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Foreword

“Now Russia-China cooperation is advancing to a new stage of comprehensive partnership and strategic interaction. It would not be wrong to say that it has reached the highest level in all its centuries-long history.”

—VLADIMIR PUTIN¹

“[Russia’s and China’s] enhanced partnership marks the first emergence of a global coalition against American hegemony since the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

—CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER²

“The Sino-Soviet rift that brought the two countries to the brink of nuclear war in the ’60s has been healed rather dramatically.”

—STROBE TALBOTT³

“The echoes of the non-aggression pacts of the 1930s get louder in this age of American retreat.”

—WALL STREET JOURNAL⁴

“If not letting America have its own way is Mr. Obama’s objective, he is an unparalleled foreign-policy success.”

—JOHN BOLTON⁵

“This will be the biggest construction project in the world for the next four years, without exaggeration,” Vladimir Putin said in Shanghai in May 2014, as he raised a glass to drink a toast with Chinese president Xi Jinping.⁶

The two leaders were celebrating the signing of a 30-year, $400 billion natural-gas deal between their countries—the biggest in the history of the natural-gas industry. Under the terms of the deal, Russia would supply the Chinese with natural gas for the first time—38 billion cubic meters of gas per year, through pipelines and other massive infrastructure investments. The Chinese would gain a major new source of energy, and a cleaner-burning fuel, in a country facing major pollution problems. Russia would acquire a massive new customer base for its gas, at a time when Europe seeks to diversify from Russian sources. The deal, Putin said, was “an epochal event” in the relationship between the two nations. For his part, President Xi, always the less voluble of the two leaders, spoke of expanding commerce with Russia. “We are determined that trade between our countries will reach $100 billion by 2015,” he said. Moscow hopes to double that figure by 2020.

The agreement had been in the works for a decade, but some commentators saw it solely in the context of a current crisis: the Western reaction against Russia after its illegal annexation of Crimea in Ukraine, and the threat that war might break out between Russia and Ukraine. “The crisis in relations with the West over Ukraine has made ties to Asia, and particularly relations with its economic engine, China, a key strategic priority,” the New York Times asserted, discussing Putin’s interest in China.⁷

That sounded perfectly logical. It was also perfectly wrong.

The truth is, Putin’s trip to Shanghai was only the latest evidence of an unfolding alliance between Russia and China that most observers are only now starting to acknowledge. The gas deal was so momentous that it would have been impossible to ignore; but the signs of Russian and Chinese collaboration are everywhere, and they have been mounting for more than a decade.

“Russia-China cooperation is advancing to a new stage of comprehensive partnership and strategic interaction,” Putin said on the eve of his visit to Shanghai. “It would not be wrong to say that it has reached the highest level in all its centuries-long history.”⁸ He was preparing to sign “a record package of documents” and agreements between the two countries, covering trade, investment, energy, infrastructure development, Asia-Pacific cooperation, and cultural exchange.⁹ “We are aiming at the creation of special areas of advanced economic development with an investment-friendly environment,” Putin said.¹⁰ Indeed, Putin has turned to China for financing, trying to roll back limits on Chinese investment in the Russian economy in the hope of luring cash into industries from housing to infrastructure to natural resources. Russia seeks China’s help to build a bridge to the Crimean peninsula.

This expanding trade is part of a larger story: Russia and China, once Communist adversaries during the Cold War, now increasingly act in concert. Beijing tacitly supported Russian moves in Crimea by abstaining from a vote in the United Nations, even though Moscow’s actions violated a stated core principle of Beijing’s foreign policy: noninterference. The two countries also lined up on the same side at the UN regarding the Syrian civil war.

Militarily, the two nations are cooperating and collaborating like never before. In May 2014, the Russian and Chinese navies held large-scale joint drills in the East China Sea—sending a message, most experts felt, to Japan, which has found itself in increasing tension with Beijing. “Moscow and Beijing have found advantages in working together to diminish U.S. influence and create greater room for them to pursue international economic and strategic interests,” Brian Spegele and Wayne Ma noted in the Wall Street Journal. “Mr. Putin is widely depicted in Chinese official media as a powerful leader unafraid to take on the West.”¹¹

That’s not how the Chinese view American leaders, to put it mildly.

In spring 2014, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, on an official visit to Beijing that included a tour of China’s first aircraft carrier, stood at a press conference with his counterpart, Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan. With the media looking on, Wanquan made sure the Pentagon chief understood that the Chinese military had no fear of American power. “With the latest developments in China,” Wanquan told Hagel, “it can never be contained.”¹²

In different ways, Russia and China also effectively tolerate, and even facilitate, the interests and goals of rogue nations—Iran, North Korea, Syria, and others. They use their political influence to assist these nations’ efforts to procure nuclear power or weaponry, to avoid international punishment for egregious human-rights abuses, and to prop up anti-Western dictators and even terrorist groups. Despite lingering differences and suspicions, Russia and China have become both newly aggressive in their own spheres and newly cooperative as partners and allies. They have forged a powerful new alliance that marks, as Charles Krauthammer rightly suggests, “the first emergence of a global coalition against American hegemony since the fall of the Berlin Wall.”¹³

