the allies more often
make this argument as an excuse for blocking action than as a proposal for
something more decisive.
52 Uneasy Giant

The point here is that the pressures on the United States to abandon
its “unilateralism” over Iraq are, in effect, pressures on us to relax
pressures on Saddam. How this will make the Middle East more secure is
not obvious. In fact, these pressures on us flow from weariness rather than
strategic analysis. Domestic politics in the Arab world are also a factor.
For us to yield to these importunings would be irresponsibility of the
highest order.

Furthermore, while we are speaking of Iraq, it is worth recalling

that in 1990-1991, the evident American readiness to proceed unilaterally
had a galvanizing effect on the international consensus. It gave courage to
waverers and led some doubters to join us if only to be in a position to
influence us. The search for consensus should not be allowed to become a
substitute for action or an excuse for paralysis.112

In the last chapter, we saw how vulnerable the international system

is to deadly new security threats – how precarious is the margin of safety
that we all take for granted. In this environment, if the pleas for American
“multilateralism” are simply a cover for strategic escapism (as in Iraq), or
if life-and-death issues of U.S. national security policy are being dictated
by the likes of the Princess of Wales, then it should not be surprising if
serious Americans say no.
 CONCLUSION: A NEW GRAND BARGAIN?

These are the contradictory desiderata of American policy. The

world is reacting badly to American predominance, but we are still asked
to provide a benevolent internationalist leadership. The United States is
advised to show more restraint and to work in concert with others, yet
unilateralism cannot be excluded. It is urged to pay more attention to
nurturing the international system, yet it faces many hard-ball dangers that
the international system cannot effectively avert. How do we sort this
out?

These contradictions and dilemmas of American policy are

inherent. Any plausible blueprint for long-term policy, therefore, won’t be
neat, and it probably will not satisfy either our complaining allies or our
exuberant Wilsonians at home. But it is possible to sketch out the
principles of a strategy that offers our allies and friends some considerable
reassurance of an internationalist American leadership, one that they
should find largely compatible with their own interests and well-being. At
the same time, the strategy will include some basic principles (particularly
on security) that the United States would be well advised not to
compromise.

The first point – prediction as much as prescription – is that the

United States is fully prepared to remain permanently engaged in key
regions such as Europe, Asia, and the Middle East to bolster
international security. Despite the surface resentments, this fundamental
strategic assurance is still desired by other friendly countries, and the
American people show every sign of accepting the responsibility. The
overwhelming Senate vote in 1998 on NATO enlargement (80-19) was not
the expression of an isolationist Congress, and it was accompanied by a
ringing endorsement of the U.S. commitment to Europe.113 A similar
bipartisan consensus underpins the commitment to allies and friends in the
East Asia/Pacific region and in the Middle East.

This contribution to global stability is one of the “public goods”

we provide. It is in our own geopolitical interest, not simply a favor we do
for others. Thus we must continue to provide it, even if we find some of
its other beneficiaries ungrateful or even annoying.

A second principle, we have seen, is that a policy grounded in the

American national interest would reduce some of this country’s
exposure to resentment and resistance on the part of others. This may
54 Uneasy Giant

be where the country is heading. Paradoxical as it may seem to us, our

Wilsonian enthusiasm and passion to improve the world sometimes come
across as overbearing. Our values do have universal meaning, but in the
real world they will be better advanced by an evolving international
consensus than by a perceived American imposition. Some American
restraint in future humanitarian interventions would be relevant here. Last
year’s intervention in East Timor was not diplomatically contentious, for a
number of reasons, including China’s interest in a stable Indonesia and the
consensus on a Security Council mandate. But another reason, I suspect,
was that the United States took a background role.

Third, the United States has a crucial responsibility – and a

powerful self-interest – in ensuring the health of the international
economic system. The United States must continue to be internationalist
on trade, for example. And indeed it has been. The much-maligned
Republican Congress has just come through again on two trade issues –
trade preferences for Africa and the Caribbean, as well as Permanent
Normal Trade Relations for China – bailing out an Administration unable
to deliver many members of its own party in thrall to the reactionary Left.
As on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the
original World Trade Organization (WTO) treaty, the Congress has shown
its enduring commitment to trade liberalization. This improves the
prospects down the road for “fast-track” legislation that will make future
negotiations on trade liberalization possible, with the rest of the Western
Hemisphere and with the European Union and Japan.

