Would the exceptional nation be an exception within the rise and fall of great powers?
In the decade of 1640s, Spain entered into a profound crisis that put an end to its European hegemony, threatened the subsistence of its Habsburg reigning monarchy, and unleashed a sustained decay.
It would take more than three centuries for Spain to reverse such decay, which began materializing with the arrival of democracy and its entrance into the European Economic Community, between the end of the 1970s and mid 1980s. The overextension of the country’s military commitments and the simultaneous wars that it had to confront, triggered a familiar dynamic within human history – The fall of a great power.
In his The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Paul Kennedy referred to the overextension of military commitments between 1500 to 2000, as the historical constant in the decay of the great powers of the day. (Kennedy, 1989). An overextension that the United States clearly faces nowadays.
America’s global dominance
According to Stephen Wertheim: “The rationale for American global dominance after the Cold War, as articulated by the Pentagon in 1992, was that by maintaining military primacy in most world regions, the United States would suppress competition among other countries, dissuade challengers from emerging and keep the peace at a reasonable cost to Americans”. (Wertheim, 2024).
By 2012, though, the days in which the U.S. was the unipolar power had clearly passed. However, in January of that year the Pentagon made public its document “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for the 21st Century Defense”. There, it stated that as a global power with global interests, the U.S. had to maintain the capacity to project credible military power in every region of the world, in defense of such interests. In the introduction of the document, the Secretary of Defense expressed: “The Joint Force will be prepared to confront and defeat aggression anywhere in the world”. (Department of Defense, 2012).
Not surprisingly, thus, according to Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ associate Hope O’Dell, in September 2022, there were 171,736 active-duty American military troops across 178 countries, and 750 U.S. bases in at least 80 countries. Numbers that may be even higher as not all data is published by the Pentagon. (O’Dell, 2023; AlJazeera, 2021).
Military overextension, though, can have different meanings at different times. During the unipolar moment that came after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the U.S.’ aimed at dissuading competitors from emerging, it was an almost risk-free endeavor. Today, on the contrary, it is a highly dangerous one, as an immensely powerful revisionist axis is coalescing. One, that pushes against the rules-based liberal international order led by the United States, and that defines itself by opposition to Washington.
The revisionist axis
Strongman politics, indeed, is ascendant among the world’s great powers. In Hal Brands words: “First, the Pax Americana of the post-Cold War period is over. For a generation after 1991, the world saw historically low levels of geopolitical and ideological competition, mostly because Washington and its allies had such a decisive advantage. That’s changing as revisionist actors -principally China, Russia and Iran- try to throw back American power and create their own spheres of influence. The resurgence of autocratic great powers, in turn, is intensifying (…) Second, connections between revisionist actors are stronger than at any time in decades” (Brands, 2023).
Within that block, and in addition to China, Russia and Iran, we also find North Korea, a country that it’s leaving behind its international pariah status, as it becomes one of the top four members of that axis. Not surprisingly, it has been argued that striking similarities exist between the emergence, interlinked relations and solidarity of the totalitarian regimes of the 1930s and today’s revisionist block (Brand, 2024). If so, the United States’ military overextension is in direct collision course with this group.
The axis’ military standing
China is the utmost economic and military rising power of the day. An industrial juggernaut, whose productive strength has translated into having the largest war navy of the world and a highly sophisticated military arsenal. The latter includes its road-transported intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) DF-41, and the submarine-launched ICBM JL-3. The first one of them can carry 10 nuclear warheads at 15.000 kilometers, whereas the second has a distance range of 9.000 kilometers. (Erickson, 2019).
Additionally, China now has more ICBM launchers than the United States. Meanwhile, it successfully experimented in 2021 a low flying hypersonic missile able to fly at five times the sound speed within an indeterminate trajectory hard to detect. Moreover, Beijing aims at passing from today´s 410 strategic nuclear warheads, to more than 1.000 in 2030 and 1.500 in 2035. This would be almost the same amount of strategic nuclear warheads that the U.S. possesses today. (Hadley, 2023; Svastopulo and Hille, 2021; Faulconbridge 2023; Liberman, 2022).
