Über Gulliver

The role of becoming a world power — let alone the sole world power — is akin to riding on the tiger's back. It is easier to get on, far easier to ride along, and the harder than anything else to dismount. If any nation should know the hazards of world power, it is Germany. Read an analysis of U.S. power today by a German journalist. It is a sobering message. Unfortunately, W's neocon advisers are ignorant of history. There is some good historical thinking here.

The Twentieth Annual John Bonython Lecture

Tuesday 5 August, 2003

"Gulliver Unbound: Can America Rule the World?"

Josef Joffe

I. Hegemony in the 21st Century

My title is 'Gulliver Unbound', and to make the point in all its baldness: There has never been a Gulliver as Gulliveresque as 21st century America. It dwarfs anybody in the present as well as in the past. Of all the former greats, only Rome fits the description although, for precision's sake, it should be classified as an empire. For at the height of its power, after it had subjugated the lands between the British Isles, Carthage and the Levant, Rome was virtually identical with the then-international system itself. Its successors-the Papacy or the Empire, Habsburg-Spain or the France of Louis XIV, 19th century Britain or 20th century Germany-were only would-be hegemons.

True, the sun never set on Charles V's empire, Britain ruled the waves in the 19th century, and Nazi Germany went all the way to the gates of Moscow and Cairo. But they were vulnerable to combinations of other powers which prevailed over them in the end. Nor was Britain a real exception. To uphold its exalted position, it depended on allies-all the way to World War II when it was almost done in by a single foe, Nazi Germany.

America is unique in time and space. Others might be able to defy the US, but they can neither compel nor vanquish it-except in the meaningless sense of nuclear devastation that will be mutual. The sweep of its interests, the weight of its resources and the margin of its usable power are unprecedented. None other than Hubert Védrine, the French foreign minister, has made the point in all its glory--though grudgingly, one must assume. 'The United States of America', he proclaimed, 'today predominates on the economic, monetary [and] technological level, and in the cultural area . . . In terms of power and influence, it is not comparable to anything known in modern history.' In short, the U.S. is a hyper-puissance, a 'hyper-power'.

Indeed, just to mention two numbers. When in the spring of 2002, George W. Bush asked the Congress for a supplemental defense appropriation, the sum requested-$48 billion-represented twice the annual defense outlays of Germany or Italy. If US defence spending proceeds as planned, this 'hyperpower' by 2007 will invest more in defence than all other countries combined.

This giant, a kind of Über-Gulliver, is different from its predecessors in a number of other ways.

First, unlike Rome et al., he can intervene-without the help of allies-anywhere in the world, and almost in real-time, as those B-52 bombers demonstrated that rose in Missouri, dropped their bomb load over Afghanistan and then returned home, all in one fell swoop. Bases, as during the Second Iraq War, are useful and important, but not vital, as the closure of Turkey to the passage of American troops demonstrated earlier this year. No other power could ever project so much might so far so fast and so devastatingly.

Second, the US economy is the world's largest, but in a fundamentally different way than, say, Habsburg's. The Habsburg Empire was like Saudi-Arabia-essentially an extraction economy, a one-horse hegemon. When the silver from Latin America dried up, so did Habsburg's power. For all of its failings-from the Enron scandal to rising current account deficit-the American economy seems better positioned to conquer the future than any of its current rivals, for at least two reasons.

One, it is more flexibly organised, hence better prepared to respond to ever more rapid shifts in demand and technology. Two, it enjoys an enormous competitive advantage in the acquisition of today's most important factor of production-which is knowledge. It is not just the global predominance of Harvard and Stanford, Caltech and MIT, but something more profound and less obvious. This is a culture that keeps drawing the best and the brightest to its shores-which, by the way, is true for the English-speaking nations in general. No longer is it Metternich, Hitler or Stalin who are driving talent across the Atlantic. It comes entirely unpropelled, attracted by the wealth of opportunity and the speed of advancement. How this most precious resource will be able to clear the barriers of the Patriot Act is an issue America has not yet begun to tackle.