Put simply, this coalition has the potential to permanently and fundamentally alter international relations. It was envisioned as, and it has functioned as, a counterweight to liberal democracy generally and the United States specifically. “The unipolar model of the world order has failed,” Putin says, referring to what he sees as American hegemony. “Today this is obvious to everyone.”¹⁴ The Russia-China alliance—we call it a new Axis—already possesses extraordinary power, as is clear not just with new economic and trade agreements and military cooperation but also in the areas of nuclear proliferation and cyber warfare. Individually and together, Russia and China seek to undermine the social, economic, and political framework of democratic societies and our alliances in a way that has yet to be fully understood.

Their efforts to do so are emboldened immeasurably by a United States that is losing the confidence and trust of its allies and partners around the world. From Europe to the Middle East to the Far East, American policy is muddled, irresolute, and even feckless—as was powerfully symbolized in June 2014 when the Obama administration stood by as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the al-Qaeda offshoot, quickly overran cities in Iraq. Our allies doubt American commitment and resolve, question or outright oppose our policies, and are increasingly looking elsewhere—or within—for sustenance and support. Even nations historically aligned with us are making tentative outreach elsewhere. The United States has no clear strategy other than retrenchment and the minimization of genuine threats. We seem unwilling to acknowledge what our adversaries our doing. Unless we fundamentally change the foreign-policy approach we have followed under President Obama, we will continue to lose ground—as will the cause of democracy and freedom around the world.

These, then, are the subjects of the book you are about to read: the Russia-China alliance, the dangers that it poses, and the desperate need for a cogent and committed American response. Without unduly flattering ourselves, let us be frank: We tried to sell the idea of this book for years before we found a taker. We’d rather have been wrong than right. Now that more Americans are paying attention, there might yet be a chance to reverse the tide.

ON THE MARCH: RUSSIA, CHINA, AND THE ROGUES

On May 9, 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin coasted into the Crimean port of Sevastopol on a naval launch, gliding past Russian warships arrayed to greet him. It was Victory Day, the Russian holiday commemorating the Soviet Union’s triumph over Nazi Germany. Over the years, Putin has made the occasion a great celebration of Russian nationalism. He had spent the morning in Moscow attending a military parade in Red Square, an old Soviet practice he resurrected in 2008. His visit to Crimea came two months after he led Russia’s illegal annexation of the Ukrainian territory—a move condemned not only by Ukraine’s government but also by much of the world. In his remarks at Sevastopol, Putin roused his audience with patriotic themes.

“I think 2014 will also be an important year in the annals of Sevastopol and our whole country, as the year when people living here firmly decided to be together with Russia, and thus confirmed their faith in the historic truth and the memory of our forefathers,” he said, in remarks broadcast nationally.¹⁵ Putin called Victory Day “the holiday when the invincible power of patriotism triumphs, when all of us particularly feel what it means to be faithful to the Motherland and how important it is to defend its interests.”¹⁶ After the speech, Russian jets flew over the crowd, through what mere months before had been Ukrainian airspace.¹⁷

While Putin was in Crimea, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin celebrated Victory Day in Moldova’s breakaway pro-Russian region of Transnistria, declaring Russia the “guarantor of security” for what he provocatively called “the republic of Transnistria,” echoing the language Russia has used to justify intervention in Ukraine.¹⁸ On May 11, in a referendum widely denounced by the West, 90 percent of voters in the eastern Ukraine provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk voted for secession from Ukraine.¹⁹ Pro-Russian activists were soon saying that they wanted to become part of Russia; annexation might be only a matter of time.

Regardless of what ultimately happens in Ukraine, the Russian seizure of Crimea has fundamentally changed the international power balance. Despite the sanctions that have been put in place, Russian aggression and assertiveness have yet to be deterred, and the United States and its European allies have no clear consensus on how to proceed. For the first time, the essential principles of the NATO alliance have been called into question—with implications for Eastern and Central Europe, and indeed for the world.

While the world anxiously watched the Ukraine situation, an 80-ship Chinese fleet sailed into waters claimed by Vietnam to install a billion-dollar oil rig in the energy-rich South China Sea. When Vietnam’s coast guard arrived, the Chinese flotilla responded with force, ramming at least one Vietnamese ship and firing water cannons at others.²⁰ Then, later in May, a Chinese vessel rammed and sank a Vietnamese fishing boat in the disputed waters.²¹ China claims 90 percent of the South China Sea as its own, rejecting the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and staking claims to dozens of islands and reefs that Beijing claims are historically Chinese.²²

New examples of Chinese assertiveness in regional waters occur regularly. As this book went to press, Chinese jet fighters armed with missiles “buzzed” two Japanese reconnaissance planes in the two countries’ overlapping air-defense zones over the East China Sea. The Chinese fighters got within 100 feet of the Japanese planes, in what the Japanese defense minister described as a dangerous act that would increase tensions between the two nations.²³ Those tensions have been rising for years. In late 2013, China unilaterally imposed an “air-defense identification zone” in the East China Sea in airspace that overlaps with Japanese and South Korean airspace, and it threatened any aircraft that penetrated the zone.²⁴ The incident with the Japanese planes could mark a new and more dangerous stage in the standoff.

