The waning of U.S. hegemony-myth or reality? A review essay

International Security

Volumn 34, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 147-172

  Layne, Christopher ^a  

^a TEXAS A AND M UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 70349484490     PISSN: 01622889     EISSN: 15314804     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/isec.2009.34.1.147     Document Type: Article

References (218)

1. Charles Krauthammer, "The Unipolar Moment," Foreign Affairs-America and the World, 1990, special issue, Vol. 70, No. 1 (1990/91), pp. 25-33.
2. For example, the George H.W. Bush administration's draft Defense Planning Guidance for fiscal years 1994-99 stated that the United States "must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role." "Excerpts from Pentagon's Plan: 'Prevent the Re-emergence of a New Rival,'" New York Times, March 8, 1992;
3. Patrick E. Tyler, "U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop," New York Times, March 8, 1992. The Clinton administration declared that the United States is "the world's preeminent power."
4. William J. Clinton, A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement (Washington, D.C.: White House, February 1995). According to the George W. Bush administration, the aim of U.S. grand strategy is to prevent any other power from "surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States."
5. George W. Bush, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, D.C.: White House, September 2002), p. 30.
6. During her confirmation hearings, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the Obama administration's overriding foreign policy aim will be to "strengthen America's position of global leadership." Quoted in Daniel Dombey, "Clinton Aims for Pragmatic Diplomacy," Financial Times, January 14, 2009.
7. The United States acted as offensive realism predicts: its ambitions expanded as its relative power increased. On offensive realism, see John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001);
8. Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006);
9. Fareed Zakaria, From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America's World Role (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998)
10. Eric J. Labs, "Beyond Victory: Offensive Realism the Expansion of War Aims," Security Studies, Vol. 6, No. 4 (Summer 1997), pp. 1-49;
11. Christopher Layne, "The 'Poster Child for Offensive Realism': America as a Global Hegemon," Security Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Winter 2002/03), pp. 120-164;
12. Christopher Layne, "U.S. Hegemony and the Perpetuation of NATO," Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 23, No. 3 (September 2000), pp. 59-91.
13. For an overview of this debate, see Michael E. Brown, Owen R. Coté Jr., Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller, eds., Primacy and Its Discontents: American Power and International Stability (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2009).
14. Christopher Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise," International Security, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Spring 1993), pp. 5-51;
15. Kenneth N. Waltz, "The Emerging Structure of International Politics," International Security, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Fall 1993), pp. 44-79.
16. For discussion of why balance of power neorealists got it wrong, see Christopher Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion Revisited: The Coming End of the United States' Unipolar Moment," International Security, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Fall 2006), pp. 7-41.
17. See Robert A. Pape, "Soft Balancing against the United States," International Security, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Summer 2005), pp. 7-45;
18. T.V. Paul, "Soft Balancing in the Age of U.S. Primacy," International Security, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Summer 2005), pp. 46-71;
19. Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, "Hard Times for Soft Balancing," International Security, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Summer 2005), pp. 72-108;
20. Keir A. Lieber and Gerard Alexander, "Waiting for Balancing: Why the World Is Not Pushing Back," International Security, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Summer 2005), pp. 109-139.
21. See Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, World Out of Balance: International Relations and the Challenge of U.S. Primacy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008);
22. William C. Wohlforth, "The Stability of a Unipolar World," International Security, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Summer 1999), pp. 5-41;
23. William C. Wohlforth, "U.S. Strategy in a Unipolar World," in G. John Ikenberry, ed., America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002), pp. 98-120;
24. Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, "American Primacy in Perspective," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81, No. 4 (July/August 2002), pp. 20-33.
25. See, for example, see Michael Mastanduno, "Preserving the Unipolar Moment: Realist Theories and U.S. Grand Strategy after the Cold War," International Security, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Spring 1997), pp. 49-88.
26. The seminal work on balance of threat theory is Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987).
27. Ikenberry, America Unrivaled especially the chapters by Ikenberry, "Democracy, Institutions, and American Restraint";
28. Thomas Risse, "U.S. Power in a Liberal Security Community";
29. John M. Owen IV, "Transnational Liberalism and American Primacy: or, Benignity Is in the Eye of the Beholder";
30. Ikenberry, "Conclusion";
31. Joseph S. Nye Jr., Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (New York: Basic Books, 1990);
32. Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004);
33. Stephen M. Walt, Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005);
34. G. John Ikenberry, "Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Persistence of American Postwar Order," International Security, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Winter 1998/99), pp. 43-78.