A third mainstay of American preponderance is cultural. This is another significant contrast with past hegemons. Whereas the cultural sway of Rome, Britain and Soviet Russia ended at its military borders, American culture needs no gun to travel. If there is a global civilisation, it is American. Nor is it just McDonald's and Hollywood, it is also Microsoft and Harvard. Wealthy Romans used to send their children to Greek universities; today's Greeks, that is, the Europeans, send their kids to Roman, that is, American universities-and to British boarding schools. Why this peculiar twist? Maybe, it is the fact that America is the 'first universal nation', one whose cultural products appeal to so large an audience because they transcend narrow national borders. It all began a hundred years ago when Russian Jews from the Pale started making movies in Hollywood that interpreted the 'American Dream' to the rest of the world.

To recapitulate: This Über-Gulliver packs a threefold set of uniquely big muscles-military, economic and cultural, and there is nothing on the horizon of political reality that suggests the speedy demise of his hegemony. Certainly, it will not be the kind of over-extension that felled Rome, Habsburg et al. In the last hundred years, average military spending as proportion of GDP has been four percent-with the Second World War and the Vietnam War as significant exception. Four percent is a far cry from the estimated 25 percent spent by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, the decade before its collapse.

II. After Bipolarity: Must Go Down What Comes Up?

Nonetheless, history and theory suggest that this cannot last. In the international system, power will always beget counter-power, usually by way of coalitions and alliances among the lesser players, and ultimately war, as in the cases of Napoleon, Wilhelm II. and Adolf I. Has this game already begun? The answer is 'no, but…'.

It is 'no' for two reasons. First, America irks and domineers, but it does not conquer. It tries to call the shots and bend the rules, but it does not go to war for land and glory. Maybe, America was simply lucky. Its 'empire' was at home, between the Appalachians and the Pacific, and its enemies-Indians and Mexicans-easily bested. The last time the US actually did conquer was in the Philippines and Cuba a hundred years ago. This is a critical departure from traditional great power behaviour. For the balance-of-power machinery to crank up, it makes a difference whether the others face a usually placid elephant or an aggressive T. rex. Rapacious powers are more likely to trigger hostile coalitions than nations that contain themselves, so to speak. And when the U.S. attacked Afghanistan and Iraq, it was not exactly invading an innocent like Belgium.

Nonetheless, Mr. Big is no pussycat, and he does throw his weight around. Why is it so hard to balance against him?

My answer: Counter-aggregations do not deal very well with the postmodern nature of power. Let's make no mistake about it. 'Hard' power-men and missiles, guns and ships-still counts. It remains the ultimate, because existential, currency of power. But on the day-to-day transaction level, 'soft power' is the more interesting coinage. It is 'less coercive and less tangible'. It grows out of 'the attraction of one's ideas. It has to do with 'agenda setting', with 'ideology' and 'institutions', and with holding out big prizes for cooperation, such as the vastness and sophistication of one's market.

'Soft power' is cultural-economic power, and very different from its military kin. The US has the most sophisticated army in the world. But it is in a class of its own in the soft-power game. On that table, none of the others can match America's pile of chips; it is American books and movies, universities and research labs, American tastes high and low that predominate in the global market. This type of power-a culture that radiates outward and a market that draws inward-rests on pull, not on push; on acceptance, not on imposition. Nor do the many outweigh the one. In this arena, Europe, Japan, China and Russia cannot meaningfully 'gang up' on the US like in an alliance of yore. All of their movie studios together could not break Hollywood's hold because if size mattered, India, with the largest movie output in the world, would rule the roost. Nor could all their universities together dethrone Harvard and Stanford. For sheer numbers do not lure the best and the brightest from abroad who keep adding to the competitive advantage of America's top universities.

Against soft power, aggregation does not work. How does one contain power that flows not from coercion but seduction? Might it work in the economic sphere? There is always the option of trading blocs-cum-protectionism. But would Europe (or China or Japan) forego the American market for the Russian one? Or would Europe seek solace in its vast internal market alone? If so, it would forgo the competitive pressures and the diffusion of technology that global markets provide. The future is mapped out by DaimlerChrysler, not by a latter-day 'European Co-Prosperity Sphere'. This is where the game has changed most profoundly. Its rivals would rather deal with America's 'soft power' by competition and imitation because the costs of economic warfare are too high-provided, of course, that strategic threats do not re-emerge. To best Gulliver, Europe et. al. must do their work-out at home.