The Administration deserves credit for its leadership in the Asian

financial crisis. At the same time, the United States has a stake in key
institutions of cooperation with the other leading economic powers – most
importantly the G-7, which was created, indeed, as a kind of political and
economic directorate of the industrial democracies.114

This brings us to the next point – the value of working in concert

with others. In the economic realm, we have partners whose economic
clout is as great as ours, and the formula for managing the international
economic system is collaboration with them. This has been a bipartisan
policy and it, too, will undoubtedly continue. Concretely, doing it right
probably means refraining from actions like punitive economic sanctions
directed extraterritorially at third countries (especially our allies) even if
we feel strongly on the merits. In my view, the policy of maintaining
pressures on Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Libya, etc., is the right one; the Europeans
are wrong. Yet, we pay a big price for attempting to bully them, and, alas,
experience shows it is not sustainable.
Conclusion: A New Grand Bargain? 55

Another dimension of this principle is to be more willing to share

responsibility for economic leadership. Early in the Asian financial crisis,
Japan offered an initiative for multilateral assistance to Southeast Asia –
the so-called Miyazawa Plan, the brainchild of one of Japan’s most
respected leaders, including a promise of $30 billion in aid. The Clinton
Administration dismissed it abruptly, which seems a political blunder
whatever the technical details.

In the security dimension, as well, it makes sense for the United

States to cut its allies some slack and encourage them to take on greater,
even if more autonomous, responsibility. The EU’s new experiment in
defense policy could enable Europe to deal with a greater range of
problems (like Balkan problems) on its own – provided it spends the
money on building real military capabilities. The United States should
encourage it – provided it remains closely linked to NATO.

A corollary is that, when our allies do take on a difficult

assignment, we refrain from publicly sniping at them from afar. In Bosnia
in 1993-1994, our European allies were taking casualties on the ground,
and the United States, with none of its people at risk, was taking potshots
at the alleged moral inadequacy of the European efforts at diplomacy. The
Europeans’ military and diplomatic efforts at that time won no particular
prizes for genius, but the American sniping provoked a bitterness in
Europe that had not been seen in decades. They had a point.

The need for consultation with allies deserves a plug here. It

should be real two-way consultation in advance, not just an ex post facto
request for ratification of an American decision. In 1998, for example, the
United States negotiated with North Korea after North Korea’s firing of a
medium-range missile over Japan; Washington then declared itself
satisfied and decided that funding for North Korea’s civilian nuclear
reactors should resume. The Japanese were not included in the
negotiations, despite their obvious security stake and the fact that more
than 80 percent of the funding for the reactors came from them. “They
were absolutely furious,” recounted scholar Michael Green.115

Many U.S. administrations have been guilty of violating this

principle. (Remember the “Nixon shocks.”) Sometimes, diplomatic
sensitivity leads us to hold a matter close to our chest. Other times, our
own bureaucratic and Congressional processes are so cumbersome,
painful, and exhausting that, once they yield a result, the natural
psychological impulse here is to yearn for an end to the matter. But if we
truly want other capable and like-minded countries to share
56 Uneasy Giant

responsibilities in a new era, we need to take this principle seriously. The

issue of missile defense would be a good candidate.

More broadly, in a variety of areas, including humanitarian

interventions, if the United States is not willing to bear every burden,
then it has a responsibility to help build and support international
systems to handle the problems.116 It would be in the American interest,
for example, to establish better procedures to facilitate the UN’s ability to
organize peacekeeping operations, or its capacity to exercise
“conservatorships” over failed states.117 Americans also have a growing
stake in international cooperation in public health, law enforcement
(especially against drug trafficking and corruption), and environmental
protection. International law has been an American cause for a century,
and, within proper limits discussed in Chapter III, it can continue to serve
common purposes that serve American interests. Also in the security field
– constraining arms proliferation, protecting freedom of the seas – there
are realistic and useful multilateral measures that command U.S. support.

It is also time to put the UN dues controversy behind us. Congress

has written a check for $926 million, payable on the implementation of
previously agreed reforms including a fairer calculation of the U.S.
share.118 The political stalemate on this in Washington is close to being
broken.∗ In any event, the strategy of withholding dues as leverage for
reform was succumbing to diminishing returns. The United States, in any
administration, will want the UN to be more effective than it is, and will
want to have influence in its forums; at this point, non-payment has
become more an obstacle than a help to those objectives.