35. See also John M. Owen IV, "Transnational Liberalism and U.S. Primacy," International Security, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Winter 2001/02), pp. 117-152.
36. Owen puts a distinctive constructivist/group identity twist on the standard liberal argument, asserting that the causal mechanism enabling U.S. primacy is that political elites in many other countries share America's liberal values. As he puts it, "Liberal elites the world over tend to perceive a relatively broad coincidence of interest between their country and other liberal countries. They tend to interpret the United States as benign and devote few state resources to counterbalancing it. In turn, the liberals who govern the United States tend to treat other liberal countries relatively benignly" (p. 121).
37. Liberal elites, he argues, "identify with one another's successes," and therefore because "the United States is the leading liberal country, its unprecedented power engenders in most non-American liberals not fear but acquiescence (actual if not rhetorical)" (p. 151).
38. G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of International Order after Major Wars (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001);
39. G. John Ikenberry, Liberal Order and Imperial Ambition (Cambridge: Polity, 2006);
40. Walt, Taming American Power;
41. G. John Ikenberry, "Getting Hegemony Right," National Interest, No. 63 (Spring 2001), pp. 17-24.
42. See, for example, Andrew Bacevich, American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002);
43. Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire (New York: Penguin, 2005);
44. Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York: Metropolitan, 2000);
45. Christopher Layne and Bradley A. Thayer, American Empire: A Debate (New York: Routledge, 2006);
46. Charles S. Maier, Among Empires: American Ascendency and Its Predecessors (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006).
47. In December 2007, the Financial Times editorialized that because of the specter of future inflation eroding its value, "the primacy of the dollar is no longer to be taken for granted." "It's a Multi-Currency World We Live In," Financial Times, December 26, 2007.
48. See also Daniel Dombey, "America Faces a Diplomatic Penalty as the Dollar Dwindles," Financial Times, December 27, 2007;
49. "Losing Faith in the Greenback-The Falling Dollar," Economist, December 1, 2007. With respect to the end of unipolarity, in December 2007 Secretary of Defense Robert Gates declared, "We are in a multipolar world now." Quoted in Jim Hoagland, "A Gates-Style Thaw," Washington Post, December 16, 2007.
50. On multipolarity, see also Fred Kaplan, "Downsizing Our Dominance," Los Angeles Times, February 3, 2008
51. National Intelligence Council (NIC), Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, November, 2008).
52. In addition to the rising great powers, states such as Iran and Turkey could emerge as important regional actors. These are part of what Parag Khanna calls the "second world." Khanna, The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order (New York: Random House, 2008).
53. For China, potential hurdles to great power emergence include environmental degradation, corruption, an inadequate social safety net, and growing income disparities (especially between the rural interior and the prosperous coastal regions). NIC, Global Trends 2025, pp. 29-30.
54. Also, if China's growth does not rebound quickly from the global economic downturn, massive unemployment could threaten domestic social and political stability. For India, impediments to great power status could include both economic factors (inadequate infrastructure and shortages of skilled labor) and political factors (domestic political fragmentation and regional and ethnic insurgencies). Ibid., pp. 30-31.
55. As the NIC points out, Russia could be a geopolitical winner from global climate change. At the same time, however, although "demography is not destiny," the NIC notes that Russia faces demographic challenges, including an underpopulated Siberia, a rising percentage of Muslims in its population, and a sharp contraction in population (ibid., pp. 31-32, 52). Nevertheless, notwithstanding projected demographic decline, in 2025 Russia still will be the most populous state in Europe.
56. David Barboza, "China Urges New Money Reserve to Replace the Dollar," New York Times, March 23, 2009;
57. Jamil Anderlini, "China Wants to Oust Dollar as International Reserve Currency," Financial Times, March 24, 2009;
58. Andrew Batson, "China Takes Aim at Dollar," Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2009. China's proposals are attributable partly to its fear that the value of its huge dollar holdings is undermined by the United States' bleak long-term fiscal prospects. Michael Wines, Keith Bradsher, and Mark Landler, "China's Leader Says He Is 'Worried' over U.S. Treasuries," New York Times, March 13, 2009.
