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Things Fall Apart: America, Europe, and Asia in the New World Disorder
http://chasfreeman.net/things-
Remarks to a Schiller Institute International Conference
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)
Senior Fellow, Watson Institute for International and Public
Affairs, Brown University
25 June 2016, Berlin, Germany
We have entered
a world in which, as William Butler Yeats put it in 1919:
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
In Europe, in
America, and in parts of Asia there is a sense of foreboding – an elemental
unease about what is to come. There is
vexing drift amidst political paralysis.
Demagoguery is ascendant and the stench of fascism is in the air.
Developments in
American politics are particularly discomfiting. The American people are belatedly beginning a
discussion about the role of the United States in the world. We Americans should have had this
conversation twenty-five years ago, when the Soviet Union collapsed and the
Cold War ended. Now we are airing
differences about foreign policy in circumstances of dispiriting international
political and economic uncertainties.
Few can even remember the optimism that prevailed when Germany reunited,
Europe became whole and free, China joined the capitalist world, and Russia
aspired to democratize and do the same.
Almost no one
now sees much to admire in the results of U.S. foreign policy since these
events. A few assert that our uses of force should have been more vigorous and
sustained but most believe that recent U.S. military interventions have been
counterproductive. A growing number of
Americans express skepticism about interventions abroad.
In a world of
ambiguities, the choice posed is binary.
Are you for or against the exercise of U.S. military power? But the divisions between the sides have yet
to be clearly drawn. The debate is
ramping up as part of an election campaign driven by domestic malcontent, to
which foreign policy is at most tangential.
The discussion about America’s international purposes and
responsibilities is just beginning. It
remains incoherent and as perplexing to Americans as it is alarming to allies,
partners, and friends overseas.
Americans are
having trouble formulating alternative approaches to foreign affairs, but they
clearly reject more of the same. They
may differ in their views of what “more of the same” means. But whatever it is, most don’t want it. In this regard, Europeans do not seem much
different.
Everyone is
aware that major shifts in the distribution of global wealth and power are
taking place. Ubiquitous malaise
accounts for the welcome that many in both Europe and America have given to
empty slogans masquerading as new ideas about how to manage borders, immigrants,
foreign trade and investment, relations with allies and adversaries, and
innovations in the existing international order. Further uncertainty arises from economic
doldrums born of political gridlock, legislative defaults on fiscal policy,
radical but unproductive monetary policies, the spread of authoritarianism,
renewed antipathy between the West and Russia, and a lot of trash talk by the
politically ambitious but intellectually challenged in both America and Europe.
The crumbling
of the Pax Americana is an important contributor to the new world
disorder. It is unnerving to Americans
as well as to the allies and partners of the United States overseas. The best that might be said of it is that it
also confuses America’s adversaries.
But, then, there is no agreement on who these adversaries are, still
less what they may want.
With the
disappearance of messianic totalitarianism, Americans succumbed to enemy
deprivation syndrome. That is the queasy
feeling of disorientation one has when one’s military-industrial establishment no longer has an obvious,
credible enemy on which to focus.
European statecraft has traditionally accepted that allies on some
matters can be adversaries on others, that military power is not in itself an
answer to many problems, that long-term interests may require short-term
sacrifice, and that it is often wiser to conciliate than to confront those
seeking limited changes in the existing order.
But these are novel thoughts for Americans schooled in international
relations by the Cold War, when diplomacy resembled trench rather than maneuver
warfare..
In many
respects, the long contest with the Soviet Union turned America into a
strategic “one-trick pony.” Washington
learned to resort to military deterrence and punishment through sanctions
before considering diplomacy to eliminate the sources of discord that create
the dangers it seeks to forefend. And
deterrence is problematic, not only because it risks war by accident and
doesn’t always work, but because it immobilizes and defers potential conflicts
rather than addressing their causes.
Deterrence prevents immediate strife, buying time for diplomacy. But if there is no diplomacy, deterrence just
stores up trouble for later, when the odds may shift to the advantage of one or
the other side. This is especially
likely when balances of power are rapidly shifting, as they are in the Indo-Pacific.
Americans now
seem to be groping our way toward the realization that resolving the
underlying issues driving contending
sides toward combat may be a better approach to sustaining peace than trying to
manage risk by promising to respond in kind to the use of force. If so, this is a healthy evolution that all
should welcome. It offers renewed
opportunities for U.S. allies and partners to leverage America’s still enormous
power to shape, steer, and maintain a better future than might otherwise evolve
from the current global disorder.
But from an
American perspective, Washington’s European allies seem more muddled than
ever. Europeans speak in many tongues
and in contradictory ways. Britain’s
vote for Brexit has just exacerbated Europe’s confusion. Brexit promises to shatter the post-war order
in Europe, to remove the British as intermediaries between the United States
and “the Continent,” and to deal a potentially fatal blow to Britain’s special
relationships with both. All this as
ill-considered proposals to renegotiate U.S. trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific
alliances, the global trade regime, and US-Russia and US-China relations ring
out on the campaign trail in the United States.
