INTRODUCTION

THE PROBLEM OF
AMERICAN POWER

What should the United States do with its power? U.S. leaders have wrestled with this question since the founding of the country, and especially since America’s rise to Great Power status.¹ At times, the answer has seemed obvious—for example, “containing” the Soviet Union was the clear objective during the Cold War—but periods of transition have invariably produced broader debates about the purposes to which U.S. power should be put. The debate over America’s role in the world began anew when the Soviet Union collapsed and the United States stood alone at the pinnacle of world power, and a host of pundits, scholars, and former policymakers quickly began to offer advice on what the United States should do with this unprecedented opportunity.²

Should America seize this “unipolar moment” to export the ideals of freedom and democracy, use its economic and military power to deny dictators access to weapons of mass destruction, and take active measures to prevent the emergence of a future “peer competitor?”³ Should the United States strive for global hegemony or should it be content to lead a multilateral coalition of stable or aspiring democracies?⁴ Should U.S. leaders concentrate on building more robust inter-national institutions, strengthening the authority of international law, helping relieve global poverty, and preventing gross violations of human rights?5 Does it still make sense for the United States to keep large military forces deployed around the world in order to dampen regional competition and keep the danger of major war at a minimum?⁶ Or could the United States return to its earlier position as an “offshore balancer,” ready to deploy its power if its vital interests were threatened but no longer maintaining a large overseas military presence?⁷

These are all important questions, and it is hardly surprising that Americans have been actively debating the strategic options that now lie before them. Consensus has proven elusive, however, because the range of options is quite broad and because there has been no single threat or target to concentrate the national mind. Even the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, did not produce unanimity; although there was broad agreement on the importance of going after al Qaeda, the 2004 presidential campaign showed there is still no national consensus on how terrorism should be fought, or how the United States should use its unmatched power to advance either its own interests or the broader welfare of humankind. No one can deny the importance of American power, but how it will be used in the future remains contested.

But what does one do about American power? That is the question the rest of the world has faced, and never more acutely than in the past decade. With so much power concentrated in the hands of one state—a state whose citizens have long seen themselves as uniquely virtuous and destined to lead the rest of the world—how should other states respond? Is U.S. primacy a source of global stability and an opportunity to extend universal values of freedom, democracy, and human rights? Will primacy facilitate the expansion of global markets and a corresponding increase in global wealth and welfare? Or is America’s dominant position something that other states should resist, so that their own interests are not disregarded or trampled upon by the overwhelming power of the United States?

Imagine, for a moment, that you are president of France. You are the leader of a proud nation that was once the strongest country in the world, and that has been an important cultural force for over four centuries. The ideological roots of French democracy are similar— but not identical—to those of the United States, and your citizens find some aspects of American society troubling. American foreign policy often strikes you as naïve and overweening, and your vision of the ideal world order—a vision you share with most of your predecessors—is one where no single state enjoys a dominant position.8 What, then, do you do about the United States?

Suppose, instead, that you were prime minister of India. You govern the world’s most populous democracy, but your country’s relationship with the United States has often been prickly. India is the most powerful state in South Asia, but relations with neighboring Pakistan remain bitter and potentially explosive—especially now that both states have nuclear weapons—and you face a number of other security problems both inside your country and in the surrounding region. The rising power of China threatens to leave India in a position of permanent inferiority, yet America’s current predominance— and its ability to act unilaterally when it wishes—is also disquieting. Is there some way to take advantage of this situation in order to advance India’s national interests?

What if you were President Vladimir Putin of Russia? You have inherited the shattered core of the former Soviet Union, and thus occupy the unenviable position of leading a society that the United States defeated during the long Cold War. Russians may be better off with competitive markets and some semblance of a democratic system, but they have paid a large price to get there, and it is humiliating to be in this position after decades as one of the world’s two superpowers. Russia still retains remnants of its role as a superpower— such as an aging nuclear arsenal—but it is a pale shadow of the former Soviet empire and no match for the United States. So how do you keep the United States from imposing its will—as it did when it helped Germany reunify and incorporated your former allies into NATO—and how do you improve your own position in a world dominated by the looming shadow of American power?

