Ely Ratner and Thomas Wright
By Ely Ratner and Thomas Wright
It’s been a banner month for the oracles of American decline. The shutdown of the federal government, the prospect of a default on the country’s debt, and the political dysfunction that made the US seem rudderless on Syria and forced the cancellation of President Obama’s trip to Asia seemed to confirm that the end of American preeminence is finally upon us.
Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass argued that Washington was “hastening the emergence of a post-American world.” The Guardian’s Timothy Garton Ash wrote that “the erosion of American power is happening faster than most of us predicted — while the politicians in Washington behave like rutting stags with locked antlers.” And the financial website MarketWatch declared: “This is what decline of a superpower looks like.”
The idea that such a moment was coming has dominated US foreign policy circles since the late 2000s. The declinists warned that in light of American difficulties at home and abroad, and the rapid rise of new powers such as Brazil, India and China, we should prepare for a global order no longer dominated by the US. Some argued that the US should retrench and do less. Others that it should share the burden of leadership with the emerging titans.
But predicting the decline of the US has always been risky business. In the 1970s and late 1980s, expectations of waning power were followed by periods of geopolitical resurgence.
There’s every reason to believe that cycle is recurring today. Despite gridlock in Washington, America is recovering from the financial crisis and combining enduring strengths with new sources of influence, including energy. Meanwhile, emerging powers are running into troubles of their own. Taken together, these developments are ushering in a new era of American strategic advantage.
Emerging economies were the darlings of the past decade, growing at an average of roughly 7 percent annually between 2003 and 2012. By some calculations, China was poised to surpass the US in GDP by 2016.
Today, the picture couldn’t look more different. Brazil’s growth rate has fallen from more than 7 percent in 2010 to just under 1 percent. Likewise, Indian growth tumbled to about 3 percent in 2012, down from double digits as recently as two years earlier. Perhaps most pronounced, China’s government is revising down its official growth targets. Analysts are no longer asking whether there will be a Chinese economic slowdown but rather how hard the landing will be.
Morgan Stanley has identified five particularly fragile emerging-market currencies: Brazil’s real, India’s rupee, Indonesia’s rupiah, South Africa’s rand and Turkey’s lira. Those countries are vulnerable to high inflation, large deficits, low growth and a downturn in China. And they may soon face problems in international financing.
The political systems in emerging powers are fraying, too. There have been huge protests in Brazil over wasteful government spending and inadequate social programs. Russia looks more authoritarian by the day. And the Chinese Communist Party is stepping up efforts to crack down on journalists, academics and bloggers in what seems to be an attempt to control the discontent that accompanies slower growth and painful economic reforms.
In terms of hard power, the US military is at the forefront of next-generation technologies, including unmanned systems, robotics and lasers. Even more superior than its hardware is its software: the command and control systems to conduct highly advanced joint operations and major wars.
The US also remains the linchpin of the international community. Through hard-nosed diplomacy, economic pressure and the spectre of military action, Washington has retained its ability to marshal effective multinational coalitions, bringing down Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, getting weapons inspectors on the ground in Syria and embarking on serious negotiations to curb Iran’s nuclear weapons program. You can quibble with process and style, but it’s hard to argue that any of these would have happened without the US.
More broadly, and most important, the US is blessed with a superior combination of sound fundamentals in demography, geography, higher education and innovation. That ensures it has the people, ideas and security to thrive at home and on the world stage.
Of course, the economic recovery is incomplete, and much remains to be done on the debt and growth, but as Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr aptly noted in July 2012, “America is just one budget deal away from ending all talk of America being in decline.” Easier said than done, but still easier to address than the mammoth challenges facing the emerging powers.
As partisan as Washington is today, the US has overcome episodes of far greater social discord and political turmoil. The recent souring of public opinion on the obstructionists in Congress is a healthy reminder of America’s propensity for political renewal. In this dawning era of strategic advantage, the US will confront foreign policy challenges largely associated with weakness and instability abroad.
Washington will wrestle with the consequences of a fragile China and its implications for the economics and politics of East Asia. The Middle East will continue its painful and bloody revolutionary period. And Europe appears increasingly unable to move beyond protracted stagnation, eroding its ability to play a constructive role in world affairs.
But being lonely at the top will also engender huge opportunities to build the kind of liberal order that the US failed to consolidate in the 1990s. Rather than simply re-engineering the existing system, this will require US leadership to build international norms, rules and institutions from the ground up.
Washington will have new leverage to renegotiate relationships and engagements with the Middle East; the success of sanctions on Iran is the first manifestation of the US as an energy powerhouse.
The US can also lead in knitting together historic trade pacts across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, re-energising a first-rate global trade agenda long sabotaged by protectionism and low standards. And Washington can use its newfound strength to exercise restraint and develop international rules around emerging security issues such as drone warfare and offensive cyber-capabilities. All of this will contribute to a more prosperous and secure US.
The principal risk to these efforts is that Americans could choose to wall themselves off from the world after a difficult decade. According to a survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 38 percent of Americans want to stay out of world affairs, the highest share since 1947, and the figure rises to a majority among young Americans who came of age during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
But retrenchment would be a huge mistake. America’s domestic revival provides all the necessary tools to facilitate American leadership abroad. Being humble about the US’ ability to shape foreign societies, particularly through military means, is no excuse for a lack of ambition to continue the project of advancing US interests and universal values overseas.
Rather than bracing for American decline, Washington should prepare to lead the world anew.
