Towards Nonpolarity

In yesterday's Financial Times there was an excerpt from a paper by Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations. After reading the excerpt I was so intrigued that I had to read the whole paper at Foreign Affairs, The Age of Nonpolarity: What Will Follow U.S. Dominance [available for free]. Mr. Haass argues that in the 21st century we will not see the multipolar world of the Cold War, or unipolar U.S. dominated world of the past 20 years, but "a world dominated ... by dozens of actors possessing and exercising various kinds of power. This represents a tectonic shift form the past."

Throughout history there has always been one power in control, or two or more powerful states at loggerheads with each other. When there has been only one power, another has inevitably risen as a rival. Mr. Haass gives several reasons why a rival has not emerged to challenge the U.S. and why a rival or set of rivals is unlikely to emerge:

• According to Mr. Haass, the most important reason, is that despite Iraq and Afghanistan and George W. Bush, the U.S. "has not, for the most part, acted in a manner that has led other states to conclude that the United States constitutes a threat to their vital national interests."
• "[T]he disparity between the power of the United States and that of any potential rivals is too great."
• Our military power and size is so vast that it "will long remain the largest single aggregation of power."
• Though other countries, China and India in particular, GDPs may become comparable to or even surpass that of the U.S., their wealth will need to be spent on "providing for the country's enormous populations and will not be available to fund military development or external undertakings."
• "The other major powers are dependent on the international system for their economic welfare and political stability," and to challenge the U.S. as a great-power rival would seriously disrupt the international system.
  

These are all solid observations that I strongly agree with, especially the final one. In the post-WWII world it is hard to see any potential rival to the U.S. willing or able to disrupt the international system. In conjunction with the second one, the U.S. military, particularly its Navy, is so powerful that if there was a disruption of the international system only the U.S. Navy could guarantee the vital imports and exports to wage any sort of conflict.

But, just because the U.S. is incredibly rich and powerful, and will remain so for quite a long time, does not mean that it will be able to dominate the world for much longer. Mr. Haas gives three reasons for the demise of the current unipolar world:

• Historical
• As states develop they become more efficient and stronger which results in more states with the ability to "exert influence regionally or globally."
• U.S. Policy
• U.S. energy policy, focused around petroleum products, has turned oil and gas producers into "major power centers."
• U.S. economic policy has placed "downward pressure on the dollar, stimulate[d] inflation, and contribute[d] to the accumulation of wealth and power elsewhere in the world."
  
• The war in Iraq has demonstrated that the U.S. is
  imperially overstretched.
• "Globalization has increased the volume, velocity, and importance of cross-border flows of just about everything."
• "[C]ross-border flows take place outside the control of governments and without their knowledge... [which] dilutes the influence of major powers."
• "[T]hese same flows strengthen the capacities of nonstate actors such as energy exporters..., terrorists..., and Fortune 500 firms."

I agree most strongly with the first and third of these reasons for the demise of the U.S. as a unipolar power. Both of these reasons for demise pose a net good for the world because cross-border flow despite the terrorism should result in an increased sharing of knowledge, and historically the world should be safer with states that are more self-sufficient. This is not because I disagree with the second, but I do wonder if the U.S. under new leadership with a bold vision could be capable of radically altering U.S. policy. For example, if a cheap reliable alternative to oil for transportation was developed and implemented, would we instead see destabilization in oil and gas producing nations?

Mr. Haass writes that "The increasingly nonpolar world will have mostly negative consequences for the United States--and for much of the rest of the world as well," because the number of threats and vulnerabilities will increase. But, Mr. Haass does not think that the inevitable nonpolar world has been defined. Rather, he thinks that "The United States can and should take steps to reduce the chances that a nonpolar world will become a cauldron of instability" as long as it still has the capacity to "improve the quality of the international system." The steps he recommends are:

• The most pressing is addressing our energy problems.
  
• He suggests reducing oil and gas consumption to "decrease U.S. vulnerability to market manipulation by oil suppliers."
• I wonder if we couldn't do more, such as funding viable alternative energy sources and adopting supportive legislation.
• "Strengthening homeland security."
  
• Terrorists will succeed, and will not disappear, so we need to make sure that their impact is minimal.
• Okay, but can we please do it constitutionally, at least at home?
  
• Combating nuclear proliferation.
  
• Can we use the military?
• Preemptive strikes on imminent threats are fine, according to Mr. Haass.
• Preventive strikes with "no indication of imminent use--are something else altogether."
• I agree, a nuclear exchange on the other side of the globe would wreak havoc politically and environmentally on this side of the globe.
  
• "Combating terrorism."
  
• Military and police actions are "a loser's game unless something can be done to reduce recruitment."
• The onus should fall on the governments and social networks of the societies where terrorists are bred, and I agree, but they'll need some help.
• Trade as tool of integration.
• Mo' money, fewer problems. Wealth "strengthen[s] the foundations of domestic political order," and "facilitates development, thereby decreasing the chance of state failure and alienation among citizens."
• YES!!! How so Mr. Haass?
• Extend scope of WTO
• Reduce subsidies and tariffs
• Build domestic political support
• Encourage capital flows across international borders.
• Same as trade.
• "[T]he United States needs to enhance its capacity to prevent state failure and deal with its consequences. This will require building and maintaining a larger military ... [and] it will mean establishing a civilian counterpart to the military reserves that would provide a pool of human talent to assist with basic nation-building tasks."
• I couldn't agree LESS.

You really had me up until that last point. These need to be multilateral efforts, not unilateral actions by an even mightier U.S. military. The burden of failed states needs to be spread around the developed nations of the world. We have lost credibility in these actions, as you point in the U.S. policy section, and this would make it harder for us to undertake nation building. Creating a civilian corps is also a bad idea. This would either end up being populated by people too young to know what they are doing or too poorly paid to be the best at their job. The prestige of rank in the military is incentive to draw in some of our best and brightest, but it would be hard to draw talented individuals with promises of rank to an organization without precedent.

Though I do agree that before the world can move forward, "it must be recast to include actors other than the great powers." In particular, "The UN Security Council and the G-8 (the group of highly industrialized states) need to be reconstituted to reflect the world of today and not the post-World War II era." We have new challenges ahead, and the world has come a long way since 1945. Let's get the change going.

Here is Mr. Haass's comprehensive list of the powers that are already establishing themselves as powerful and typical of the types of actors that we will see in the increasingly non-polar world:

In addition to the six major world powers [China, the European Union (EU), India, Japan, Russia, and the United States], there are numerous regional powers: Brazil and, arguably, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela in Latin America; Nigeria and South Africa in Africa; Egypt, Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East; Pakistan in South Asia; Australia, Indonesia, and South Korea in East Asia and Oceania. A good many organizations would be on the list of power centers, including those that are global (the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, the World Bank), those that are regional (the African Union, the Arab League, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the EU, the Organization of American States, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation), and those that are functional (the International Energy Agency, OPEC, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the World Health Organization). So, too, would states within nation-states, such as California and India's Uttar Pradesh, and cities, such as New York, São Paulo, and Shanghai. Then there are the large global companies, including those that dominate the worlds of energy, finance, and manufacturing. Other entities deserving inclusion would be global media outlets (al Jazeera, the BBC, CNN), militias (Hamas, Hezbollah, the Mahdi Army, the Taliban), political parties, religious institutions and movements, terrorist organizations (al Qaeda), drug cartels, and NGOs of a more benign sort (the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Doctors Without Borders, Greenpeace).