Or imagine being Tony Blair, or one of his successors. Britain no longer has an empire, but history, culture, and the assiduous deference of every prime minister since Winston Churchill has given you a “special relationship” with the American colossus. So how can you use American power to magnify your own position on the world stage, and to help you accomplish your own foreign-policy goals?

Consider a more daunting challenge. Suppose you were Kim Jong Il of North Korea. You are the unchallenged leader of one of the world’s oddest countries, an ideological relic trapped in totalitarian poverty. Your country’s entire gross national product is less than 4 percent of the sum that the United States spends on its military alone, and your population faces recurrent fuel shortages and the possibility of famine every year. Your own armed forces are technologically backward and no longer a match for the forces of your more successful cousins to the south. Bill Clinton called you a “rogue state,” George W. Bush said you were part of an “axis of evil,” and even your longtime allies in the People’s Republic of China are increasingly ambivalent. Given the vast gulf between the power that you control and the capabilities that any U.S. president can wield, what can you possibly do to stay in power, maintain some freedom of action, and perhaps even improve your position?

Or what if you were Ariel Sharon? More than fifty years have passed since the founding of the state of Israel. Aided by the energy and determination of Israel’s citizens, and by large amounts of economic and military aid from the United States, Israel has defeated its various neighbors in a series of wars, expanded the territory under its control, and is now the dominant military power in the region. Yet these successes have not brought tranquility, because you still face the stubborn resistance of three million Palestinian Arabs living either in Israel proper or in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza. Israel has signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, but relations remain frosty at best. Despite its many achievements, Israel remains dependent on U.S. largesse and diplomatic protection. During the Cold War, this support could be justified by the claim that Israel was a “strategic asset.” But the Cold War is over, and critics now argue that Israel’s policies are a growing liability in the effort to defeat al Qaeda. Under these difficult circumstances, how do you ensure that the United States remains firmly on your side?

How do you deal with American power? As all of these examples illustrate, that question is a—if not the—central issue for leaders in every corner of the globe. The problem of U.S. power is not the only challenge they face, but it is an issue they cannot ignore. Given the vast concentration of power in American hands, what U.S. leaders decide to do—and what they choose not to do—will inevitably have far-reaching effects on the fates of other leaders and other societies. Whether they like it or not, developing a strategy for dealing with American power has become an essential element of statecraft for every country in the world.

The question is one that Americans should care about as well. When a handful of foreign terrorists can kill nearly three thousand Americans on a sunny September morning, it is hard to argue that we need not worry about how other people are reacting to U.S. power. Although the United States enjoys a position of primacy that is unique in modern history, it nonetheless shares the planet with nearly two hundred other states. What these other states (and, in some cases, nonstate actors) do will inevitably affect America’s ability to achieve its own foreign-policy goals. The United States cannot negotiate new trade agreements to boost the U.S. economy without cooperation from others. It cannot halt the spread of nuclear technology or control the dissemination of loose nuclear material without active and sustained support from many other countries. It cannot go to war without access to foreign military facilities—access that other countries can always withhold—and its military actions will not receive the mantle of legitimacy unless other states, and especially the current members of the United Nations Security Council, give their approval. And if it does go to war on its own (or with largely symbolic “coalitions of the willing”), then U.S. soldiers will do most of the fighting and dying and U.S. taxpayers will have to foot the bill. Even an unrivaled superpower like the United States cannot defeat the shadowy forces of global terrorism without active, enthusiastic, 24/7 cooperation from foreign intelligence services and law enforcement agencies. U.S. primacy gives it many advantages, but what others do will still determine whether U.S. foreign policy succeeds or fails.

In short, if others agree with U.S. goals and endorse the means it has chosen to pursue them, then success is more likely and will require less effort. On the other hand, if other states oppose U.S. goals or are simply concerned about keeping American power in check, then U.S. leaders will find it harder to accomplish even worthy objectives. The more we know about the ways that others view U.S. power, and the more we understand about the strategies they are using to deal with it, the better equipped we will be to fashion a foreign policy that will maximize global support and minimize opposition.

