(Photo: Pixabay)
Thus, the Americans favoured the globalisation of trade, of which they were both the beneficiary and the guarantor. Globalised trade favoured the United States as a leading sea power, and liberal principles of economic exchange promoted American capital, innovation and products in foreign markets. For the same reason, the US supported collective security and cooperation systems (such as NATO and the World Trade Organisation), in which they were always the strongest “shareholder”. This enabled them to control potential competitors and radically hampered their search for an “independent path”, which in the long run could threaten the dominance of the hegemon.
At the same time, the United States was the precursor of the Information Age, initiated in 1992 by President Bill Clinton’s economic strategy called Clintonomics. The technology sector was its pillar. US advantages in science and technology were used to conduct a revolutionary breakthrough in the development of electronics and information technologies. This made American products more globally competitive and put the country at the forefront of the IT revolution that changed the world picture at the beginning of the 21st century and ushered in the Information Age.
At that time, the United States did not withdraw from the ocean after defeating the Soviet Union, which collapsed spectacularly as an imperial geopolitical construct. On the contrary, the US chose a global primacy strategy for the post-Cold War period, with the aspiration to shape the international environment in such a way as to support primarily US interests as a global hegemon. In concrete terms, this was manifested in the promotion by the naval power of democracy and open free markets in other countries, and the maintenance of political and military advantage over potential rivals in key geopolitical regions (Europe and the Western Pacific).
To this end, the Americans also used their alliances with the Rimland states. In achieving this goal, NATO was expanded deeper into the European mainland and a decision was taken to actively maintain a military presence in Eurasia. In time, further steps were taken. Deceived by “imperial temptation” at the summit of world primacy, the Americans undertook numerous military interventions, including in order to induce American norms of behavior and in various forms, they engaged in regulating world affairs at many levels, including as a “global policeman” with military strength and global projection of power. It was a very expensive strategy in terms of spending and resource use, but its application allowed the US role to be maintained in the world for over two decades.
It should not be forgotten that in this post-cold war golden time, America was supported, however, by numerous allies, which may have been more inclined to Thomas Wright’s labelling of this period not so much a “unipolar moment”, but rather as a “unipolar concert of strong and vigorous liberal democratic states.”
Contrary to many forecasts of political scientists and geopolitics, they remained closely related to Washington, recognizing that the United States provides the world (and specifically both of them as leading global exporters in need of uninterrupted access to foreign markets) with such global public goods as stability and the mitigation of the risk of local wars and conflicts, leadership and establishing enforceable standards for the system of an open and dynamically globalising global economy, as well as the security of (especially offshore) communication lines leading to foreign markets and raw materials, including policing activities on the periphery of the system in the event of attempts to destabilize it (e.g. by terrorist phenomena).
There were, of course, differences of opinion and interests with China or Russia about Taiwan or Kosovo, but because of the huge advantage of US power, the risk of war between powers was very low. The competition was silenced, although the above-mentioned Mearsheimer predicted that the world would return to the established cycle of competition and he was right. For the above reasons, the 1990s were a completely unique era.
Even former enemies – responsible for the foreign policy of the US (James Baker) and the Soviet Union (Eduard Shevardnadze) – co-operated quite well against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, which can be seen from their joint communique condemning Hussein’s actions. Beijing also most often in those years refrained from protesting, and the UN Security Council appeared as a body that was able to reach an agreement and regulate the most important matters of the world by working together on behalf of “the good of the international community.”
With such a favourable international environment, the Americans could deal with terrorism in the absence of other major challenges to their position and power.
In the 1990s, the United States’ GDP accounted for ¼ of the world’s GDP, which was twice as much as the second largest power – Japan. At that time, Washington was responsible, depending on the specific year, for between 30 and 40% of world military spending, and after the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, even 42% (in 2004) – as much as the next 14 or 15 countries combined. The situation of the absolute advantage of the United States power resulted not only from the absolute wealth of the Americans, but also from the relative economic weakness of Russia, China and other potential rivals in Eurasia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian GDP fell twofold from 5.4% of its former share in the world to 2.3%.
Between 1988 and 1994, military expenditure of Russia (the Soviet Union) fell from 21.5% of GDP to just 4.2% of GDP, and the resources of a trained recruit from 5.3 million men in 1985 to just 1.27 million in 1996. Neither China nor Russia opposed the United States in the 1990s or attempted to pursue a policy with such aspirations. Iraq, North Korea, and perhaps Iran, were all opponents of Washington at the time, all of them capable of causing regional damage but none constituted a force capable of challenging the real position of the US.