Russia, on its part, has been a true disappointment in conventional military warfare and in relation to the quality of such arsenal. War in Ukraine has significantly downsized Russia’s conventional military image. However, it will be foolish to underestimate its nuclear strength. With around 5.889 nuclear warheads, of which 1,674 are deployed strategic ones, Russia tops the United States. The latter, indeed, possesses 5,244 and has around 1,674 deployed strategic warheads. Russia’s Burevestnick new strategic cruise missile and its almost completed Sarmat ICBM, each capable of carrying ten or more nuclear warheads, are fearful reminders of its military might. Moreover, Russia’s advances on the development of a spaced-based nuclear weapon, designed to threaten America’s satellite network, has drawn high concern in Washington. (Faulconbridge 2023; Barnes, Demirjian, Schmitt and Sanger, 2024).
North Korea has also positioned itself as a serious threat to the United States. Its rapidly advancing nuclear capabilities have to be taken seriously enough. With 50 to 60 nuclear warheads deliverable on missiles, Pyongyang ranks amid the top military players within the revisionist axis. Especially so, if its Hwansong-18 intercontinental ballistic missile, tested last December, shows capable of reaching any part of the continental United States, as stated. Recent North Korea’s manifestations of its increasing military might, including the launching of a military satellite, the above mentioned intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test, the testing of an underwater nuclear drone, and a submarine launched cruise missile test. (Carlin and Hecker, 2024; Sue, 2024).
Iran, as yet a conventional military regional power, keeps advancing towards the acquisition of nuclear weapons. A regional military heavyweight, it has built a network of non-state actors’ allies able to punch abroad, while maintaining a military force of more than 1 million active and reserve personnel, susceptible to deterring an invasion of its territory. Its medium-range ballistic missile system includes the Sahab-3, the Emad-1 and the Seiiil, which can reach 2,000 kilometers. Meanwhile, its short-range system is formed by the Quiam-1, the Zolfaghar, the Shahab-2, and the Fateh that can reach from 300 to 750 kilometers. (Lamrani, 2020).
Dealing with a coalition of these four autocratic regimes looks daunting enough. Especially so, as each threatens America’s primacy in different regions of the world. It must be recognized, though, that through its actions or omissions, during these past few decades, Washington bears an important quota of responsibility in the intricate situation that it now confronts.
China
In relation to China, omission prevailed on America’s side. The route opened in 1972 and consolidated in 1979 between China and the U.S., allowing for an important partnership to develop. One that permitted China to blossom, with Washington’s acquiescence and support. However, there was a substantial difference in their actions. While Beijing’s ones were guided by strategy, Washington’s were based on wishful thinking. Following the advice left by Deng Xiaoping to his successors, China hid its strengths and won time. Its low profile allowed for the strategic miracle of rapidly emerging without alarming the United States. Meanwhile, American hubris translated into the belief that it could mentor 5,000 years’ old China, and that a more prosperous country would naturally evolve into a freer society and economy in consonance with its own.
In 2008 an inflexion point emerged, with Beijing becoming increasingly assertive. The reason behind this change could be found in a notion familiar to the Chinese strategic thought, but totally alien to the Western mentality – The Shi. This conceptual formulation dates back to ancient times and translates into an alignment of forces, or a concatenation of circumstances, able to shape a new situation. Meaning, as the momentum that wise statement should profit for. (Pillsbury, 2015, Chapter 3).
What were, though, the concatenation of circumstances that materialized in 2008? The answer is clear: The American financial excesses that produced the world’s worst financial crisis since 1929; China’s sweeping efficiency in overcoming the risk of contagion from this crisis; China’s ability in maintaining its economic growth, which prevented a major global economic downturn; and finally, the highly successful Beijing Olympic games of that year, that provided the country with a boost to its self-esteem. Concomitant to those events, was the erosion suffered by America’s hegemonic standing resulting from its inability to prevail in two peripheral Middle Easter’s wars. In synthesis, the United States had proven not to be ten feet tall, while China resulted much taller than they had thought. This could only mean that the U.S. had passed its peak as a superpower, and that the curves of Chinese ascension and America’s decline were about to cross each other. (Toro Hardy, 2022, p. 27).