59. Michael Wines, Keith Bradsher, and Mark Landler, "China's Leader Says He Is 'Worried' over U.S. Treasuries," New York Times, March 13, 2009.
60. As the NIC states, "We anticipate that arms races, territorial expansion, and military rivalries that characterized the late 19th-century multipolarity will be less significant in the emerging one, but we cannot rule out such possibilities." NIC, Global Trends 2025, p. 82.
61. The risk of great power competition to control energy resources is especially great in Central Asia. Ibid.
62. Given that students of great power politics are concerned with the relative power positions of rival states, it is perplexing that Zakaria-author of a widely praised scholarly book about the United States' rise to great power status-suggests that other states can rise without a corresponding decline in U.S. relative power.
63. Sometimes described as the "Beijing Consensus," China's socioeconomic model emphasizes state-directed, top-down economic development and subordinates political liberalization to economic reforms that stimulate growth and modernization. The term was coined in Joshua Cooper Ramo, The Beijing Consensus (London: Foreign Policy Center, 2004).
64. As Zakaria argues, "The United States does face larger, deeper, and broader challenges than it has ever faced in its history, and the rise of the rest does mean that it will lose some share of global GDP. But the process will look nothing like Britain's slide in the twentieth century, when the country lost the lead in innovation, energy, and entrepreneurship. America will remain a vital, vibrant economy, at the forefront of the next revolutions in science technology, and industry-as long as it can embrace and adjust to the challenges confronting it." Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World (New York: W.W. Norton, 2008), p. 182. In fairness, Zakaria completed his book before the magnitude of the current global economic and financial crisis was fully apparent.
65. Zakaria acknowledges that his work on foreign policy prescriptions build on that of Ikenberry, Josef Joffe, Nye, and Wohlforth. He specifically cites G. John Ikenberry, "The Rise of China and the Future of the West," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 87, No. 1 (January/February 2008), pp. 23-37;
66. Josef Joffe, "How America Does It," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 5 (September/October 1997), pp. 13-27;
67. Wohlforth, "Stability of a Unipolar World." Zakaria, Post-American World, pp. 232-235, 241.
68. As Kishore Mahbubani says, "The past twenty years have probably seen some of the greatest changes in world history. The biggest shift is that the 88 percent of the world's populations who live outside the West have stopped being the objects of world history and have become its subjects. They have decided to take control of their own destinies and not have their destinies determined by Western-dominated global processes and institutions. They believe that the time has come for the West to cease its continuing domination of the globe." Mahbubani, The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East (New York: PublicAffairs, 2008), p. 125.
69. Mahbubani believes that in Asia, China is beating the United States at the soft power game. Ibid., pp. 229-234.
70. As Mahbubani states, although for the West the "idea that freedom can be relative and can indeed take many forms is alien," for Asians, "if they compare their lives today with their lives a few decades ago-they have achieved much greater freedom." Ibid., p. 134.
71. Mahbubani argues that the "role and purpose" of the major multilateral international institutions "has been distorted by the Western powers." Ibid., p. 114. For his critique of Western competence in managing the international system, see chap. 5.
72. As Khanna sees the world, Russia, Japan, and India will be distinctly subordinate players in the great game of geopolitics. The Second World, p. xvi.
73. Khanna argues, "The world's superpower map is being rebalanced-but without a single center. By challenging America's position in the global hierarchy and securing allies and loyalty around the world, the EU and China have engineered a palpable shift toward three relatively equal centers of influence: Washington, Brussels, and Beijing." Ibid., p. xv.
74. Ibid., pp. 260-261. Khanna echoes the Mackinder versus Mahan debate about land power versus naval supremacy
75. See H.J. Mackinder, "The Geographical Pivot of History," Geographical Journal, Vol. 22, No. 4 (April 1904), pp. 421-437;
76. A.T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1939);
77. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London: Ashfield, 1983), pp. 177-204;
78. Nicholas J. Spykman, America's Strategy in World Politics: The United States and the Balance of Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1942).