III. 'Soft' Balancing

These two reasons help to explain why 'hard' balancing-alliances and war-has not set in against the American Über-Gulliver. But remember the 'no, but…'. The 'but' is a shorthand for saying that 'soft balancing' against Mr. Big has already set in. Is there a date? Yes, it is Christmas Day 1991 when the hammer-and-sickle flag over the Kremlin was hauled down for the last time, when the Soviet Union committed suicide by dissolution. From this point onward, the structure of international changed from bipolarity to unipolarity. Gulliver's power was no longer neutralised and stalemated by another player of equivalent weight. The ropes were off, so to speak, and that had political consequences.

What is 'soft balancing?' The best example is the run-up to the Second Iraq War when a trio of lesser power-France, Germany and Russia-all 'ganged up' on No. 1 diplomatically in their effort to stop the Anglo-American move against Saddam Hussein. What was their purpose? To save Saddam Hussein? No, of course not. It was to contain and constrain American power, now liberated from the ropes of bipolarity.

And why not? Assume this American victory, swift as it turned out to be, is also sustainable-that it intimidates rather than inflames Arabs and Iranians, relieves dependence on dangerous clients such as Saudi-Arabia and Egypt, and finally loosens up the dysfunctionalities of Arab political culture that spawned Al Qaida. Such an outcome will finally consecrate the US as arbiter over the Middle East, over its oil and politics. This prospect can hardly enthuse the lesser players, for it would certify what is already the case de facto: the global primacy of the United States. So it should not come as a surprise that America's rivals and quondam allies would try to balance against No. 1 by enmeshing him in the ropes of institutional dependence, that is, the UN Security Council.

This was a classic instance of 'soft balancing' against No. 1-spawned by the profound shock to the international equilibrium caused by the demise of No. 2, the Soviet Union. Another kind of balancing, let's call it 'surreptitious balancing', had begun much earlier, in the mid-1990s, when the US regularly found itself alone and on the other side of such issues as the ABM Treaty or the International Criminal Court.

Au fond, all of these duels were not about principle, but power. If the United States wanted to scratch the ABM Treaty in favor of Missile Defense, Europe, China and Russia sought to uphold it on the sound assumption that a better defense makes for a better offense, hence for richer US military options than under conditions of vulnerability. And so with the International Criminal Court (ICC). In the end, even the Clinton team correctly understood the underlying thrust of the ICC. Claiming the right to pass judgment on military interventions by prosecuting malfeasants ex post facto, the Court might deter and thus constrain America's forays abroad. All the Liliputians would gain a kind of droit de regard over American actions

Europe and others cherished this expansion of multilateral oversight precisely for the reason why the United States opposed it. Great powers loathe international institutions they cannot dominate; lesser nations like them the way the Lilliputians liked their ropes on Gulliver. The name of the game was balancing-on-the-sly, and both sides knew it, though it was conducted in the name international law, not of raw power.

IV. Can Gulliver Go It Alone?

To recapitulate. One, Gulliver is an Über-Gulliver. Unique in time and space, he has the largest pile of chips on all significant gaming tables: military-technological, economic and cultural. Second, hard balancing, the anti-hegemonial tool of choice in history, has not set in because this Gulliver, for the time being, is more of an elephant than a T. rex. Third, as the last decade has shown, the international system will exact its revenge, and so, 'soft balancing' and 'balancing-on-the-sly' has already set in, as international relations theory correctly predicted once bipolarity-the mutual stalemating of nos. 1 and 2-was dead. Now, to my fourth and final point: Can Gulliver go it alone?

The answer is no. Given No. 1's exalted position in the international hierarchy of power, one must assume that he would want to remain what he is-Gulliver forever. If so, he has two, and only, two choices. One would seek to undercut or outmaneuver countervailing coalitions, a latter-day British grand strategy, so to speak. The other is a strategy that would emphasise cooperation over competition, a kind of retake of the Golden Age of American diplomacy of the early postwar decades.