All the foregoing are prescriptions for American good behavior, as

it is defined by many who now criticize American “hegemonism” and
“unilateralism.” They are prescriptions I endorse. At the same time, we
are left with a series of security matters on which it would be a grave
mistake for the United States to relinquish its freedom of action.
Whether we will be indulged on this score by our allies, in exchange for
our more dutiful internationalism on the other issues – as part of a new
“grand bargain” – remains to be seen.

∗
It is not generally realized, but for the last two years the Congressional
leadership was ready to compromise on the abortion issue with which the UN
dues payment was entangled; it offered waiver provisions and diluted the
language. The President’s priorities were elsewhere, however. Probably due to
the Lewinsky scandal, he refused any compromise on the abortion language until
early this year.
Conclusion: A New Grand Bargain? 57

If others are conscious of our immense power, we are obliged to be

conscious of our vulnerabilities. In an era of asymmetric security
challenges, as we saw in Chapter III, American military dominance is not
as invincible as many imagine. (In fact, some who complain loudest of
our “hegemonism” are looking the most eagerly for our vulnerabilities.)
Our allies and friends, especially, have a stake in this. Contrary to the
experience of the land mines convention or the International Criminal
Court, it would behoove countries that still rely on U.S. military strength
as the mainstay of international security to give occasional consideration
to American concerns. And the standard of seriousness about various
regional dangers – from Iraq and North Korea, for example – needs to be
higher in international discussions. If not, then the future will see a lot
more American unilateralism.

This is not the place for a complete discussion of the debate over
U.S. missile defenses. There are legitimate concerns on both sides of the
Atlantic, and in Russia. But the emotionalism of the current debate is
uncalled-for, and the self-serving quality of many of the criticisms
(including from China, which is expanding its ballistic-missile arsenal at a
rapid rate)119 deserves more notice. Similar hysteria greeted U.S. missile-
defense programs initiated by both President Nixon and President Reagan,
and both Presidents managed to translate these programs into useful
bargaining leverage. World War III did not result, and the risks are even
smaller now.

Meanwhile, the dangers of the global proliferation of ballistic

missiles are clear and present, as documented definitively by the bipartisan
Rumsfeld Commission.120 Our allies and friends in the Asia/Pacific
region, feeling directly threatened, have been conspicuously absent from
the chorus of critics. To say that someone is “wedded to Cold War
thinking” is one of the fashionable put-downs in intellectual circles these
days; yet nothing is more anachronistic than to cling to strategic models of
mutual vulnerability left over from the era of bipolarity (like the 1972
ABM Treaty). Missile defense is another area in which strategic escapism
among the critics will not be persuasive to serious Americans.

In sum, there are no easy formulas for a superpower that yearns to

be loved as well as respected. Henry Kissinger has written that the test of
history will be whether the United States can turn its predominant power
into international consensus and its own principles into widely accepted
norms. This was the greatness achieved by the Roman and British
empires in their time.121 But the spread of our moral and political values
cannot be by fiat, nor can it achieve instant results. To an extraordinary
degree it is already happening. The idea of freedom has more power today
58 Uneasy Giant

than ever before, as it sweeps through the extraordinary global

marketplace of ideas now opened up by mass media and the Internet.
There are no barriers of authoritarianism that the Information Age will
leave intact. If mass culture and the idea of liberty have the universal
appeal that we assume (and some fear), then we know the outcome.
Americans should have more confidence in this process, as well as greater
sensitivity to the historical and cultural circumstances of some societies
that will not evolve overnight simply because we insist.

Meanwhile, there is an immediate agenda of safeguarding security

and prosperity that the world faces, and on which American leadership is
still genuinely valued. Organizing international consensus and sometimes
new institutions is a skill of which we have shown great mastery since the
1940s; it was never a matter of imposition. That is our opportunity now.

Others’ resentment can partly be cured by a less domineering style.

But much of it comes with the territory. That, too, will require a certain
self-confidence on our part: There will be times we feel compelled to buck
the international consensus. If we know what we are doing, and know
how to accomplish our objective, then we will find vindication in the
outcome. That, too, is our opportunity.

Being the sole superpower is not a job for the timid.

