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The Disinterested Colossus

A recurring theme of Mr Donald Trump’s campaign for the Republican nomination for President of the United States has been that America “doesn’t win anymore”. Just as a stopped clock is still correct twice a day, the otherwise buffoonish Mr Trump may be on to something with this particular lament.

A recurring theme of Mr Donald Trump’s campaign for the Republican nomination for President of the United States has been that America “doesn’t win anymore”. Just as a stopped clock is still correct twice a day, the otherwise buffoonish Mr Trump may be on to something with this particular lament.

Even the most fervent supporters of the Obama administration would be hard-pressed to deny that the US has been knocked back on its heels of late by a number of foreign adversaries.

WHERE ARE THE WINS?

In East Asia, despite repeated US warnings, China has pushed its expansive maritime claims in the South and East China seas with growing assertiveness, and North Korea has intensified its quest to develop nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.

In Europe, Russia has brazenly annexed the Crimean Peninsula, sponsored insurgency in East Ukraine, and launched an aerial bombing campaign against American-sponsored rebel groups in Syria.

In the Middle East, Syrian President Bashar Assad, who has butchered hundreds of thousands of his own people and unleashed a wave of millions of refugees, still clings to power despite Mr Obama’s repeated calls for his removal.

Meanwhile, Islamic State and the Taliban remain undefeated in their insurgent campaigns against US proxy governments in Baghdad and Kabul.

Even the Obama administration’s signal accomplishments in international affairs have been lambasted by critics as hallmarks not of patient and tenacious diplomacy, but of rank appeasement.

For example, the landmark nuclear deal concluded last year with Iran has been assailed for establishing a weak verification regime, containing sunset provisions that would enable Tehran to begin reconstituting its nuclear programme after a decade, and ignoring the theocratic regime’s unabated proliferation of ballistic missiles and sponsorship of terrorism.

Critics have similarly condemned the administration’s reestablishment of normal diplomatic relations with the communist state of Cuba because the White House failed to make the initiative contingent on the Castro regime’s improvement of its abysmal human rights record.

It would be grossly unfair, however, to single out the present occupant of the Oval Office for its poor batting average in foreign policy.

In addition to failing to prevent the most catastrophic foreign attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor, Mr Obama’s predecessor, Mr George W Bush, deserves the lion’s share of blame for the Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan, the calamitous war in Iraq, and the strides made by North Korea and Iran towards developing nuclear weapons.

Mr Bush’s predecessor, Mr Bill Clinton, ordered a humiliating military withdrawal from Somalia, stood pat as genocide engulfed Rwanda, and did little to counter a series of increasingly bloody terrorist attacks against US targets by Al Qaeda.

Foreign-policy fecklessness has afflicted Democratic and Republican presidencies alike since the end of the Cold War.

UNIPOLARITY: A BLESSING AND CURSE

Paradoxically, America’s frustrating inability to rack up “wins” since the end of the Cold War has less to do with the foibles of the individuals who have occupied the Oval Office than with the country’s uniquely advantageous geopolitical position.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 eliminated the US’ sole peer competitor, transforming a bipolar international system into a unipolar one.

For the most part, unipolarity has been a tremendous blessing to the US, granting it more security than any great power has enjoyed in centuries.

By definition, a unipole confronts no external threat capable of conquering, subjugating, or destroying it because the only actors capable of doing so — namely other great powers — do not exist. Instead, its chief antagonists are small “rogue states”, and even weaker non-state terrorist and insurgent organisations that are capable of inflicting only glancing damage.

The flipside of the enormous margin of security possessed by a unipolar power, however, is that the unipole’s resolve to prevail in disputes with its adversaries will be limited.

Since the unipole is confronted exclusively by minor, non-existential threats, its leaders and general public will not be highly motivated to pay the full costs of deterring, coercing, or decisively defeating external enemies, and will thereby limit the material and temporal extent of their commitment to prevail in those efforts.

Conversely, by virtue of the unipole’s overwhelming power, it poses an existential threat to its much-weaker foreign antagonists, rendering them highly motivated to counter it. These antagonists will thereby place few, if any, restrictions on the full mobilisation of their power resources for as long as necessary to prevail against the unipole. The curse of unipolarity is that the unipole’s wars of choice unfortunately happen to be its enemies’ wars of necessity.

Consequently, although the post-Cold-War balance of power has grossly favoured the US over all of its current opponents, the balance of interests has just as lopsidedly favoured the latter. This juxtaposition has produced mostly disappointing foreign-policy outcomes ranging from partial or fragile successes (for example, the Iran nuclear deal, and the Balkan wars of the 1990s) to costly stalemates (for example, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) to outright failures (for example, the Libyan War, and the North Korean nuclear programme).

Nevertheless, these results need to be placed in a broader context that is unacknowledged by most foreign-policy observers and analysts, namely, that the results are poor in large part because the stakes are so low for the US.

A better appreciation of the importance of both power and interests will lead to more prudent statecraft. Given America’s continuing military superiority over all of its rivals—in 2015, it spent more on defence, US$596 billion (S$802 billion), than the next seven states combined — President Obama’ successor(s) will also be highly tempted to meddle in peripheral regional conflicts, but will similarly be wary about incurring high costs in imposing decisive and lasting military solutions on them.

In nearly all conceivable instances, outright wins—to use Mr Trump’s vernacular—will be highly rare, and it will be preferable to stay out altogether than to intervene and risk either cheap losses or costly draws. Future US leaders would be wise to keep their powder dry in preparation for the more consequential challenges that will be posed by emergent great powers, particularly China, in the decades to come.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Evan N Resnick is Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the United States Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

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