American Ascendancy; And the Pretense of Concert.

• Author: Bell, Coral

Like a sudden flash of diplomatic lightning, Kosovo has illuminated much that was previously obscure in the landscape of international politics. Not because of the victory over Milosevic - it would indeed be a cold day if NATO could not vanquish a minor power - but because a norm has been forcefully asserted, a Western norm with explosive potentialities for many other sovereign states. And because NATO has made its debut as the military arm of a concert of powers.

During the 1990s, the United States has mostly tiptoed through the current unipolar structure of the society of states with a sort of ponderous tact, like a benign Ferdinand-type bull making its way delicately around a china shop of unknown value. That prudence has been well justified: the situation is still quite new and of uncertain import to all the world's policymakers. History is not much help, for no equal degree of unipolarity has existed since the high point of the Roman world, almost two millennia ago.(1) The central balance of power had set the main agenda of world politics for more than five centuries: its "intermission", even for a time whose length remains a matter of speculation, is a truly transformatory event, and foreign affairs bureaucracies tend to be nervous of such upheavals.

The level or depth of that transformation must depend on the duration of the unipolar "moment", as it was originally labeled by Charles Krauthammer. If it had actually been just a "moment" (even one coming up toward ten years, as it now is), any changes in world order might have proved marginal or ephemeral. But I propose to argue that it will last at least another four decades or so, and possibly a great deal longer, though that will depend on Washington's choice of strategies. Such a duration would be enough to set in concrete changes that have already begun to modify some of the oldest and most basic norms and conventions that previously governed the society of states.

The Lingering "Moment"

Before assessing those changes, what are the arguments for expecting so long a duration of this phase of diplomatic history? They turn primarily on the economic, military and diplomatic "distance" that the five or so assumed potential challengers to America's current ascendancy - its prospective "peer competitors" - must travel before they could have plausible grounds for making such a challenge. That in turn means considering briefly the qualifications necessary for membership in an eventual multipolar or bipolar balance, when and if one replaces the present unipolar structure.

These qualifications are not very different from those possessed by the members of past central balances, allowing the differences in scale between the European society of states of the nineteenth century and the global society of the twenty-first. The latter will be a society of giants. Extensive territory, population and resources; high economic and technological skills; adequate political and social cohesion; advanced military muscle (especially power projection capacity) and the willingness to use it; organizational and administrative capacity for rapid decision-making in crisis; and (most crucially) capacity to induce the behavior known as "bandwagoning" - that is, joining what is calculated to be the winning side - by other powers will all be necessary. And potential motivation must be considered alongside potential capacity.

Almost every commentator has for some years been regarding China as the likeliest of the usual suspects for future "peer competitor" status. The interests of Washington and Beijing seem to be on a possible collision course in East Asia and the China Seas, to a degree not really paralleled by America's relationships with major powers in its other spheres of interest. The survival of Taiwan, the fate of the two Koreas, the U.S. alliance with Japan, the visibility of U.S. troops in the area, the even greater visibility of U.S. naval forces (as in the 1996 crisis in the Taiwan Strait), the prospects of a Theatre Missile Defense system possibly covering Taiwan and Japan, and the resented American pressures on human rights (concerning not only China itself but, still more, Tibet) are all likely to continue creating frictions and irritations.

On the "future capabilities" side, China seems prospectively more formidable than other potential competitors. Its population, territory and resources provide the foundation of that impression. The spectacular rate of Chinese economic growth in the last few decades has inevitably reinforced this. China's level of technical and economic competence has also been impressive. And a party autocracy like that in Beijing (assuming it survives) has an inherent advantage in making rapid, ruthless decisions during crisis, as in 1989.

Conceding all that, China's shadow is often greater than even its very real substance warrants. For some decades to come, its apparent strengths will be offset by less apparent weaknesses. The rapidity of its economic growth has often led analysts to pass over the immense structural difficulties and imbalances of the Chinese economy: for instance, the problem of restructuring loss-making state industries, the great inequalities between the prosperous coastal zones and the still bitterly poor interior, the weakness of the banking sector, the inadequate development of commercial law, the rushed urbanization, and the truly awesome fact of more than one hundred million unemployed in the labor force. As well, the ability to sell into the American market will remain vital to the foreign exchange reserves that enable China to buy essential commodities, weapons and technologies. Normal trading status, previously called most favored nation status, will therefore remain a vulnerable asset. Most oil supplies for China still come from the Middle East, and could at present readily be interdicted. The political control the Beijing regime wields over its territory and peripheral areas is potentially fragile.

On the military side, though China has bought and/or copied some advanced Russian platforms (aircraft and submarines) and perhaps garnered a few American secrets, its defense establishment still has a very long way to go before it will be able to look sideways at the 7th fleet, except perhaps very close to the Chinese coast. There are clear signs that China's strategists are well aware of the limits of their power projection capacity, even as against Taiwan.(2) They have made no effort in recent decades to retake the islands Qemoy and Matsu, held by Taiwan since 1949. Official awareness of China's current strategic weakness may even be seen in the interest that young Chinese strategists are allowed to take in the "revolution in military affairs" (RMA), the forward edge of advanced American strategic thinking.(3) If the Chinese defense establishment is conscious of having no chance of catching up with the present generation of American weapons systems, or even the next generation, it is clearly logical for it to concentrate on a more distant strategic future, which means the weaponry envisaged in the RMA. Since a weapons generation these days lasts at least fifteen years, that would put "peer competitor" status on hold until about forty-five years...