A growing
number of Americans understand that, if the United States does not heed the
voices of its allies, it will in time cease to have any. But others ask how countries that spend
relatively little on their own defense, preferring to leave it to Uncle Sam,
can qualify as “allies" and equals rather than “protectorates.” “Allies” are countries with mutual
obligations and responsibilities to each other, not a one-sided
dependency. Loose usage of the term “ally”
conceals the fact that in Asia and the Middle East, the United States has wards
and client states that it has taken under its unilateral protection, not
“allies” committed to the common defense.
By contrast,
the United States has always sought such allies in Europe, not satrapies or
straphangers, still less servile sycophants.
That is why Americans have been so supportive of the “European
project.” As the effort to unify Europe
falters, so does American hope that Europe can avoid a return to the imbalances
of power and politico-economic breakdowns that, on three occasions in the last
century, required the United States to rescue and, finally, to garrison
it.
To be frank, in
present circumstances, to continue to be seen as allies and to be listened to
as such by Americans, Europeans must alter their expectations of both
themselves and America. They must do
more in their own defense and form and communicate coherent views of what they
need and don’t need from the United States to supplement their own military
power. They must equip themselves to persuade
the American people that it’s in the interest of the United States for them to
get what they want. (The same is true of
non-European partners like Japan and south Korea.) For better or ill, the world has entered an
era of transactional relationships, not coalitions based on confrontation with
a common global enemy or mutual commitments to shared strategic interests and
visions.
The call to
rejustify and at the same time restructure America’s overseas defense
guarantees is a reminder that, for 160 years, the United States carefully
avoided “entangling alliances.” This
stance ended only in 1949, when the U.S. joined Canada and ten European nations
in forming NATO. Washington then sought
to counter the perceived threat that Stalin’s USSR might seek to dominate – if
not conquer – not just Europe, but the world beyond the Western Hemisphere,
aggregating power in the Old World to the point that it could pose an
existential challenge to the New. But
the Soviet Union is no more. Notwithstanding today’s efforts to portray
Russia as implacably predatory, Europe faces no external menace comparable to
those of yesteryear.
With American
help, Europe recovered from World War II
and strengthened its democratic political culture. It has enjoyed a quarter-century of peace,
prosperity, and expansion of the rule of law since the Cold War ended. Europe may be much less than the sum of its
parts, but it is not weak. European NATO
members alone have a population more than four times that of Russia and a GDP
that is nine times larger. They fall
short of NATO’s military budget targets but still spend at least three times more
on defense as Russia. Some maintain
formidably effective armed forces. There
is no present requirement for Europeans to continue to rely mainly on U.S.
forces for their defense. In these
circumstances, it is hardly surprising that a growing number of Americans
believe that the trans-Atlantic alliance is overdue for rebalancing.
Some ask “if
NATO is still the answer, what were the questions?” But, far from seeking to separate themselves
from Europe, most Americans want a more equal security relationship with
it. This is because three wars in the
twentieth century (two hot and one cold) have shown that:
$ Europe and America belong to a single geopolitical zone in
which the security and well-being of each is inextricably connected to the
other;
$ A Europe-wide security architecture is needed to sustain
security cooperation and keep peace among Europeans;
$ America needs a link to that architecture to safeguard its
vital interests in stability in Europe and Eurasia; and
$ Europe requires American participation in its security
architecture to preclude domination by its
greatest power, Germany, and to enable it to balance and coexist
peacefully with Russia.
These realities
create an inescapable framework for trans-Atlantic cooperation, but they are
not self-executing. They are undermined
by Brexit and similar fissiparous tendencies elsewhere in Europe. They do not lead automatically to cooperative
security, cooperative relationships with Russia or Turkey, or cooperative
stabilization of the borderlands between Eurasia and Europe. The crafting of such arrangements demands
statecraft that has been conspicuous by its absence since the end of the Cold
War.
Peace and
stability in Europe and Eurasia require recognition by Europe and Russia that
both have a vital interest in a broadly united, prosperous, independent
Ukraine. Such a Ukraine cannot emerge
without restraint and reassurance by both.
A model for this is the Austrian State Treaty of 1955, which established
Austria as a sovereign, democratic state with safeguards for ethnic
minorities. Austria cemented its freedom
by declaring its permanent neutrality between East and West and developing a
credible federal defense force. If this
could be done for Austria at the height of the Cold War, it can be done for
Ukraine in today’s far less confrontational circumstances.
It would be in
the interest of all, especially Ukrainians, to establish Ukraine as both a
buffer and a bridge between Europe and Russia.