WP-BLOOMBERG
By Ely Ratner and Thomas Wright
It’s been a banner month for the oracles of American decline. The shutdown of the federal government, the prospect of a default on the country’s debt, and the political dysfunction that made the US seem rudderless on Syria and forced the cancellation of President Obama’s trip to Asia seemed to confirm that the end of American preeminence is finally upon us.
Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass argued that Washington was “hastening the emergence of a post-American world.” The Guardian’s Timothy Garton Ash wrote that “the erosion of American power is happening faster than most of us predicted — while the politicians in Washington behave like rutting stags with locked antlers.” And the financial website MarketWatch declared: “This is what decline of a superpower looks like.”
The idea that such a moment was coming has dominated US foreign policy circles since the late 2000s. The declinists warned that in light of American difficulties at home and abroad, and the rapid rise of new powers such as Brazil, India and China, we should prepare for a global order no longer dominated by the US. Some argued that the US should retrench and do less. Others that it should share the burden of leadership with the emerging titans.
But predicting the decline of the US has always been risky business. In the 1970s and late 1980s, expectations of waning power were followed by periods of geopolitical resurgence.
There’s every reason to believe that cycle is recurring today. Despite gridlock in Washington, America is recovering from the financial crisis and combining enduring strengths with new sources of influence, including energy. Meanwhile, emerging powers are running into troubles of their own. Taken together, these developments are ushering in a new era of American strategic advantage.
Emerging economies were the darlings of the past decade, growing at an average of roughly 7 percent annually between 2003 and 2012. By some calculations, China was poised to surpass the US in GDP by 2016.
Today, the picture couldn’t look more different. Brazil’s growth rate has fallen from more than 7 percent in 2010 to just under 1 percent. Likewise, Indian growth tumbled to about 3 percent in 2012, down from double digits as recently as two years earlier. Perhaps most pronounced, China’s government is revising down its official growth targets. Analysts are no longer asking whether there will be a Chinese economic slowdown but rather how hard the landing will be.
Morgan Stanley has identified five particularly fragile emerging-market currencies: Brazil’s real, India’s rupee, Indonesia’s rupiah, South Africa’s rand and Turkey’s lira. Those countries are vulnerable to high inflation, large deficits, low growth and a downturn in China. And they may soon face problems in international financing.
The political systems in emerging powers are fraying, too. There have been huge protests in Brazil over wasteful government spending and inadequate social programs. Russia looks more authoritarian by the day. And the Chinese Communist Party is stepping up efforts to crack down on journalists, academics and bloggers in what seems to be an attempt to control the discontent that accompanies slower growth and painful economic reforms.
In terms of hard power, the US military is at the forefront of next-generation technologies, including unmanned systems, robotics and lasers. Even more superior than its hardware is its software: the command and control systems to conduct highly advanced joint operations and major wars.
The US also remains the linchpin of the international community. Through hard-nosed diplomacy, economic pressure and the spectre of military action, Washington has retained its ability to marshal effective multinational coalitions, bringing down Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, getting weapons inspectors on the ground in Syria and embarking on serious negotiations to curb Iran’s nuclear weapons program. You can quibble with process and style, but it’s hard to argue that any of these would have happened without the US.
More broadly, and most important, the US is blessed with a superior combination of sound fundamentals in demography, geography, higher education and innovation. That ensures it has the people, ideas and security to thrive at home and on the world stage.
Of course, the economic recovery is incomplete, and much remains to be done on the debt and growth, but as Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr aptly noted in July 2012, “America is just one budget deal away from ending all talk of America being in decline.” Easier said than done, but still easier to address than the mammoth challenges facing the emerging powers.
As partisan as Washington is today, the US has overcome episodes of far greater social discord and political turmoil. The recent souring of public opinion on the obstructionists in Congress is a healthy reminder of America’s propensity for political renewal. In this dawning era of strategic advantage, the US will confront foreign policy challenges largely associated with weakness and instability abroad.
Washington will wrestle with the consequences of a fragile China and its implications for the economics and politics of East Asia. The Middle East will continue its painful and bloody revolutionary period. And Europe appears increasingly unable to move beyond protracted stagnation, eroding its ability to play a constructive role in world affairs.
But being lonely at the top will also engender huge opportunities to build the kind of liberal order that the US failed to consolidate in the 1990s. Rather than simply re-engineering the existing system, this will require US leadership to build international norms, rules and institutions from the ground up.
Washington will have new leverage to renegotiate relationships and engagements with the Middle East; the success of sanctions on Iran is the first manifestation of the US as an energy powerhouse.
The US can also lead in knitting together historic trade pacts across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, re-energising a first-rate global trade agenda long sabotaged by protectionism and low standards. And Washington can use its newfound strength to exercise restraint and develop international rules around emerging security issues such as drone warfare and offensive cyber-capabilities. All of this will contribute to a more prosperous and secure US.
The principal risk to these efforts is that Americans could choose to wall themselves off from the world after a difficult decade. According to a survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 38 percent of Americans want to stay out of world affairs, the highest share since 1947, and the figure rises to a majority among young Americans who came of age during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
But retrenchment would be a huge mistake. America’s domestic revival provides all the necessary tools to facilitate American leadership abroad. Being humble about the US’ ability to shape foreign societies, particularly through military means, is no excuse for a lack of ambition to continue the project of advancing US interests and universal values overseas.
Rather than bracing for American decline, Washington should prepare to lead the world anew.
WP-BLOOMBERG