America’s wishful thinking and lack of attention had allowed China to quietly strengthen its military capability. When this was coupled with a diminishing respect for the U.S. ‘s standing, the time was ripe for a much bolder foreign policy. The arrival of Xi Jinping to power in 2013 accelerated this trend. Believing that time and momentum are on China’s side, as repeatedly expressed by Xi, forceful actions have been taken to consolidate that country’s hegemonic presence in that part of the world. Within that scenario, Taiwan assumes the first place within the list of dangerous geostrategic conflicting points.
Russia
In relation to Russia, to the contrary, America’s actions, particularly those regarding NATO’s expansion to the East, helped in creating the current state of affairs. One of the most difficult moments faced by Gorbachev after the dissolution of the Soviet’s Eastern and Central European empire, came with the reunification of Germany in 1990. This implied that Moscow would have to accept a reunified Germany within NATO, which was a bitter concoction to swallow. To make this concoction more palatable, the Americans made a fundamental concession to Gorbachev: As stated by then Secretary of State James Baker, there would be no further extension of NATO’s jurisdiction one inch to the east. This commitment, though, was repudiated by Bill Clinton’s Administration under the argument that such a promise had been made to the Soviet Union, which had ceased to exist (Gaddis, 2005, Chapter Seven).
At that point in time, though, both NATO members and its former Warsaw Pact adversaries coexisted under a joint security agreement: The North Atlantic Cooperation Council, NACC. This was a forum for dialogue and cooperation that had been created in 1991, and whose aim was to deal with residual Cold War security concerns and to promote political cooperation and confidence building between former enemies. Russia’s Yeltsin was perfectly happy with this arrangement. However, the Visegrad Group’s member countries (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia), convinced Clinton of opening the doors of NATO to them. After that first step the die had been cast, as there was no justification to deny to some what had been granted to other of their peers. In successive phases, Bulgaria, Latvia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latonia, Lithuania, Rumania, Croatia, Albania, Montenegro and Northern Macedonia, would also be incorporated into NATO. (Sarote, 2021).
Towering American foreign policy and academic figures such as George Kennan, Henry Kissinger, John Mearsheimer, or Stephen Walt, strongly objected to this expansion. Kennan, the architect of America’s Cold War containment policy, wanted to find ways to incorporate Russia into a European world, and did not understand the rationality of NATO’s expansion to the East when no one in Europe was threatening anybody else. Mearsheimer and Walt believed that NATO’s expansion was recklessly interfering with Russia’s traditional sphere of influence, which at some point would push Moscow to react. Kissinger was particularly worried about NATO’s approach to Ukraine, a flat land extension that had been crossed by Napoleonic France, Imperial Germany and Nazi Germany to invade Russia. (Stent, 2014, pp. 69-75; Mearsheimer, 2014; Haroche, 2023; Kissinger, 2014).
In 2013-2014, the West manifestly overstepped. Its intent to incorporate Ukraine into the Western sphere and talks about its accession into NATO, were a bridge too far to cross. Putin’s actions in 2014, which included annexing Crimea where Russia’s Black Sea fleet was based, preempted any further discussion of NATO’s expansion into Ukraine. The latter, because states with territorial disputes must settle them by peaceful means as a precondition for being invited to join the Alliance. (NATO, 2008).
Under the light of said preemption, Ukraine’s invasion eight years later was as reckless as unnecessary. It made no sense under the argument of stopping NATO’s expansion into this territory, while it became a cruel reminder of Russia’s historical imperial tradition.
North Korea
In relation to North Korea, America’s omission bears an important quota of responsibility. Mainly, for not having ended a 70 years state of war. The dynamic of their relations seems almost surrealistic: A paranoid State that keeps arming itself for fear of its all-powerful foe, and the powerful foe that keeps sowing more fear as a pressure tool for its disarmament. After decades of the end of its hostilities, the U.S. still refuses to sign a peace treaty with North Korea and to recognize it diplomatically, while it keeps almost 30.000 soldiers in South Korea.
