Читать книгу America's Great-Power Opportunity - Allison Graham, Ali Wyne - Страница 14

When we are sailing through uncharted waters, we instinctively draw upon our accumulated experiences, looking to see if any of them might offer guidance. It is unsurprising that observers often invoke the interwar period and the Cold War when assessing contemporary great-power competition. With its combination of economic stagnation, authoritarian momentum, and aggrieved nationalisms, the 1930s feel uncomfortably relevant. And the decades-long, globe-spanning competition that pitted Washington’s assertion of exceptionalism against Moscow’s would seem to be the natural prequel to the increasingly expansive contest that unfolds now between the United States and China. While each period holds insights important for the present, I will suggest in chapter 2 that these insights may obscure the characteristics of contemporary geopolitics more than they clarify.

If one accepts that those historical comparisons are limited, one has to work harder to diagnose America’s competitive predicament and generate fresh prescriptive guidance. The prevailing starting point for those conversations is that the United States must adapt to an environment of increasingly acute great-power competition. Chapter 3 expounds more fully the concern around this construct: the notion needs to undergo significant analytical refinement before it can evolve from a partial descriptor of contemporary geopolitics into a prudent basis for US foreign policy. For the United States to have the confidence to compete with China and Russia on a considered, selective basis rather than on a reflexive, reciprocal one, it must take their respective measures with temperance, making sure that it neither discounts nor aggrandizes them.

The 2017 NSS and the 2018 NDS often juxtaposed those two countries, and many discussions in Washington continue to lump Beijing and Moscow together when aiming to articulate the great-power challenge as a whole. But, given the differences between the two countries’ material capacities, strategic objectives, and foreign policies, it is important to consider them separately. Chapter 4 begins that deconstruction, exploring how the United States should assess China’s competitive strengths and weaknesses. That it is the longest chapter in the book testifies to the central place that Beijing’s resurgence now occupies in US foreign policy discussions. While China is undeniably a formidable and multifaceted competitor, it is actively undercutting its own strategic potential by doubling down on both authoritarian rule and coercive foreign policy—and, in the process, alienating major powers within and outside the Asia-Pacific. Indeed, COVID-19 has illuminated a paradox of its trajectory that had been growing more apparent for some time: while increasingly embedded economically and technologically, Beijing is also increasingly isolated militarily and diplomatically, at least among the advanced industrial democracies that still anchor the postwar order.

Chapter 5 continues the disaggregation. It considers how the United States should weigh both Russia’s competitive challenge and a deepening relationship between Beijing and Moscow. While Russia possesses a range of assets that make dismissals of its relevance unwise, the problem it poses is more of a disruptive than systemic nature. Similarly, while its relationship with China continues to grow in scope and intensity, the ideological allure and geopolitical potential of their entente will be constrained so long as it defines itself more on the basis of what it opposes—US influence—than on the basis of what it espouses. Rather than considering misguided efforts to drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow, Washington should concentrate on renewing the power of its democratic example and demonstrating that it can mobilize allies and partners around the urgent task of constructing a more resilient post-pandemic order.

I had originally intended to make this fifth chapter the last one in the book. Soon after I began putting pen to paper, however, I concluded that it would be irresponsible to do so. After all, the more strenuously one objects to a prevailing construct, the more conscientiously one must strive to offer an alternative—or, less satisfactorily, admit that one cannot think of an alternative. With that perspective in mind, the sixth and final chapter outlines eight principles designed to inform a more affirmative vision of US foreign policy, one in which a circumscribed competition with China and Russia influences but does not determine America’s role in the world.

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I should note upfront that, for two reasons, I do not attempt to propose US responses to each specific competitive challenge raised by a resurgent Beijing, a disruptive Moscow, and a deepening entente between them. First, it would be impossible to do justice to that task in a book of this length. Second, my goal is not so much to offer a comprehensive playbook for dealing with those challenges as it is to articulate a broader framework in which to examine them. That framework is grounded in the judgment that China and Russia, while significant competitors, are not overwhelming ones, either individually or in concert. If the United States accepts that judgment, it will have the confidence to believe that it will be able to address whatever challenges they end up presenting. It will also have the composure to conduct a foreign policy in which the management of great-power tensions does not overwhelm the pursuit of other imperatives.

While Washington can play a significant role in shaping the external environment Beijing and Moscow confront, particularly if it exercises greater discipline in making common cause with allies and partners, it can fully control only its own choices. That judgment is no cause for despair. On the contrary, if the United States focuses on investing anew in its unique competitive advantages, it will be well positioned to endure as a pillar of geopolitics, even with a reduced margin of preeminence. Hence it has a great-power opportunity to renew itself without having to invoke China or Russia, let alone base its course upon their calculations. If it can formulate a foreign policy that is largely justified on its own merits, one whose prudence endures no matter what steps its competitors may take, it will have gone a long way toward seizing that opportunity.