NOTES

INTRODUCTION
1
Karsten D. Voigt, “The Discussion of a European Security and Defense
Policy: Labor Pains of a New Atlanticism,” speech at a seminar of the
Washington Office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, March 8, 2000, p.1.
2
Ibid.
3
Arnold Toynbee quoted in Walter A. McDougall, Promised Land,
Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776 (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1997), p. 6.
4
This is the thesis of Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great
Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York:
Random House, 1987). But see the critique of Kennedy’s historical analysis in
W.W. Rostow, “Beware of Historians Bearing False Analogies,” Foreign Affairs,
Spring 1988, and the discussion in Chapter II below.
5
Secretary of State Warren Christopher, response to a question at the
Secretary’s Open Forum, Department of State, reported in Center for Security
Policy, Decision Brief No. 94-D27, March 11, 1994, p. 4.
6
Samuel R. Berger quoted in R. W. Apple. Jr., “A Domestic Sort with
Global Worries,” New York Times, August 25, 1999.
7
Charles Krauthammer, “The Unipolar Moment,” Foreign Affairs, Vol.
70, No. 1 (America and the World 1990/91), p. 23-33. See, more recently,
Charles Krauthammer, "A Second American Century?" TIME, December 27,
1999, p.186.

CHAPTER I: HOW OTHERS ARE REACTING

8
James Walsh et al., “America the Brazen,” TIME (Atlantic ed.), August
4, 1997, p. 22.
9
Ibid.
10
Der Spiegel quoted in William Drozdiak, “Even Allies Resent U.S.
Dominance; America Accused of Bullying World,” Washington Post, November
4, 1997, p. A1.
60 Uneasy Giant

11
E.g., President Bill Clinton, “Strategic Alliance with Russian Reform,”
address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Annapolis, MD, April 1,
1993.
12
E.g., President Bill Clinton, A National Security Strategy for a New
Century (Washington: The White House, October 1998), p. 43.
13
Yevgenii Primakov, statement to the 51st Session of the United Nations
General Assembly, September 24, 1996, Embassy of the Russian Federation
Press Release #27 (September 25, 1996), p. 4.
14
Boris Yeltsin, address to the collegium of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, Moscow, May 12, 1998, reported by ITAR-TASS and Interfax, in FBIS-
SOV-98-132, 12 May 1998.
15
Remarks by new Acting President Vladimir Putin to an extended session
of the Russian Security Council, December 31, 1999, as reported by Interfax, in
FBIS-SOV-1999-1231, 31 December 1999.
16
Liu Huaqiu, “China Will Always Pursue a Peaceful Foreign Policy of
Independence and Self-Determination,” Qiushi (Beijing), No. 23, 1 December
1997, in FBIS-CHI-98-078, 19 March 1998.
17
Joint Russian-Chinese communiqué, Beijing, April 25, 1996, in FBIS-
CHI-96-081, 25 April 1996, p. 15.
18
Yeltsin quoted by M. Dmitriyev, “China’s ‘Western Impromptu’?”
Zavtra, May 1996, in FBIS-SOV-96-125-S, 27 June 1996, p. 5.
19
Joint Russian-Chinese communiqué, Moscow, December 28, 1996, in
FBIS-SOV-96-251, 28 December 1996.
20
Joint Russian-Chinese communiqué, Beijing, December 10, 1999, in
FBIS-CHI-1999-1210.
21
Primakov quoted by Xinhua, November 18, 1996, in FBIS-CHI-96-224,
18 November 1996.
22
Hubert Védrine, remarks to a conference of French Ambassadors, Paris,
August 28, 1997.
23
Jacques Amalric and Pierre Haski, “Védrine: ‘The Era of Symbolism is
Over,’” interview in Liberation, November 24, 1998, pp. 8-9, in FBIS-WEU-98-
328, 24 November 1998.
24
Joint Sino-French Declaration, Beijing, May 16, 1997, in FBIS-CHI-97-
095, 16 May 1997.
Notes 61