That is the central task of this book: to explore the global response to American power. The central question is not “What should the United States do with its power?”; it is “What can other states do about U.S. power?” As we shall see, their responses are not always negative. Many states see U.S. power as a positive force in the world and are primarily interested in ensuring that it is used in ways that advance their own particular interests. Nonetheless, even close U.S. allies sometimes worry about the legitimacy, moral acceptability, and wisdom of U.S. policy, and they have tried to develop ways to minimize its negative consequences. At the same time, other states have more serious objections to America’s position in the world and the policies it pursues, and they employ a variety of strategies to thwart U.S. aims and to further their own interests in the face of American power.

How to Think about U.S. Primacy

In writing this book, my aim is to explain why other states are uncomfortable with U.S. primacy and to describe how they are responding to it. I have not sought to construct a single theory to explain the various responses, and I have resisted the temptation to shoehorn the behavior of other states into a single theoretical tradition. Instead, I have borrowed freely from the existing theoretical approaches to international politics (including some of my own work), but in a deliberately eclectic fashion. From the realist tradition, I take the basic insight that states in anarchy are acutely sensitive to the balance of power and generally uncomfortable whenever one state—no matter how virtuous or benevolent—becomes significantly stronger than the others.9 From liberalism, I take the notion that different social groups within states may exert independent influences on foreign policy, and that foreign powers may consciously try to manipulate another state’s internal politics in order to influence its international conduct.¹⁰ From the “constructivist” approach to world politics, I borrow the important idea that states respond not just to the physical power that the United States possesses, and not just to the policies that the United States pursues, but also to the ways that U.S. power is described and understood, and the meanings that are attached to its use.¹¹ It matters, in other words, if prevailing global discourse portrays the United States as a “benevolent hegemon,” an “indispensable power,” a “rogue superpower,” or a “unilateralist empire.” Similarly, is U.S. power being used in a manner that is consistent with a widely shared body of norms and collective understandings, or is it simply a case of “the strong doing what they can”?

I have also plundered other bodies of scholarship in search of additional ideas. Within the field of international relations, for example, there is a small but useful literature on “weak states” that analyzes the strategies of minor powers in a world dominated by Great Powers.¹² Within sociology and anthropology, there are a number of prominent works analyzing the different strategies found in highly skewed social orders (e.g., prisons, concentration camps, slave societies, feudal orders, etc.), where the stronger actors have seemingly total control over the weaker parties.13 Although these works were neither inspired by nor directed at problems of international politics, they offer intriguing hints about the strategies that weaker states may adopt when a single country stands alone at the pinnacle of world power.

In a prison, concentration camp, slave plantation, or feudal estate, for example, the governing authorities have nearly absolute control over the weaker parties. There is no question who is stronger, even though the weaker members are often far more numerous, and their condition of material weakness is usually reinforced by an ideology justifying sharp status distinctions (e.g., slaves or peasants are routinely portrayed as innately inferior and thus deserving of their condition). The dominant group enjoys enormous autonomy and can usually force the weaker parties to do whatever they want. When the supporting ideology is fully embraced, moreover, the weaker parties may regard this situation as appropriate and just.

Yet total control is rarely possible, even when power is highly concentrated. Wardens and prison guards cannot monitor every single action that the inmates might take; they must therefore choose which infractions to watch for and which to let slip. They can establish a system of rewards and punishments to deter violations, but prisoners invariably find ways to evade the rules, and it is rarely worth the effort to try to root out every possible violation. Indeed, as the workings of any black market reveal, the more restrictions you impose, the greater the potential rewards for successfully evading them. Inmates are never wholly without resources, and they can bargain for additional privileges by agreeing to do other things for the people in charge.¹⁴ In short, even when one group has a near-monopoly on power, the weaker parties can still find ways to get some of what they want and to resist the order that the authorities are trying to impose.

