(pixabay.com)
It is worth comparing the previous era – the Cold War – which also saw Americans failures, even a major defeat in Vietnam, but the grand strategy of containing the Soviets in Eurasia passed the test and led to the building of a global order fashioned by the US.
The undoubted success of the post-Cold War time was the stabilisation of security in Europe, although it could have been highly unstable after the post-1989 retreat and then the eventual collapse of the Soviets in 1991, which created a security vacuum in the wake of the withdrawing power. One of the great successes one forgets about, as if it were a natural fact – was to maintain the old wartime powers – the former enemies – Germany and Japan in check with the US and the West as part of the Bretton Woods architecture.
Part of this success was the ability to extinguish local conflicts before they spread over, for example, entire areas, which was proven by the Balkans and which has not been successful in Syria and the Levant recently. This also shows the unipolar moment of US dominance is a thing of the past, especially in the Greater Middle East.
Various methods were used here: political and security guarantees – as in the case of Ukraine and the Budapest Memorandum (which, as it turned out in 2014, did not end up guaranteeing territorial integrity), hard diplomacy or the threat of the use of force (in Iran and Libya). One forgets how extremely important the efficient denuclearisation of the republics created after the collapse of the Soviet Union was from the point of view of the hegemon’s interests and the overall stability of the international system.
A constant task was also to prevent the tendencies of strong countries in key regions of the world to dominate others (Saddam Hussain), and to combat asymmetrical threats to the global political and economic system in the course of progressing globalisation and increasingly intense interpersonal and trade interactions – such as terrorism. In the civilisational dimension, however, tasks included broadening the liberal order and democratisation, even in Latin America and Europe, including the Baltic-Black Sea Intermarium.
Ensuring the freedom of the World Ocean is still an achievement (carried out so effectively that it appears to lay people as almost obvious and somehow natural). This reduces tensions in trade, which would otherwise multiply if the countries participating in global exchange had to deal with competition for access to this critical world trade highway.
Here, however, the question arises as to whether or not huge China could ever have been fully incorporated in this way. Beijing is such a powerful and distinct pole of power that, apart from individual elements of the order accepted by the Chinese leadership in an opportunistic manner in order to maintain the possibility of economic development, it was probably not possible in the long run. As such – it was simply a task beyond Washington’s capacity.
It is hard to resist the impression that the individual basic assumptions on which the American post-Cold War successes were based are now obsolete. These past assumptions are:
1) the existence of a United States military primacy that was to last forever, in every region of the world, over every rival and over an alliance of two or more rivals in Eurasia;
2) consistent cooperation of US allies, who were to remain net exporters of peace and stability for a long time, and were to remain in the group of the richest and strongest countries in the world;
3) potential opponents wanted – in line with their own development interests – to be included in the liberal system of American primacy;
4) the USA could effectively use international institutions to maintain a favourable global order;
5) the war between powers is an anachronism – with this particular thinking consisting of several elements: the twilight of totalitarian ideologies such as fascism or communism generating additional tension for conflicts of geopolitical interests that occur naturally; the supposedly peaceful impact of economic globalisation, mutual nuclear deterrence and MAD (mutually assured destruction), i.e. mutual capabilities for complete nuclear destruction of the USA and Russia;
6) the economic primacy of the United States over all others;
7) the extension of the democratisation of societies and states was to be unstoppable;
8) modern technologies were only to promote freedom, private property and the openness of societies and markets, and thus the power of the liberal maritime external hegemon of Eurasia – the United States;
9) Europe was to remain the most important region for the US primacy strategy and it was from this point of view that Europe would continue to be the allies most important for Washington’s global interests;
10) Great Britain has always been to remain the closest ally of the United States in the world and in Europe, because the Atlantic was the main axis of the relationship between America and Europe as the richest and most important parts of the world, separated by this ocean;
11) Great Britain had a significant impact on events in the most important of the twentieth century Eurasian Rimlands, i.e. in Europe.
However, the whole sequence of events occurred, from the war of Russia with Georgia in 2008 through to the great global economic crisis of 2008-2009, the wars in Ukraine and Syria to the election campaign, and then the election of Donald Trump as the president of the United States. At that time, some Americans were frustrated with the attitude of their former allies, when there were regular theses about NATO’s allegiance and the alleged debt of the whole world, including the current American allies – towards the United States. According to Trump and his advisers, the Americans had “built and maintained the global order, thanks to which everyone else got rich”, and the Americans had begun to lose out.
It was foretold in sharp rhetoric that the time to change this unfavourable system would come. In this context, the speech of China’s leader Xi Jinping at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2017 was remarkably remembered when he defended the principles of an open global economy against the new US policy!