China has been acting more provocatively toward its Asian neighbors for years. Beijing recently began a construction project in the disputed Spratly Islands, despite a long-standing agreement with the Philippines and other nations in the region not to build on these disputed landmasses. The Philippines filed a formal protest, and the action worsened relations with Vietnam, already angered by the oil-rig incident. It wasn’t clear what the Chinese were building in the Spratlys—only that Beijing insisted that its right to do so was purely a matter of “Chinese sovereignty.”²⁵ In March 2014, China blockaded Philippine marines stationed on Second Thomas Shoal, an uninhabited atoll China claims for itself.²⁶

While some foreign-policy observers may believe that Beijing is acting recklessly, it’s more likely that these provocations are all part of a broader strategy to undermine U.S. authority in the region by picking small, winnable fights. “China is seeking to prove to its neighbors that containment cannot work and that the U.S. cannot be relied upon to defend them,” wrote David Pilling in the Financial Times. “If it can do so, they and Washington will have to acknowledge that the status quo is untenable. It is a dangerous strategy. It is also a clever one.”²⁷

“China is deliberately doing these things to demonstrate the unsustainability of the American position of having a good relationship with China and maintaining its alliances in Asia, which constitute the leadership of the United States in Asia,” says Professor Hugh White, a former senior Australian defense official.²⁸

Russia and China are also formidable combatants in one of the 21st century’s primary battlegrounds: cyber warfare. The Justice Department’s May 2014 indictment of five Chinese officers of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for cyber espionage only confirms what has been poorly understood up until now, but which we assert vigorously in Chapter 3: that a state-sponsored cyber war against the United States is being directed at the highest levels of the Chinese government. Russia, too, is a key cyber player: Hackers almost certainly affiliated with Moscow have been behind some of the most destructive private-sector cyber attacks of recent years.

Americans had only to note the two countries in which Edward Snowden stopped when he was on the run from the United States after he leaked American intelligence secrets: first China, then Russia, where he was eventually granted asylum. Those who dismiss the strong likelihood that Snowden was an agent of either the Russians or the Chinese are deluding themselves.

As Russia and China flex their muscle, rogue nations have often looked to one or both of them for support—tacit or explicit. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad stands in a stronger position than he has for years, thanks in no small part to Vladimir Putin’s staunch support. President Obama threatened Assad with missile strikes in August 2013 after the dictator used chemical weapons against rebel groups and civilians, but at the last moment Obama completely reversed himself, making the term “red line” into an international synonym for spinelessness.

Likewise, the Islamic theocracy that runs Iran is closing in on achieving its goal of becoming a nuclear power. This time, it hasn’t been American irresolution that is to blame, but American commitment—a commitment to a fatally flawed nuclear accord that will all but assure the Iranians of getting what they want. Finally, a new Defense Intelligence Agency report shows that North Korea has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles. The murderous regime, propped up by China, threatens the peace and stability not only of Asia, but the world.

All these challenges are serious, complex, and multifaceted, and it would be foolhardy to assume that even under the finest leadership, the United States could solve them all with the best conceivable outcomes in each case. At the same time, however, there is no question that these problems have been exacerbated and made much more dangerous and destabilizing by failed American leadership—or, more accurately, by an abdication of American leadership.

AMERICA IN RETREAT

It’s not often that congressional leaders emerge from a White House meeting with the president of the United States and call their visit “bizarre,” but that’s how Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee described his sit-down with Obama-administration national-security officials in May 2014. Listening to them talk about Syria, Afghanistan, and the Nigerian Islamist terror group Boko Haram, Corker was amazed by how far off course American foreign policy had drifted. “I realized last night that the administration has no policy in Syria, has no strategy in Syria,” Corker said.²⁹

It isn’t just Syria, either. The Obama administration has no clear counterterror policy in the wake of Snowden’s damaging leaks of national-security information in 2013. It has no clear coordination with American allies and no coherent approach to upgrading and modernizing our defenses. It has no articulated doctrine on when, where, and how to use force in the world, and how to offer credible deterrents to antidemocratic regimes and groups.