Strategy I is the 'Rumsfeld Strategy' en vogue right now, one that follows the Secretary of Defence's famous injunction: 'The mission determines the coalition, and not the other way round.' This is the logical counter to the attempts on the part of nos. 2, 3, 4, 5 etc. to tie down Gulliver with the ropes of institutional dependence, where it is 'one nation, one vote'. The essence of the game is to pick ever changing coalitions of the willing within which the word of No. 1 is the writ of the whole. This strategy actually antedates Don Rumsfeld; George Bush the Elder enacted it in the First Iraq War, and Bill Clinton assembled a NATO posse for the Kosovo intervention. The rule here is: Act only with those you can dominate.

A complementary strategy is 'counter-counter-balancing' to neutralise the kind of anti-American coalition France, Germany and Russia tried to organise in the run-up to the Second Iraq War. Against this 'Neo-Triple Entente', the Bushies engineered the 'Wall Street Eight and the 'Vilnius Ten'. And so, on January 30, Messrs. Chirac and Schröder woke up to an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal/Europe where the leaders of Britain, Spain, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Denmark and Portugal told Paris and Berlin in so many words: 'We are not amused that you are trying to gang up on the United States. Saddam must be disarmed, by force if need be'. Repeated more harshly by the 'Vilnius-10' on February 5 ('we are prepared to contribute to an international coalition to enforce'), the message was that 18 European countries (from A like Albania to S like Slovenia) were not ready to take on the 'hyperpower'-and even less ready to submit to the French and Germans as would-be gang leaders.

A clever counter-move, but such a strategy-balancing à la Britain-has not been America's greatest forte. Nor will it take care of the underlying dynamics of the post-bipolar world. Great power will keep generating counter-power sooner or later. Better, and probably more economical in the long run is a strategy that undercuts the incentives for ganging up-to soften he hard edge of America's overwhelming power with the soothing balm of trust. In his State of the Union Address of 2003, George W. Bush did not hold out such relief when he asserted that, in the end, 'the course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others'.

Hence, Grand Strategy II-updating the Golden Age of American diplomacy. America's core role then was institution-building, as illustrated by a whole alphabet soup of acronyms: UN, IMF, GATT, OEEC/OECD, NATO, World Bank, WTO, PfP, plus a host of subsidiary Cold War alliances like ANZUS, SEATO and CENTO. Think of these not just as international institutions , but as international public goods, and the point is that these institutions took care of American interests while serving those of others. This was an extraordinary break with centuries of power politics. For previous hegemons were in business for themselves only.

What is the advantage of such a strategy? I would argue that nos. 2, 3, 4... will prefer cooperation with no. 1 to anti-American coalitions as long as the US remains the foremost provider of such international public goods-call them security, free trade, financial stability and an orderly procedure for conflict resolutions. The essence of public goods is that anybody can profit from them once they exist-like a park in the neighbourhood or an unpolluted river. That gives the lesser players a powerful incentive to maintain the existing order and to accord at least grudging acceptance to the producer of those benefits. At the same time, it diminishes their incentives to gang up on him.

While the others surely resent America's clout, they have also found it useful to have a player like the United States in the game. Europe and Japan regularly suffer from America's commercial hauteur, but they also suspect that the US is the ultimate guarantor of the global trade system. Britain and France were only too happy to let American cruise missiles bludgeon the Serbs to the negotiating table in 1995 and 1999. The Arabs hardly love the US, but they did cooperate when George Bush mobilised an international posse against Saddam Hussein in 1990 because they could not contain him on their own. And so again in 2001 when Bush the Younger harnessed a worldwide coalition against terrorism.

When lesser powers cannot deter China in the Straits of Taiwan, or persuade North Korea to denuclearise, it is nice to have one special actor in the system who has the will and the wherewithal to do what others wish, but cannot achieve on their own. Indeed, he is indispensable. In the language of public goods theory: There must always be somebody who will recruit individual producers, organise the startup and generally assume a disproportionate burden in the enterprise. That is as true in international affairs as it is in grassroots politics.

But now you will ask: Why continue to pay a disproportionate share of the bill? Here are some answers: By providing security for others-in Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific-the US has also bought security for itself. Stability is its own reward because it prevents worse: arms races, nuclear proliferation, conflicts that spread. Enlarging NATO, though costly to the American taxpayer, brings profits to both Poland and the United States because anything that secures the realm of liberal democracy benefits its leading representative. Shoring up the World Trade Organisation (WTO), even when it pronounces against Washington, is still good for America because, as the world's largest exporter, it has the greatest interest in freer trade.

