The Strategic Straitjacket of Globalization

WASHINGTON: After the demise of the Soviet empire, many strategic thinkers began to look for another potentially comparable competitor that would emerge to challenge the United States in the 21st century. It now appears likely that none will arise. Successfully globalizing states will be economic and political competitors and partners at the same time. These states, whose power depends upon enmeshment in the globalizing world, may find the use of force more harmful than helpful.

The process of globalization creates a strategic straitjacket for globalizing nations, including the sole superpower. The use of force to gain strategic advantage or to settle disputes among globalizing states is highly unlikely. As Richard Haass has noted, war between the great powers is almost unthinkable within the new paradigm. While this strategic straitjacket is evident within the European Union, it also affects the relationships of other countries, including the US and China.

There are those in the US who continue to view the world in Realist terms and maintain that a rising power such as China is inherently threatening. They argue that China will pursue military power to match its growing economic power and seek to expand its defense perimeter, sharply reduce US military and political influence in Asia, and redraw international norms and institutions to advance its own narrow national interests. China, in short, is a long-term threat to the United States that must be kept weak and contained. Similarly, there are strategists in China who think the US will seek to thwart a rising China and foresee an eventual military clash.

Such views, however, fail to appreciate the changing basis of national power and national interests under conditions of globalization. Moreover, it fails to account for how Chinese leaders view the country's long-term national interests and strategy.

China has no viable alternative to engagement with the United States. This strategic straitjacket is likely to tighten, not loosen, even though China's growing economic power would seemingly widen its options and enhance its military potential. Chinese leaders recognize that disruption of China's economic relations with the outside world would have a devastating impact on the country's economic growth and modernization, with politically destabilizing consequences. They also recognize the strategic importance of sustaining the international institutions and norms that have enhanced global economic growth and benefited China. They recognize that China's security is not enhanced by the occupation of land - Taiwan is a question of national unity to Beijing, not of acquiring territory - or seeking to militarily dominate a region. China's dependence on good relations with the United States and maintenance of the US-led international system will likely continue to grow as China becomes even more integrated into the global economy and international community. Nearly all countries perceive a clear stake in maintaining the international system, and in protecting their own umbilical cord to that system; China is no exception.

The Realists also underestimate the US's ability to maintain its position as the world's most powerful nation. It will not be in any major nation's interest including China's to engage in a self-defeating strategic challenge to try to replace the US as the world leader. China and all the major powers today depend on the health of the US-led international economic system for their prosperity and often their security. Moreover, there is no battle of ideological, political and economic systems comparable to that which animated the Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. For the US to maintain its prosperity, security, and dominant position, however, it also needs to maintain cooperative relations with other major nations, especially an economically and strategically important one like China.

Not only are the globalizing states limited in their strategic options toward each other, they are increasingly vulnerable to threats that emanate from weak, failing, and rogue states - usually the least globalized states - and non-state actors who utilize those states. These threats range from terrorist cells operating from their territory, like Al Qaeda used Afghanistan, to transnational crime, regional conflict, and incubation and spread of disease. Consequently, the globalizing states need to engage in strategic cooperation to meet the near and long-term challenges posed by the least-globalized states.

This new strategic reality may be understood as another form of the bipolarity of global powers seen during the Cold War. The world is now divided not between two superpower-controlled blocs, but between the areas of relative stability, order, prosperity, interconnectedness, and interdependence - namely the globalizing states in much of Eurasia, Northeast and Southeast Asia, and North America - and the areas of relative instability, disorder, economic decline and little interconnectedness or interdependence including some areas of Southeast, South and Central Asia, much of the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of the Caribbean and Latin America. Evidence of this bipolar conflict is demonstrated by US use of force in the last fifteen years, which has been exclusively in and against weak, failing and rogue states. This new situation is inherently fuzzy, however, since these divergent areas shift constantly and are not clearly demarcated.

This new fuzzy bipolarity was not evident to the Bush administration when it took power in January 2001. Top officials focused on maintaining US global and regional hegemony in the face of China's rise. But immediately after 9/11, the administration reordered its strategic priorities to focus on fighting global terrorism and the threats posed by declining rather than rising states. This led to US military action to topple the Taliban government in Afghanistan in an effort to deprive the Al Qaeda terrorist network of a strategic base for operations against the US homeland. The quick military success in Afghanistan was followed a year and a half later by the administration's discretionary war to remove Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.

The US has proven much more adept at regime removal than regime replacement, however. It now seems quite likely that the US will be bogged down in post-conflict conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq for years to come, and that it will need all the help it can get from allies and international institutions. The strategic focus of the US will necessarily be on unstable non-globalized states, as indicated in the President's National Security Strategy.

This new strategic map is likely to define the challenges of the 21st century. It remains to be seen whether the successfully globalizing countries can cooperate to meet the threats from the non-globalized world and help failing and weak nations become successful globalizing ones. This pooling of power to meet the challenges emanating from non-globalized states needs to include not only the US, Europe, and Japan, but also China, which has many of these states on its periphery and is vulnerable to their dangers. Chinese leaders recognize that China has an increasing stake in mitigating these threats and strengthening the institutions and regimes that underpin the global order. Moreover, Sino-US economic interdependence is growing rapidly. China needs American markets, technology, and investment. China's purchase of more than $100 billion in US treasuries finances US deficits and helps keep interest rates low. The common threat to US and Chinese security and prosperity posed by failing states calls for long-term cooperation between Washington and Beijing, which could also dramatically strengthen mutual trust and confidence in the bilateral relationship. And all of the major powers need to take advantage of the new strategic straitjacket that unites globalizers in order to refocus their cooperative efforts on the real strategic challenges of the 21st Century.