Consider that Obama ran for reelection in 2012 in substantial part on his foreign-policy record, touting especially his decision to order the operation that killed Osama bin Laden. Al-Qaeda, the president said often, was “on the run,” and the War on Terror was winding down. “This war, like all wars, must end,” he said in a speech at the National Defense University in 2013. Only recently has he begun to acknowledge the obvious: that the terrorism threat is not declining but growing around the world, not only in Afghanistan and Iraq but also throughout the Middle East and Africa. Writing in the New York Times, Mark Landler rightly underscored the contradiction of a president whose view of the world has “darkened,” even as he has “settled on a minimalist foreign policy.”³⁰

Indeed, just days after he had pledged in his 2014 commencement address at West Point to tackle terrorism anew, Obama announced the release of five senior Taliban commanders in exchange for American POW Bowe Bergdahl.³¹ Serious questions surround Bergdahl’s capture in 2009 and whether his actions constituted desertion. But even if Bergdahl had been an unambiguous hero, the president’s decision to free dangerous, high-ranking Taliban fighters would be profoundly troubling. Simply put, it is too high a price to pay, and it will almost surely come back to haunt American forces in the region, as well as our policymakers. Once again, Obama shows that he can talk a good game on American national security, but his execution leaves something to be desired.

“It’s a case for interventionism but not overreach,” says Obama’s deputy national-security adviser, Ben Rhodes, in an attempt to clarify the muddle that characterizes the administration’s approach.

Nice try. The truth is, even when the administration’s words and stated principles sound clear, its policies are inconsistent and frequently incoherent. President Obama’s America is a passive, confused, and ineffective superpower. Some years ago, one administration insider tried to describe Obama’s approach as “leading from behind.” But America isn’t leading at all.

America is in retreat internationally, just as the need for U.S. leadership is greater than at any time since the end of the Cold War. It bears repeating: The world’s superpower has no foreign-policy vision or strategy—unless one believes that Obama’s doctrine of “Don’t do stupid stuff” is visionary or that his resolute selling of his policies as anti-Bush and anti-war is a workable framework for dealing with a dangerous world.³² Even when we do determine to pursue something, we lack will and follow-through. Our abdications know no borders: We’re being kicked off the International Space Station by the Russians, and the administration has even urged us to surrender control of the Internet to a shadowy global consortium. The U.S. presence in the world has become so passive that the thuggish, brutal leader of Nigeria’s Boko Haram, flaunting the group’s monstrous abduction in April 2014 of hundreds of schoolgirls, released a video in which he dared Americans to retaliate. Any American force, even a small team of Marines, would make quick work of these Islamist fanatics. But like Vladimir Putin—and like Xi Jinping and Bashar al-Assad and Hassan Rouhani and Kim Jong Un—Abubakar Shekau knows that the Americans aren’t coming for him.

In short, President Obama has manifestly failed to provide effective foreign-policy leadership—and this failure is due in large part to the president’s own inclinations to de-emphasize American primacy and then expect the world to follow his vision for it.

“Obama’s surprisability about history, which is why he is always (as almost everyone now recognizes) ‘playing catch-up,’ is owed to certain sanguine and unknowledgeable expectations that he brought with him to the presidency,” Leon Wieseltier wrote in the New Republic.³³ Indeed, Obama seemed to crave a world in which American power is no longer essential, but the world doesn’t share that wish. “There are many places in the world where we are despised not for taking action but for not taking action,” Wieseltier observed. “Our allies do not trust us. Our enemies do not fear us. What if American preeminence is good for the world and good for America? Let’s talk about that.”³⁴

General Wanquan’s warning to Chuck Hagel about American inability to “contain” China was unfortunately correct—especially because, even as the international situation becomes less stable, America is slashing its defense budget. The Army is projected to shrink to its smallest size since before World War II. As the Brookings Institute’s Robert Kagan argued at a recent Council on Foreign Relations meeting, our budgetary challenges don’t require such extreme cuts.³⁵ “For diplomacy to succeed, it must be supported by a strong and credible defense,” former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Leon Panetta wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “Now is not the time to weaken our military, but that is exactly what’s happening.”³⁶ Indeed, we will always need enough troops to fight wars; it’s absurd to argue otherwise and fall back on Predator drones and our expertise in cyber warfare.

This military retrenchment is all the more baffling in light of what Russia and China are doing militarily (explored at length in Chapter 4). Russian defense spending is set to rise 44 percent over the next three years,³⁷ and its naval budget, barely 10 percent of America’s just a few years ago, is now approaching 50 percent of the American outlay.³⁸ In June 2014, four Russian strategic bombers conducted practice runs near Alaska; two of the bombers triggered U.S. air-defense-system warnings after they came within 50 miles of the California coast. A retired American Air Force general, Thomas McInerney, who served as Alaska commander for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said that he couldn’t remember a time when Russian strategic bombers had come that close to the American coast, and he blamed the episode on America’s “unilateral disarmament, inviting adventurism by the Russians.”³⁹

China, meanwhile, will spend more on defense by the end of 2015 than Britain, France, and Germany combined,⁴⁰ and Beijing is set to overtake the U.S. in its number of naval “major combatant vessels” by 2020.⁴¹ Hawkish officers in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) call for “short, sharp wars” to assert Chinese interests.⁴² The hawks seem to be winning the policy debate: Whereas in the past, China’s policies in the South China Sea have been erratic, leaving neighbors guessing as to when the next provocation would come, more recently, as we’ve seen, China has pursued an unyielding approach to its territorial claims, provoking high-profile clashes with Vietnam, the Philippines, and others. Beijing appears determined to pursue a strategy of hardline aggression in the Asia Pacific.⁴³