An American bombardment of North Korea’s Yongbyun nuclear plant almost took place in 1994, during Clinton’s time. However, the North’s dug deep in the mountains’ 500 artillery pieces pointing at Seoul, at just 48 kilometers of its border, were sufficient deterrence against such action. The 12 million inhabitants of South Korea’s capital were, indeed, hostages to any such U.S. military action. As a result, in 1994 itself, Pyongyang and Washington reached an agreement whereby North Korea was offered fuel oil and two light nuclear reactors, in return for abandoning its uranium enrichment program (Watts, 2002).
In 2002, Washington confronted Pyongyang as it continued to enrich fissile material, to which North Korea pointed out that the U.S. had not kept to its side of the agreement. Pyongyang offered, though, to respect its side of the deal, if the United States committed itself not to attack it and to sign a peace agreement. However, the Bush administration rejected the offer. This happened the same year in which North Korea had been placed by Washington within the so-called “Axis of Evil”, and an implicit strategy of regime change had been defined for that country. Moreover, it happened a year after the U.S. had announced the deployment of a missile defense system to protect itself from “rogue nations such as North Korea”. On top, this came after Iraq had proved, in Madeline Albright’s words, that if you did not possess nuclear weapons you were invaded, whereas if you had them, you were not. (Toro Hardy, 2007, pp. 70, 71).
Hiroshi Minegishi from Nihon Keizai Shimbun was clear enough in this regard: “There is no doubt that North Korea, fearing a regime change operation by the Bush administration, seeks reconciliation with the United States through direct negotiations. Of course, provoking problems by way of the sensitive issue of weapons of mass destruction, as a mean to propitiate a negotiation with the White House, shows a kind of diplomacy at the edge of the abyss” (Hiroshi, 2006).
Clyde Prestowitz presented the situation in the following terms: “Suppose that instead of calling North Korea part of an ‘Axis of Evil’, the president had maintained contact with North Korea’s President Kim Jong-il, and assured him delivery of the promised electricity-generating equipment he so much needs. Suppose we had offered to negotiate a peace treaty to finally end the Korean War, and he had offered diplomatic recognition to North Korea as we promised, and hadn’t made such a big deal out of deploying a National Missile Defense to defend against ‘rogue nations like North Korea’. Would we have a Korea crisis in our hands? And again, would the North be so obviously frightened of us if we had not announced our preventive war strategy? I think the answer is no. We have contributed mightily to the bad choices now confronting us”. (Prestowitz, 2003, pp. 271, 272).
As was to be expected at some point, in the end of 2006 North Korea announced that it had successfully conducted its first nuclear test. From then on, things got really complicated, as returning the genie into its lamp once out, is no small feat. Especially so after Muammar Gaddafi, who had unilaterally given up nuclear enrichment and the pursuit of nuclear weapons, was subjected to a regime change operation in 2011, where he was killed.
In these last few months, North Korea’s aggressiveness has increased in a dramatic way. Top experts’ interpretation of Pyongyang’s deeds and words substantially differ. For some, the Korean Peninsula is at the brink of a new war. For others, we are just witnessing pressure politics as usual.
Robert L. Carlin and Siegfried S. Hecker, two well-known scholars and practitioners with top expertise on Korean affairs, have concluded that the situation in that Peninsula is at its most dangerous point since early June 1950. Believing to have exhausted all other options, particularly the central goal of normalizing relations with the United States which prevailed between 1990 and 2019, Kim Jong Un has made the strategic decision to go to war. In Pyongyang’s view, successive American administrations pulled away from engaging with it, and ignored North Korea’s constructive initiatives. The straw that broke the camel’s back came with Kim’s perception that he poured his prestige into the second summit with President Trump in Hanoi, to no avail. Moreover, he feels that he was left in the lurch, in a loose face position. The belief that there is no way further with the United States, is compounded by the conviction that America is in global retreat. North Koreans seemed to be specially fixated on the U.S. military’s departure from Afghanistan in August 2021 (Carlin and Hecker, 2024; Wong and Barnes, 2024).