25
Helmut Kohl, address at Catholic University, Louvain, Belgium,
February 2, 1996, excerpted in Internationale Politik, vol. 51, no. 8 (August
1996), p. 82.
26
Joschka Fischer, speech in the European Parliament, Strasbourg, January
12, 1999.
27
Wim Kok, “Euro is Crowning Glory of Long Process,” lecture at
University of Leiden, March 9, 1998, excerpted in NRC Handelsblad
(Rotterdam), March 9, 1998, in FBIS-WEU-98-070, 11 March 1998.
28
Wim Kok quoted in Der Standard (Vienna), October 27, 1998, p.2.
29
Tony Blair, address to the North Atlantic Assembly, Edinburgh,
November 13, 1998.
30
Fischer and Scharping quoted at the Bremen meeting of the WEU, May
10, 1999, cited in Bundespresseamt bulletin, May 11, 1999.
31
Heinrich Boell Foundation, “A New Foreign and Security Policy for
Europe?” conference brochure, 1-2 December 1999, Berlin. I am grateful to
Jeffrey Gedmin for calling this to my attention.
32
Masaharu Honda, “Japan’s Autonomy Questioned on the 40th
Anniversary of the U.S.-Japan Alliance,” Asahi Shimbun, January 19, 2000. For
this and other source material on Japan, I am indebted to Michael J. Green and
the manuscript of his forthcoming book on Japan’s search for strategy and
identity.
33
Kyofuku Fukushima, Corporate Governance: An Aspect of Asia’s
Currency Crisis and Its Implications, Nomura Research Institute, June 1999, p.
11, also cited by Green.
34
Asahi quoted in Hong Kong AFP dispatch, December 5, 1999, in FBIS-
EAS-1999-1205, 5 December 1999.
35
Amre Moussa, “A Nationalist Vision for Egypt,” interview in Middle
East Quarterly, September 1996, p. 62.
36
Ocho Columnas, April 14, 1997, quoted in U.S. Department of State,
Bureau of Intelligence and Research, “U.S. Image in a ‘Unipolar’ World: Foreign
Media Perspectives,” Issue Focus, May 1, 1997, p. 13.
37
Dato’ Seri Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad, address to the 54th session of the
UN General Assembly, September 29, 1999.
62 Uneasy Giant

38
Remarks by President Clinton and President Narayanan of India in an
Exchange of Toasts, Rashtrapati Bhavan, Delhi, India, March 21, 2000 (White
House Press Release).
39
For a fuller discussion, see Peter W. Rodman, Drifting Apart: Trends in
U.S.-European Relations (Washington: The Nixon Center, June 1999).
40
This point is well made by Victoria Nuland in a recent paper, “Fear and
Loathing in the Unipolar World,” written for the Council on Foreign Relations,
draft of February 18, 2000, p. 9.

CHAPTER II: THE HISTORICAL TREND

41
Remarks by Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan at the
annual dinner and Francis Boyer Lecture of The American Enterprise Institute,
Washington, December 5, 1996.
42
Chairman Alan Greenspan, testimony on the Federal Reserve’s
semiannual report on the economy and monetary policy, before the Committee
on Banking and Financial Services, U.S. House of Representatives, February 17,
2000.
43
Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic
Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House,
1987).
44
Ibid., p.xvi.
45
Ibid., esp. pp.532-533.
46
W.W. Rostow, “Beware of Historians Bearing False Analogies,” Foreign
Affairs, Spring 1988, pp. 863-868.
47
Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American
Power (New York: Basic Books, 1990). See also Henry R. Nau, The Myth of
America’s Decline: Leading the World Economy into the 1990s (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1990)
48
See Budget of the United States Government: Fiscal Year 2001,
Historical Tables, Table 3.1 – Outlays by Superfunction and Function: 1940-
2005, pp. 42-49.
49
Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, Annual Report to the President
and the Congress: 2000 (Washington: Department of Defense, 2000), Appendix
B, Budget Table B-1 (comparing FY2001 with FY1985).
50
Christopher Layne, “What’s Built Up Must Come Down,” Washington
Post, November 14, 1999, p.31.
Notes 63

51
“Survey of China,” The Economist, April 8, 2000, p. 14.
52
Summers quoted in “How poor is China?” The Economist, October 12,
1996, p. 35.
53
Ibid., pp. 35-36.
54
Paul Bracken, “Will China Be Number 1?” TIME, May 22, 2000, pp.
104-105.
55
Lee Kuan Yew, remarks at a news conference in Beijing, May 18, 1993,
quoted in Han Fook Kwang, “SM calls for a new security arrangement,” The
Straits Times (Singapore), May 19, 1993, p. 1.
56
This proverb was quoted to me with a smile by a Chinese strategist at a
Beijing think-tank associated with the defense establishment, on a visit of mine
to Beijing in August 1997.
57
See Michael Pillsbury, China Debates the Future Security Environment
(Washington: National Defense University Press, 2000), Chapter 2.
58
Coral Bell, “American Ascendancy and the Pretense of Concert,” The
National Interest, Fall 1999, pp. 58-59.
59
Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), pp.
809-810.
60
Samuel P. Huntington, Bradley Lecture, American Enterprise Institute,
May 11, 1998, excerpted in AEI Newsletter, July 1998 (emphasis in original).
See also Samuel P. Huntington, “The Lonely Superpower,” Foreign Affairs,
March/April 1999, pp. 35-36.
61
Bell, loc. cit., pp. 55-63.
62
William C. Wohlforth, “The Stability of a Unipolar World,”
International Security, Summer 1999, pp. 5-41.
63
Ibid., p.17.
64
Ibid., p.36.
65
U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, Seeking a National
Strategy: A Concert for Preserving Security and Promoting Freedom
(Washington: U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, April 15,
2000), pp. 6, 10-13.
64 Uneasy Giant