79. As the authors state, "Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, no other power-not Japan, China, India, or Russia, nor any European country, nor the EU-has increased its capabilities sufficiently to transform itself into a pole." Brooks and Wohlforth, World Out of Balance, p. 13.
80. For the authors' definition of "structural constraints," see ibid., pp. 13-15.
81. As Brooks and Wohlforth describe it, theirs is an argument based on opportunity costs: "After all, hemming in the United States is not the only motivation of other states. They seek economic growth, local security, and other objectives that may be compromised by attempts to constrain the United States, especially if they provoke retaliation." Ibid., p. 63.
82. Here, as Brooks and Wohlforth acknowledge, they are building on Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). Ibid., p. 215.
83. As Brooks and Wohlforth state, "The unprecedented concentration of power resources in the United States generally renders inoperative the constraining effects of the systemic properties long central to research in international relations. Given the likely longevity of American primacy, this general finding has important repercussions for thinking about international relations scholarship and U.S. foreign policy." Ibid., p. 3.
84. See World Politics, special issue, Vol. 61, No. 1 (January 2009).
85. Wohlforth argues for unipolar stability. Wohlforth, "Unipolarity, Status Competition, and Great Power War," pp. 28-57. Although they approach the issue from different theoretical perspectives, both Martha Finnemore and Stephen M. Walt argue that the United States should exercise self-restraint and bolster the legitimacy of its hegemony by acting multilaterally.
86. See Finnemore, "Legitimacy, Hypocrisy, and the Social Structure of Unipolarity: Why Being a Unipole Isn't all Its Cracked Up to Be," pp. 58-85;
87. Walt, "Alliances in a Unipolar World," pp. 86-120.
88. See Pape, "Soft Balancing against the United States";
89. Paul, "Soft Balancing in the Age of U.S. Primacy";
90. Lieber and Alexander, "Waiting for Balancing."
91. Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion";
92. Waltz "The Emerging Structure of International Politics."
93. Walt, Taming American Power
94. Walt, "Keeping the World Off Balance."
95. Their argument is actually tautological: in a unipolar world, they say, the lopsided concentration of power in the unipole's favor makes counterbalancing impossible. In other words, the world will remain unipolar because it is unipolar. John Owen noted this flaw several years ago. See Owen, "Transnational Liberalism and U.S. Primacy," p. 118 n. 3.
96. See Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics
97. Joshua Goldstein, Long Cycles: Prosperity and War in the Modern Age (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988);
98. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987);
99. George Modelski and William R. Thompson, Leading Sectors and World Politics: The Coevolution of Global Economics and Politics (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996).
100. Brooks and Wohlforth, World Out of Balance, pp. 17, 218. In a recent piece, Wohlforth and his coauthors admit that "unipolarity will not last indefinitely."
101. G. John Ikenberry, Michael Mastanduno, and William C. Wohlforth, "Unipolarity, State Behavior, and Systemic Consequences," World Politics, Vol. 61, No. 1 (January 2009), p. 4. In light of this admission, Brooks and Wohlforth's failure to provide signposts that would enable scholars and policymakers to recognize the key transition points from unipolarity to multipolarity is a glaring omission.
102. Brooks and Wohlforth conflate a systemic outcome (the lack of a balance of power in a unipolar world) with unit-level behavior (ongoing balancing by states). See Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion Revisited."
103. Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics;
104. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
105. For overviews of this economic shift, and its possible geopolitical consequences, see Bill Emmott, Rivals: How the Power Struggle between China, India, and Japan Will Shape Our Next Decade (Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt, 2008);
106. James Kynge, China Shakes the World: A Titan's Rise and Troubled Future-And the Challenge for America (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006);
107. William H. Overholt, Asia, America, and the Transformation of Geopolitics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
108. Space constraints do not permit discussion of the great power prospects for India, Japan, Russia, and the EU. I focus on China because it is closest to becoming a new pole of power; there is increasing speculation about whether China's rise will lead to Sino-American conflict; and, in contrast to the doubts about great power prospects of the others, there is widespread agreement that China is close to becoming a peer competitor of the United States.