Are the costs of 'public goods' production intolerable? The problem is that the bulk of the world's great institutions were built during the Cold War when it was clearly in the interest of no. 1 to shoulder the burden and sign the checks. Since then, it is no longer so clear that the United States puts more resources into international institutions than it seeks to draw from them. America's old penchant for free trade is now diluted by preferences for 'managed trade', which is a euphemism for regulated trade. Having regularly castigated the EU for its protectionist agricultural policy, the US has now handed out billions in largesse to its own farmers, adding a nice dollop for steel producers, too. And if it cannot achieve consensus, the US will act unilaterally-or bilaterally, as most recently in the Second Iraq War.

The costs of a 'communitarian' grand strategy are clearly high. First, Gulliver has to pay a disproportionate share of the institutional maintenance fee. Second, he will have to resist those domestic forces-steel, farmers-who would maximise their welfare at the expense of global welfare. Third, he will have to expend an inordinate diplomatic effort to persuade and cajole. Finally, he may sometimes find himself immobilised by the Lilliputians.

On the other hand, the costs of a 'Rumsfeld Strategy' may be worse. As the US diminishes its investment in global public goods, others will feel the sting of American power more strongly. And the incentive to discipline Mr. Big will grow. Short of that, the aftermath of the Second Iraq War seems to suggest that it is easier to go in by yourself than to leave by yourself. There are just too many players in this game who would love to see the US and Britain fail, starting with the remnants of the Baathist regime and continuing with Iran, the Arab dictatorships and the Palestinians. Presumably the Neo-Triple-Entente that tried to stop the war would not mind either if the US had its nose bloodied in the Middle East. The long and the short of this is: The most sophisticated military panoply in history cannot quite substitute for international legitimacy.

But let's look beyond Iraq and generalise the point. The most interesting issues in world politics cannot be solved even by an Über-Gulliver acting alone. How shall we count the ways? Nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea, international terrorism, free trade, global financial stability, mayhem in places like Liberia, the Congo or the Sudan, climate control, the AIDS epidemic in Africa, China's transition from totalitarianism to the rule of law and perhaps even democracy, the political pathologies of the Arab Middle East that gave us Al-Qaida. These are all issues that, almost by definition, require collective responses.

So Gulliver's choices seem all to clear. Primacy does not come cheap, and the price is measured not just in dollars and cents, but above all in the currency of obligation. Conductors manage to mold 80 solo players into a symphony orchestra because they have fine sense for everybody else's quirks and qualities-because they act in the interest of all; their labour is the source of their authority. And so a truly great power must do more than merely deny others the reason and opportunity for 'ganging up'. It must also provide essential services. Those who do for others engage in systemic supply-side economics: They create a demand for their services, and that translates into political profits also known as 'leadership'.

Power exacts responsibility, and responsibility requires the transcendence of narrow self-interest. As long as the United States continues to provide such public goods, envy and resentment will not escalate into fear and loathing that spawn hostile coalitions. But let's put this in less lofty terms.

Real empires routinely crush their rivals. But America is only an 'imperial republic', as Raymond Aron mused decades ago. Presumably, democracies pay 'decent respect to the opinions of mankind' because they cherish that respect for themselves. They are better off leading by heeding because they cannot sustain the brutish ways of Rome for any length of time. Unwilling to conquer, this 'empire' still needs order beyond borders. The objective is the right 'milieu'. To achieve it, America must sometimes use force; to sustain it, the sword is not enough-and too costly, to boot. But to build the right coalitions for peace, the United States must not forsake the 'co' in 'coalition'-as in 'consensus' and 'cooperation'. As Gulliver learned, it is hard enough to live even as friendly giant among the pigmies. It is even harder to escape their slings and arrows when strength is untempered by self-restraint. For power shall be balanced.

Dr. Josef Joffe is the Publisher-Editor of Die Zeit and Contributing Editor to Time magazine. His most recent book was The Future of International Relations: The Great Powers.

© The Centre for Independent Studies, 2003