Is the American Century Over?

"This book taps into some of the current debates. Is America just in relative decline? Or is it in terminal decline? Is America turning inward? Is America’s seeming inward turn just part of normal oscillations in US foreign policy? Or is it a harbinger of things to come? It’s also interesting because it predates the election. Certainly Trump’s election as president has caused many of us to recalibrate certain judgments about US foreign policy, but Joe Nye continues, even in his recent writings, to make the case that some of the concerns about American decline are overwrought. But the reason I chose his book is that I don’t know of any discussion, not just of America’s role in the world, but of power in world affairs in general, that can avoid his writings. If you’re thinking about power and world affairs—how do we measure and conceptualize it, and how do countries convert power into influence—he is the preeminent figure. He coined the term ‘soft power.’ I feel that any discussion of power has to begin with the contributions he has made. And, at this point, Joe Nye has been pushing back against the declinist narrative for almost 30 years. So in 1987 Paul Kennedy wrote his famous declinist tract. In 1990, Professor Nye wrote a book called Bound to Lead . I don’t know if the book was intended purely as a refutation, but it certainly had Professor Kennedy’s work in mind. In the 1980s, there were concerns about imperial overstretch, there were concerns about an ascendant Japan and there were concerns about America’s preoccupation with Soviet politics and its inability to think beyond that prism. And Nye said, ‘No. If you look at the broad base of American power and influence, America is more resilient than most observers believe, and it will have an enduring capacity to influence world affairs.’ And I would say he’s one of the few, part of a dying breed of scholars of international affairs who is able to take, and has a penchant for adopting, the 30,000-foot view. I’ve been studying his work more and more in light of China’s resurgence. Right now, in the United States, there is a very fundamental recalibration of attitudes towards China. There are a lot of scholars and policy makers who are debating, ‘Was our engagement strategy vis-à-vis China wrong? Is America sufficiently competitive? Does America know how to compete with China?’ And so on and so forth. Joe Nye takes stock of the China challenge. He doesn’t dismiss its magnitude, but he places it in proper perspective. And one of his very important insights is that power alone—just the raw accumulation of power—does not a superpower make. A superpower has to stand for an idea. You have to embrace a vision that others find compelling. And so, interestingly, if you look at the United States, it had the world’s largest economy by the late 19th century. Some people say it overtook Britain in absolute size in the 1870s and some people say the 1880s or 1890s. But it wasn’t until the end of World War II that America became a superpower. And so people ask, ‘What happened in the interregnum?’ Because there’s a preoccupation—I would say almost a borderline obsession—in Washington with, ‘When is China’s economy going to overtake America’s in absolute terms?’ People fixate and say, ‘Well, if you measure it in PPP terms, or if you measure it at market exchange rates and build in these assumptions…’ I think that that kind of preoccupation is psychologically unhealthy. My own feeling is that even if China’s rate of growth slows significantly, or it encounters certain economic obstacles, it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which China’s economy doesn’t overtake ours at some point. But I think the real question is, ‘What does China do with that power?’ When America’s economy overtook Britain’s it still didn’t have a veritably global mindset. In the 1920s and 1930s, America was far more inward looking. There was the Great Depression , the imposition of tariffs. “I read recently that America is currently combating terrorist organizations in 14 countries and has special operations forces deployed in roughly three quarters of the world’s countries” Then you had World War II. America was thrust into a superpower role almost by default because Asia and Europe were devastated. President Truman and his advisors ask, ‘What do we do with this postwar inheritance of power?’ And they decided to fashion what we now call the postwar order. But they had a vision. They were able to tether America’s raw, bountiful inheritance of power to a vision that has proven quite compelling, one in which American power was embedded within a system that was, not fully inclusive, but reasonably inclusive. And it was a system under whose auspices Western Europe and Asia recovered. And, as much as the postwar order is under duress nowadays, it still presents a compelling vision. “For a superpower to be a superpower, you have to stand for an idea. You have to embrace a vision that others find compelling” The big question that Joe Nye talks about a lot is, even if China eclipses the United States in absolute economic size, even if it eclipses the United States in terms of certain headline grabbing metrics, does China have an alternative vision of world affairs that is equally or more compelling? Particularly under Xi Jinping, China has done quite a skillful job of conveying this aura of inexorability around its resurgence, despite facing formidable issues. China’s demographic outlook is quite grim. Environmental degradation has wreaked havoc. There are fundamental social issues. By 2025 or so they want to have brought roughly 250 million Chinese from rural areas into urban areas. Think about the economic and political costs of that urbanization. China also doesn’t have an alliance network in the way that the United States does. It has a very transactional approach to foreign policy. So if you look at the Belt and Road initiative, if you look at China’s economic statecraft, it has been very effective in helping China build inroads into a number of countries. But over the long-term, a transactional foreign policy that’s narrowly tailored to Beijing’s interest, I don’t know how compelling a vision that is globally. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter And what’s interesting is that despite its rapid resurgence, China isn’t exactly chomping at the bit to replace the United States in its present capacity. Because what if, hypothetically, America were to decline precipitously or to decide tomorrow, ‘We’re packing up our bags, we’re coming home, we’re withdrawing everywhere and China, here are the keys.’ Then, all of a sudden, China’s domestic politics, which are already under tremendous scrutiny, are placed under an even harsher light. I don’t think China would like the reception that it would get. I think the narrowness of China’s foreign policy and the inability of that foreign policy to mobilize coalitions to address global challenges would be placed in sharper relief. China benefits from having the United States as a foil. But I’m not sure that China is prepared take the spotlight and say, ‘Our vision for world affairs is x.’ It’s hard to fill in the blank at the moment. One of the challenges posed by the declinist debate is that the United States has to navigate between two equally unhelpful impulses, complacence and fatalism. The benefit of the historical view is that you say, ‘We’ve been here before.’ In fact, the declinist preoccupation is not just a geopolitical preoccupation. James Fallows wrote an essay in 2010, ‘ How America Can Rise Again ,’ in which he makes the point that declinism dates back to colonial times when the concerns were about moral decline. In the 30s and 40s, there were concerns about declinism vis-à-vis Japan and Germany. Then, during the Cold War, there were concerns about decline vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. Then it was Japan; now China. So you want to tell yourself that we’ve been here before, so let’s not get paranoid. On the other hand two very trenchant observers of US foreign policy, Gideon Rachman and Ed Luce, say, ‘Well, it’s true that the declinist thesis hasn’t proved correct yet. But what if this time is different?’ And that’s a very important question because the fact that previous rounds of declinst predictions haven’t panned out has no bearing on whether the current declinist rhetoric will pan out or not. The erstwhile failure of declinism should impart a certain caution to the debate, but it has no bearing on the analytical validity of the present wave of declinism. I’m not going to pronounce on whether the declinist case will prove wrong or right this time around. But I do think that the China challenge is more formidable, in certain ways. So if you compare China to the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, or fascist Japan, the mistakes the 20th century powers made was of posing a frontal assault on the system. These were heavily militaristic and heavily ideological assaults. There was very little nuance. The Chinese have learned from those mistakes. If you look at the core of China’s competition, it’s placing a lot more emphasis on economic statecraft than on militarism or on ideological fights. They are selectively revisionist. There are certain elements of the postwar system that they’re chipping away at; there are certain elements of the system that they’re shoring up. And then there’s certain Chinese behavior that’s proceeding independent of the postwar system. The very frontal nature of the 20th century assaults made the threats, at least in the short term, more alarming. But those threats were also more capable of rousing a sense of shared national purpose. It’s far easier to galvanize a polity and the policymaking apparatus if you say, ‘We face a real and/or perceived existential challenge.’ It’s far more difficult to rouse a similar level of concern when you go to Congress or to the public and say, ‘China is militarizing certain features in the South China Sea and it’s stealing intellectual property. It’s not really exporting its ideology, but its values don’t comport with ours.’ Also, we have a robust economic relationship with the Chinese. It may be at risk now, but at least up until now we’ve had deep economic interdependence with the Chinese. We also have cooperated on certain issues. The US-China relationship is marked by both competitive and cooperative dynamics. So how do you rise to a challenge that’s incremental, that’s more economic than military or ideological? It’s a long-run challenge. George Kennan warned about this in his later years. On the occasion of his 90th birthday, he gave a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. He said that for 60 years American foreign policy has been oriented around singular threats. There was Japan, there was Germany, there was the Soviet Union. But he said that institutionally, the US is not oriented towards dealing with a world in which there are no existential or singular challenges that can absorb the energy of its foreign policy apparatus. And if you look at the landscape right now, you have a range of challenges, but none of them rise to an existential level. Joe Nye is my lodestar for thinking about these sorts of issues. You know you’re the preeminent figure when even those who vigorously disagree with you begin by acknowledging you. For several years running, researchers at William and Mary have asked international affairs practitioners to identify which international relations scholars have had the greatest impact on U.S. foreign policy over the past two decades. Joe Nye tops the rankings. Dan Drezner wrote a column in mid-2011 saying, ‘All roads to understanding American foreign policy run through Joe Nye.’ Whether you disagree with him or agree with him, he is central to any discussion of foreign policy, and of power. It’s far from being a preeminent position among the Chinese foreign policy establishment, but it is a position that is starting to get more attention among leading scholars. Yan Xuetong, for example, has a reputation for being a China hawk. He says that we’re locked in a zero-sum competition with the United States and has been leading the baton on that front. He wrote an op-ed in 2011 in the New York Times called ‘ How China Can Defeat America .’ He says the core of the competition between the United States and China will be the number and the quality of alliances. That’s why he has been urging Chinese leaders to revisit their erstwhile leeriness of alliances. He says that those alliances are a force multiplier, they’re an influence multiplier. You have to have people who inculcate your values, who inculcate your vision, who are able to engage in burden sharing. So even Yan Xuetong—who has been quite critical of America’s alliances and of the alliance construct—has said, ‘Look, China, until and unless you’re able to get on with people, there’s going to be an intrinsic limit to how far you can progress,’ particularly in the Asia Pacific. China’s path to regional or global preeminence has to start in China’s backyard. The dynamic that’s playing out in the Asia Pacific is very interesting. Many of China’s neighbors are saying, ‘How do we simultaneously ride the coattails of China’s economic resurgence and strengthen our trade ties and strengthen our investment ties, but hedge against its security ambitions? We’re concerned about its conduct in the South China Sea. We’re concerned about its conduct in the East China Sea. We’re concerned about the unspecified nature of its nine-dash line.’ If I’m one of China’s neighbors, particularly if I’m one of China’s smaller neighbors—and that’s why I think that the behavior of Vietnam and the Philippines and Laos and Cambodia will be a bellwether—I’m mindful of history. China’s preferred arrangement is a hierarchical regional construct where it sits on top and its smaller neighbors pay tribute. Now, the question is, ‘Will China’s economic magnetism, its economic gravitational pull, at some point become sufficiently large that China is able to circumvent that putative alliance requirement?’ There are some people who make the argument that, ‘Well, maybe China won’t need alliances if it can exert a sufficient grip on the economies of its neighbors.’ I’m not persuaded of that view, but it is a view out there."