So – without difficulty – in 1991, the Americans gathered in the Persian Gulf, very far from the American continent, 500,000 troops against Iraq, including hundreds of ships and thousands of aircraft. During the crisis in the Taiwan Strait (1995-1996), two aircraft carrier strike groups entered the Strait to prevent Chinese attempts to exert pressure on Taiwan. The demonstration of the naval force of the hegemon on the eastern perimeter of Eurasia ended with the surrender of China’s ambitions.
(Photo: Wikipedia)
In southern and south-eastern Europe, not covered by the processes of economic consolidation of the western part of the continent, and not covered by US geostrategic interest, the 1990s were a period of instability and wars, which can be called succession wars after the geopolitical construct of Yugoslavia fell apart: Serbia’s war with Croatia and conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo killed hundreds of thousands of people and led to the largest exodus of civilians after 1945. The war of Yugoslavian succession ended only as a result of American political and military intervention in the Balkans. Europeans alone did not manage to do this.
An extremely important factor in advancing American primacy in international affairs was, however, undoubtedly the fact that Washington was extremely benefited by the fact that America’s allies in the world were also powerful and rich.
In total, all European and Asian allies of America were responsible for as much as 46.9% of global GDP in 1994, of which European allies in NATO – 30.9%. At that time, weak Russia only accounted for 4.2% of world military spending, while France 5.9%, Germany 4.7%, Great Britain 5.0%, Japan 3.9%, and all NATO (excluding the US) for 26.5% of the globe’s military spending. Adding about 40%, for which the USA was responsible, it is clear how great a power was the unipolar concert of the USA together with its democratic allies in Europe and Asia: they together constituted about ¾ of the aggregated power of the world. It was indeed a spectacular phenomenon in the history of the world.
And yet the kind of “natural” regularity in the history of the world is balancing influence between players in the international system. At that time, however, as the next richest countries played in the unipolar concert mentioned above, contrary to historical regularities, the next in the hierarchy of power did not balance against the leader of the system. Quite the opposite – they were his allies within the universally accepted primacy, characterised by a complex conglomerate of Bretton Woods institutional links. These institutions apparently helped them to serve and achieve particular national goals.
Democracy and free-market economies were spreading rapidly; there was no credible competitor to the primacy of the US, the West and the model of economic liberalism and globalization; and even Russia and China sought to join the American-run World Trade Organization and other world institutions of Bretton Woods.
In this context, we can understand US President George W. Bush, who proudly announced in 2002 that “the great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism (had) ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom.” This phrase perfectly captures the Zeitgeist of this moment in world history and people living at that time certainly remembered this moment. Just then, after the enlargement of NATO and the EU, the West had reached the zenith of its power and influence, and the maximum power of pushing the normative order, which it considered its own and worthy of widespread dissemination (human and individual rights, personal freedom, elective democracy, the primacy of private property, etc.). At that time, the conviction about the admissibility of intervention in other areas of the world in the name of defending the above values became legitimate for many.
This is entirely characteristic of the dominant geopolitical constructs, which create and defend the canon of norms that suit them and which they legitimise with their power. They construct the cement and are a “mortar” of mutual relations and the criterion of differentiation towards external forces.
Then the conservative values of the ancient regime, so hated by nations on the Baltic-Black Sea bridge, the loss of subjectivity of which was confirmed in Vienna “for all time”), stabilizing order in Europe for at least several decades of the nineteenth century.
The configuration of the post-Cold War power system meant that the US was able to preserve local balance of power in key regions of Eurasia favourable to its primacy, which was the central motive of the US post-Cold War strategy. And now they could achieve their goal with much less effort and cost than before. During the Cold War, American allies in regions of the world distant from America had to measure whether or not there was a disadvantageous arrangement of forces for them – if the power of the United States were lacking in this calculation. This forced Washington to make the most pre-emptive (almost preventive) equalisation of potential differences, usually through permanent dislocation in key regions of substantial military forces. In turn, in the post-Cold War world, the difference between the needs of allies in terms of security (and existing threats) and what the allies themselves can provide was much smaller, and often did not exist at all.
Such was the case, to some extent, initially even in the Western Pacific, which allowed the US to reduce the number of their military forces in this operational theatre from 110,000 to 76,000 between 1989 and 1995. It was even more pronounced in Europe. European NATO accounted for ¼ of world spending in 1994, and Russia only for 4.2%.
What’s more, Russia was in fact even weaker than the numbers indicate, and this is due to a decrease in combat readiness and a complete stagnation in the process of modernisation and material and equipment additions to the army of the Russian Federation. This weakness fully manifested itself during the war in Chechnya.