In the same way, factory workers can resist pressure from above by shirking, by “dragging their feet,” or by adopting “work-to-rule” tactics.15 Foremen and supervisors are often forced to acquiesce in the face of these strategies, because they need to keep the plant running efficiently in order to keep their own positions. Weaker parties can also use the ruling group’s own moral principles and legitimating ideology to constrain the ruler’s power. For example, if a feudal lord’s status as a member of the “nobility” is justified in part by his alleged moral superiority (as implied by his assuming responsibility for the welfare of his tenants), then tenants can invoke that principle in order to obtain better treatment. Their demands can be ignored or denied, of course, but an aristocrat whose position rests in part on the principle of noblesse oblige could not ignore such requests completely.¹⁶

The same logic appears in more “normal” social settings, such as a typical nuclear family. Parents are physically stronger than their younger children, and they control the available financial resources. Yet even the harshest parent never gets complete and instant obedience. A child can refuse to go to bed and, once put there by force, can resist going to sleep. Even a toddler can usually find many ways to limit the effective authority of his or her parents, in order to do less of what the parents want and more of what the child wants. They can cry, stall, do something amusing, or merely wait until the parent’s attention is diverted. Parents frequently succumb to these tactics, especially when seated in a public waiting room or when dinner guests are arriving downstairs. They are still far stronger in some absolute sense, but it is often more effective to give in a little, instead of using the full power at one’s disposal, especially when using it could easily make things worse.

But what does this have to do with world politics? I do not mean to suggest that the United States is a “slaveholder on a global scale” or the international equivalent of a feudal lord or prison warden. (There may be some writers and political activists who endorse such a view, but I am not one of them.) Nor is the United States the “parent” and the rest of the world its “children.” Analogies between these situations where power is asymmetrically distributed and the current condition of U.S. primacy are admittedly imperfect and must therefore be used with caution. True hierarchical orders rest on asymmetries of power and powerful legitimating ideologies, and most of them are enforced by the authority of the state and its own monopoly on legitimate violence. In world politics, by contrast, all sovereign states are of equal formal status (even though the power they control varies enormously), and no country can make a binding and legitimate claim to formal authority over other countries. Indeed, the doctrine of national self-determination argues exactly the opposite: no country—no matter how powerful—is legitimately authorized to give binding orders to another government, save in specific sets of circumstances that are defined and regulated by international law.17 States do make demands on one another, of course, but whether the demands are met is determined largely by the balance of power and interest and not on the basis of formal obligation.

These caveats notwithstanding, the literature on highly skewed social orders encourages us to think more broadly about how the power of the United States appears to others. It also directs our attention to the different and often subtle strategies that weaker states can employ to constrain, manipulate, resist, exploit, evade, undermine, and in general deal with the reality of U.S. power.

Is it possible to stand up to the United States? Can weaker states balance U.S. power by joining forces with others—as traditional balance-of-power theory would predict—or is America too far ahead to be checked? Can they mobilize their own resources in ways that will make it too expensive for the United States to press them? Or can they “just say no,” in the hope that the United States will not retaliate? Can weak states extract concessions by threatening to pursue some action that the United States opposes but cannot easily prevent? When will such tactics work? Is it possible to bind U.S. power within existing international institutions—and if so, when and how? Can other states mobilize broader global resistance by casting doubt on the legitimacy of U.S. leadership and the moral character of U.S. policy?

Will other states choose to align with the American colossus, so as to avoid facing its “focused enmity”?18 If a state does align with the United States, can its leaders establish strong personal bonds with their American counterparts, and thereby gain benefits or concessions that are not available to others? Can other states manipulate U.S. domestic politics in order to ensure that U.S. power is used to their benefit?

In the chapters that follow, I show that the answer to each of these questions is “yes.” Although the United States is far and away the most powerful country in the world—and arguably the most powerful country in modern history—other states have many options for dealing with U.S. power. Most of these strategies do not seek to alter the global balance of power (at least not anytime soon), and they do not threaten the U.S. homeland directly. But they do affect America’s ability to achieve its foreign-policy goals, and thus its ability to fashion a more desirable world.

THE REMAINDER OF the book is organized as follows. Chapter 1 describes the dominant global position of the United States and summarizes the various ways that the United States has used its power since the end of the Cold War. I argue that the United States is in a position of power that is historically unprecedented, and that it has used its power to mold a world that would be compatible with U.S. interests and values. The United States has not acted as a “status quo” power: rather, it has used its position of primacy to increase its influence, to enhance its position vis-à-vis potential rivals, and to deal with specific security threats.