CHAPTER III: OUR REAL VULNERABILITIES

66
Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., “Preliminary Observations: Asymmetrical
Warfare and the Western Mindset,” in Lloyd J. Matthews, ed., Challenging the
United States Symmetrically and Asymmetrically: Can America Be Defeated?
(Carlisle Barracks, PA: U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, July
1998), p. 1.
67
National Defense Panel, Transforming Defense: National Security in the
21st Century (Arlington, VA: National Defense Panel, December 1997), pp. 11-
12.
68
Lt. Gen. Li Jijun, “Notes on Military Theory and Military Strategy,”
excerpted from his book Military Theory and Conflict (Beijing: Academy of
Military Science Press, 1994), translated in Michael Pillsbury, ed., Chinese Views
of Future Warfare (Washington: National Defense University Press, 1997), p.
227. See additional sources collected in Michael Pillsbury, China Debates the
Future Security Environment (Washington: National Defense University Press,
2000), pp. 76-83.
69
Pillsbury, Chinese Views of Future Warfare, Part Four; Maj. Mark A.
Stokes, “China’s Military Modernization: Implications for U.S. National
Security,” paper for the Project for the New American Century (Washington:
Project for the New American Century, n.d. [1999]).
70
U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, Seeking a National
Security Strategy: A Concert for Preserving Security and Promoting Freedom
(Washington: U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, April 15,
2000), pp. 8-9, 14-15.
71
Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, Annual Report to the President
and the Congress: 2000 (Washington: Department of Defense, 2000), pp. 19-21.
72
Edward N. Luttwak, “Where Are the Great Powers?” Foreign Affairs,
July/August 1994, pp. 23-28.
73
See Saddam’s conversation with American Ambassador April Glaspie,
July 25, 1990, as printed in the New York Times, September 23, 1990, p. 10;
Saddam’s speech to the Arab Cooperation Council summit, Amman, February
24, 1990, in FBIS-NES-90-039, 27 February 1990, p.5; Lawrence Freedman and
Efraim Karsh, The Gulf Conflict 1990-1991: Diplomacy and War in the New
World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 276-285; Barry
Rubin, “The United States and Iraq: From Appeasement to War,” in Amatzia
Baram and Barry Rubin, eds., Iraq’s Road to War (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1993), p. 264; H.D. S. Greenway, “How the War Was Won, Mostly,” New York
Times Book Review, January 24, 1993, p. 2.
Notes 65

74
Robert J. Samuelson, “What Greenspan Doesn’t Know…” Newsweek,
May 1, 2000, p. 78.
75
Francis Fukuyama, “Will Socialism Make a Comeback?” TIME, May 22,
2000, pp. 110-112.
76
Henry A. Kissinger, “Making a Go of Globalization,” Washington Post,
December 20, 1999.
77
For an elaboration of this analysis, see Peter W. Rodman, Drifting
Apart? Trends in U.S.-European Relations (Washington: The Nixon Center, June
1999).
78
Ibid., pp. 35-36. For the Congressional reaction, see H. Res. 59 (by
Reps. Bereuter, Bliley, Boehlert, and Lantos), passed by 278-133 on November
2, 1999, and S. Res. 208 (by Senators Roth, Lugar, Biden, Kyl, Hagel, Smith,
Lieberman, and Helms), passed by unanimous consent on November 8, 1999.
79
When the Clinton Administration took office in January 1993, the
number of UN Security Council resolutions stood at 801. At this writing, the
number is up to 1301.
80
Associated Press dispatch, “U.N. Tribunal Investigating NATO’s War In
Yugoslavia,” New York Times, December 29, 1999. See also the report of Del
Ponte’s retreat, in Barbara Crossette, “U.N. War Crimes Prosecutor Declines to
Investigate NATO,” New York Times, June 3, 2000, p. A4.
81
Joint Russian-Chinese communiqué, Beijing, December 10, 1999, in
FBIS-CHI-1999-210, 10 December 1999.
82
Minister of Foreign Affairs Joschka Fischer, address to the 54th session
of the United Nations General Assembly, New York, September 22, 1999.
83
Remarks by President Clinton and President Narayanan of India in an
Exchange of Toasts, Rashtrapati Bhavan, Delhi, India, March 21, 2000 (White
House Press Release).

