Two new books, 'Twilight of the Titans' and 'Rising
Titans, Falling Giants,' challenge conventional wisdom about grand-strategy,
and advocates conservative husbanding of resources, for an era of renewed great
power rivalry.
“I am sure every Englishman who has a heart in his breast and a
feeling of justice in his mind sympathizes with those unfortunate Danes,” Lord
Palmerston quipped, to loud cheers in the British Parliament, just as German
armies were massing near the Danish border in 1864. Yet Palmerston,
the great gusto, ended the same speech saying “we did not think that the Danish
cause would be considered as sufficiently British, and as sufficiently bearing
on the interests and the security and the honour of England, as to make it
justifiable to ask the country to make those exertions which such a war would
render necessary.”
Beneath the poetic phrasing was a cold, realist calculation. The
British expeditionary forces would be far inferior in numbers in a continental
war Germans could easily escalate, resulting in a humiliating defeat or, worse,
a bleeding stalemate. Second, the overall balance of power in Europe, as well
as British naval hegemony and empire, would remain unchanged regardless of the
German conquest and annexation of a Danish province.
You Can’t Be Strong
Everywhere
Questions of
narrow national interests are again at the forefront, as great power rivalry
returns. In light of that, two new books attempt to answer a few key questions.
Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson’s Rising Titans, Falling Giants: How Great Powers Exploit
Power Shifts deals with a puzzle: How do great powers
navigate shifts in relative power and decline of rivals? Put simply, what
explains support or predation in a great power’s behavior, towards other
declining powers? “Predation does not necessarily mean snuffing out a declining
state’s existence as a sovereign actor.”
The United States supported the United Kingdom after World War II,
just as Wilhelmine Germany supported Austria-Hungary. Yet the United States
also ramped up pressure against the Soviet Union in its dying days, while not
going too far to see it collapse or seek vengeance.
Shifrinson
cites George Shultz and the American grand strategy under President Reagan
that aimed “to keep the Russians well behind us,” yet “not so far behind
that they become desperate and dangerous.” This is a resounding archival slap
to neoconservative revisionism about the Reagan administration (or the mythical liberal order),
which was as strategic—and broadly realist—as any other great power in any
time in human history.
The question is important, because “decline carries major security
implications,” as alliances are dissolved and reformed, arms races reignited,
and great powers gear up for war as a new order looms. Shifrinson comes with a
clever concept called “Predation Theory,” and after calculating the variables,
he suggests that “the more a declining state can impose significant costs on a
rising state in defense of its interests, the less intensely a rising state is
likely to pursue a predatory strategy.” Internal strength, not expeditions or
allies but a strong military and economy, deters a rival.
Twilight of the Titans: Great Power Decline and
Retrenchment, by Paul MacDonald and Joseph Parent, is
the second explanation of our coming “Titanomachy.” How to stall relative decline is the
question facing the United States, after a quarter-century of utopian
overreach. If history is any guide, the answer is simple. Of the 16 cases
studied, “only two declining powers stuck to the status quo, while only one
followed expansionist policies” (to their doom), and the rest all “retrenched”
to recuperate.
Retrenchment is not isolation or appeasement. “The underlying
logic of retrenchment, therefore, is solvency. States, like firms, tend to go
bankrupt when they budget blithely and live beyond their means, but states,
unlike firms, can be subject to lethal reprisals,” the authors
observe. Retrenchment leads to a variety of measures of husbanding
resources. “In politics as in nature, eclipses are spectacularly dark times,”
and therefore “expanding or maintaining grand strategic ambitions during
decline incurs unsustainable burdens and incites unwinnable fights.”
Consider the comparative grand strategy of Britain and France
during a relative decline, facing other rising powers. Boneheaded
French assertiveness and post-Bismarckian drubbing led to further volatility
and weakness in France, as “territorial grabs in the Mediterranean drove Italy
into the arms of Germany.” The frog continued to boil slowly without realizing
it, so to speak.
MacDonald
and Parent suggests Britain as a better example, citing Admiral Sir John Fisher,
“We cannot have everything or be strong everywhere. It is futile to be strong
in the subsidiary theatre of war and not overwhelmingly supreme in the decisive
theatre.” Regardless of liberal rhetoric, “British policy during this period
was not driven by doctrinaire scepticism of an activist foreign policy, but by
careful calculation of the balance of power.” Britain turned a
rising United States into an ally, and prolonged the empire for
another century.
Retrenchment and
American Grand Strategy
The question is how much the research will reflect policy and
affect the future grand strategy of the United States. There is,
for example, a notion among foreign policy types that President Obama,
after a quarter-century of liberal utopia, redirected American foreign policy
towards a more strategic orientation, but that couldn’t be further
from truth.