109. Brooks andWohlforth, World Out of Balance, pp. 40-45.
110. On China's great power rise, see Robert Ross and Zhu Feng, eds., China's Ascent: Power, Security, and the Future of International Politics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008);
111. David Michael Lampton, The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money, and Minds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008);
112. Bates Gill, Rising Star: China's New Security Diplomacy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2007);
113. Avery Goldstein, Rising to the Challenge: China's Grand Strategy and International Security (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2005);
114. Aaron L. Friedberg, "The Future of U.S.-China Relations: Is Conflict Inevitable?" International Security, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Fall 2005), pp. 7-45;
115. Thomas J. Christensen, "Fostering Stability or Creating a Monster? The Rise of China and U.S. Policy toward East Asia," International Security, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Summer 2006), pp. 81-126.
116. These include defense spending; defense spending as a percentage of total great power defense expenditures; defense research and development spending; defense spending as a percentage of GDP; GDP; GDP per capita; and GDP as a percentage of great power GDP. See Brooks and Wohlforth, World Out of Balance, pp. 27-35.
117. Geoff Dyer, "China Moves Up Economic League Table," Financial Times, January 15, 2009;
118. Peter Marsh, "China Reverting to Form as the World's Workshop," Financial Times, August 11, 2008
119. See Dominic Wilson and Roopa Purushothaman, "Dreaming with BRICs: The Path to 2050," Goldman Sachs. Global Economics Paper, No. 99 (New York: Goldman Sachs, October 1, 2003), pp. 3, 10.
120. See Jim O'Neill, head of Global Economic Research, Goldman Sachs, video interview, February 2008, http://www2.goldmansachs.com/ideas/brics/index.html.
121. Economist Intelligence Unit, "All Country Data Set," April 20, 2009, http://store.eiu.com/products.html.
122. On power transition theory, see A.F.K. Organski, World Politics (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968);
123. A.F.K. Organski and Jacek Kugler, The War Ledger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980);
124. Jacek Kugler and Douglas Lemke, eds., Parity and War: Evaluations and Extensions of the War Ledger (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996).
125. See Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics
126. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers; Zakaria, From Wealth to Power; and Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion."
127. Zakaria, From Wealth to Power
128. Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion."
129. David A. Baldwin, "Power Analysis and World Politics: New Trends versus Old Tendencies," World Politics, Vol. 31, No. 2 (January 1979), pp. 163-164.
130. Zakaria, From Wealth to Power
131. For approaches to measuring state power, see Ashley J. Tellis, Janice L. Bially, Christopher Layne, and Melissa McPherson, Measuring National Power in the Post-Industrial Age (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2000);
132. Gregory F. Treverton and Seth G. Jones, Measuring National Power (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2005).
133. See Ezra F. Vogel, Japan as Number One: Lessons for America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979);
134. Herman Kahn, Emerging Japanese Superstate: Challenge and Response (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970);
135. Clyde V. Prestowitz Jr., Trading Places: How We Are Giving Our Future to Japan and How to Reclaim It (New York: Basic Books, 1988).
136. Although its leaders insist that China's economy will grow by at least 8 percent in 2009, independent forecasts suggest a figure of about 6 percent
137. For the view that the global economic and financial crisis will work to China's relative advantage, see Roger C. Altman, "The Great Credit Crash, 2008: A Geopolitical Setback for the West," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 88, No. 1 (January/February 2009), pp. 2-14.
138. As Altman says (p. 12), "Although China, too, has been hurt by the crisis, its economic and financial power have been strengthened relative to those of the West. China's global influence will thus increase, and Beijing will be able to undertake initiatives to increase it further."
139. For analysis of the factors that could side-track China, see Susan Shirk, China: Fragile Super-power: How China's Internal Politics Could Derail Its Peaceful Rise (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)
140. On the United States' rise to great power status and regional hegemony, see Zakaria, From Wealth to Power;
141. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. For the argument that the trajectory of a rising China's will be similar to that of the United States from 1890 to 1914, see John J. Mearsheimer, "China's Unpeaceful Rise," Current History, Vol. 105, No. 690 (April 2006), pp. 160-162.
142. Zakaria, The Post-American World, pp. 234-235.
143. Leading works on soft power are Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004);
144. Nye, Bound to Lead;
145. Joseph S. Nye Jr, "Public Diplomacy and Soft Power," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 616, No. 1 (March 2008), pp. 94-109.
