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This Too Shall Pass
http://chasfreeman.net/
This Too Shall Pass
Remarks to the Camden Conference on The New World Disorder
and America’s Future
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)
Senior Fellow, Watson Institute for International and
Public Affairs
February 18, 2018, Camden, Maine
The United States
declared its independence two hundred and forty-two years ago. We did so on a planet in which China was
one-third of the world economy but geopolitics were dominated by Britain, the
world’s greatest naval power, and France, which had the finest army and the
most brilliant culture on the Eurasian landmass. After a struggle, in which our war for
independence played a role, Britain emerged as the global superpower. As a well-known map shows, it is easier to depict the countries
Britain did not invade[1]
than to identify those it did.
After 1815, the
rules of the world order were written in English. The United States prospered in the
British-led international system. By
about 1875, we had become the world’s largest economy.
In the early 20th
century, the United States began to displace Britain’s global dominion. Initially reluctant to lead, Americans’
belated but successful engagement in World War II made us the dominant power in
every corner of the globe other than those within the Soviet empire. Our Establishment rose to the challenge. Since 1945, the world has been regulated by
norms, obligations, and conventions mostly made in the USA. As the Cold War unfolded, American diplomacy
became a form of imperial administration, designed to secure the frontiers of
our sphere of influence and keep order within what we called “the free world.”
U.S. allies,
partners, and client states relied on the United States to provide the bulk of
their collective defense against Soviet predation. We supplied security, regime support, and
reconstruction and development aid. In
return, they tolerated the “exorbitant privilege” of dollar supremacy and let
Americans exempt ourselves from the rules we insisted on applying to them and
everyone else.
In foreign
lands, the United States preached that “all men are created equal.” At home, we practiced racial
segregation. Abroad, we declined to
ratify multilateral treaties we had proposed even as we held others to the
standards in these treaties. Americans
demanded international courts but made ourselves immune from their
jurisdiction. We ignored and fell far
short of the targets for development aid we ourselves had proclaimed.
Since 1991,
when the Soviet Union imploded and the Cold War ended, the United States has
continued to expect the same deference and exemptions from the standards we
apply to other countries as before.
American military power remains uniquely formidable. The U.S. military bestrides the globe. But American power no longer serves to defend
allies, partners, and friends against a common enemy on behalf of jointly defined
interests.
In the 21st
century, the U.S. armed forces turned to unilateral American agendas. Washington replaced its previous emphasis on
supporting cooperative regimes – regardless of their character or ideology –
with a fixation on regime change in the name of democratization and other
ideologically or special interest-driven causes. Americans greatly reduced our development
assistance. We turned our energies to
the maintenance of our global military primacy, while cutting our investment in
all other aspects of foreign affairs.
For more than
two centuries, American exceptionalism had appealed to the angels of humanity’s
better nature. But, as the 21st
century advanced, foreigners began to see American claims to political
privilege and demands for legal immunity as instances of assertive irresponsibility. The result is steadily reduced foreign
support for the hegemonic privileges and double standards to which Americans
had come to feel entitled. Today, the
American conviction that other countries should be grateful to us and
supportive of our continuing global primacy clashes with the preference of
every other great power for a multipolar world order in which there is no
single world policeman.
We Americans
can and should be proud of what we accomplished when we led the world. Our leadership institutionalized
international norms that helped expand human liberty, foster unity to deter
aggression, deal with the causes and consequences of conflict, retard the
spread of nuclear weapons, and share the burdens of doing all this among
like-minded nations. American
initiatives created institutions that enabled the world to harmonize the rules
governing international transactions, lower barriers to trade and investment,
promote economic growth and efficiency, lift billions of people out of poverty,
improve corporate governance, facilitate the peaceful resolution of
commercial disputes, and respond to
systemic shocks that threatened global prosperity. We will not be alone in missing these fruits
of the Pax Americana.
In February
2018, given the thirteen-month-long festival of unintended consequences that is
the Trump administration, few still see the challenge to global order as
managing the consequences of the steady expansion of other nations’ power in
relation to the United States. The world
is now concerned to mitigate and offset the knock-on effects of the rapid
contraction of American global influence.
The 20th century was rightly called “the American
century.” The United States has turned
its back on it and is in a messy transition to something else.
As the
Canadian-American band, Buffalo Springfield, put it at another troubled moment
of transition, in 1966:
“There’s
something happening here.
“What it is
ain’t exactly clear.
“There’s a man
with a gun over there,
“tellin’ me I
got to beware.
“It's time we
stop. Hey, what's that sound?
“Everybody look
what's going down.”
Now, as
American global dominion recedes into history, we can begin to see some
elements of what is to come. If the 20th
century was America’s, the 21st will be nobody’s. We are witnessing a return to a world based on
regional, not global, balances of power.