At the other extreme of this Armageddon’s perspective, is the interpretation given by Tae Yong-ho, a former North Korean diplomat who defected to the South in 2016. In his view, Kim Jong Un might be sending a message to American presidential candidates: The time has come to renegotiate one-on-one with North Korea, as it now possesses missiles capable of reaching the U.S. mainland. (Kenji, 2024).
Iran
America’s quota of responsibility in relation to Iran has mainly been the result of actions. Clumsy ones. The first was to empower its Shia fundamentalist regime by toppling what was its natural wall of contention – Saddam’s secular and Sunni Iraq. The second, has been its zigzags regarding nuclear negotiations.
Having taken down the above wall of contention was a big gift to the regime of the Ayatollahs. However, bringing Iraq’s Shias to power by promoting a ballot box democracy within a majority Shia population, was an additional big bonus to them. Suddenly, Teheran’s influence grew exponentially. Particularly so, as Iran has always perceived itself as the epicenter of a Persian-Shiite sphere of influence. One that goes from Mesopotamia to Central Asia. Iran’s revival translated into the strengthening of a group of regional movements supported by Teheran, mainly Hezbollah. (Nasr, 2006).
In the 2006 Lebanon War, Hezbollah accomplished what no other regional force had attained (including Egypt, Syria or Jordan): Maintaining the longest and more effective military confrontation with Israel. This launched Hezbollah’s reputation within the Arab World, while strengthening that of its mentor, Iran. Shiites with Iran at its forefront, became a towering presence in the Middle East. From then on, America’s regional friends have had to deal with that towering and disruptive presence.
But together with helping to empower Iran through its actions, Washington has been instrumental in making nuclear negotiations with Teheran not only an imbroglio, but a continuous source of resentment. After 27 years of diplomatic freeze, Washington offered in 2006 direct negotiations with Teheran. Its condition was the immediate termination of Iran’s nuclear program, which should have gone accompanied by international verification. That implied putting the cart before the horses, because what should have been negotiated was precisely the end of such a nuclear program. This was seen as an act of capital arrogance and, as such, was rejected by the Ayatollahs. Washington, however, kept insisting that a one-on-one negotiation with Iran would not take place as long as Iran did not put an end to its nuclear program.
Finally, at the end of 2013 negotiations on Iran’s nuclear enrichment began within the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. This plan gathered Iran plus the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, mainly the U.S. In mid 2015 a landmark agreement was reached One, which had required intensive one-and-one negotiations between the American Secretary of State and Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. Under its terms, Teheran agreed to dismantle much of its nuclear program and open its facilities to more international inspection, in exchange for billions of dollars’ worth of sanction relief. Although it was not a perfect agreement, it was a reasonably good one that allowed for confidence building between the parties.
In 2018, though, President Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement and reinstated devastating banking and oil sanctions on Iran. Moreover, it threatened sanctions on the other members of the agreement, if they decided to go along with it. Not surprisingly, in 2019 Iran began to disregard the terms agreed upon. In 2020, after Washington’s targeted assassination of Iranian general and war hero Qasem Soleimani, Teheran took more steps away from its nuclear pledges. (Robinson, 2023).
In the same manner in which George W. Bush’s actions were instrumental in replacing a pragmatic and moderate President as Ayatollah Khatami for a radical like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Trump’s ones were responsible for having the hard liner Ebrahim Raisi replacing the also moderate and pragmatic Hassan Rouhani. Not surprisingly, President Biden’s intention to go back to what was agreed in 2015 is now almost impossible. This, because hard liners now run the show in Teheran Moreover, due to Biden’s additional conditions and because Iran completely mistrusts a country where Trump could be back in power next year.