The Chinese buildup comes in the context of Beijing’s efforts to redefine the alliance system in Asia—loosening the grip of the U.S. on its Asian neighbors and asserting its primacy over the region. Xi Jinping made this explicit in May 2014 in a speech in Shanghai, in which he outlined a “new regional security cooperation architecture” that excluded the U.S. Admiral Sun Jianguo, the PLA general staff’s deputy chief, was more blunt: According to the New York Times, he described the American alliance system in the region as “an antiquated relic of the Cold War.”⁴⁴ And at the Shangri La security dialogue in Singapore, Major General Zhu Chengdu openly criticized American hegemony in the Pacific, warning ominously: “If you take China as an enemy, China will absolutely become the enemy of the U.S.”⁴⁵ The simple conclusion is inescapable: Asia is for Asians—and Russians. American defense cutbacks aren’t confined to conventional armed forces. We are also rolling back our nuclear armaments under the leadership of a president who has made no secret of his goal of someday reaching nuclear zero. That’s a goal not shared, needless to say, by adversaries of America and the West.

Obama’s high-minded yet strangely aloof and out-of-touch approach is evident in his reaction to Vladimir Putin, as it is in his foreign policy generally. Obama regards Putin’s behavior with a combination of condescension and naiveté: “Mr. Putin’s decisions aren’t just bad for Ukraine,” he says. “Over the long term, they’re going to be bad for Russia.”⁴⁶ He fails to consider that from Putin’s perspective, aggression in Ukraine makes good strategic sense. In seizing Crimea, Putin has “acquired not just the Crimean landmass but also a maritime zone more than three times its size with the rights to underwater resources potentially worth trillions of dollars,” William J. Broad detailed in the New York Times.⁴⁷ Obama also conveniently overlooks Russian success in turning more nations in Eurasia against the open, democratic Western model. According to a new report from Freedom House: “Ten years ago, one in five people in Eurasia lived under Consolidated Authoritarian rule, as defined in the report. Today, it’s nearly four in five, and the trend is accelerating.”⁴⁸

Set against those real-world gains, why would Putin lose any sleep over Obama’s haughty disapproval? Indeed, as Putin himself said of Obama recently: “Who is he to judge, seriously?”⁴⁹

Obama’s detachment has long distressed champions of American power, who often reside right of center on the political spectrum. The president’s supporters dismiss those critiques, but it’s not so easy to shrug off the criticism coming from two former Obama defense secretaries: Panetta (who also served as CIA chief) and Robert Gates.

“When the president of the United States draws a red line, the credibility of this country is dependent on him backing up his word,” Panetta said last year, after Obama had backed down from confronting Syria at the 11th hour.⁵⁰ In his memoir, published early in 2014, Gates harshly criticized the commander in chief, particularly for what he saw as Obama’s failed leadership and commitment to the war in Afghanistan. Obama, “doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his,” Gates wrote. “For him, it’s all about getting out.”⁵¹

As Obama’s international failures become more manifest and more consequential, it isn’t just the Right or the neocons who are speaking out. Critics on the Left are worried, too. “What’s frustrating to me sometimes about Obama is that the world seems to disappoint him,” said New Yorker editor David Remnick—an Obama biographer and admirer—on the MSNBC program Morning Joe.⁵² “Under Obama, the United States has suffered some real reputational damage,” David Ignatius wrote at the Washington Post. “I say that as someone who sympathizes with many of Obama’s foreign-policy goals. This damage, unfortunately, has largely been self-inflicted by an administration that focuses too much on short-term messaging.”⁵³ And Foreign Policy editor David Rothkopf wrote in September 2013: “Even the most charitable of interpretations by the president’s most loyal supporters (and I voted for him twice, so I count myself in that group) would have to rank the past couple of months as among the worst of his administration in terms of national-security policy mismanagement.”⁵⁴

It’s no wonder that the United States has been outflanked at every turn by strong leaders such as Putin and Xi. They believe in what they’re doing, and they have clear strategies and specific initiatives in the military, political, economic, and international realms that they purse with vigor and principle. At the present time, nothing like this can be said for the United States. Our paralysis and weakness have broad-ranging effects—clearing a path for our adversaries to advance their interests, while leaving our allies puzzled, angry, and vulnerable.

EMBOLDENED ADVERSARIES, WEAKENED ALLIES

When red lines are crossed in Syria, when Libya deteriorates, when Crimea is taken effortlessly in the face of clear U.S. treaty obligations, our allies around the world lose confidence and faith in our policies, in our commitments, and in us. The evidence is everywhere.

We are losing what allies we had in the Middle East. Consider: Saudi Arabia, one of America’s key partners in the region, was elected to a seat on the UN Security Council in 2013—and declined to accept it. The Saudis cited the inability of the UN to put a stop to Iran’s nuclear program and blamed the UN for allowing Syria “to kill its own people with chemical weapons . . . without confronting it or imposing any deterrent sanctions.”⁵⁵ When our own allies have no faith in international security mechanisms such as the UNSC, it signals a crisis of confidence in the international system, the system so long backed by the confidence and authority of the United States.

