COMMENTARY Drifting toward
multi-polarity By Michael A Weinstein
Now that the experiment in American
unilateralism has failed with the collapse of the
adventurist campaign in Iraq, the world returns to the
two foundational models for global power relations:
multilateralism and multi-polarism.
Whoever
occupies the Oval Office after the November 2004
election will have to try to recoup the power that the
United States lost during its rendezvous with
neo-conservative fantasy. That can only be done - if at
all - through an attempt to reconstitute a multilateral
consensus on globalization in which the United States is
primus inter pares, guaranteeing the security of
world capitalism militarily, but not using its military
power to impose its policies on its allies and
independent limited collaborators (China and Russia)
without genuine negotiation and compromise. Under
multilateralism, the United States usually gets its
geopolitical way, but forbears from acting in opposition
to significant resistance from other major power
centers. The Iraq adventure has demonstrated that
unilateralism alienates allies and collaborators,
resulting in the loss of American credibility and clout.
Multilateralism remains the path that leads to the
maximization of American power in the world.
The
question is whether the Iraq adventure marks a watershed
in world politics, in which the currents that once ran
toward multilateralism in the decade following the fall
of the Soviet Union have now shifted in the direction of
multi-polarism. Well before the second Gulf War, China,
Russia and France had voiced preferences for
multi-polarism, in which American leadership is replaced
by negotiation among regional power centers, among them
North America. The Iraq war may have tipped the balance
so that it favors the multi-polarists. If the United
States cannot be trusted to take the interests of allies
and collaborators into account in its strategic policy,
these governments will seek to retrench, moving to gain
as much control as possible over their regions, so that
they can exert a veto on American interventions into
them. Although each regional power center has its own
independent interests, they all have a shared interest
in fending off American dictation and, therefore,
constitute an incipient defensive alliance.
Multi-polarism is a containment policy against
the United States - the one-time hyper-power that has
revealed its vulnerability and the limits of its
military control.
The most likely configurations
of world politics in the coming decade are weak to
moderate multi-polarism and weak multilateralism. There
is some small chance that the United States will regain
acquiescence in its status as the "world's only
superpower" and, with it, a comparative advantage for
the realization of its policies and the satisfaction of
the interests actuating them. The more highly probable
scenario is a slow drift toward multi-polarism.
Multi-polarism is only a dream unless it is
backed by military power. The primary indicator of a
tendency toward multi-polarism is the military policies
of the regional powers. The two most important - China
and Russia - have publicly stated that they are
committed to building state-of-the-art militaries. India
is similarly committed to militarization, as is
Pakistan, so far as its limited resources permit. Europe
presents a more complex picture. Faced with opposition
to its attempt to assert leadership in Europe, the
Franco-German combine remains bound into the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization and is left with its
economic and diplomatic cards. By taking advantage of
the internal conflict within the European Union ("Old
Europe and New Europe"), the United States has helped to
block the emergence of a full-fledged regional power
center. It is not able to do the same elsewhere. China
and Russia will lead the move toward multi-polarism and
other powers around the world will follow them whenever
it is in their interest to do so.
The major
point for the emergence of multi-polarism is East Asia.
What drives the New Regionalism is a partial power
vacuum caused by recognition of the limits of American
projection of military power and the loss of American
political credibility as a trustworthy ally and
collaborator, and moral credibility as a champion of
democracy, human rights and even global capitalism. The
regional power positioned most favorably to take
advantage of the vacuum is China.
China The coming confrontation with China
was the focus of the American National Security Strategy
of 2002 and the justification for its doctrine of
maintaining American military supremacy through coming
generations. China's strategic aim is eventually to make
the South China Sea and the Taiwan Straits its own
Caribbean, excluding the United States from military
influence and the economic advantage that it brings.
China can be expected to seize as much control over its
region as it can, consistent with maintaining foreign
investment and normal trade relations. If there is a
drift toward multi-polarism, it will be manifested, in
China's case, by a harder line towards Taiwan and Hong
Kong. If China can drive Taiwan into its orbit through
military threat coupled with de jure autonomy
masking de facto dependency, it will have moved a long
way towards satisfying its strategic aims. Other states
in the region will take notice. China can also be
expected to drag its feet on the North Korea nuclear
weapons issue. It will not want to give the United
States an easy victory and will try to undermine
American credibility on North Korea by extorting
concessions from the US.
Other states in East
Asia will not be favorable to expansion of Chinese power
over the region. They will depend on the United States
to defend them, but will be less certain than in the
past of the effectiveness of that protection. If North
Korea is not de-nuclearized and China comes to exert
some sort of hegemony over Taiwan, Japan would be
tempted to nuclearize, as would South Korea.