“America First” invites “China first,” “India first,” “Japan first,”
“Pakistan first,” “Russia first.” Maybe
“Europe first,” if there is a Europe.
Great power rivalries are back, some of them between nations with
nuclear weapons. None wants to shoulder
the burdens of global hegemony on the American model. None seeks to impose its own model on the
world. But all are arming to preserve
their sovereignty, often against the perceived threat of American attempts at
regime change.
War is back as
an accepted means of adjusting the policies, borders, and international
alignments of nations. Afghanistan,
Iraq, Libya, and Syria have been thrust into anarchy by foreign
intervention. Israel is swallowing all
of Palestine. Serbia has lost Kosovo;
Ukraine has lost the Crimea. A Saudi-led
Arab coalition is devastating Yemen.
International law has been reduced to an instrument of accusatory
diatribe. It no longer regulates
national behavior.
The reversion
to the lawlessness of the premodern era is now well advanced. The armed forces of the United States are
directly or indirectly engaged in combat with Muslim militants in seventy-six
countries,[2]
often without regard for their sovereignty.
Nations like China, India, Russia, and Turkey are joining Americans and
the ex-imperial powers of Europe in establishing bases abroad from which they
can project their military power to regions remote from them. Once quiescent client states – like Egypt,
Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the U.A.E. – are on their own warpaths,
without regard to the policies of their American patrons or once-respected
principles of international law. The new
world disorder is one in which all fights are local, might commonly makes
right, refugees are plentiful, and American charitable responses to human
misery are newly wanting.
Meanwhile, the
central institutions of transnational cooperation – like the United Nations,
the World Bank, the World Trade Organization – are atrophying under the impact
of American disinterest, disengagement, and disinvestment. As Washington’s abdication of its previous
role in global governance has become ever more obvious, China and others have
begun to create organizations to complement and parallel those Americans set up
after World War II. Thus were born the
“BRICS bank,” the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and a host of special
funds directed at supporting connectivity on the Eurasian landmass under
China’s “Belt and Road Initiative.”
The continuing
U.S. retreat from forming, leading, or supporting multilateral structures and
arrangements is taking a toll on American prestige and abetting stagnation in
legacy institutions. It invites their
replacement or sidelining by groupings from which the United States is
absent. And, as we all know, if you’re
not at the table, you’re on the menu.
The so-called
“liberal rule-bound international order” is not dying, as some claim. It is evolving through a process that is not
being managed or led by the United States or any other Western power. Influence within the current international
state system is proportional to the investment, effort, and input made by its
members, not the past credentials or status of any single nation or grouping of
nations. Increasingly, the crucial
investments, efforts, and inputs come from China, India, and other rising
powers outside the North Atlantic region.
This is a break
from the pattern of the last five centuries, in which various Western nations,
including, latterly, the United States, ran things pretty much everywhere. It raises the question of how much of the old
order will be incorporated into the international state system of the future. For, like all instances of entropy in human
affairs, the current world disorder will, in due course, yield to
organization. Who organizes the new
system and how great a role Americans have in doing so will depend in part on
the quality of our vision, statecraft, and diplomatic engagement. We can command our fate, if we put our minds,
skills, money, and other resources to shaping it.
The United
States has not lost our natural endowment, which remains unmatched. We still have everything it takes to shape
the world to our advantage. We are remarkably
diverse. As Herman Melville observed,
“if you kill an American, you shed the blood of the whole world.” Our universities are widely considered the
world’s best. We have a heritage of
freedom and a record of resilience and invention. We are again the world’s greatest producer of
energy. Americans make up at most 1/24
of the world’s people but possess about 1/8 of its cropland and water
supplies. To our East and West, we are
sheltered by two great oceans. Until
recently, we enjoyed untroubled relationships with our neighbors to the North
and South, who saw no reason to consider turning against us. We have been able to call on allies
everywhere to add their strength to ours in pursuit of common objectives.
But, on every
level other than the promiscuous use of force, we are now underperforming. One wag has suggested that, in some
admittedly superficial ways, we have come to resemble Haiti in the 1920s. We have a populist president surrounded by
plutocrats and our country is run by the U.S. Marines. We do not deserve the boorish epithet our
president recently applied to Haiti any more than it does. But, sadly, we are no longer a society that
others seek to emulate. We are in the
midst of an American version of China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
-- the Great Plutocratic Cultural Reaction.
The 21st
century has subverted our republic and corroded our democracy. The shock and awe of 9/11 panicked us into
curtailing American liberties in the name of preserving them. The Congress supinely surrendered to the
president its constitutionally exclusive power to authorize wars of choice Successive presidents have launched an
unending series of military campaigns under the heading of the “global war on
terrorism.” They have financed – and continue
to finance – these consistently unsuccessful interventions through what amount
to credit rollovers. This practice has
eroded the general welfare. The
uncontrolled expansion of public debt threatens an ultimate systemic collapse
of the American economy and the society it sustains.