We have no relationship to speak of with Egypt, for generations a staunch American ally. That country is in undeniably worse shape than before the revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak. New Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is no friend of the United States; in fact, he has a strong and deepening relationship with Putin. Egypt is planning to buy Russia’s cutting-edge MiG-35 fighter jet, and the two countries have agreed to hold joint military exercises. Russia is engaging in “arms-supply diplomacy” across the Middle East in an effort to take advantage of the power vacuum left by America’s pullback from the region.⁵⁶

Another formerly close American ally, Turkey, has been blaming Washington for months for its domestic unrest. Under the increasingly autocratic leadership of Recep Erdogan, Turkey is moving away from the United States. Erdogan even filed an extradition request for Fethullah Gulen, a political rival living in Pennsylvania. Erdogan knows that America will deny this request, but the rebuff will set the stage for Erdogan to take advantage of rising anti-Americanism as he goes into upcoming presidential elections.⁵⁷ Like other Middle Eastern leaders, Erdogan has calculated that siding with America may no longer be a winning strategy.

In Afghanistan, where America spent an unfathomable sum in blood and treasure to defeat the Taliban, the current government is eager to distance itself from America’s faltering global leadership. This past March, Hamid Karzai, who owes his presidency to America’s efforts to promote democracy in that country, endorsed Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea.⁵⁸ Brazenly, Karzai chose to announce his position at a meeting with an American congressional delegation.⁵⁹

Even Iraq, the country that America sought to remake, at enormous human, financial, and political cost to ourselves, is moving away from the U.S.—and toward a closer strategic alliance with Iran. The two countries concluded a sale of arms worth roughly $200 million in February 2014, the latest sign of a deepening relationship between the two majority-Shiite countries. Iraq might even be permitting Iranian shipments of weapons to Syria, directly undermining American efforts to support moderate anti-Assad rebels.⁶⁰ (Of course, all bets are off if ISIS, made up of Sunni rebels and al-Qaeda fighters, continues its gains and winds up toppling the Maliki government. That will present different problems, perhaps even worse ones, for the U.S.)

Indeed, the carnage in Syria continues unabated, and the international community is powerless to put a stop to it. The United States, devoted to staying out, is not exerting meaningful leadership to sway an outcome. The Syrian conflict has become a proxy for Iranian power, as Tehran has recruited and paid impoverished Shiite Afghanis to fight for Assad.⁶¹ The Syrians have violated the chemical-weapons accord numerous times, including by using chlorine against rebels and civilians. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said publicly that the United States, Britain, and France were wrong to call off airstrikes against Assad in August 2013. Fabius says that he has evidence that Syria has used chemical weapons 14 times since September 2013. Damascus has missed the deadlines for disgorging the chemical weapons it still possesses, and it may be hiding other stockpiles.⁶²

We have offered no credible threat that would curtail the development of nuclear weapons in North Korea and Iran. China continues to defend and support the murderous regime in Pyongyang, whose sickening crimes against its own citizens were detailed in a chilling United Nations report in February 2014.⁶³ North Korea continues to expand its nuclear arsenal and threatens to provoke a nuclear arms race in East Asia.⁶⁴

Our highly touted nuclear accord with Iran now appears all but certain to fail, as the terms of the deal leave Iran far too much leeway for uranium enrichment and will allow the Iranians to keep inspectors from visiting sites such as Parchin, where it is believed they are researching detonators that would convert nuclear fuel into nuclear bombs.⁶⁵ The West’s deal-making has been not just incompetent, but destructive: In the process of making these craven attempts to put a good face on the Iranian situation, we have managed to alienate Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey. Abandoned hope for any Israeli–Palestinian peace deal is another price paid for our misadventures.

We’re not doing much better reassuring our Asian allies, all of whom have felt the brunt, one way or another, of Chinese assertiveness. Obama’s April 2014 Asian tour was meant to placate Japan and the Philippines, but he was subdued in his assurances, lest he offend Beijing. “President Obama obviously wants to avoid any appearances that this is part of a new Cold War with China,” said Mark Thompson, director of the Southeast Asia Research Centre at City University of Hong Kong. “But this is a tricky balancing act because this is increasingly how the U.S.’s traditional allies that he is visiting are viewing things.”⁶⁶ Thus the Philippines welcomed an agreement that would allow base access to American warships, planes, and troops for the first time since 1992, when the U.S. gave up its bases on the archipelago. But even this is hardly a warm embrace: We’re using Philippine bases, not reopening our own. The message seems to be, “We do need you, but only on our terms.” The Americans were quick to say that the decision had nothing to do with China, but most observers saw through that disclaimer.