146. Altman, "The Great Credit Crash," p. 2.
147. See Joshua Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power Is Transforming the World (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007).
148. Altman, "The Great Credit Crash," p. 12.
149. See Guy Dinmore, Anna Fifield, and Victor Mallet, "The Rivals: Washington's Sway in Asia Is Challenged by China," Financial Times, March 18, 2005;
150. Jane Perlez, "Across Asia, Beijing's Star Is in Ascendance," New York Times, August 28, 2004
151. See Simon Romero and Alexei Barrionuevo, "Deals Help China Expand Sway in Latin America," New York Times, April 15, 2009;
152. "Friends of Opportunity," Economist, November 27, 2008, pp. 41-42;
153. Tom Burgis, "Beijing to Boost Spending in Africa Fund," Financial Times, March 16, 2009;
154. William McNamara, "China Eyes Developed Mine Assets," Financial Times, January 5, 2009
155. Unlike the United States and the EU, China now is in a "position to assist other nations financially and make key investments in, for example, natural resources at a time when the West cannot." Altman, "The Great Crash," p. 3.
156. Ikenberry, After Victory
157. See also Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984).
158. Brooks and Wohlforth, World Out of Balance, pp. 216-218.
159. Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf observes, "The ability of the west in general and the U.S. in particular to influence the course of events will also be damaged. The collapse of the western financial system, while China's flourishes, marks a humiliating end to the 'unipolar moment.' As western policy makers struggle, their credibility lies broken. Who still trusts the teachers?" Wolf, "Seeds of Its Own Destruction," Financial Times, March 8, 2008.
160. Brooks and Wohlforth are the outliers among the works reviewed. For them, claims about U.S. relative decline and incipient multipolarity reflect a change in perceptions about the distribution of power-not a shift in objective power relations. Wohlforth made this point in two 2008 panel discussions in which he and I participated. Coming from Wohlforth, this is an odd argument, because he previously has claimed that diplomacy and grand strategy are driven by policymakers' perceptions of the balance of power rather the actual distribution of power.
161. See William C. Wohlforth, The Elusive Balance: Power and Perceptions during the Cold War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993);
162. William C. Wohlforth, "The Perception of Power: Russia in the Pre-1914 Balance," World Politics, Vol. 39, No. 3 (April 1987), pp. 353-381. The growing belief that the world has become (or rapidly is becoming) multipolar has profound implications for international politics because states do act on their perceptions, and China clearly sees itself on the upswing and the United States in decline.
163. See "Briefing: China and the West," Economist, March 21, 2009, pp. 27-29.
164. Speaking to the annual Lone Star National Security Forum (San Antonio, Texas, April 4, 2009), Yang Jiemain-president of the prestigious Shanghai Institute for International Affairs (and brother of China's foreign minister)-said that the era of multipolarization has begun; China is an emerging global power; and Beijing will have a major voice in reshaping the emerging international order
165. Robert A. Pape, "Empire Falls," National Interest, No. 99 (January/February 2009), pp. 21-34;
166. Christopher Layne, "Impotent Power: Re-examining the Nature of America's Hegemonic Power," National Interest, No. 85 (September/October 2006), pp. 41-47;
167. Niall Ferguson and Laurence J. Kotlikoff, "Going Critical: American Power and the Consequences of Fiscal Overstretch," National Interest, No. 73 (Fall 2003), pp. 22-32.
168. What Gilpin wrote about the United States' plight in 1987 seems even truer in 2009: "With a decreased rate of economic growth and a low rate of national savings, the United States was living and defending commitments far beyond its means. In order to bring its commitments and power back into balance once again, the United States would one day have to cut back further on its overseas commitments, reduce the American standard of living, or decrease domestic productive investment even more than it already had. In the meantime, American hegemony was threatened by a potentially devastating fiscal crisis." Robert Gilpin, The Political Economy of International Relations (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 347-348. In light of contemporary developments, it is time for scholars to update the 1980s' debate on U.S. decline.