In sum, while during the Cold War the United States had to confront a single contender, it has to deal now with four different ones that vary in sizes and shapes. Several factors make this plural confrontation particularly uphill for Washington. Among them would be the following. First, the United States lacks a clear sense of purpose. Second, American alliances are weak. Three, contention of the revisionist axis takes place in their own backgrounds. Four, America’s overextension can be exploited by its rivals. Five, the U.S. is no longer the industrial juggernaut that it used to be.
Lacking sense of purpose and focus
In the first place, America lacks focus and a clear sense of purpose. The country oscillates between international commitment and isolationism, between global primacy and regional prioritization. While Democrats, and particularly the Biden Administration, pursue liberal internationalism, Republicans, beyond Trump himself, seem increasingly uninterested on international issues and even detached from national security concerns. With the exception of a single topic, Israel, Republicans seem to be signaling a retreat from America’s role as leader of the world. Only 30 percent of Republicans believe that the country should keep active in world affairs. A Biden triumph in November would thus maintain international engagement, in the same manner in which a Trump one would lead the country to a fold into itself. (Schneider, 2022; Kurtzleben, 2023).
Simultaneously, a sort of contradiction exists, essentially within Democrats, between maintaining global reach or focusing on priority areas, mainly the Indo-Pacific. Since Obama’s pivot to Asia an effort has been made to set clear priorities. However, this is easier said than done. In Stephen Wertheim words: “The Biden administration has avoided making structural reductions to any portion of U.S. global primacy – to the political objectives, defense commitments, and military positions that Washington has accumulated over eight decades. At the same time, it has continued to set priorities (…) In its National Security Strategy, released in October 2022, the terms ‘priority’, ‘priorities’ and ‘prioritize’ appear 23 times, even as the United States’ globe-spanning alliances are described as ‘our most important asset’”. (Wertheim, 2024).
Weak alliances
Secondly, America’s alliances are unavoidably weak. At a point in time when the United States confronts the rivalry, or better say the enmity, of a powerful revisionist axis, allies become fundamental. Without them, the U.S. will not be able to confront the many challenges herein posed. However, how difficult it becomes to be allied to a country so confused with regard to the direction to follow?
Donald Trump never believed in the fundamental one-for-all-and all-for-one concept of NATO. Pulling his country from this organization seemed to have been one of his unfulfilled goals, one that he may yet accomplish if reelected next November. His recent remarks that he would go so far as to “encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” with NATO countries in arrears, gave America’s European allies a chilling sense of “déjà vu”. How to trust Washington? How to follow its zigzags? How to be willing to share its enmities as they did in Afghanistan, the only time that NATO’s article 5 had been invoked? But even if the U.S. were to remain committed to liberal internationalism, how to know which of its alliances would be prioritized? The unreliability that the U.S. projects upon its allies, boomerangs into it as well. (Baker, 2024).
Jack of all trades but master of none
Thirdly, while the U.S. global reach may turn it into a jack of all trades but master of none, the members of the revisionist axis are masters of their own spaces. This, by the simple fact that the bulk of their military forces is concentrated within its immediate reach. And their challenge to Washington is essentially regional. This certainly is the case of China, but also applies to the rest in different measures.
Let’s take the case of China. While the distance between California and the South China Sea is around 7,400 miles and that between California and Taiwan is almost 7,000 miles, the distance between mainland China and Taiwan is just 90 miles (actually, 81 miles at its closest point). Even if what John Mearsheimer calls the “stopping power of water” would not be considered as a deterrent barrier for the U.S., Chinese firm control of the operational theaters in relation to the South China Sea and Taiwan, should be taken very seriously. Such control not only derives from the short distances from its mainland, but from the flooding of these areas by China’s powerful navy (the largest in the world), and from its construction of what has been labeled as the “great wall of sand”. Meaning, the building undertaken by China of 27 highly militarized artificial islands in the Paracel and Spratly islands. All of this, duly supported by China’s impressive missiles’ might. This generates an effective anti-access/area-denial strategy extremely difficult to overcome. (Mearsheimer, 2001, pp. 114-128; Fabey, 2018, p. 231).
