Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power

The fact that by 2050 China will be a relatively middle-aged society, somewhat like today’s Japan—currently 22% of the latter’s population is aged sixty-five or older, and projections indicate that by midcentury so will be 25% of China’s—also justifies the hypothesis that such a change may not come as abruptly as in the case of societies with potentially explosive demographic youth bulges. Indeed, the changing demographic profile of a more middle- aged as well as middle-class China is likely to facilitate a more evolutionary adoption of political pluralism as a normal progression toward a more refined political culture, compatible with China’s traditions.

In that evolving historical context, America’s geopolitical role in the new East will have to be fundamentally different from its direct involvement in the renewal of the West. There, America is the essential source of the needed stimulus for geopolitical renovation and even territorial outreach. In Asia, an America cooperatively engaged in multilateral structures, cautiously supportive of India’s development, solidly tied to Japan and South Korea, and patiently expanding both bilateral as well as global cooperation with China is the best source of the balancing leverage needed for sustaining stability in the globally rising new East.

- CONCLUSION - AMERICA’S DUAL ROLE

During the first half of the first millennium—more than 1,500 years ago—the politics of the relatively civilized parts of Europe were largely dominated by the coexistence of the two distinct western and eastern halves of the Roman Empire. The western empire, with its capital most of the time in Rome, was beset by conflicts with marauding barbarians. With its troops permanently stationed abroad in extensive and expensive fortifications, the politically overextended Rome came close to bankrupting itself midway through the fifth century. Simultaneously, divisive conflicts between Christians and pagans sapped its social cohesion and heavy taxation and corruption crippled its economic vitality. In AD 476, with the fall of Romulus Augustus to the barbarians, the by-then moribund western Roman Empire officially collapsed. During the same period, the eastern Roman Empire—soon to become known as Byzantium—displayed more dynamism in its urbanization and economic growth while proving to be more successful in its diplomatic and security policies. After the fall of Rome, Byzantium continued to thrive for centuries. It reconquered parts of the old western empire and lived on—though later through much conflict—until the rise of the Ottoman Turks in the fifteenth century.

The importance of this historical diversion is as a point of contrast to the dynamics of the world in the twenty-first century. Rome’s dire travails in the middle of the fifth century did not damage Byzantium’s more hopeful prospects, because in those days the world was compartmentalized into distinct segments geographically isolated and politically and economically insulated from one another. The fate of one did not directly and immediately affect the prospects of the other. Today, with distance made irrelevant by rapid communications and instant financial transactions, the well-being of the economically, financially, and militarily most advanced parts of the world is becoming increasingly interdependent. In our time, unlike 1,500 years ago, the organic relationship between the West and the East can be either reciprocally cooperative or mutually damaging.

Thus, America’s central challenge and its geopolitically imperative mission over the next several decades is to revitalize itself and to promote a larger and more vital West while simultaneously buttressing a complex balance in the East, so as to accommodate constructively China’s rising global status and avert global chaos. Without a stable geopolitical balance in Eurasia promoted by a renewed America, progress on the issues of central importance to social well-being and ultimately to human survival would stall. America’s failure to pursue an ambitious transcontinental geopolitical vision would likely accelerate the decline of the West and prompt more instability in the East. In Asia, national rivalries, foremost between China and India and Japan, would contribute to greater regional tensions while eventually intensifying the latent hostility between China and America, to the detriment of both.

Alternatively, a successful American effort to enlarge the West, making it the world’s most stable and also most democratic zone, would seek to combine power with principle. A cooperative larger West, extending from North America through Europe into Eurasia and embracing Russia as well as Turkey, would geographically reach Japan, the first Asian state to embrace democracy successfully, as well as South Korea. That wider outreach would enhance the appeal of its core principles to other cultures, and thus encourage the gradual emergence in the decades ahead of varied forms of a universal democratic political culture.

At the same time, America should continue to engage cooperatively in the energetic and financially influential but also potentially conflicted East. If America and China can accommodate each other on a broad range of issues, the prospects for stability in Asia will be greatly increased. That is likely to be the case especially if the United States can at the same time encourage a genuine reconciliation between Japan—its principal Pacific Ocean ally— and China, as well as mitigate the growing rivalry between China and India. These concurrent goals are important because one should not lose sight of the fact that Asia is much more than China. US policy in the East has to take into account that the quest for a stable Asian equilibrium cannot be confined to a China-centric concentration on a special partnership with Beijing, desirable as that is.

Hence to respond effectively in both the western and eastern parts of Eurasia, America must adopt a dual role. It must be the promoter and guarantor of greater and broader unity in the West, and it must be the balancer and conciliator between the major powers in the East. Both roles are essential and each is needed to reinforce the other. But to have the credibility and the capacity to pursue both successfully, America needs to show the world that it has the will to renovate itself at home. Leaving aside the increasingly questionable statistical presumption that current national rates of growth will continue indefinitely for decades, Americans must place greater emphasis on other dimensions of national power such as innovation, education, the ability to balance intelligently force and diplomacy, the quality of political leadership, and the attraction of a democratic life- style.

For America to succeed as the promoter and guarantor of a renewed West, close American-European ties, a continuing US commitment to NATO, and careful American-European management of a step-by-step process of embracing, perhaps in varying ways, both Turkey and a truly democratizing Russia into the West will be essential. The United States must encourage the deeper unification of the European Union and guarantee its geopolitical relevance by remaining active in European security, while pushing Europe to increase its own political and military activity. The close cooperation between Britain, France, and Germany—Europe’s central political, economic, and military alignment—should continue and broaden. Additionally, the expanding German-French-Polish consultations regarding Europe’s eastern policy—critical to the EU’s eastern accommodation and expansion—must simultaneously strengthen and expand. America is the critical source of historical stimulus for this project because without its active presence the new and still fragile European unity could fragment.

In strategically engaging Russia while safeguarding Western unity, the French-German-Polish “Weimar triangle” can play a constructive role in advancing and consolidating the ongoing but still tenuous reconciliation between Poland and Russia. Franco-German support for this reconciliation would both enhance Poland’s sense of security and reassure Russia that the process has a larger European dimension. Only then might the much desirable Russian-Polish reconciliation become truly comprehensive, as the German-Polish one has already become, and both reconciliations would then contribute to greater stability in Europe. But in order for the Polish-Russian reconciliation to be productive and enduring, it has to move from the governmental level to the social level, through extensive people-to-people contacts and numerous joint educational initiatives. Expedient accommodations by governments, not grounded in basic changes in popular attitudes, will not last. In 1939, Hitler’s Nazi regime in Germany and Stalin’s regime in Soviet Russia made such a grand accommodation, yet two years later they were at war.

In contrast, the post–World War II Franco-German friendship, while initiated at the highest levels (with both General de Gaulle and Chancellor Adenauer playing historical roles), was also successfully promoted on the social and cultural level. Even respective French and German national narratives have become fundamentally compatible, providing a solid base for genuinely good neighborly relations—and thus a firm foundation for a peaceful alliance. Exactly the same process needs repetition in the Polish-Russian case, and once it gains momentum it will generate its own positive international effects. Poland, moreover, could then play not only a critical role in opening the doors of Europe to Russia but also in encouraging Ukraine and Belarus to move in the same direction on their own, thus