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Speech by Chester A.Crocker to Canadian International Council,
Ottawa, January 9, 2012
There are three topics I will develop for you this evening:
- First I will provide some context around the much discussed question of American decline. Is it happening? If so, why? If not, what is happening and what does power transition really mean?
- Second, I will talk about America’s adaptation to a turbulent and fast changing world, and look at some much-needed strategic readjustments.
- Finally, I want to say a few words about strategic planning in an age of turbulence and surprise.
I. On American Decline. Pundits – especially British and other ex-imperial pundits – love historical comparisons – especially to the British experience! There is a long tradition of history by analogy: Piers Brendon’s Decline and Fall of the British Empire (2008) appeared six years after Gore Vidal’s D&F of the American Empire, 20 years after Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 90 years after Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, and some 232 years after Edward Gibbon’s classic on Roman imperial decline, published, interestingly, in the year of American independence from Great Britain. Decline and fall history is a genre. A telling exemplar was Will Cuppy’s best selling satirical book The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody, published in 1950.
Discussion of American decline comes in cycles: at the time when the Soviets launched Sputnik, after we exited Vietnam, and, ironically, as the Cold War ended. The 1990s (by contrast) were a time of exceptionally American exceptionalism (some called it hubris: – remember the words of our top diplomat at the time -- and I quote Secretary of State Madeleine Albright): “We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.” This was the decade when we wandered through years of apparent disengagement and then rebounded in the face of Balkan and African barbarism into a phase of hyper-active intervention. We Americans had our so-called unipolar moment about 12 years ago; and then, after 9/11, terrorism of global reach transformed our national security narrative, producing a massive distortion of priorities and sustained exaggeration of actual threats.
Today, another cycle of commentary about American decline is unfolding. The November-December Foreign Affairs leads with the title “Is America Over”? Harvard political scientist Stephen Walt has a provocative article “The End of the American Era” in the November-December issue of The National Interest. Back in September, the weekly New Yorker magazine published a fun article by Adam Gopnik called “Decline, Fall, Rinse and Repeat”. The allusion to shampooing hints at his skepticism about the whole business.
Nonetheless, “declinist” talk and reminders of our Exceptionalism always get a new lease on life during American election seasons. To read some of the commentariat in Washington, one might conclude that ‘leading from behind’ – the unhappy term used to describe the US role during the Canadian-commanded air campaign in Libya -- may be somehow unconstitutional and, perhaps, indecent.
But, are the eulogies about American power correct? Vis a vis whom and by which criteria are we declining?
I do not accept the notion set out by Ian Bremmer of Eurasia Group that “The
party is over for Americans and their Govt” and that there is
“a seismic shift in the international balance of power in every region of the world”. Those words appeared in Foreign Policy. More recently, though, Bremmer cataloged for the Financial Times America’s unique and enduring strengths – an economy still twice China’s, a reserve currency that is the global haven in today’s volatile storms, huge soft power assets, leading universities, technologies and global firms, plus the world’s only global power projection capacity and defense spending greater than the next 17 states combined. That’s 2 sides of the coin, I guess…
With reference to what and to whom are we declining? One reference point is the apogee of American power, in or around 1990 when our global adversary had collapsed and our unipolar dawn opened. And, Yes indeed, the American position today is far less dominant than it was – or seemed to be – some 20 or 65 years ago. As Stephen Walt puts it in his fine essay in The National Interest “… it is highly unusual for a country with only 5% of the world’s population to be able to organize favorable political, economic and security orders in almost every corner of the globe and to sustain them for decades.”
A structural re-balancing has occurred. New power centers have emerged in several regions as economic dynamism has spread beyond the Atlantic Community, leading to a sustained diffusion of power and decentralization of the global political and economic systems. Arguably, American actions and policies – both wise and ill-considered – have accelerated inevitable trends.