We look to
everyone else to deal with the refugees our botched military interventions have
displaced. Then we disparage those who respond for their foolish
generosity. Few Americans realize that,
over the past quarter century, the United States has been responsible, directly
or indirectly, for the premature deaths of some four million Muslims. This is a major reason for the metastasis of
anti-American terrorism with global reach.
Blowback from the havoc we are imposing abroad now disturbs our domestic
tranquility. This has led to the serious
further impairment of due process and civil liberty in the United States and
elsewhere.
We Americans
now seem to be entering one of our periodic “Red Scares,” recalling the xenophobia
and hysteria of the Palmer raids of 1919 - 1920 and the McCarthy era of 1947 -
1957. As a nation, we are in a whiny,
belligerent frame of mind. We blame
Russia for the way we vote. We are
working ourselves into a frenzy of machismo about China. We blame everybody but ourselves for the mess
in the Middle East, for our trade and balance of payments deficits, and for the
de-industrialization of our job market.
We are
dismissive of expertise, especially that of economists, the majority of whom tell
us that our problems derive from our pathetically inadequate national savings
rate, our disinvestment in our human and physical infrastructure, a
dysfunctional relationship between labor and management that favors outsourcing
to countries with cheap labor as a reaction to competition, shortcomings in the
way we retrain and find employment for workers displaced by automation, rising
income inequality, irrational immigration policies, the rake-offs and misdirection
of investment by a tax code designed to nurture and protect vested
interests, and gridlocked
government. It’s far easier to blame
foreigners in China, Mexico, Canada, Germany, Korea, or Japan for our
underachievement than to examine and change our own policies and practices.
But successful
foreigners are not the ones with the savings, trade, and investment
shortfalls. We are. Insisting that foreigners do things our way
might infect them with our problems. It
will not fix those problems. Nor will
declaring China or others “adversaries,” and hence active candidates to become
enemies in future wars make us safer.
“Taking names” is no substitute for cogent and persuasive argumentation
on international issues on which we have become isolated. The answer to Chinese mercantilism,
protectionism, and techno-nationalism cannot be a petty-minded American
obsession with bilateral trade balances, beggar-thy-neighbor economic
nationalism, or xenophobic investment controls.
We Americans need to pull up our socks and show that we can compete on
our own terms. And what are those terms?
As part of
preparing ourselves for the future, we must decide what elements of the
so-called “liberal rule-bound international order” we consider it worth making
a serious effort to restore or perpetuate.
What instruments of statecraft might enable us to make these principles
and practices part of the future as well as the past? How should we comport ourselves to accomplish
this? What must we be prepared to propose
and oppose?
The most
precious elements of the world we are exiting were its predictability, the
sense of personal and collective safety this supported, and the openings for
the realization of individual and societal potential that this afforded. The international state system promoted
comity -- respect by one country for the sovereignty, laws, judicial decisions,
and institutions of others – as well as cooperation between states. It was risk averse. It applied a facsimile of the rule of law to
its international participants. Even
those who, like the Chinese and Russians, came late to the rule-bound order
American leadership had built, prospered in it and saw their opportunities for
the pursuit of happiness expand.
This was the
result of an array of rules that set standards for acceptable international behavior. In ancient times, it was said that “the
strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” The evolution of international law that we
Americans led in the 20th century offered reassurance of protection
to the weak as well as a warning to the strong.
It helped damp down arms races and limit the risk of aggression by
larger states against their smaller neighbors.
As the post-Cold War era began, Iraq attempted to annex its smaller
neighbor, Kuwait. Under U.S. leadership,
the international community rallied to Kuwait’s defense. It did so as a matter of principle as well as
strategic interest.
The United
States now routinely denounces others for not observing rules we ourselves no
longer obey. This is weakening
constraints on the coercive behavior of states.
The precedents we have set through our use of assassination, drones,
cyber warfare, overt encouragement of insurrection in other countries, and the
imposition of unilateral controls on trade and investment are encouraging other
states to pursue their interests without regard to the rules we once
championed. This is not in our interest,
and not just because others, once they can, are likely to feel justified doing
to us what we are doing to them. We
cannot be sure that we will always have the upper hand in all
circumstances. Properly understood, the
golden rule is a security measure not to be lightly cast aside.
The rule of law
is Euro-American civilization’s greatest contribution to world affairs. Its value is widely appreciated outside the
Atlantic region but, in a world in which other traditions and values are
growing in influence, its survival is not assured. Can societies that do not practice the rule
of law at home really feel bound by it abroad?
