The
new game
American
dominance is being challenged
GREAT-POWER POLITICS
OCT 17 2015
A CONTINENT
separates the blood-soaked battlefields of Syria from the reefs and
shoals that litter the South China Sea. In their different ways,
however, both places are witnessing the most significant shift in
great-power relations since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In Syria, for the
first time since the cold war, Russia has deployed its forces far
from home to quell a revolution and support a client regime. In the
waters between Vietnam and the Philippines, America will soon signal
that it does not recognise China’s territorial claims over a host
of outcrops and reefs by exercising its right to sail within the
12-mile maritime limit that a sovereign state controls.
For the past 25
years America has utterly dominated great-power politics.
Increasingly, it lives in a contested world. The new game with Russia
and China that is unfolding in Syria and the South China Sea is a
taste of the struggle ahead.
Facts
on the ground
As ever, that
struggle is being fought partly in terms of raw power. Vladimir Putin
has intervened in Syria to tamp down jihadism and to bolster his own
standing at home. But he also means to show that, unlike America,
Russia can be trusted to get things done in the Middle East and win
friends by, for example, offering Iraq an alternative to the United
States (see page 56). Lest anyone presume with John McCain, an
American senator, that Russia is just “a gas station masquerading
as a country”, Mr Putin intends to prove that Russia possesses
resolve, as well as crack troops and cruise missiles.
The struggle is also
over legitimacy. Mr Putin wants to discredit America’s stewardship
of the international order. America argues that popular discontent
and the Syrian regime’s abuses of human rights disqualify the
president, Bashar al-Assad, from power. Mr Putin wants to play down
human rights, which he sees as a licence for the West to interfere in
sovereign countries—including, if he ever had to impose a brutal
crackdown, in Russia itself.
Power and legitimacy
are no less at play in the South China Sea, a thoroughfare for much
of the world’s seaborne trade. Many of its islands, reefs and
sandbanks are subject to overlapping claims. Yet China insists that
its case should prevail, and is imposing its own claim by using
landfill and by putting down airstrips and garrisons.
This is partly an
assertion of rapidly growing naval might: China is creating islands
because it can. Occupying them fits into its strategy of dominating
the seas well beyond its coast. Twenty years ago American warships
sailed there with impunity; today they find themselves in potentially
hostile waters (see pages 67-69). But a principle is at stake, too.
America does not take a view on who owns the islands, but it does
insist that China should establish its claims through negotiation or
international arbitration. China is asserting that in its region, for
the island disputes as in other things, it now sets the rules.
Nobody should wonder
that America’s pre-eminence is being contested. After the Soviet
collapse the absolute global supremacy of the United States sometimes
began to seem normal. In fact, its dominance reached such heights
only because Russia was reeling and China was still emerging from the
chaos and depredations that had so diminished it in the 20th century.
Even today, America remains the only country able to project power
right across the globe. (As we have recently argued, its sway over
the financial system is still growing.)
There is
nevertheless reason to worry. The reassertion of Russian power spells
trouble. It has already led to the annexation of Crimea and the
invasion of eastern Ukraine—both breaches of the very same
international law that Mr Putin says he upholds in Syria (see page
46). Barack Obama, America’s president, takes comfort from Russia’s
weak economy and the emigration of some of its best people. But a
declining nuclear-armed former superpower can cause a lot of harm.
Relations between
China and America are more important—and even harder to manage. For
the sake of peace and prosperity, the two must be able to work
together. And yet their dealings are inevitably plagued by rivalry
and mistrust. Because every transaction risks becoming a test of
which one calls the shots, antagonism is never far below the surface.
American foreign
policy has not yet adjusted to this contested world. For the past
three presidents, policy has chiefly involved the export of American
values—although, to the countries on the receiving end, that
sometimes felt like an imposition. The idea was that countries would
inevitably gravitate towards democracy, markets and human rights.
Optimists thought that even China was heading in that direction.
Still worth it
That notion has
suffered, first in Iraq and Afghanistan and now the wider Middle
East. Liberation has not brought stability. Democracy has not taken
root. Mr Obama has seemed to conclude that America should pull back.
In Libya he led from behind; in Syria he has held off. As a result,
he has ceded Russia the initiative in the Middle East for the first
time since the 1970s.
All those, like this
newspaper, who still see democracy and markets as the route to peace
and prosperity hope that America will be more willing to lead. Mr
Obama’s wish that other countries should share responsibility for
the system of international law and human rights will work only if
his country sets the agenda and takes the initiative—as it did with
Iran’s nuclear programme. The new game will involve tough diplomacy
and the occasional judicious application of force.
America still has
resources other powers lack. Foremost is its web of alliances,
including NATO. Whereas Mr Obama sometimes behaves as if alliances
are transactional, they need solid foundations. America’s military
power is unmatched, but it is hindered by pork-barrel politics and
automatic cuts mandated by Congress. These spring from the biggest
brake on American leadership: dysfunctional politics in Washington.
That is not just a poor advertisement for democracy; it also stymies
America’s interest. In the new game it is something that the United
States—and the world—can ill afford.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário