United States of America: Superpower By Design or By Default?

CPO Greg Frazho — Fri, 11 Mar 2016 14:31:08 -0500

Is the United States of America still a superpower? Yes, I think we are. Are we as dominant in world affairs as we were even ten years ago, let alone thirty years ago? No, I don't believe we are any longer. Is that by design or by default?

1. When it was a bipolar balance of power between the USA versus the USSR, life was pretty simple - at least, the geopolitical context was.

We're the good guys, they're the bad guys. Capitalism versus communism. Blue versus red. The eagle versus the bear. Both sides committed tremendous amounts of manpower and resources into the preparations to annihilate the other side. Ironically, though, the biggest deterrent to war with the Soviets, besides our nuclear triad, was war itself. NATO and the Warsaw Pact existed to prevent World War III, yet they simultaneously existed to bring about war if it came down to it. Luckily for us, it didn't. But was that lucky enough for us in the long run?

2. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the world gradually transformed into a loose unipolar balance of power: the U.S. and everybody else. But not the U.S. versus everybody else.

Since around 1990, focus has been about terrorists and the fragile state of geopolitics in Southeast Europe (think Bosnia), Eastern Europe (think Ukraine and the Baltics), Southwest Asia (think Iraq, Iran and Saudi) and Southeast Asia (think China, Korea and Japan). Political fragmentation, or the delicacy of world and regional relations is, in my opinion, about where it was just before 1914. A lot of the old resentments that had either gone underground or been subsumed by the balance of terror have come back to the fore (if they ever left people's psyches). Again, think Bosnia, Ukraine, et al.

3. Is the world safer than the era of mutually assured destruction?

It’s hard to say, because we're not much safer, inasmuch as the proliferation of dirty bombs, e-bombs and biological agents, among others, could create for the discharge - accidental or deliberate - of an event that, while not as catastrophic as a thermonuclear exchange, would still be a regional nightmare and thus the world's problem. Who'd bring order to that kind of chaos? If somebody detonated a pocket nuke that yielded "only" .1 megatons of TNT, could anybody but the U.S. bring about a de-escalation of hostilities - if we could even identify the perpetrators? Or perhaps we're just sick of being the world's police force, and we want to confer that obligation to other nations. We’ve done that lately in regard to the situation in eastern Europe, conferring the heavy diplomatic lifting to Germany and its prime minister. What could go wrong there?

4. Did the Cold War really end in 1991?

Or did it go dormant for a while, during what I'd call the “Yeltsin thaw”, before gradually retreating back to the pre-Reykjavik mentality that we now have under the Putin regime? Or are we in a new phase of the same Cold War with a 25-year intermission? Hard to say, but with the possibility of a proxy conflict in the morass that is Syria, I'd say we probably should dust off our Russian textbooks and bring some of our Soviet-ologists out of retirement because their skill sets seem to be in demand again. Russia, just by the sheer size of their homeland and the ethos of surviving and ultimately winning what they refer to as the Great Patriotic War, is never to be counted out of anything, particularly when it comes to regional and world hegemony.

5. When I left active duty in 2013, I admonished those at my farewell to be cognizant and vigilant of two things: an ascendant China and a resurgent Russia.

Both nations have come more to the fore and are now biting at our heels for world domination. The complexities of both the politics inside and outside (relative to their neighbors) of both nations is something we need to take a cold, hard look at without telegraphing to the world our intention to subjugate one or both entities. It'd be better to co-opt or defuse a gradually escalating war of words and wider isolation from both China and Russia, but I'm afraid relations between us and them, like others in the world, are at a critical crossroads, and not one to our advantage. Under Putin’s control, Russia has been much more assertive and much more aggressive than it’s been in decades. By the same token, the Chinese are branching out further into the global commons, i.e., the shipping lanes that pass through highly contested waters. This assertiveness is the active ingredient for a budding nautical conflict.

6. We have been at war, or something like it, for the better part of two decades.

For some of us, these wars have spanned the length of our lives, and it’s somewhat difficult to imagine what life was like before September 11th, 2001. While there have been technical and political terminations of both the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the danger, our presence, and the need for collective security is as prevalent as it's ever been. Long story short: you can't legislate peace from afar and expect all parties to adhere to it. We find ourselves back in Iraq, getting more involved in Syria and still enduring in Afghanistan. All this while Russia and China, who aren’t involved in nation-building, look to achieve greater hegemony not just in regional, but in world affairs. If that doesn't sound like a quagmire, let alone a recipe for disaster, I don't know what is.

Needless to say, these conflicts and others have stretched our defense system, specifically its manpower, to the breaking point. We simply can't count on high-speed/low-drag, whiz-bang technology to solve our every martial problem, nor should we. The people on the ground, both men and women have to be engaged and in the mix of things, however distasteful or dangerous it may be. That’s why we have armed forces in the first place.

7. The seeds of our defeat, if it ever comes about, will be sewn when multiple regional conflicts erupt or collide simultaneously.

Notice I didn't mention the exchange of nuclear arsenals. Imagine sustaining operations in Afghanistan, counterterror (CT) operations in Iraq and Syria in conjunction with a force-on-force conflict against the Chinese in the East or South China Seas and a NATO intervention in East Europe, whether it be Ukraine, the Baltics or both. This would spell catastrophe for the all-volunteer force, and it exposes, if we need it to, the dire need for strong, decisive and yet innovative leadership throughout the political spectrum. That means reaching out to consolidate our position with our Allies who, I think, are losing confidence in our ability to be the world's police force. It also means starting a dialogue, however distasteful that may initially be, with potential threats throughout the world. Back home, it means the new administration will have to be headed by a consensus-builder and a unifier, not a self-destructive, divisive political mindset that won't give one's opponents or its allies the time of day.

8. If the art of the compromise is dormant, we need to awaken it. If it's dead, we need to resurrect it.

Ronald Reagan may have been onto something when he once said: "The only thing worse than being in Doonesbury is not being in Doonesbury." The only thing worse than being the world's superpower is not being the world's superpower. If we see that neo-isolationism hasn't worked, I don't know if there's any hope for us. If we see the adamant refusal to reach across the aisle, then perhaps we can make the system, such as it is, work again. If we don't do this, we will, I think, slip closer to anarchy and ultimately lose our status as the world's superpower and as the great beacon of freedom and democracy. No pressure, right?

9. In order to do all these wonderful things, we have to have the political and economic leverage to bring about needed change and updating for a 21st century world.

We have to acknowledge that being a superpower isn’t synonymous with being a bully, and we have to also acknowledge that with great power comes great responsibility. That said, you can only negotiate from a position of strength. The world needs good, strong capable leadership. If we provide it, make the tough decisions and back up our commitments with action, we can be the superpower we once were again. If we don’t, we’ll regret it.

10. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention a word or two about society’s role in all this superpower-or-not business. We have got to get rid of the “everyone’s-a-winner” mentality.

Everyone can’t be. Most aren’t. Some people are cut out for public service, whether it’s the police force, the military, the court system or the road construction crew. By the same token, a lot of people aren’t cut out for public service, whether that be politics or the armed forces or in some other capacity. We have to candidly assess our peers’ strengths and weaknesses. Before doing so, we have to be honest about and with ourselves; that’s the key to being a mover and shaker in world affairs. Self-deception is a killer. And it’s a very delusional thing to suggest that everyone’s a winner. What’s a lot more practicable is this: everybody brings something to the table.

11. Lastly, we’ve got to ditch the cavalier attitude that is endemic in this country, one that’s perpetuated by our pop culture and those who would seek to diminish our standing in world affairs.

FDR once famously said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

In today’s culture, I’d transform that into this: the only thing we have to fear is fear-mongering and those who practice it. People who practice the politics of self-destruction will do just that: destroy themselves. People who fear-monger for a living (and a lot do nowadays due to the proliferation of social media and its turbocharged ability to spread hysteria and sensationalism), will undo themselves once they run out ammunition or when people simply tire of the same drumbeat over and over again. Likewise, the apologists and the revisionists of history need to be stopped in their tracks. This is not a healthy mindset for any nation, any culture or any society. We ain’t perfect -nobody is.

By design, we were a superpower following the end of World War I. By default, we still are...but we’re slipping. I’d say the world as we know it today is more reminiscent of August 1914 than of October 1962. But you be the judge.

Response by SGT Aaron Burks made Mar 11 at 2016 3:11 PM

SGT Aaron Burks — Fri, 11 Mar 2016 15:11:53 -0500

This, Chief, is an outstanding assessment of our challenges that we have to rise to meet today as well as an accurate portrayal of the actions needed. The real challenge is how to make our society. -lethargic and apathetic to anyone's problems but their own- get on page with the task at hand? How do we convince a whole generation that they need to put down the video games and see the world for what it is? Most of these kids have grown up being told that they are the most special little flower, while simultaneously being told that their nation should be less special than others. This is a problem.

Response by SSG Private RallyPoint Member made Jan 27 at 2017 12:47 AM

SSG Private RallyPoint Member — Fri, 27 Jan 2017 00:47:27 -0500

1. There was a lot of talk about Capitalism vs. Communism, however I never agreed that is what it was all about. It was about Representative government vs Totalitarianism. Totalitarianism lost, however the threat remains.
2. A few more generations growing up in a bi-polar world might have been enough to turn some of those older resentments into ancient history.
3. I'm not sure the world is safer, however I am sure the American and Russian people are at least somewhat safer.
4. I think the Soviet Union had thrown in the towel a year or two before it finally collapsed. When the Soviets gave up East Germany, I think we all knew the threat of WW3 had pretty much passed.
5. Russia and China are growing regional powers, I don't think anything we can do is going to change that. What we can do is work to ensure they are balanced by other powers such as India and the EU.
6. The nation hasn't mobilized for war, we've simply exercised military power on far less powerful adversaries from time to take and dealt with the occasional attacks that posed no real danger to the existence of our nation. There has been some enduring conflicts, however I don't think the nation has really been at war.
7. I don't believe a military defeat will ever be our downfall, if we fall it will be an economic defeat... mass unemployment, famine, plagues, something along those lines.
8. That's one reason the UN is so important.
9. We need to take the lead in multilateral agreements, not unilateral action.
10. People need to strive for their best and excellence needs to be rewarded, at the same time we also need to value things like teamwork and sacrifice.
11. History is exactly that, a story told by someone (usually the winner). If we want to understand history (and science), we should always be looking to deepen our understanding of what happened or happens, based on real physical evidence.