CHAPTER IV – STRATEGY FOR A SUPERPOWER

84
Fritz Ermarth brought these observations to my attention.
85
E.g., comments by Secretary of State Madeline Albright on ABC News,
“Nightline,” from Columbus, Ohio, February 18, 1998 (State Department Press
Release).
66 Uneasy Giant

86
Measure for Measure, Act II, Scene 2. For this reference, I am grateful
to the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, Seeking a National
Strategy: A Concert for Preserving Security and Promoting Freedom
(Washington: U.S. Commission on National Security/ 21st Century, April 15,
2000), p. 15.
87
Walter A. McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State: The American
Encounter with the World Since 1776 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997),
Chapters Six, Eight.
88
E.g., President Bill Clinton, A National Security Strategy of Engagement
and Enlargement (Washington: The White House, July 1994), pp. 1, 18-20.
89
This stress on “New Age” functional issues is evident, for example, in
President Clinton’s remarks at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy’s 119th
commencement, New London, CT, May 17, 2000.
90
Jim Hoagland, “Russia Into the Vacuum,” Washington Post, November
21, 1997, p. A27.
91
E.g., Robert Kagan, “The Benevolent Empire,” Foreign Policy, Summer
1998.
92
ABC News, “This Week,” November 5, 1995, Federal News Service
transcript, p. 18.
93
ABC News, "This Week,” March 28, 1999, ABC News transcript #909,
pp. 10, 12.
94
Speaker Dennis J. Hastert, “Securing America’s Future,” address before
the Mid-America Committee, Chicago, January 10, 2000, p. 2.
95
U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, op. cit., p. 6.
96
Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power
and Peace, 3d ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), pp. 563-564.
97
Josef Joffe, “ ‘Bismarck’ or ‘Britain’? Toward an American Grand
Strategy after Bipolarity,” International Security, Spring 1995, pp. 98-101.
98
Joseph S. Nye, “Redefining the National Interest,” Foreign Affairs,
July/August 1999, pp. 28-30.
99
Joffe, loc. cit., pp. 102-105.
100
Ibid., p. 110.
Notes 67

101
Josef Joffe, “How America Does It,” Foreign Affairs,
September/October 1997, p. 22.
102
There is also doubt whether Moscow ever intended it as a serious
initiative. The idea originated in a casual response by Prime Minister Yevgenii
Primakov to a news conference question in New Delhi. See ITAR-TASS World
Service reportage, December 21, 1998, in FBIS-SOV-98-355, 21 December
1998, and K.K Katyal, “The concept of a ‘strategic triangle,’” The Hindu,
December 29, 1998.
103
The Hindu, May 1, 1997, quoted in U.S. Department of State, Bureau of
Intelligence and Research, “U.S. Image in a ‘Unipolar’ World: Foreign Media
Perspectives,” Issue Focus, May 1, 1997, p. 10.
104
See Peter W. Rodman, Between Friendship and Rivalry: China and
America in the 21st Century (Washington: The Nixon Center, June 1998).
105
Coral Bell, “American Ascendancy and the Pretense of Concert,” The
National Interest, Fall 1999, p. 60 (emphasis in original).
106
Karsten D. Voigt, “The Discussion of a European Security and Defense
Policy: Labor Pains of a New Atlanticism,” speech at a seminar of the
Washington Office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, March 8, 2000, p. 10.
107
Minister of Foreign Affairs Hubert Védrine, address at the opening of the
conference “Into the 21st” of the Institut Français des Relations Internationales,
Paris, November 3, 1999.
108
Colum Lynch, “U.S. Arms Policy Is Criticized at U.N.,” Washington
Post, April 25, 2000, p. A18.
109
William Hartung quoted in Jonathan Alter, “Swords vs. Shields,”
Newsweek, May 8, 2000, p. 44.
110
Statement of Mikhail Wehbe (Syria) to the 2000 Review Conference of
the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, United
Nations, New York, April 26, 2000 (United Nations Press Release DC/2698, 26
April 2000), p. 3.
111
Statement of Secretary-General Kofi Annan to the 2000 Review
Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear
Weapons, United Nations, New York, April 24, 2000 (United Nations Press
Release SG/SM/7367, 24 April 2000, p. 2.
112
See Victoria Nuland, “Fear and Loathing in the Unipolar World,” paper
written for the Council on Foreign Relations, draft of February 18, 2000, p. 11.
68 Uneasy Giant

CONCLUSION: A NEW GRAND BARGAIN?