169. See David Calleo, The Imperious Economy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982);
170. James Chace, Solvency, the Price of Survival: An Essay on American Foreign Policy (New York: Random House, 1981);
171. Gilpin, The Political Economy of International Relations;
172. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers;
173. Samuel P. Huntington, "Coping with the Lippmann Gap," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 66, No. 3 (1987), pp. 453-477.
174. Martin Feldstein, "Inflation Is Looming on America's Horizon," Financial Times, April 20, 2009
175. The worst case is that a "recovery" simply puts the United States back in the same unsustainable position it was in before the meltdown: too dependent on consumption; not enough production; too much in debt; and too dependent on other countries to lend it money. See Paul Krugman, "Erin Go Broke," New York Times, April 19, 2009;
176. David Ignatius, "Back to the Bubble?" Washington Post, March 15, 2009
177. Congressional Budget Office (CBO), "A Preliminary Analysis of the President's Budget and an Update of CBO's Budget and Economic Outlook" (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Budget Office, March 2009);
178. William G. Gale and Alan J. Auerbach, "The Economic Crisis and the Fiscal Crisis: 2009 and Beyond" (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, February 19, 2009), http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2009/0219_fiscal_future_gale.aspx.
179. On the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, see Joseph F. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict (New York:W.W. Norton, 2008)
180. James Glantz, "The Economic Cost of War," New York Times, March 1, 2009
181. CBO, "Preliminary Analysis of the President's Budget and an Update of CBO's Budget and Economic Outlook," p. 13.
182. Jonathan Kirshner, "Dollar Primacy and American Power: What's at Stake?" Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 15, No. 3 (August 2008), p. 418.
183. Ibid., pp. 419-421.
184. See also Eric Helleiner, "Political Determinants of International Currencies: What Future for the U.S. Dollar?" Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 15, No. 3 (August 2008), pp. 370-371.
185. Helleiner, "Political Determinants of International Currencies," p. 371.
186. On the dollar's future and its potential geopolitical consequences, see Eric Helleiner and Jonathan Kirshner, eds., The Future of the Dollar (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, forthcoming).
187. Economic Research Service, "International Microeconomics Data Set," United States Department of Agriculture, December 22, 2008, http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/Macroeconomics/.
188. As Kirshner states, the absolute size of U.S. defense expenditures is "more likely to be decisive in the future when the U.S. is under pressure to make real choices about taxes and spending in the future. When borrowing becomes more difficult, and adjustment more difficult to postpone, choices must be made between raising taxes, cutting non-defense spending, and cutting defense spending." Kirshner, "Dollar Primacy and American Power," p. 431.
189. U.S. strategic retrenchment would enable rising powers to significantly narrow the current military gap between them and the United States. Brooks and Wohlforth argue that the rise of a single peer competitor capable of challenging the United States globally is unlikely. They overlook, however, other geopolitical mechanisms that can bring U.S. primacy to an end. At the turn of the twentieth century, Britain's hegemony ended because London lacked the resources to cope with the simultaneous challenges mounted by regional great powers to its interests in Europe, Asia, and North America and also to deal with wars of empire such as the Boer War-not because it was challenged by a single great power globally. In coming years, there is a good chance that an increasingly overstretched United States could see its hegemony overthrown by a similar process. On Britain's decline, see Aaron Friedberg, Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline, 1895-1905 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988);
190. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery;
191. C.J. Lowe and M.L. Dockrill, The Mirage of Power, Vol. 1: British Foreign Policy, 1902-1914 (London: Routledge, 1972);
192. Correlli Barnett, The Collapse of British Power (New York: William Morrow, 1972)
193. Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000), pp. xxviii, 9.
194. Jonathan Kirshner, "Globalization, American Power, and International Security," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 123, No. 3 (Fall 2008), p. 364.
195. For arguments that the world is entering a period of deglobalization, see Gideon Rachman, "When Globalization Goes into Reverse," Financial Times, February 2, 2009;
196. John Gapper, "The Humbling of Davos Man," Financial Times, January 29, 2009
197. On economic tasks, see Charles P. Kindleberger, The World in Depression, 1929-1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973);
198. Robert Gilpin, U.S. Power and the Multinational Corporation: The Political Economy of Foreign Direct Investment (New York: Basic Books, 1975);
199. Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics
200. On military tasks, see Barry R. Posen, "Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony," International Security, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Summer 2003), pp. 5-46. It has been argued that a hegemonic United States essentially functions as a world government.