Perhaps the most anxious Asian ally is Japan, which has found itself increasingly in Chinese crosshairs—and worried about whether Washington will really be there if trouble breaks out. In a press conference with Obama, Prime Minister Abe was less than enthusiastic about the alliance. Abe said: “We want to make this a peaceful region which values laws, and in doing this, strengthening of our bilateral alliance is extremely important. On this point, I fully trust President Obama.”⁶⁷ But Abe has rapidly built up Japan’s military, seeking to “make Japan a more equal partner with the U.S. in policing Asia”—hardly a sign of confidence in America’s ability to keep the peace.⁶⁸ He is also building a web of security and defense relationships with other Asian states, independent of U.S.-led initiatives, because he lacks faith in America’s willingness to use its alliances against China.

Most worryingly of all, Abe is reaching out not only to countries such as the Philippines and Vietnam but also to Russia. Looking at the China-Russia gas deal as a model, members of Abe’s party are pushing for a $6 billion pipeline that would supply Japan with Russian gas. The new pipeline would make Japan dependent on Russia for nearly a fifth of its annual supply.⁶⁹ Putin will probably travel to Russia in the fall of 2014, and Abe hopes that the two countries can sign a peace deal that would normalize relations for the first time since World War II.⁷⁰ If the deal comes off, it would mark a potentially tectonic shift in the Pacific power balance.

Finally, in Europe, uneasiness about American commitments is rampant. Obama’s humiliation on Syria has left European leaders wondering if he has a bottom line on anything, and our key allies increasingly doubt the strength and future of the NATO alliance—as their reaction to the crisis in Ukraine shows. The British refuse to go along with sanctions against Putin, looking to “protect the City of London’s hold on dirty Russian money.”⁷¹ The German business establishment is more interested in protecting billions in trade and energy business with Moscow than in saving Ukraine. And perhaps most notoriously, the French are dismissing American concerns about their plans to go forward with sale of Mistral-class warships to Russia. For France, the decision makes good economic sense for its struggling shipbuilding industry, but the costs to the world could be enormous: The Mistrals will give Moscow capabilities it has never possessed before. If it had had Mistrals in 2008, Russian naval chief Vladimir Vysotsky said, Moscow would have won its war against Georgia in “40 minutes.”⁷² And France isn’t just selling Russia the warships; it’s also training hundreds of Russian naval personnel to operate them. Put simply, a NATO ally is actively assisting Russia to beef up its military capabilities, even as NATO countries in Eastern Europe prepare for more Russian aggression.⁷³ U.S. objections have done nothing to dissuade the French; one imagines that, in an earlier time, American disapproval might have meant something.

So withered has the American reputation become in Europe that the continent’s far-right parties, which won big in parliamentary elections in May 2014, celebrate Putin as their political inspiration. Aymeric Chauprade, for example, of France’s National Front, calls Russia “the hope of the world against new totalitarianism.”⁷⁴ The National Front’s Marine Le Pen said of Putin: “He’s aware we are defending common values.” When asked what values specifically, Le Pen replied: “The Christian heritage of European civilization.”⁷⁵ Nigel Farage, the leader of Britain’s far-right party, UKIP, says that he admires Putin most among world leaders. Greece’s Golden Dawn party, Austria’s Freedom Party, and Hungary’s Jobbik also strongly prefer Putin to an America they frequently denounce. One might dismiss this fact if these parties had remained marginal, as they were only a few years ago. Now, their appeal and influence are growing.

INDISPENSABLE NATION, DISPOSABLE LEADERSHIP

On May 28, 2014, President Obama delivered the commencement speech at the United States Military Academy at West Point, attempting—yet again—to lay out a clear and decisive foreign-policy vision and answer the mounting chorus of critics. And, superficially at least, he succeeded. He declared that “America must always lead,” spoke of his devotion to American exceptionalism, called America the “indispensable nation”—a phrase first coined by Madeleine Albright—and pledged support for our allies and for the cause of democracy. But notwithstanding the rhetoric, the speech offered no clear mandate for action, no clear framework for a strong and committed American presence in the world. Peel away the rhetoric, and the message was retrenchment and abandonment of responsibility.

When even the New York Times judges that the speech “did not match the hype, was largely uninspiring, lacked strategic sweep, and is unlikely to quiet his detractors, on the right or the left,”⁷⁶ it’s a safe bet that the speech failed. The Financial Times joined the chorus of critics: “There was precious little to convince U.S. allies that Mr Obama is ready to step up his diplomatic agenda a gear or two.” Indeed, Obama’s omissions were glaring, with “barely a mention of how he would deal with China’s maritime boldness, nor of Russia’s neo-imperialist boundary-setting,” the paper added. “He did not mention the foundering trade negotiations in the Pacific and across the Atlantic.”⁷⁷ And so on.

