The National Interest: The Era of Unipolarity Is Over… What Will the United States’ going to do?

Thomas Graham wrote in The National Interest, asking, “The United States needs to redefine its role in world affairs… What does that mean and what will it take?

The liberal rules-based international order that the United States built and maintained in the years following World War II is disintegrating at an accelerating pace.

After a period of cordiality following the end of the Cold War, great power competition has returned with a vengeance, and the United States finds itself facing off against two major powers: China and Russia.

At the same time, smaller powers are courting one or more members of this triumvirate.

More generally, global power and dynamism are flowing away from the Euro-Atlantic community, which is the core of the liberal order.

Despite US resistance to this idea, the world is moving toward an illiberal, if not necessarily anti-liberal, multipolarity.

The United States has faced a multipolar world before, but it has never actively engaged as a pole of power.

From its independence until the end of the nineteenth century, it exploited European rivalries to advance its interests in Europe without becoming involved in European affairs, and without engaging in multipolar competition.

After the end of the Cold War, the world became unipolar, allowing the United States to lead the world on the basis of the liberal order that supports US supremacy in the future.

But how will the United States react to emerging multipolarity?

There are two schools of thought today about this challenge: one advocates a retreat and a reduction of US engagement, returning to pre-World War II foreign policy; the other advocates a restoration of order and a bipolar framework as the basis for engagement, but neither school aims to position the United States to participate actively in a truly multipolar world.

Why are the two schools insufficient to achieve US goals?

The proponents of the policy of retreat are right to believe that the United States is essentially secure because of its geopolitical position and power potential, but the United States cannot afford to remain insulated from global developments.

In today’s interconnected world of great power competition, regional balances need constant nurturing.

The United States need not be present everywhere abroad, but it must ensure an active presence in many places abroad, especially on the periphery of the vast Eurasian continent that includes Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, and the Arctic.

By contrast, global order restorers believe that the United States needs to be actively present abroad, but they want the United States to be engaged around the world in promoting and defending liberal democratic values, not just in areas vital to America’s security.

In this spirit, they seek to counter emerging multipolarity by reducing it to a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism.

Proponents of this school also advocate dealing with countries such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea as the focus of unrest, although the aforementioned countries aren’t in complete agreement on all issues.

Each of them prefers to deal with the others bilaterally rather than as part of a broader coalition.

It should be noted that despite the preference of the school of restoring order, the rest of the world, including the countries of Europe and East Asia, rejects the bipolar framework and is working stubbornly to promote multipolarity.

The task of shaping a multipolar system is to recognize the four potential great powers, in addition to the United States: Russia, China, India, and Europe, and to identify the challenges posed by each of these powers.

Accordingly, the task of the United States becomes to formulate an approach to dealing with the specificities of each power in line with a comprehensive approach to dealing with world affairs; so that the United States restricts China as a great power, while nurturing India as a single great power, maintaining Russia as a single great power, and finally ensuring that Europe is shaped into a single great power.

The United States is constraining China’s geopolitical ambitions, especially in the technology sector, to ensure its own supremacy.

The United States must control its mounting debt problem, raise stagnant educational and health standards, strengthen its ecosystem, and overcome intense political polarization to prepare itself for the coming intense competition with China.

The American support for India should be to strengthen its defense industries, not just by supplying it with Western equipment, but by helping it modernize its defense industries domestically and enhance its role as a global player.

Recognition of Russia as a great power is a fundamental element of Russian national identity, but preserving Russia’s status as a great power requires countering Russia’s growing embrace of China as a result of Western sanctions.

The United States cannot tear apart the current strategic alliance between the two countries, but it can soften it by easing sanctions on Russia so that Russian and Western companies can cooperate in Central Asia and the Arctic.

This in turn would reduce China’s growing influence in both regions.

The immediate goal is not to separate Russia from China, but to ensure that any deals Russia makes with China, whether diplomatic or commercial, aren’t as heavily weighted in China’s favor as they are now.

Europe has all the economic and technological capabilities to become a great power, but it lacks the political will and cohesion.

Since the Cold War, European countries have allowed their defense capabilities to atrophy in order to deepen social and economic prosperity and rely on the United States for security, but now they must assume their great power responsibilities to deal with security emergencies.

Success in a multipolar system will require Washington to rethink its behavior.

This requires recognizing that great powers have strategic autonomy, pursuing their own interests whether they coincide with or conflict with those of the United States.

The United States must recognize the limits of its power and prioritize the defense of its vital interests.

In this emerging multipolar world, it cannot dominate the world or bend other countries to its will.

It must therefore demonstrate leadership by integrating divergent and competing interests to its advantage.

In other words, it must skillfully manipulate multipolarity.