Chapter 2 explores the broad gap between America’s perception of its own global role and the ways that role is perceived abroad, focusing primarily on the reasons why other states do not always welcome U.S. dominance. Although Americans tend to see the U.S. role in the world in positive and benevolent terms, citizens elsewhere are far more skeptical. Even states that are generally pro-American worry about the concentration of power in U.S. hands, and other states openly oppose it. I argue that other states fear, resent, or hate the United States partly because of “what it is” (i.e., the world’s most powerful country), but also because of what it has done in the past and is doing today. I then consider why Americans often fail to recognize the roots of this resentment, and thus fail to understand why the global reaction to U.S. primacy has ranged from ambivalence to resentment to overt opposition.

Chapter 3 considers the various strategies that states can employ if they find it necessary or desirable to oppose U.S. primacy. One option is balancing, either by mobilizing internal resources or by allying with others. I explain why efforts to form balancing coalitions have been quite modest, and why states have tended to engage either in “soft balancing” (with others) or internal balancing (on their own), the latter option being pursued largely through various asymmetric strategies, including conventional military responses, terrorism, or the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

A second strategy is balking, whereby other states either ignore U.S. requests or do the bare minimum to carry them out, thereby hindering U.S. efforts while attempting to avoid an overt clash. Third, states may pursue the strategy of binding, which is the use of norms and institutions to constrain U.S. freedom of action. I argue that this tactic will not work on core issues of military security, both because the United States can act independently in many military situations and because it can usually attract enough international support to make military action possible. Binding is a more effective tactic in other areas—such as international economic affairs—however, because the U.S. advantage is not as pronounced and it has less capacity to “go it alone.” States can also gain concessions through blackmail (i.e., threatening to take some undesirable action unless the United States offers compensation), and I explore the conditions in which this strategy is likely to work. Finally, states (and some nonstate actors) can also try to challenge the legitimacy of America’s global position and the policies that the United States is currently pursuing. The strategy of delegitimation seeks to portray the United States as a morally bankrupt society whose actions abroad are generally selfish, capricious, cruel to others, and not in the best interests of mankind. By encouraging more and more people to question America’s global leadership, this strategy seeks to make it harder for the United States to win support, while simultaneously encouraging selfdoubt among Americans themselves.

Chapter 4 examines the various strategies that states may follow if they choose to accommodate U.S. power and to cooperate with U.S. foreign policy. One strategy is to bandwagon with the United States in order to avoid being pressured or attacked, and I argue that this response has been and will continue to be rare. States may behave prudently in the face of U.S. power, but “winning through intimidation” is not going to work very often. Instead, states that align with the United States will do so either to gain protection against regional rivals (regional balancing) or to enhance their own global position by gaining influence in Washington. Foreign leaders may also try a strategy of bonding—in effect trying to form close personal ties with U.S. officials and lending their support to specific U.S. policies—in the hopes of gaining additional influence over what the United States does. Foreign governments may also try to manipulate the U.S. domestic political system directly, by penetrating the American body politic and giving individual politicians strong incentives to favor closer ties. To show how a strategy of penetration works, I focus in detail on the operations of the Israel lobby, which is far and away the most successful example of a country using the U.S. political system to gain influence over U.S. foreign policy. I also offer briefer studies of the Indian and Armenian lobbies, which show that the Israeli example is far from unique.

The final chapter describes what the United States should do in response. If other states have many options for dealing with U.S. power, then U.S. foreign policy must be molded with their reactions in mind. How can the United States encourage states to see its dominant position as beneficial (or at least bearable), and how can it convince them that its foreign-policy actions deserve broad international support? How can it ensure that it is not exploited by countries that appear to embrace U.S. values and goals but are also trying to manipulate U.S. power for their own purposes and may themselves behave in ways that are contrary to U.S. interests and values? How can the United States make its global position more legitimate in the eyes of others? In brief, I argue that America’s current position requires greater knowledge, wisdom, and self-restraint than ever before, and that achieving this level of wisdom will require fundamental changes in the ways Americans approach the world.

This is the true paradox of American primacy: Instead of enabling the United States to act however it wishes, America’s dominant position encourages other states to fear our unchecked power and look for ways to constrain it. If we want the rest of the world to welcome U.S. primacy, therefore, we must convince them that American power is not something to be tamed, but rather something that will be used judiciously and for the broader benefit of mankind.