The speech failed because, at heart, it was defeatist; and in this, it reflected clearly on its author. Despite his occasional clarion calls to American greatness, Obama’s dominant tone was one of paring back the traditional post–World War II mission of the United States in the world. Where we have been, for 70 years, the world’s lead actor in protecting democratic governments, adjudicating disputes, and putting teeth into UN resolutions, Obama would have us walk back from this into a much narrower definition of American capabilities, interests, and options. He offers nothing that will dissuade our allies from their growing conviction that they cannot count on a paralyzed United States. John Bolton put it well when he wrote that Obama “has somehow managed to combine the worst features of isolationism and multilateralism.”⁷⁸ Indeed, a president so committed to multilateralism that he won’t act alone—even with compelling reasons to do so—is a president willing to hamstring American power, in a world in which other actors (such as Russia and China) feel no such compulsion to ask for permission. No wonder that, barely a week after the president’s speech, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, gave a speech of his own in Tehran—under a banner reading “America cannot do a damn thing”—in which he proclaimed that Obama has “renounced the idea of any military actions” against Iran.⁷⁹

Traditionally, when a great issue has come to the fore demanding American action, American presidents have spoken to the world in clear and unequivocal language—saying, in effect, “We will handle this.” Obama, by contrast, says, “We will look into this and get back to you”—and then he does neither. For years, he has fostered the growing sense that America wishes to disentangle itself from leadership in the world. He seems unwilling or unable to recognize that when America steps away from leadership, the world becomes more dangerous.

We remain convinced that strengthening, renewing, and promoting democratic institutions worldwide is a fundamental mission of the United States. This means championing U.S. and Western values whenever and wherever we can—through means such as the Voice of America—and providing far more robust assistance to democratic groups around the world while imposing tough penalties and sanctions on antidemocratic forces. Despite recent setbacks, the democratic ideal remains strong around the world, and the United States makes a profound mistake when it fails to promote democratic institutions globally to its utmost capacity. This diffidence is not only wrongheaded; it also carries ominous implications for our influence and authority around the world. It may be that democratic institutions are being tested in ways we never expected them to be. But it is the institutions and the politicians that are failing, not the democratic ideal or democratic values. If anything, those values become more essential in the face of autocracy, authoritarianism, and repression—as made clear by the courage and resolve of freedom-seeking people in Istanbul, Kiev, and Moscow, and around the Middle East. Exasperated with the Obama administration’s failures, some are tempted to look to 2016 for a change in the American approach. And yet, a crisis-ridden world will not cooperate with our desire to sit out until better leadership arrives. Two more years in the current climate is too long to wait. Somehow, the United States must regain a clear sense of foreign-policy mission. In our view, this mission means reassuming American preeminence—in our defense capabilities, in our stewardship of Western alliances, and in our articulation of democratic values. The longer we delay in righting our course, the more difficult the task will be.

These truths are gaining acceptance across the American political spectrum. In May 2014, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates gave a commencement address at Georgetown. Gates said that the United States remains the country that the world looks to for advancement of the cause of freedom, liberty, and democracy. Yet, at a time of growing threats around the globe, we have degraded our defense capabilities severely. As Gates reminded his listeners, “soft” power means little without hard power to back it up. The Economist, always a fair and nuanced critic of the president, has made a similar point: “Credibility is about reassurance as well as the use of force. Credibility is also easily lost and hard to rebuild.” Arguing that Obama has been an “inattentive friend” to American allies, the magazine also invoked his Syrian retreat to underline that he had “broken the cardinal rule of superpower deterrence: You must keep your word.”⁸⁰

Obama has often defended his approach by pointing to the growing isolationist sentiments of the American electorate. Polls do show such leanings, as they have for years, but the case for engagement remains compelling—and needs only a president who can make the public argument for it. Indeed, in an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll in which respondents voiced isolationist sentiments, 55 percent nonetheless agreed that it was important for the U.S. to project an “image of strength.”⁸¹ In our view, this suggests that isolationist sentiment is only skin-deep. We believe that, recent discouragements aside, most Americans still identify with assertion over accommodation—and with standing up for our principles, our values, and our broader interests.

This should not be confused with advocacy of endless war or of an overly intrusive United States. Rather, what we must do is offer credible deterrence again. As this book went to press, the Justice Department announced the indictment of five officers of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army for violations of cyber security. The charges are almost certainly symbolic—Beijing isn’t going to extradite these gentlemen to Washington for a trial—and more important, they are incomplete. We made no mention of going after government officials or Chinese businesses that enable and facilitate these hackers. However, at least the charges suggest accountability, recognition, and acknowledgment; all are essential if America is to grasp what it faces and begin fighting back.

In this book, we have outlined a bold and multifaceted set of initiatives the U.S. should implement if we are to begin restoring our place in the world as the bulwark of freedom, liberty, and democracy. Yet no matter how many good ideas are offered, strong leadership remains essential. The Obama administration has been hesitant, halting, and hamstrung.

This simply must change. Unless the United States rebuilds a robust defense, clearly asserts its interests and values, assures its allies, and offers unapologetic leadership, we will fail. And our failure will carry with it a huge price: the collapse of the post–World War II international architecture. To avoid such a scenario, the United States—still the world’s only “indispensable nation”—must reassume its rightful role as the world’s only superpower.

Superpowers, as Robert Kagan wrote recently, “Don’t get to retire.”⁸²

Time is short, but it is not too late—yet.