America's Imperial Sunset

In "Imperial Sunset? America the All-Powerful Finds its Hands Tied by New Rivals," the Financial Times sheds further light on our nation's diminishing stature on the world stage.

The world that was born with the end of the cold war is dead and buried. Today, America's sole superpower status, which steeled the Bush administration in its determination to go to war in Iraq, is losing relevance. Instead, the US has an ungovernable new world on its hands.

This, at least, is the outlook of some of the world's most seasoned officials and international affairs experts, who believe that the US has lost power and influence and that an uncertain era is about to begin. The age they describe is one dominated neither by Washington's matchless military strength nor the old international -institutions.

"We are going through systemic change," Madeleine Albright, the former US secretary of state, says in an interview. "What has happened in the past six years has been a lessening of respect for American power . . . The world is going to be multipolar," she adds, referring to the growing influence of countries such as China and India and the likelihood that they will have greater roles in deciding the world's affairs.

Already, the US is finding both diplomacy and military action increasingly difficult. Tensions over Iran and North Korea's nuclear programmes, the crisis in Darfur, Kosovo and climate change all cry out for urgent attention. But none can be solved by a single power or even a select group of allies - and progress has been haltingly slow at the United Nations. Even more worryingly for Washington, the Bush administration is finding it increasingly difficult to find allies to help fight its battles - whether in the shrinking "coalition of the willing" in Iraq or the Nato-led mission in Afghanistan.

No longer does the US inhabit the lop-sided world created by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Instead, the growing diffusion of international power makes this an era in which a profusion of deals has to be done. Yet multilateralism - the use of international treaties, institutions and consultation to achieve diplomatic goals - is harder than it has been for at least half a generation.

This point is hammered home by Moscow, the great loser of the cold war. Three days ago Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, derided what he said was the US's attempt to create a "unipolar" world - a world with "one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making". In a speech that signalled a new post-cold war low in Moscow-Washington relations, he said such a world was both unacceptable and impossible. Referring to the war in Iraq, he added: "Unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved any problems . . . No one feels safe."

China and India are also thrusting on to the world stage, confident that the future is on their side. China already has the world's fourth-biggest economy, ahead of the UK, and is rapidly closing in on Germany. Even Russia, whose hydrocarbon wealth may not last long into the century, is infinitely more confident than it was when it begged for western aid in the 1990s - as Mr Putin's speech attested.

"The US has had its unipolar moment for about 15 years but is beginning to realise that it isn't getting the things done it wants," says Paul Kennedy, the author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. "But just as the US could be moving back to a more multilateralist position, Russia and China may be less interested in agreeing with the west."

Whether we like it or not, it seems increasingly evident that the age of American hegemony is coming to an end.

Comments

[M. Tubin]

Michael,

I would be careful buying into the argument about hegemonic decline too easily. Some of us, Albright included, probably would prefer a multipolar world since balance of power politics presumably help constraint the type of irresponsible behavior of the current Bush Administration. This is precisley why "realists" like EH Carr and Hans Morgenthau warned so strongly against the ill effects of unrestrained Wilsonian idealism on world politics.

I for one - would prefer a more multipolar world militarily - where presumably a future China and the United States have to worry about each other enough that they are forced to think more about the long-term strategic implications of individual policy options (not to mention the EU, Russia and India as contenders for great power status). The fear of causing a massive world-war or perhaps a nuclear holocaust helps clarify things it seems to me.

That being the case, Paul Kennedy, an incredible historian, and top notch political scientists like Robert Gilpin in the 1980s were predicting hegemonic decline of the United States and look how well those predictions turned out. We are of course entering a period of increased uncertainty about what the future brings us, but in the medium-term we should be careful and understand the difference between the damage done to the reputation and image of the United States and its military, financial and economic power bases. The difference between the Authority of the United States to act legimately in world politics and its power or capcity to do so.

In the 1980s - analysts were concerned about the implications of the disasterous policy in Vietnam, the end of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates, a rise in unilateralism from issues ranging from monetary through trade policy, the relative rise of the Japanese economy and major issues like the twin-deficits. Part of the problem turned out to be that they were just flattly wrong, part of it depends on what specific part of American hegemony we are speaking of.

It is not hard to see that the reputation and image of the United States has been damaged to a very severe degree. I would suggest it would be much more difficult to suggest this type of decline in the military sphere.

While the US military has been taking a beating, the fact that Bush can throw so much money into the new military budget (to the point of breaking historical records in his 2008 proposal) suggests that the aggregate power of the United States has not been that terribly weakened by 2 serious asymmetric conflicts.

If the United States pulls out of Iraq, perhaps maintaining a containment strategy like that proposed by Elliot Cohen at Brookings, is there reason to suspect that it will not be able to fight a serious war in future perhaps in a more conventional theater?

In the case of military power, its not that the United States has necessarily lost a tremendous amount in recent years, as much as it relearned (or maybe I shouuld say it is relearning) lessons most of us thought were mooted during decolonization and the Cold War -- counter-insurgency is not easy, and chances are the will of the occupation power will break before its campagin is over even if its military capacity has not.

Economic and financial power are a bit more complicated to tease out. In terms of relative size, the US economy is pretty darn huge. The predictions about massive and drastic change from something like a loss of confidence in the dollar spin potential possibilities, but I am not sure the balance of risk is that highly in their favor. The debate about the relative importance in the coming years of London and New York is an interesting point, but here too is a case of people going over board. The United State's veto position at the IMF and World Bank is not going away anytime soon.

All in all, the US has made a mess for itself, and yes reduced a majorily important part of its Hegemony -- its legitimacy. Raw power is simply not very effective despite Mao's quote about the barrel of the gun. That being said, raw power is not useless either.

From a US foreign policy perspective, the task of the next administration will be to start a very long process of repairing the damage to the US reputation. This will not be easy, but it hardly seems reasonable to declare the death of hegemony -- at least for now. Perhaps - at best American relative decline has been sped up. It is a historical inevitability as the work of Kennedy and others demonstrate rather forcefully.

But Kennedy's personal experience as a futurist shows the futility of trying to extrapolate exactly how and when that process will work for the US. If anything -- one should be reminded of the first variable mentioned in these stories -- increasing uncertainty. That applies equally not just to the strategic environment the US finds itself within, but equally to expectations about change in the near and long-term. This is especially important when dealing with a concept like hegemony -- which is very multifaceted. In fact, in a now classic book in international relations theory, Keohane and Nye suggested that hegemoncy was context dependent. The concept became more useful at helping analyze the world when hegemony was broken into relavent parts - specifically relating to particular issue areas in world politics.