The standard of two major regional wars (2MRC) was to guarantee stabilisation of geopolitically key regions (primarily three – the West Pacific, Europe and the Middle East), so that any opponent would not dare to use the moment of American involvement in a second important theatre. The 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review explicitly stated that the 2MRC standard is thesine qua nonof being a superpower, although in 2012 during Obama’s Defense Strategic Guidance they changed the standard from 2MRC to just 1.5 or 1.7MRC, which means – to explain assumptions of the current standard, so as to preserve the ability to defeat one opponent and defend against the actions of the other by tying his forces in combat, inflicting great losses on him mainly using means on the Navy ships moving around Rimland Eurasia and as a result of air strikes over long distances (which, by the way, negatively affected the flexibility of using a decreasing number of platforms in the US Air Force at two different and remote operational theatres).
Since Obama’s strategy was announced before the war in Ukraine, it can be speculated whether it sometimes questioned Washington’s guarantees and influence, and whether it did not affect the perception of the Russians about the balance of power in Europe, especially in areas significantly removed from the Atlantic.
First of all, for the reason that the 1.5MRC standard was devastated by the effects of sequestration in the financing of the US armed forces, which primarily reduces combat readiness and the ability to project overseas forces that are constantly complained about by commanders and US politicians responsible for the state of the armed forces.
Events in the Baltic-Black Sea Intermarium, the Western Pacific, the Indian Ocean and around the Horn of Africa, and the additional effort of operations against Islamic State, the war on terror in Africa, Yemen, and in addition the planning of possible operations and conducting exercises in 2017 2018 towards North Korea and Iran, completely questioned the sense of the 1.5MRC (1.7MRC) standard and also to the formerly binding 2MRC as completely insufficient for the challenges of the new era.
The Budget Control Act (BCA), i.e. the aforementioned Sequestration Act (which covered defence spending in over 50% of Congressional targeted cuts), negatively affected the abilities of the MRC general standard to bounce back. This was carried out primarily without the flexibility required by common sense, cutting critical elements of key programs and expenditure important for the structure of the armed forces, not to mention continuous priority spending. For example, in the most important land forces for European security, this affected combat readiness, the structure and the actual number of troops.
As a result of sequestration, investments in modernisation were stopped, necessary purchases were reduced, technologies of the future were limited by the BCA. The third real offset strategy, which was very important for the future battlefield, came to lack money over the years. The cessation of investing in the military programs of the future will begin to be felt in the 2020s.
The US Air Force has the least aircraft and is the oldest in terms of equipment in its entire proud history, which began during World War II. Not only has reduced funding become a problem, but it is also used too intensively and there is a fast rotation and operational rate of units in Eurasia. In the face of financing cuts, the growing problem was the increase in personal expenditure on soldiers’ salaries and bureaucratic growth resulting from overseas operations requiring complex logistics and planning at the expense of linear combat units.
This would lead to a reorientation of alliances whose first attempts, especially in the Pacific, are already well visible, as in the case of the Philippines and Malaysia. The spectacular shift of economic and military power from Europe to Asia is superimposed on these nations. The distribution of economic and military forces in the world is becoming increasingly unfavourable for the main US partners: Germany, France and the United Kingdom, but also for Japan, Washington’s main ally in the West Pacific.
In 2015, Europe accounted for 25.4% of global GDP and 22.6% of global military expenditure, while Asia already accounted for 31.5% of global GDP and 25.6% of military expenditure. Over the past 20 years this change has taken place, inevitably heralding a changing global structure. Although it must be admitted that, along with the US, the allies in 2015 still constituted as much as 61.2% of world GDP and 59% of global military spending. However, despite the fact that they still have an advantage as a combined whole, the advantage has decreased significantly, especially in military expenditure and especially in strategically important places. In addition, there was a gap in geopolitical and economic interests between the US and some of its allies.
In 1994, they alone represented 24.7% of global GDP and 38.75% of military expenditure. Ten years later, the US share in global GDP had even increased to 25.2%, and expenditure to 42.1%. A steady decline in the US share has been recorded since then. In addition to the growing power of the opponents and the powerful financial crisis of 2008-2009, the US is noting a general weakening of economic growth, and after 2010 there have been drastic cuts in the Pentagon. This has been combined with a simultaneous increase in GDP and military expenditure in these years in other countries, particularly China. The US share of world GDP fell by 1/10 between 2004 and 2015 to 22.4%, and military expenditure dropped to 33.8% of world expenditure. All of the above data are for nominal values.
In 2015, China spent 12.2% of global military spending, while US allies in Asia only a combined 7.6%. The Chinese armed forces are undergoing rapid modernisation and are using the geography of the West Pacific to prepare operational concepts that take advantage of geographic conditions favouring China in the event of war with the US or Japan in the South China or East China Sea.
