Pearls and Irritations

Some US commentators are advocating a recalibration of America’s full-spectrum global posture, while others, including Condoleezza Rice, energetically beg to differ – naturally for the good of the world.

One apparent example from the first category (recalibration) is a recent essay in the journal, Foreign Policy, by Michael Hirsh. He reviews two books written, we are told, by close advisers of the Democratic Party’s new presidential candidate, Kamala Harris (replacing the 81-year-old, Joe Biden, who was ardently persuaded to step aside).

First there is: “An Open World: How America Can Win the Contest for 21^st Century Order” co-written by Rebecca Lissner and Mira Rapp-Hooper published in 2020.  Next: “Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East”, written by Philip Gordon, published in the same year.

Hirsh notes how, previously, Harris essentially invoked:

“The same hegemonic world view that every American President has embraced since World War II.  As Harris put it in a 2023 speech — quoting a favourite phrase of Biden’s — ‘a strong America remains indispensable to the world’.”

Now, though, he suggests, real change may be afoot, arguing that:

“The United States may be downgraded to a humbler status if Harris is elected president in November, based on the thinking of her chief advisers”.

Yet Lissner and Rapp-Hooper still argue that, as the Western-crusading, “unipolar” moment wanes:

“A new, more open system would still have to guarantee an ’accessible global commons’ where the US would remain ‘indispensable’ as it is the only country that can guarantee such an open system.” 

As such a system would have to accommodate “autocratic and illiberal regimes” it would need American policing, according to this argument. For the rest of the world — and especially the Global South — this claim, today, stands eviscerated. What American global-policing credibility is left after anyone seriously considers how the US has “policed” Israel as it prosecutes its vengeful, unending, brutal Gaza genocide?

Would a Trump presidency make any difference?  Not a lot, it seems, as Trump is likely “to continue to downgrade the United States’ global policeman role”, according to Hirsh.

Moreover, in his conclusion, Hirsh, still feels the need to embrace indispensability:

“Given the ongoing crises around the world — especially in Europe, the Middle East, and possibly East Asia if the Taiwan issue heats up — it’s highly questionable whether the United States can adjust downwards when there is no other power that even comes close to approaching Washington’s global sway.”

This seems a curious way to finish an article entitled, “Preparing for a Less Arrogant America”.

Another less equivocal article advocating an American re-setting of its global posture, to maintain a balance of power favourable to the US (rather than full spectrum dominance) has also lately been published in Foreign Policy: “The ‘Axis of Evil’ is Overhyped”, by Daniel R. DePetris and Jennifer Kavanagh.  Refreshingly absent from this analysis are otherwise routine American exhortations to advance ideological loathing of a designated “shared enemy”.

The authors detail a range of more specific adjustments, before concluding that:

“Instead of treating these four powers as a unified bloc, policymakers should pursue differentiated strategies that address the unique challenges posed by each country and target the bilateral exchanges of greatest concern. Specifically, rather than relying so heavily on broad economic and financial sanctions, US policymakers should experiment with positive inducements that exploit the diverging ambitions of the four countries. Iran and North Korea, for instance, may be willing to limit military transfers to Russia in return for the relaxation of existing economic restrictions or limited cooperation on infrastructure development and commercial technologies. China, which may feel disenfranchised by the current US-led international system, could be enticed into curtailing technology sharing with Russia or North Korea in exchange for inclusion in new multilateral forums and a greater decision-making stake in global governance.

“Such moves would face opposition, especially from those attached to the axis of evil framing. China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia would all prefer an international order that isn’t dominated by the United States, but the worst thing that Washington can do is overhype the threat of their alliance. That would be a major disservice to the core objectives of US grand strategy: maintaining a favorable global balance of power, minimising the risk of becoming entangled in needless conflict, and preserving opportunities to build better relationships with these states if the geopolitical landscape shifts in the future”.

The final sentence is ambiguous, perhaps deliberately so.  Do DePetris and Kavanagh include America as one of the states that may change to help build better geopolitical relationships in the future? It is, inescapably, the key state which needs to change in this way.