201. See Michael Mandelbaum, The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the World's Government in the 21st Century (New York: PublicAffairs, 2005)
202. As President Barack Obama said, "If there is going to be renewed growth it can't just be the United States as the engine, everybody is going to have to pick up the pace." He also observed that "in some ways the world has become accustomed to the United States being a voracious consumer market and the engine that drives a lot of economic growth worldwide. And I think that in the wake of this crisis, even as we're doing stimulus, we have to take into account our own deficits." Quoted in David E. Sanger and Mark Landler, "In Europe, Obama Faces Calls for Rules on Finances," New York Times, April 1, 2009.
203. In particular, recent developments in the EU suggest that global meltdown has dealt liberalism a blow. The EU's key members (Britain, France, and Germany) are seeking economic security by adopting self-help policies rather than putting multilateral cooperation first. This is a reminder that we still live in a world of nation states, and that even in economics nationalism is the default option. Or, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently put it, "International policy is, for all the friendship and commonality, always also about representing the interests of one's own country."
204. Quoted in Nicholas Kulish and Judy Dempsey, "Merkel Is Set to Greet, and then Resist, Obama," New York Times, March 29, 2009. Recent examples of European states putting self-interest ahead of cooperation include the French government requiring Peugeot and Renault to invest in their factories in France-not elsewhere in Europe-in exchange for government loans; European governments-especially Britain-pressuring banks to repatriate capital from overseas subsidiaries in other EU member states; German reluctance to raise taxes or resort to deficit spending to stimulate the rest of Europe; and Germany and France blocking a proposed EU rescue of financially stricken East Central European states and passing the buck for doing so to the International Monetary Fund. Even in Europe-where war is said to be "unthinkable" and liberalism is supposedly entrenched-some observers worry openly that the continent could revert to the dark days of the late 1920s and 1930s. See Gideon Rachman, "Euroscepticism Is Yesterday's Creed," Financial Times, March 2, 2009;
205. William Drozdiak, "In Europe, Breaking Up Is So Easy to Do," Washington Post, March 1, 2009;
206. Philip Stephens, "Wanted: Leaders to Face the Demons of Europe's Past," Financial Times, February 19, 2009
207. For a historian's argument that Europe is always just a step away from backsliding to war, political extremism, and ethnic violence, see Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century (New York: Knopf, 1997)
208. Ikenberry, After Victory;
209. Keohane, After Hegemony
210. Scholars are beginning to look at the key role played by status and prestige. See Wohlforth, "Unipolarity, Status Competition, and Great Power War";
211. Deborah Welch Larson and Alexei Shevchenko, "Status, Power and World Order," paper presented at the annual convention of the International Studies Association, New York City, New York, February 15-18, 2009;
212. Tudor Onea, "Status and Great Power Conflict: American Hegemony and the Dispute over the Invasion of Iraq, 2002-2003," paper presented at the annual convention of the International Studies Association, New York City, New York, February 15-18, 2009
213. On how "commercial" liberalism purportedly constraints war, see Arthur A. Stein, "Governments, Economic Interdependence, and Cooperation," in Philip E. Tetlock, Charles Tilly, Jo L. Husbands, Robert Jervis, and Paul C. Stern, eds., Behavior, Society, and International Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 241-324;
214. John R. Oneal and Bruce M. Russett, "The Classical Liberals Were Right: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Conflict, 1950-1985," International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 2 (June 1997), pp. 267-294. Some realists believe that even in a world shorn of liberal constraints on great power conflict, nuclear weapons will prevent war. Coupled with the technological and doctrinal innovations associated with the "revolution in military affairs," however, the nuclear "stability/instability paradox" may actually make great power war more-not less-thinkable in the early twenty-first century. On the stability/instability paradox
215. see Glenn H. Snyder, "The Balance of Power and the Balance of Terror," in Paul Seabury, ed., The Balance of Power (San Francisco, Calif.: Chandler, 1965), pp. 185-201;
216. Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution: Statecraft and the Prospect of Armageddon (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 1-45.
217. See Gideon Rachman, "Generation L and Its Fearful Future," Financial Times, January 12, 2009