Simultaneously, they would explore more aggressively
strategic bargains with China, further diminishing
American influence. The United States will face a
decisive question: Does it have the military and
economic resources, and the political will to resist a
well-calculated Chinese power grab?
Russia The second major site for the
emergence of the New Regionalism is Russia. Under
Vladimir Putin, Russia has returned to its traditional
strategic doctrine of containing encirclement and, if
possible, expanding its cordon sanitaire (in this
case, restoring it). Putin has made it explicit that
Russia has to take care of its own economy and society,
pursue an independent foreign policy, and aggressively
militarize. The strategic aim of those principles is to
regain control over Russia's periphery: to draw Ukraine
and Belarus firmly into its orbit and to re-exert
influence over the former Soviet republics in the
Caucasus and Central Asia. Specifically, Russia's goals
are to edge American bases out of Central Asia and to
gain some control over Caspian Sea oil.
Russia
is hampered by economic weakness, dependence on oil
revenues, the war in Chechnya and an inefficient
military. Its effectiveness as a center of
multi-polarism will hinge on its ability to generate a
sufficient economic surplus to deliver on the promise of
a state-of-the-art military. As the re-militarization
program proceeds, Russia will attempt to exploit
dissidence in the former Soviet republics to its south
when that is to its advantage, and to cultivate closer
relations with them when that is advantageous. The
United States will seek to hold on to its gains in the
region, but the question again is whether it will have
the resources and will to do so. The former Soviet
republics are not eager to fall under Russian hegemony
and rely for their independence on Euro-American
protection. The Iraq adventure has not changed that.
Russia has chosen to pursue a multi-polar strategy, but
it is a work in its early stages.
India and
Pakistan The South Asian sub-continent is the
third site of the New Regionalism. Both India and
Pakistan are committed to militarization. Their conflict
over Kashmir remains unresolved and the Iraq adventure
has put a strain on American mediation of it. India's
prime strategic aim is to secure itself from any
military threat so that it can pursue an autonomous
domestic and foreign policy as it develops economically
and enters the globalized economy as a full player.
Pakistan, with a much weaker economy and an unstable
regime, is hedged in by its imposed alliance with the
United States, and the internal conflict that the
alliance has caused.
With the United States tied
down in Iraq, India will be tempted to exert pressure on
Pakistan over Kashmir. If it pursues such a course,
Pakistan will become even more unstable and its
relations with the United States will be strained. There
is a low probability of a nuclear exchange between India
and Pakistan, and a much higher probability of low-level
confrontations. The United States will have less
influence over the course of those confrontations than
it did before the Iraq adventure, and will be
compromised by the clash between its economic interests
in India and its strategic interests in Pakistan.
Europe It will be difficult for the
Franco-German combine to become the nucleus of a
European regionalism. Here the United States has
confident allies in the coalition of states that resists
Franco-German hegemony in the European Union. In
addition, shared economic interests in transnational
capitalism make any Franco-German long-term break with
multilateralism unlikely.
Lacking independent
military power, the Franco-German combine is blocked
from strategic autonomy. If the United States resumes a
multilateralist policy toward Europe, it should be able
to regain its former position as primus inter pares in
the North Atlantic. Tendencies toward multi-polarism
will be long-term, depending on the degree of economic
and political integration within the European Union,
which would eventually lead to greater military
independence.
Islamic
militancy Cross-cutting the New Regionalism is
the worldwide Islamist movement, which was the pretext
for the Iraq adventure (the notion of Saddam Hussein
giving weapons of mass destruction to terrorists). That
the United States has lost credibility in the Islamic
world is a platitude. Islamic militancy has not
diminished since the Iraq adventure and all reports
point to its increase. Rather than advancing the "war on
terrorism," the Iraq adventure has pushed it back.
Conclusion The United States will be
forced in the coming decade to continue to focus
attention and dedicate economic, military and diplomatic
resources to contain Islamism. There is no end in sight
of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and there is little
chance that Iraq will be a unified and stable market
democracy. The Middle East will preoccupy the United
States with little possibility of favorable results,
while major powers in other regions will take every
opportunity to pursue their own strategic aims of
greater autonomy and control.
The decline in
American credibility and the worldwide recognition of
its military limitations does not spell a decisive shift
to multi-polarism, but a drift in that direction. Signs
of that drift would be a more aggressive Chinese
approach toward Taiwan, a more aggressive Indian
approach to Pakistan, and a genuine commitment to rapid
re-militarization in Russia. American power has been
potentially impaired in those three regions; they are
the potential crisis points outside the Middle East
where the United States is most likely to face effective
challenges to its power and interests.
Published with permission of thePower and
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