Europeans and Russians have now proved beyond a reasonable doubt that
each is prepared to frustrate and punish attempts by the other to absorb or
dominate Ukraine. The United States has
shown that it can be counted upon to back Europe militarily in resisting
Russian intervention in Ukraine. The
result is a dangerous impasse but also an opportunity. The two sides have exhausted coercive
measures. Neither can hope to gain
anything substantial from continuing competition for dominance in Ukraine. Escalating confrontation between NATO and
Russia is costly and risky. It leads nowhere either side wishes to
go. The negotiation of mutual guarantees
of Ukraine’s independence and neutrality on the model of Austria is the best
remaining option.
But without a
shared vision between Europe and Russia to frame such an outcome, the impasse
will persist. This is an instance where
a grand bargain is appropriate. The
mutual pullbacks and reforms stipulated in the Minsk accords provide a potential starting point for a
diplomatic process to consolidate the future place of an independent Ukraine
between Europe and Russia. As at Minsk,
Europe, not America, is best qualified to conceptualize and lead such a
process, which needs to be part of a larger vision of cooperative security in
Europe.
Wise American
statecraft would welcome, not resist, Russian participation in the governance
of affairs in both Europe and the Eurasian landmass as a whole. There are many existing institutional
frameworks for this, including the OSCE, the NATO-Russia Council, the Council
of Europe, the Shanghai Cooperation Council, and others. The reintegration of post-revolutionary
France in the Concert of Europe after the Napoleonic wars showed how the
inclusion of former adversaries in decision-making can promote long-term peace
and stability in Europe. The exclusion
of post-Wilhelmine Germany and post-Czarist Russia from the councils of Europe
after World War I did not work out so well.
That experience should drive home the peril of excluding great powers
from an appropriate role in managing affairs in which they have a legitimate
interest.
The United
States, Europe, and Russia must also all adjust to a world in which China and
India join Japan as Asian nations with global reach. This is a particularly difficult adjustment
for the United States. America has
dominated the Western Pacific for seventy-one years. It has become accustomed to being the custodian
of the global commons and the indispensable arbiter of disputes in the
region. Now it must accommodate a rising
China, a more assertive India, and a more independent Japan.
Existing
institutions, like ASEAN, are divided and ineffective in managing these
issues. The shifting balances of power
in the Asia-Pacific are mostly driven by economics. By contrast, the so-called U.S. “rebalance to
Asia” is almost entirely military. The
United States, Japan, and China are shouting past each other. But a piecemeal process of accommodation is
unfolding amidst much histrionics about maritime territorial issues to which
the United States is not a party.
The huge
asymmetries between what is at stake in these issues for China and the United
States are dangerous. To paraphrase
Bismarck’s prescient comments about the Balkans twenty-six years before World
War I, all the rocks, reefs, and sandbars
there are not worth the life of a single U.S. Marine. But if
there is ever another war in Asia, it will come out of some damned silly thing
in the South or East China Sea. Wars
can happen even when they make no sense.
In Asia, as in Europe, there is an urgent need for diplomacy as a
substitute for military approaches that solve nothing but risk much.
With the United
States pushing back against Russia in the West and China in the East, the two
are being nudged together. To counter
Sino-Russian partnership, Japan is courting Russia, though not very
effectively. China is reaching out to
Europe. And China, Europe, Japan,
Russia, and the United States are all courting India, which is playing hard to
get. We have entered a world of many
competing power centers and regional balances in which long-term vision and
short-term diplomatic agility are at a premium.
With the exception of India, none of the great powers at present
displays both qualities.
This is the
global context in which China has proposed to integrate the entire Eurasian
landmass with a network of roads, railroads, pipelines, telecommunications
links, ports, airports, and industrial development zones. If China’s “One Belt, One Road” concept is
realized, it will open a vast area to economic and intercultural exchange,
reducing barriers to international cooperation in a sixty-five-country zone
with seventy percent of the world’s population, with over forty percent of its
GDP, generating well over half of its current economic growth. The estimated cost of projects already on the
drawing boards is at least eleven times what was spent on the Marshall
Plan.
These massive
infrastructure projects promise to deliver major increases in the speed of
transport and telecommunications, to lower costs, and to create a great many
new jobs. They will integrate Russia and
Central Asia with both China and Europe, while connecting South Asia by land as
well as by sea to the markets and natural resources of the countries to its
north as well as to Africa.. By making
land transport vastly more efficient and linking it to new ports and airports,
the “One Belt, One Road” program will alter the balance between land and sea
power, including in the Arctic regions now becoming accessible as a result of
climate change.
In concept, the
Belt and Road program is the largest set of engineering projects ever
undertaken by humankind. Its potential
to transform global geoeconomics and politics is proportional to its
scale. It will create a greater arena
for peaceful cooperation and competition than any empire ever did, and it will
do so without military conquest or the use of force. It thereby offers an antidote to the
strategic myopia, militarism, and financial gamesmanship that drive the new
world disorder. It is an alternative to
“more of the same” that the world should welcome and embrace.
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