Overextension and industrial weakness
Fourthly, America’s overextension can be duly exploited by the members of the revisionist axis. Indeed, they could coordinate their actions in order to overflow the U.S.’ response capacity. Simultaneous acts of aggression in their different regional scenarios, where the bulk of its military force is concentrated, could corner America. Especially so, if America’s alliances are in disarray, affecting both its deterrence and fighting capabilities. Let us imagine China’s invading Taiwan, North Korea’s bombarding Seoul, Russia’s moving over Lithuania, and Iran’s and its network of non-state actors’ allies attacking Israel. All at the same time. Fighting each of them concurrently, in their own areas, would be much more than the U.S. could chew.
Fifthly, the U.S. is far from being the industrial juggernaut that it used to be during the Cold War. In it’s The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, Paul Kennedy made this fundamental remark: “The United States today has roughly the same massive array of military obligations around the globe as it had a quarter-century ago, when its shares of world GNP, manufacturing production, and military spending were so much larger than today”. This, of course, was written in 1988, when America was much more powerful economically and industrially than it is nowadays. However, its military obligations keep being global. (Kennedy, 1988, p. 672).
The simple example of ammunition speaks for itself, in relation to America’s industrial military limitations. Let’s read what Maiya Clark, Research Associate of the Center for National Defense, wrote in this regard: “The U.S. began sending military aid to Ukraine early last February. By April, our stocks of Javelin anti-tanks and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles had been depleted by a third. If only two months of a regional war consumed that large a chunk from our critical munitions stockpiles, it is easy to imagine the military would run off these munitions if the U.S. ever faced down a competitor like China. The defense industry will not be able to replenish some of these rundown stocks for years (…) Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes says the company could not ramp up production for at least 18 months (…) Other munitions would have similar production timelines (…) The math is simple. If the military has enough munitions for only a few months of war, and the defense industry requires 18 months to supply more, the U.S. will be in trouble if it has to fight a protracted war”. (Clark, 2023).
Would the exceptional nation be an exception?
As seen, the United States faces a tremendous geopolitical challenge. Greater than the one that it confronted during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. But, from a much weaker position. At this point in time, the possibility that the U.S. might replicate the example of 1640’s Spain looks realistic enough. If America’s military overextension continues, there is no objective reason to presume that what Alexis de Tocqueville called the exceptional nation, would be an exception within the cyclical rise and fall of great powers.
In Paul Kennedy’s words: “In all discussions about the erosion of American leadership, it needs to be repeated again and again that the decline referred to is relative not absolute, and is therefore perfectly natural; and that the only serious threat to the real interests of the United States can come from a failure to adjust sensibly to the newer world order”. As seen, since the beginning of the millennium the United States failed to do that. A more stable and pacific world could have resulted if certain actions and omissions had been managed more sensibly, and if hubris had not prevailed in the way it did. Again, in Kennedy’s words: “The task facing American statesmen over the next decades, therefore, is to recognize that broad trends are underway, and that there is a need to ‘manage’ affairs so that the relative erosion of the United States’ position (…) is not accelerated”. (Kennedy, 1988, pp. 690, 691).
Managing affairs sensibly is, of course, common-sense advice and not a strategic recipe. However, as things stand, there are no simple answers for the United States. Abandoning hubris. Avoiding the extremes and looking for the middle ground. Accepting cooperative multilateralism as a reasonable option to an unsustainable primacy, while avoiding the temptation of isolationism. Being always ready to negotiate from an equal-to-equal position. And, of course, being clever enough to avoid that adversaries coalesce, by not antagonizing them at the same time. These would be but a few first steps, in that direction.
Author: Alfredo Toro Hardy, PhD – Retired Venezuelan career diplomat, scholar and author. Former Ambassador to the U.S., U.K., Spain, Brazil, Ireland, Chile and Singapore. Author or co-author of thirty-six books on international affairs. Former Fulbright Scholar and Visiting Professor at Princeton and Brasilia universities. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations and a member of the Review Panel of the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center.