113
See the Protocols to the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949 on the Accession
of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, May 4, 1998, in Cong. Rec., May
4, 1998, pp. S4217-4220, esp. Sec. 3(A).
114
Henry Kissinger, Years of Renewal (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1999), Chapter 22, esp. pp. 692-697.
115
Green quoted in Tyler Marshall and Jim Mann, “Goodwill Toward U.S.
Is Dwindling Globally,” Los Angeles Times, March 26, 2000.
116
U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, Seeking a National
Strategy: A Concert for Preserving Security and Promoting Freedom
(Washington: U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, April 15,
2000), pp. 6, 13; Joseph S. Nye, Jr. “Redefining the National Interest,” Foreign
Affairs, July/August 1999, pp. 28-30.
117
Gerald B. Helman and Steven R. Ratner, “Saving Failed States,” Foreign
Policy, Winter 1992.
118
Sen. Jesse Helms, address before the UN Security Council, New York,
January 20, 2000.
119
China may build as many as 1,000 new ballistic missiles in the coming
decade, mostly of short and medium ranges. See Mark A. Stokes, “Weapons of
Precise Destruction: PLA Space and Theater Missile Development,” in Central
Intelligence Agency/National Intelligence Council and Library of
Congress/Federal Research Division, China and Weapons of Mass Destruction:
Implications for the United States, Conference Report CR-99-05, November 5,
1999 (Washington: National Intelligence Council, April 2000), p. 194.
120
Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States,
Report pursuant to Public Law 201, 104th Congress, Executive Summary
(Washington: July 15, 1998).
121
Henry Kissinger, “Our Nearsighted World Vision,” Washington Post,
January 10, 2000.
 69

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to thank the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the

German Marshall Fund of the United States, and the Lockheed Martin
Corporation for their generous support of The Nixon Center’s national
security programs, including this monograph.

Meghan Bradley, as usual, provided expert, patient, and invaluable

editorial and production assistance. Daniel Davenport and Ashley Neese
were exceptionally able research assistants.

A number of colleagues and friends contributed wise advice and

ideas during the course of this project. I am particularly grateful to
Dimitri K. Simes, Robert Ellsworth, Henry Kissinger, Josef Joffe, and
Charles Krauthammer for their comments on the manuscript. I also
benefited from a discussion of these issues at a Nixon Center workshop on
March 17, 2000, whose participants included Josef Joffe, François
Heisbourg, Charles Krauthammer, Singapore Ambassador to the United
States Heng-Chee Chan, Robert Ellsworth, Dimitri K. Simes, Bruce
Jackson, and Geoffrey Kemp. None of these individuals can be held
responsible for, or be assumed to agree with, the final content, which is
my own and my own responsibility.

I must also thank The National Interest, and its editor Owen
Harries and executive editor Lawrence Kaplan, for printing an adaptation
of Chapter I in the journal’s Summer 2000 issue.

Peter W. Rodman
Washington, DC
June 2000
 NIXON CENTER MONOGRAPHS

STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT SERIES

Peter W. Rodman, America Adrift: A Strategic Assessment,
foreword by Henry A. Kissinger, 1996.

Peter W. Rodman, Broken Triangle: China, Russia, and America

after 25 Years, foreword by Senator John McCain, 1997

Peter W. Rodman, Between Friendship and Rivalry: China and

America in the 21st Century, foreword by Dimitri K. Simes, June 1998.

Peter W. Rodman, Drifting Apart? Trends in U.S.-European

Relations, foreword by Robert F. Ellsworth, June 1999.

OTHERS
Geoffrey Kemp, Energy Superbowl: Strategic Politics in the
Persian Gulf and Caspian Basin, foreword by Lionel H. Olmer, 1997.

Geoffrey Kemp, America and Iran: Road Maps and Realism,

1998.

David M. Lampton and Gregory C. May, Managing U.S.-China

Relations In The Twenty-First Century, September 1999.

Dmitriy Ryurikov, Russia Survives, foreword by Robert F.

Ellsworth, December 1999.

Dov S. Zakheim, Congress and National Security in the post-Cold

War Era, October 1998.

The Paris Agreement on Vietnam: Twenty-five Years Later:

Conference Transcript, April 1998.