While the shrinking number of US troops remained in Eurasia, anchoring the advanced American presence on the supercontinent, the balance was definitely “skewed” in favor of the Atlantic world. In addition, Russia withdrew to the borders of its union republic from the times of the Soviet Union, which geographically returned it to the borders of the state from before the beginnings of imperial expansion started for good by Tsar Peter I the Great. All this reduced the involvement of US military forces on the Old Continent from about 300,000 permanently stationed soldiers in 1989 to about 107,000 in 1995 and 98,000 in 2005. In 2014 – on the day of the Russian invasion of the Donbas – it was already well below 70,000. What’s more, these troops were primarily intended for training allies, for training expeditionary activities, e.g. in Afghanistan, or managing subsequent rotations and shipments between the US and the Greater Middle East, using the transit location of the Old Continent, and were not strictly combat troops.
Similarly, the total overseas presence of armed forces (i.e. those located outside the US home territory, including ships on the seas and oceans at advanced combat stations and patrols around Eurasia) decreased from a total of 510,000 in 1989 to around 238,000 in 1995. And all without giving up the defense of interests or guaranteeing the political and military obligations of overseas powers. The already mentioned weakness of potential rivals allowed the continuation of the US’s role as a geopolitical stabiliser while reducing the associated burden.
There is no question that such a convenient configuration of the international situation allowed the transfer of forces and taking action in places where after the Cold War security challenges seemed to be the greatest.
Great Britain and France took an active and significant part in the 1990-91 war with Iraq, and Germany and Japan paid a large part of the financial bill for this war – namely about USD 16 billion, out of the entire bill for this war of about USD 61 billion. The same mechanism for supporting the activities of the external hegemon was repeated in subsequent conflicts: in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. At the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 21st century, NATO made expeditionary missions a core issue of the entire alliance (in the famously laconic phrase – “out of area or out of business”).
Despite the gradual loss of real military capabilities by European allies, which was already clearly visible during the intervention in Libya, overall participation and support of the alliance was a net advantage for the US due to the legitimacy of the hegemon’s conduct, especially if the intervention/war was not formally approved by the United Nations. Here comes an extremely important argument, showing how much the overall power of the West translated into a diplomatic force compatible with the American vision of the world and the entire construct of the ‘West’ at a principled level, even if in specific matters sometimes Western allies were not always consistent. The above guaranteed undeniably large reserves of “soft power” to the hegemon.
All of the above phenomena led to the situation that in this exceptional period of geopolitical pause, the international system was built not on a balance of power, but indeed on a huge imbalance manifested in the overwhelming advantage of the power of the liberal West and its institutions supported by the hard power of US strength. The distribution of forces in key Eurasian matters was, in fact, controlled by countries whose views on international affairs were, in principle, consistent with those prevailing in Washington. By the way, this opened the gates to a whole range of political science theories based on idealistic constructs in international relations. They were all based on the “invisible” everyday power of the American hegemon. As a result, it was a golden time for forcing liberal ideas, human rights and democracy, as well as for a peaceful and open international order that would benefit globalisation.
Countries more or less opposed to this order were positioned far below their own objective power, because they could not derive fruit from acting under this order.
Few voices publicly contested American policy at the time, and as many as seven wars were waged by Washington from the end of the Cold War until 2017, though one of the important exceptions was the legendary George Kennan, previously mentioned – the former legendary creator of the doctrine of restraining the Soviets in Eurasia, who (as well as other less known than American geostrategists) was, however, in the 1990s strongly opposed to NATO enlargement, Washington’s additional strategic commitments in Eurasia, and any US intervention in general (Bush junior’s doctrine), if it did not result from the need for balance in Rimland Eurasia. In his opinion, they did not serve the interests of the USA.
Just like the symbol of the previous imperial system of Great Britain was in the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century a proud Royal Navy liner protecting communication lines from the colonies to the metropolis.
In the context of the European continent, the goal of US policy in the golden period was to shape Europe in such a way that it could be as far as possible one unit under the primacy of the US with the institutions of the sea – such as Bretton Woods and NATO. Four successive American administrations acted in unison in the implementation of this grand strategy towards Europe, supporting the enlargement of the European Union and expanding NATO to include the former Warsaw Pact countries and the republics of the former Soviet empire. In the same vein, Russia was also drawn into the Western world, which was traditionally called “constructive dialogue” in the US.
Autor
Jacek Bartosiak
CEO and Founder of Strategy&Future, author of bestselling books.
Strategy&Future
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