The notion of a
rule-bound international order will surely not endure, still less prosper, if
the United States and Europe are not united in supporting it. But for Europeans and others, Guantánamo
symbolizes contemporary American contempt for due process and international law. The West will remain divided as long as the United States persists in our unilateral
suspensions of the rules governing prisoners of war, kidnapping, interrogation
through torture, and detention without charge, not to mention disregard for the
legality of wars of choice under both the United States constitution and
international law. American
reaffirmation of the traditional values of Western civilization is both
essential and urgent. Absent appropriate
engagement, other values may well displace ours.
Consider
China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” in this context. China has put forward a grand strategy to
apply its economic-commercial, financial, and diplomatic power to transform all
of the Eurasian landmass into a single geoeconomic zone. This will involve trillions of dollars in
investment in roads, railroads, pipelines, fiber-optic cables, ports, airports,
and industrial estates from the Azores to the Bering Strait and from
Archangelsk to Colombo. It entails
agreements on free trade, customs clearance, transport standards, and other
harmonizations of law and regulations between sixty-five countries. China is setting up specialized courts to
apply the standards embodied in these agreements to the resolution of
commercial disputes in the new, Eurasian geoeconomic zone.
What law – what
rules – will these courts apply? We are
talking about an area that embraces about two-thirds of the world’s population
and already accounts for two-fifths of its GDP.
That’s enough to determine much of the future world order. Will the United States be a participant or a
bystander as this order is forged? Will
we or will we not work with Europe and others to ensure that the legacy of
Atlantic civilization is consolidated in Eurasia as it reforms, opens up, and
peacefully develops into a single great region?
This brings me
to a delicate point: an intelligence
establishment that tells our leaders what they want to hear is worse than none
at all. It enables delusional reasoning
that misdirects policy planning to deal with the very real challenges our
country faces. The American body politic
has a bad habit of projecting our ambitions and fears onto others rather than
seeing them as they are. This can lead
to premature and counterproductive uses of force. Consider the run-up to the 2003 invasion of
Iraq, with its confident but bogus assertions about weapons of mass
destruction, al Qaeda, and the inadequacy of intrusive UN inspections, as well
as its attribution to Iraq’s neighbors of a sense of threat from it they did
not feel. Consider the politicians who still
ceaselessly rant about Iranian nuclear weapons programs while every
professional intelligence agency says these do not yet exist. “Fake news” now creates as well as repeats
fake intelligence. The world is suffering
from hypocrisy fatigue.
Our bloated
defense budget has ceased to be a response to any realistic challenge to the
United States or its interests. It is a
jobs program in which more is always better and justifications for spending
inflate to absorb the funds available.
Contrary to political rhetoric, our military is not undernourished. But every civilian element of our government
is experiencing politicization and deprofessionalization. The deterioration in our foreign affairs
capabilities stands out for its severity.
We are in a
period of transition to some sort of new world order. We can influence what it is, or just accept
what comes. Bravado backed by whiz-bang
weaponry and an empty wallet will not shape events to our advantage. There are no military solutions to most of
the challenges we face. But we are
creating conditions in which diplomatic incompetence makes it ever more likely
that we will have to put our military in play.
We will have failed to explore, let alone exhaust, the diplomatic
alternatives to doing so.
The “old days’
were not as wonderful as we would like to believe. But, with the right leadership and effort on
our part, the days to come need not be as bad as we now imagine. It is up to us to provide that leadership and
mount that effort.
I believe that
thinking Americans know what must be done.
Raise the national savings rate.
Boost investment in human and physical infrastructure. Elevate educational standards and revamp
vocational training. Unclog and remarketize
investment decisions by simplifying federal taxes and state and local
regulations. Reform labor-management
relations to incentivize raising productivity and retraining redundant
employees as an alternative to firing them and outsourcing their work to
foreigners. Study and adopt foreign best
practices, including for medical insurance and services. Sharpen our wits, ramp up our game, and
strive for excellence in statecraft and diplomacy as an alternative to
counterproductive efforts at military coercion of our rivals as well as our
allies, partners, and friends.
Somewhere in
the cold, dark of Maine in this season or elsewhere in our vast country, there
is someone who sees what we need and can lead us to do it. Americans await this leadership. We know it is out there. It is sorely needed. It is what is required to make America great
again. And that is an objective we all
share.
“It's time we
stop. Hey, what's that sound?
“Everybody
look what's going down.”
[1] Andorra, Belarus, Bolivia, Burundi, Central African
Republic, Chad, Congo, Republic of, Guatemala,
Ivory Coast, Kyrgyzstan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Mali, Marshall
Islands. Monaco, Mongolia, Paraguay, Sao Tome and Principe, Sweden, Tajikistan,
Uzbekistan, Vatican City.
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