It should also be emphasised that the relative decline in the allies’ power was more pronounced than that of America itself. European NATO members produced 30.9% of the world’s GDP in 1994 and in 2015 – 26.1% and furthermore this share is still decreasing rapidly. An even greater decrease can be seen in the share of military expenditure: from 26.5% to 17.6%, with personnel and modernisation costs far higher in Europe than, for example, in Asia. It should also be noted that as a result of NATO enlargement, the number of allies increased by 2017 from 16 to 29 countries, so NATO’s area of responsibility increased enormously, and with it there are increased obligations, including on the Alliance’s eastern flank, while the negative expenditure trend remained unchanged.
This attitude resulted from the great sense of security that occurred after the end of the Cold War. Nothing changed by the said enlargement of NATO borders and thus the increase in commitments, nor the costs incurred as a result of external interventions and expeditions outside the area of treaty liability of the Alliance – such as Afghanistan. For Germany, military and defence spending was 1.7% of GDP in 1994 and only 1.2% in 2015. In France, the decrease was from 3.3% of GDP to 2.1% of GDP between 1994 and 2015. In Great Britain in the same period from 3% to 2%. The numbers alone do not reveal the even more bitter reality, because the relative decline in achieved GDP and the decrease in the percentage of military expenditure led – in conjunction with a sense of geopolitical pause – to the fall of the readiness of the armed forces, to a kind of stagnation of general military capabilities. Most of the allies have not invested or even maintained their existing capabilities to conduct warfare since from the Cold War period, which was manifested itself primarily in a dramatic reduction in the structure and size of the armed forces.
Initially, combat operations were to be carried out by Europeans, and the US was to provide logistics support. It quickly became apparent that only the Americans could perform Suppression of Enemy Air Defences (SEAD) against such a weak power as Libya. When the Americans withdrew into the second line of combat operations, European shortcomings in capabilities abounded in the eyes of observers: deficiencies in the means of recognition and tracking, a shortage of personnel to manage powertrain operations, lack of a sufficient number of aerial fuel tanks necessary to maintain the ability to fly over enemy territory and maintain combat zones (the US provided over 70% of aircraft fuel tanks), not to mention the more widely known problem in the press of the rapid depletion of precision ammunition, which the Americans had to start supplying their allies to sustain any warfare.
The above data, however, does not say everything. The cuts since the beginning of the 1990s have disproportionately reduced critical capabilities for war such as reconnaissance, intelligence, monitoring, transport, and above all logistics, including the means of haulage and stockpiling. Secondly, huge shortages in the readiness of units and the level of their modernisation, especially after the financial tsunami of 2008, perpetuated.
Although in the last three or four years there has been an attempt to stop the regression and maybe rebound from the bottom since around 2016 due to both the pressure of the new administration in Washington and the realisation of the effects of the war in Ukraine. For now, the effects are one extremely modest. It will take years to improve the overall bad condition of European armies. In addition to the ability to wage war in cooperation with the Americans, this situation is greatly complicated by the United States in maintaining the previously achieved cohesion of the West in terms of military involvement. For it reduces the possibility of arguments about multilateral intervention by hard force, which would legitimise US primacy. Instead, the lack of real military capabilities may push Washington to unilateral decisions on security issues, which paradoxically may accelerate the de-legitimation of the US primacy system.
But this is no longer 6 times less – as in the mid-1990s. In addition, the expenditure trend in European countries does not seem easy to reverse because of their economic and social structure. In addition, the nature of the generally changing balance in Eurasia and trends in the development of the art of war and military technology – resulting from the revolution in military matters that is currently underway – favour the Russian armed forces. In addition, Russia has been practicing strategic mobility and constant readiness of units for ten years, and has a predominance of geography on NATO’s eastern flank, which is under Moscow’s very nose – close to Russian borders, and actually very close to its core statehood.
This means that there is the temptation to treat each of these matters as an isolated problem, which – if it is overcome – will make it possible to regain the foundations of international order stability automatically. The problem, however, is that individual crises – which are the main news of the day – are symptoms of deep, structural problems in the international order.
If strategy is a calculated relationship between means and goals, America must think carefully about whether it is heading towards the reef. For a superpower, foreign policy boils down to balancing (preferably with a comfortable surplus of strength) “the nation’s commitments and the nation’s power”. If the statesman is unable to do so, he will fall in due course – as Walter Lippman wrote 75 years ago.
Autor
Jacek Bartosiak
CEO and Founder of Strategy&Future, author of bestselling books.
Strategy&Future
Trwa ładowanie...