Obama was of course superficially less interested in
interventions, but whether that reticence was due to realpolitik, or because of
a cunning understanding of the war-wary American public, is for
future historians to judge. However, the march towards trans-national,
liberal/progressive institutionalism that undermined any idea of nation-states
as the fundamental actors of global politics got turbo-charged under Obama.
Obama’s
foreign policy speeches consistently highlighted integration over
nation-states, and the need to be bound by international laws and institutions,
and to ensure that “if powerful nations like my own accept constraints…binding
ourselves to international rules over the long term — enhances our security.”
As John Fonte pointed out, the
transnational themes were prevalent under a concerted effort to not just
curtail American power, but to enhance an equilibrium with a distinct aim of a
future, bureaucratic elite-driven global governance.
It might lack the neo-conservative crusading zeal
about promotion of human rights, but it was by no means a “realist”
policy, either, much less a nationalist or a conservative one. Realpolitik
dictates reaching equilibrium through a balance of power, while
aspiring to maintain the balance in favor of the hegemon. Realpolitik does not
dictate Fenrir agreeing voluntarily to be chained.
President Trump’s instincts are more aligned to a classical
sovereigntist, restrained, and conservative foreign policy. This, in turn, is
more aligned to a Nixonian realpolitik, as well as traditional Anglo-American
grand-strategy. There is a remarkable consistency with regards to alliances,
peer and rival great powers, potential hegemonic challengers, and restraint in
promoting values. There is also a gloomy skepticism about democracy promotion
in certain parts of the world that are, put simply, not societally evolved
enough to have a western-imposed way of life, universalist values, and order.
His
administration also has been considerably different, with regards to threat
perceptions, not just geo-strategic but geo-economic. The national security
strategy highlights both of these issues with great power rivals like Russia
and China, which are expected. But Trump’s “Divide and Rule” in Europe betrays
a certain 19th-century strategic genius, an instinct that is far
more Palmerstonian than
even what modern American academic realists might want.
To give an example, Trump perhaps understands what a lot of
realists fail to perceive: that a budding hegemon in the European Union would
be inevitably antagonistic to American interests, not just because it would
have enormous trade power, which it won’t be shy to leverage against Washington
or use to play a balancing game between the United States and China, but
because Europe united as a single powerhouse is unreliable.
A united Europe is traditionally, historically, and culturally
hostile to free-trading, maritime great powers. Trump’s opposition to European
powers passing the security burden to American taxpayers is also far more
mercantile, and rightfully reflects the changes in relative power across the
globe. This is, one might optimistically say, a late but needed start of a
classic retrenchment strategy.
That is also, in effect, a conservative understanding of history.
Trump reflects a traditional Washingtonian disdain for permanent alliance
entanglements, and is opposed to military interventions abroad looking for
“monsters to destroy.” Classical conservatism believes in restraint, realism,
and prudence; consolidating gains, instead of ambitious overreach; and
retrenchment and recuperation, instead of imperial collapse.
The behavior in such a scenario is highlighted in McDonald and
Parent’s book, whereupon any great power retrenchment begins at home. “First,
declining states can reduce spending on the military and foreign affairs.
Second, declining powers can use retrenchment to revise force structure. Third,
declining powers can use retrenchment to reform institutions,” they note.
When translated to actual policy, this leads to redeploying
forces, removing potential flashpoints, and redistributing burdens. While all
administrations are limited by realities on the ground, one can observe
somewhat thematic and directional similarities between the prescribed strategy
and actual current American foreign policy.
Reality and Hope
Both the
books are a treasure trove of archival research and historical quotes. They are
actual works of scholarship, compared to the pop-historians and poseurs one
might encounter blathering on social media and television news. And they are a
refreshing change of pace, which will perhaps be promptly ignored by the
foreign policy blob.
Mercifully, international structure is more
powerful than individual agency. In the anarchic system of
international affairs where survival is the utmost consideration of great
powers, the retrenchment that partially started with Obama and increased under
Trump will probably carry on regardless of who comes to power in D.C.
This means fewer liberal adventurism, less questionable human
rights-promotion and nation-building, and a more conservative focus on
prioritizing strategic theaters and great power naval buildup. After all,
conservative foreign policy realists can also hope.
Sumantra
Maitra is a doctoral researcher at the University of Nottingham, UK, and a
writer for The Federalist. His research is in great power-politics and
neorealism. You can find him on Twitter @MrMaitra.
https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/26/the-case-for-continuing-foreign-policy-retrenchment-post-trump/