Perpetual dominance

The recent Foreign Affairs essay by Condoleezza Rice provides an indicative example of how those who remain conspicuous members of the majority, indispensable-nation brigade, think about American global dominance.

Rice’s article is long and winding, factually slack in places and it recurrently relies on dark-authoritarian versus noble-democracy cliches. Although it is not a particularly easy read, it is an essay written by a former US Secretary of State (from 2005 to 2009, under President George W. Bush) and so is something of a flagship statement.

It begins by telling us that: “The World Still Needs America – and America Still Needs the World”, later explaining that, “Great power DNA is still very much in the American genome”.

Unsurprisingly, boilerplate denigration of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea garnish the extended narrative, which means that, “Washington will need to maintain economic pressure on the revisionist powers. It should continue isolating Russia, with an eye toward arresting Beijing’s creeping support for the Kremlin”.  Though, caution is advised, as blunt sanctions imposed on China, “would be ineffective and counterproductive, crippling the US economy in the process”.

However, while still considering East Asia, Rice candidly observes that, “An attack on Taiwan would require a US military response, even if the policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ created uncertainty about the exact nature of it’.”  Which raises the question, how could today’s Canberra possibly hope to protect Australia from being sucked into this projected, bombs-away, American “solution-attack” on our paramount trading partner?

Rice also coldly holds a “hot dogging” Chinese pilot responsible for forcing a US reconnaissance plane to land (safely) in China – while it was spying on China.  Airbrushed is the fact that this “hot dogging” pilot was killed as a direct consequence of this mid-air encounter.

Here is how Rice brings her sprawling argument to a close:

“The new Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse — populism, nativism, isolationism, and protectionism — tend to ride together, and they are challenging the political centre. Only the United States can counter their advance and resist the temptation to go back to the future. But generating support for an internationalist foreign policy requires a president to paint a vivid picture of what that world would be like without an active United States.

“The future will be determined by the alliance of democratic, free-market states or it will be determined by the revisionist powers, harking back to a day of territorial conquest abroad and authoritarian practices at home. There is simply no other option”.

The current US President, Joe Biden, would surely nod in agreement.  In a recent major interview he told the news-anchor that “I’m running the world”.

Although the swollen stridency of the Rice article (echoed in countless similar American presentations – and policy documents) suggests wobbling hegemony-confidence in Washington, the US remains the most warlike country in the world – as former US President Jimmy Carter observed in 2019.

Conclusion

There are signs that guarded intellectual reconsideration of America’s “full spectrum global dominance” has begun within limited quarters in the US. 

But, as John Menadue recently noted, America continues to be “the most violent, aggressive country in the world today”. At about the same time, Daryl Guppy documented the ways in which NATO now “threatens Asia-Pacific stability” as it seeks “to manufacture an excuse for war” in East Asia.

This same US-driven, NATO threat prompted the leading Singaporean commentator, Kishore Mahbubani, to point out, in July: “The Pacific has no need of the destructive militaristic culture of the Atlantic alliance.”

Meanwhile, Ian Shaw, of Glasgow University argues that America stills operates a “predator empire”.  Caitlin Johnstone agrees, emphasising how the Democratic Party is even more hawkish than the Trump-led Republicans, notwithstanding confected, DP “celebrity progressive” arguments to the contrary.

Next, Philip Giraldi lately documented how “America’s search for new enemies” — a feature of US geopolitical thinking for around 80 years — remains intense today.

Notwithstanding watchful, minority, internal reflections on American global hegemony, the rest of the world continues to face, for the foreseeable future, what looks like (borrowing a term from Peter Hehir) a “left-right barking mad marching machine”.

Thus, as Eugene Doyle argues, “exiting Pax Americana” looks by far the most sensible course for Australia – and New Zealand.  How to manage this when a supine Canberra has turned Australia into an “indentured [American] state”? That is the question.