There is much loose talk about the role of the BRICS, but this fun moniker invented by the Goldman Sachs research department does not describe a politically meaningful group of states. As Joe Nye argued in a 2011 article, while they occasionally posture about the international financial system, the BRICS have almost nothing in common with each other and represent no real constituency beyond the organizers of mutual funds on Wall Street. I would add that, of course, our share of global GDP has declined, but this decline is the happy consequence of the worldwide success of the US-led (let’s call it the Western-led) democratic capitalist revolution.
I believe that Walt is correct that we often ask the wrong question: it is not whether the US is suffering some dramatic or even catastrophic decline. That is not happening. Rather, the question is whether the United States, while remaining “the strongest global power, will be (and I quote) “unable to exercise the same influence it once enjoyed.” My answer is that we do not and will not again have that degree of influence. Here are some of the reasons why our position has fundamentally changed from 20 years ago:
- Part of the answer relates to power diffusion – from a unipolar moment to a pattern of multi-dimensional multipolarity.
- Part of answer is that power is not the same thing as influence. Washington has plenty of power, but its influence is much less than it used to be – or ought to be. Power is raw potential strength. Influence is what happens when power (in its various forms) is harnessed into effective strategies and deployed by creative people using diplomatic skills, mediation techniques, capacity building and coordinated multilateral action plans.
i. Influence is what produced the Golan Heights disengagement agreement of 1974, the Camp David Accords and Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty of 1978-79, the Madrid Conference of 1991
ii. Influence is what produced the denuclearization of the former Soviet Republics of Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan and the peaceful reunification of Germany
iii. Influence is what produced the transitions in Southern Africa in late 1980s and early 1990s.
- Too often what passes for strategy in Washington is the mere public assertion of preferences and goals with precious little attention to priorities and choices and almost no attention to the ‘HOW” of building strategic traction in foreign policy.
- For example, after 9/11 we had the urge to teach the Muslim world a lesson and reorganize the map of the Middle East in our favor. Instead we got taught some lessons – about the limits of military power; about the need to be capable of filling vacuums if we are determined to create them; and, about the severe challenge of building legitimate governance in societies that have been torn up by the roots and militarized.
- In the greater Middle East, we have deployed a massive share of our diplomatic capacity, political capital and national security resources in a region of complex turbulence whose challenges are endlessly humbling – to empires as diverse as the Tsarist and Soviet, the French and the British, the Ottoman and the Roman. By mortgaging so much of our power in this region and in this fashion, the US has handed strategic gifts to the Iranians and Chinese and blank checks to the Israelis and Saudis. That is not strategy.
- Having helped to create power vacuums during this period of strategic amnesia, we have tried to create the operational capacity for administering and governing unruly societies – almost as if we wished to reinvent the British Colonial Office. And, we have unlearned what we are good at in the fields of Conflict Management, Mediation, and other traditional diplomatic arts.
However, beyond our own actions, there are other – perhaps more basic -- reasons why we have lost some of our influence during these 20 years. Simply put, the very nature of security challenges has changed. In many cases, no single country or institution can dominate the response; no one has all the needed skills; rarely is a single point of over-arching control of the action possible. Who can manage Syria’s upheaval or the Congolese election aftermath, or Somali piracy, or the Pakistan-Afghan frontier, or the return to war in Sudan, or the criminal networks destroying civil governance in Central America, the Caribbean and West Africa? Besides, and this may be even more important, no one government really wants to own such problems. We have entered a new age: let’s call it the era of Collective Conflict Management, and we’d better get good at it. The alternative may be no management at all.
The final reason for our declining influence is domestic. I did not come to Ottawa to discuss American domestic politics. Clearly, however, we will continue to lose international clout unless we can get our political and economic house in order.
II. On Strategic Readjustment and Rebalancing
I turn now to talk briefly about some badly needed adjustments so that the US can stop digging the hole we are in, restore our room for maneuver and regain some momentum, and to address the opportunities and challenges of this fast moving and turbulent global scene.
The timing of this talk is propitious: On January 5, 2012 President Obama unveiled the new Defense Strategic Guidance document (“Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense”) that has been in preparation for months. It is the blueprint for US forces up to 2020. It is worth a read. Here are some of the drivers and key elements of the strategic readjustment:
- Hard lessons have been learned from 10 years of ground wars and stability operations in the greater Middle East. I recall the words of former Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Feb 25, 2011: “In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined”. Here is what the January 5 Guidance document says on this score:
“In the aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States will emphasize non-military means and military-to-military cooperation to address instability and reduce the demand for significant U.S. force commitments to stability operations. U.S. forces will nevertheless be ready to conduct limited counterinsurgency and other stability operations if required, operating alongside coalition forces wherever possible. … However, U.S. forces will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations.” This declaration points unambiguously to a downsizing of American ground forces and a change in national security priorities.
- Budgetary austerity imposes itslf. DOD budget cuts could range from 8% to 17% depending on whether there is a second round of cuts under “sequestration” procedures. Though it makes no sense, there are likely to be cuts in funding the other tools in the US national security arsenal as well – State Department, USAID and so on.
- Our changing map of strategic risk. To quote the Guidance, “we will of necessity rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region.” Europe is defined as “our principal partner in seeking global and economic security” and NATO is viewed as “critical to the security of Europe and beyond. Most European countries are now producers of security rather than consumers of it. Combined with the drawdown in Iraq and Afghanistan, this has created a strategic opportunity to rebalance {translation: reduce) the U.S. military investment in Europe.” In the Middle East, the approach will be transformed as ground campaigns wind down. But the residual commitments are defined in familiar terms: countering terrorist networks across a diverse landscape and a sharp focus on Gulf security, collaboration with Gulf Cooperation Council countries, and determination to prevent Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon capability and to counter its destabilizing policies. And, of course, we will continue “standing up for Israel’s security” and working for comprehensive Middle East peace. Continuity is the watchword in this region; no purpose would be served by airing new or controversial thinking on neuralgic Middle East issues in an election season.
The U.S. is shifting toward a flexible hedging strategy, one that takes into account China’s maritime assertiveness and defense build up, the perceived lack of “transparency” in Chinese plans, the concerns of Asian friends and allies. Moving away from land warfare priorities, the strategy places greater reliance on US technological advantages (C4- ISR - Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance), our naval and air platforms, and our space-based systems. We will continue to develop and exploit new and exotic technologies and our much enhanced Special Operations Forces and our capacity-building programs to bolster partner nations in Africa and Latin America.
One of the Guidance document’s most telling sections observes that over past 10 years we and our allies have “learned hard lessons and applied new operational approaches in the counter terrorism, counterinsurgency, and security force assistance arenas, most often operating in uncontested sea and air environments. Accordingly, similar work needs to be done to ensure the United States, its allies, and partners are capable of operating in A2/AD {anti-access/area denial}, cyber, and other contested operating environments.” This shift of focus is basic to the new thinking emerging in Washington. Who exactly are we worried about? “States such as China and Iran will continue to pursue asymmetric means to counter our power projection capabilities, while the proliferation of sophisticated weapons and technology will extend to non-state actors as well.”
Of course, a final and not unimportant factor is US public opinion: according to an authoritative Chicago Council on Foreign Relations report (2010), there are some interesting headlines.
- 80% of Americans favor strong US leadership and support maintaining superior power
- But only 10% favor maintaining ‘pre-eminence’, and large majorities think we play world policeman too much, and 90% think it is more important to fix pressing domestic problems
- Strong support for UN and for ‘selective engagement’ on top ranking issues (Iran, North Korea) and for not being involved (militarily) in conflicts that ‘do not directly concern us’.
- In a 2011 global poll by the Pew Attitudes project, folks in various countries were asked if China has already replaced the US as ‘the leading superpower’: 23% of the French think so, and 12% of Americans, but only 6% of the Chinese! HOWEVER, when asked if China will eventually replace the US as the lead superpower, nearly 50% of the Chinese and many of our leading European allies said ‘yes’; only 34% of Americans agreed, while 45% of Americans said it will never happen.
- So strategic adjustments, yes; decline and withdrawal from global leadership, probably not. I’m with the 45%!
III. Strategic Planning in an Age of Turbulence and Surprise
I turn, finally, to the question of strategic planning in an age of turbulence and strategic surprise. What value does such planning (the Defense Strategic Guidance, for instance) have? The U.S. faces some obvious near and medium-term challenges, and it is well to recognize them:
- getting out of the wars without emboldening bad guys or discrediting the US position globally;
- transitioning to a more effective capacity building and burden-sharing mode of leadership (NATO was actually pretty effective in Libya even though there were problems and that country’s future political evolution remains obscure; in another example, NATO ally France plus the African Union and UN did a reasonable job in Cote d’Ivoire, too).
The point is that global and regional institutions have their problems but are indispensable and need strong US leadership, as the distinguished Canadian diplomat Louise Frechette emphasized in a recent speech in Dubai.
- Another near term challenge is managing the profile of U.S. democracy promotion policies and avoiding the traps of silly doctrinal purity; case-by-case approach is best in responding to today’s mass protests, stolen elections, and networked social activism. Not every street protest or urban mass action is a manifestation of embryonic democracy.
- We will also have to balance our equities in Russia where we are witnessing the end of the Putin era in the sense that he appears to have lost the ability to rule as he did before. But what to do? The protesters may be attractive but Putin’s party lost to Nationalists and Communists more than Liberals. Moreover, as Dimitri Simes of the Center for the National Interest recently argued, we need Russia (Afghanistan, Iran, the Middle East) and we do not want to drive Russia into China’s arms.
These are some near-term dilemmas and tests. But the real challenge is how to do planning in an era of seemingly endless Strategic Surprise. Back in 1957, Dwight Eisenhower made a powerful point when he said: “Plans are worthless but planning is everything”. Or, as soldiers often recite: “if everything is going according to plan, there’s an ambush ahead”. Planning is a kind of mental exercise. It helps one prepare for what former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig has termed “The Inevitable Failure of Prediction”.
Surprise cannot be eliminated from human events. It is akin to Clausewitz’s theory of “general friction” in warfare. There will always be uncertainties in our information, distortions created by our sense of danger and our image of the other side, and the natural unpredictability of two-sided interaction between “us and them”. Here are just a few of the many sources that strategic surprise comes from: random events (tsunamis), historical discontinuities (social media), trend reversals (financial deleveraging), systemic transitions (Arab Awakening), the actions of others (F.W. de Klerk’s release of Nelson Mandela from prison). Sometimes, we surprise ourselves, as the British and French found out at Suez over 55 years ago.
But surprise may also come from bureaucratic and cultural barriers: from the way information is interpreted, distributed, and prioritized by senior officials. This is especially problematic when available intelligence data comes up against an entrenched policy consensus. Such factors help explain events like Pearl Harbor, the Iranian revolution, or the Sunni insurgency in Iraq.
Knowing that surprises will happen must not be allowed to immobilize us. Nor can strategic planning be based on uncertainty alone; it must be rooted in some set of probabilities and core assumptions. Self-consciousness about those assumptions brings an open mind. British strategic theorist Colin Gray argues that the goal in strategy is to cope with and plan against the effects and consequences of surprise so that we have some control over those effects and consequences.
One of the better features the just-released Defense Strategic Guidance in Washington is the explicit awareness that (and I quote) “we cannot predict how the strategic environment will evolve with absolute certainty”. A powerful but simple statement. Its implications are clear: the watchwords must be hedging, variegated capabilities, versatility, adaptability, and reversibility.
In the turbulent times ahead we will do well to remember 3 things: elect leaders who know what they don’t know; recruit diverse expertise into top policy councils; and critically examine our own assumptions because – sometimes – they are the problem.
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