4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! Articles Hegemony Collapse Bad.docx April 16, 2020 2:36 pm 131 KB (https://pf.debateus.org/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=outofthebox- download&OutoftheBoxpath=%2Fhegemony%20collapse%20bad.docx&lastpath=%2F&a ccount_id=dbid:AADl- 2kwkskY3fNZ5rF4SPEYXBKJu28EjMQ&listtoken=3758c5bd2fdf4e314fd1ca30d672c5bb ) OffshoreBalancing.docx April 16, 2020 2:36 pm 289 KB (https://pf.debateus.org/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=outofthebox- download&OutoftheBoxpath=%2Foffshorebalancing.docx&lastpath=%2F&account_id=d bid:AADl- 2kwkskY3fNZ5rF4SPEYXBKJu28EjMQ&listtoken=3758c5bd2fdf4e314fd1ca30d672c5bb ) Feedback NATO Good.docx April 16, 2020 2:36 pm 44 KB (https://pf.debateus.org/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=outofthebox- download&OutoftheBoxpath=%2Fnato%20good.docx&lastpath=%2F&account_id=dbid: AADl- 2kwkskY3fNZ5rF4SPEYXBKJu28EjMQ&listtoken=3758c5bd2fdf4e314fd1ca30d672c5bb ) See also: Gulf Presence Update (https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/09/gulf- presence-updates/) Global nuclear confrontation between superpowers possible Dimitri K. Simes, publisher of the National Interest, is President and CEO of the Center for the National Interest, April 24, 2020, The Perfect Storm, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/perfect-storm-147791 WHAT THE United States confronts, then, is a moment of truth. Unfortunately, there is scant evidence that we are learning lessons about the imperative of strategic thinking. Itʼs encouraging that Trump played a key role in helping to reach a useful, if uncertain, https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 3/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! deal in reducing foreign oil production with Russia and Saudi Arabia. Less encouraging are the strident voices in Congress and elsewhere about the need to punish China for the coronavirus, which would lead to a resumption of the trade war at the least opportune moment. Old habits are dying hard: little attention is being paid to averting a closer alignment between Beijing and Moscow. In addition, the nuclear arms- control regime is collapsing and signs of animosity between great powers are growing. The perils of an outright conflict should not be wished away for the current pandemic demonstrates how the unthinkable can quickly occur. NATO expansion increased the threat from Russia Dimitri K. Simes, publisher of the National Interest, is President and CEO of the Center for the National Interest, April 24, 2020, The Perfect Storm, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/perfect-storm-147791 Feedback Americaʼs entire system of alliances, particularly NATO, appears increasingly obsolete in their current form. A variety of statesmen and experts, most notably George F. Kennan, warned that NATO expansion into the Baltics would turn Russia, a nation after the Soviet collapse was eager to join forces with the West, into a dangerous adversary. The United States did not heed these cautions and instead created a self-fulfilling prophecy in which NATOʼs expansion ironically enhanced the threat posed by Russia to the very states it sought to guarantee. These alliances currently serve primarily to entangle the United States in the internecine disputes of European nations. As George Washington presciently asked in his farewell address, “Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?” Democracy produced a massive international backlash https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 4/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! Dimitri K. Simes, publisher of the National Interest, is President and CEO of the Center for the National Interest, April 24, 2020, The Perfect Storm, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/perfect-storm-147791 Reforming American foreign policy requires nothing less than the recognition that the liberal world order—the battle cry of global elites on both sides of the Atlantic— was largely a myth rooted in illusions and double standards. Since the times of Aristotle, there has always been a debate over the relative merits of democracy and autocracy and what combination of the two is the most appropriate for a particular society under particular circumstances. Rendering democracy promotion one of Americaʼs defining foreign policy objectives was always bound to create a powerful international backlash. It ensured that China and Russia would combine against American interests and forced the United States and Europe to whitewash misbehavior by their allies as they proclaim loyalty to the new Atlanticist Feedback hegemon. Multilateral global cooperation needed to solve caronavirus ri K. Simes, publisher of the National Interest, is President and CEO of the Center for the National Interest, April 24, 2020, The Perfect Storm, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/perfect-storm-147791 ONE LESSON we should learn is the primacy of sovereign states. The notion that sovereignty is outdated is itself outdated. It is patently obvious that the pandemic is prompting governments to focus on their national interests first. Only on that basis can they then seek to engage in international cooperation. However, the governments of the great powers should acknowledge their collective culpability for failing to identify global priorities and instead taking imprudent steps that diverted attention from issues of major global concern in favor of non-essential and outright cavalier pursuits. Even less justifiable was the near destruction of the international system designed to create and enforce a rules-based mechanism of international trade, and the weaponization of global commerce by states to promote their unilateral interests, https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 5/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! subjective values, or domestic political ambitions. Institutions like the UN, World Trade Organization, and World Health Organization (WHO) are not a panacea for world ills. But they can provide useful, if limited, signals ahead of trouble and serve as shock absorbers for international disagreements. As Henry Kissinger has eloquently expressed in the Wall Street Journal, “No country, not even the U.S., can in a purely national effort overcome the virus. Addressing the necessities of the moment must ultimately be coupled with a global collaborative vision and program. If we cannot do both in tandem, we will face the worst of each. It is not as though we couldnʼt have seen this coming. In the past twenty years alone, there were three major global outbreaks of deadly viruses: SARS from 2002–2004, H1N1 in 2009–2010, and Ebola from 2013–2016. None of these outbreaks created the type of global devastation we currently face, as these viruses lacked the specific combination of lethality, ease of transfer, delayed manifestation of symptoms, and the lack of vaccines and widespread testing infrastructure which allowed the coronavirus to thrive. Feedback But each epidemic made clear the prospect for global disaster. World is becoming nonpolar Drezner et al, May/June 2020, DANIEL W. DREZNER is Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. RONALD R. KREBS is Beverly and Richard Fink Professor in the Liberal Arts and Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. RANDALL SCHWELLER is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Program for the Study of Realist Foreign Policy at Ohio State Universitym ForeignAffairs, The End of Grand Strategy: America Must Think Small, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2020-04-13/end-grand- strategy Finally, the diffusion of power throughout the international system is creating a nonpolar world. Many point to the rise of China and other competitors to say that the world is returning to multipolarity (or to bipolarity within a more multipolar setting), but that view understates the tectonic shift currently underway. International relations will no longer be dominated by one, two, or even several great powers. Because https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 6/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! economic and military power no longer yield influence as reliably as they once did, the top dogs have lost their bite. The weak and the mighty suffer the same paralysis and enjoy the same freedom of action. Moreover, new actors, from local militias to nongovernmental organizations to large corporations, each possessing and exerting various kinds of power, increasingly compete with states. Relatively few states represented in the UN can claim a monopoly on force within their territorial borders. Violent nonstate actors are no longer minor players. Ethnic groups, warlords, youth gangs, terrorists, militias, insurgents, and transnational criminal organizations—all are redefining power across the globe. These changes in power are producing a world marked by entropy. A world populated by dozens of power centers will prove extremely difficult to navigate and control. In the new global disorder, even countries with massive economies and militaries may not be able to get others to do what they want. It is essentially impossible for modern states, no matter how militarily and politically powerful, to influence violent groups that prosper in Feedback ungoverned spaces or online. Not only do such actors offer no clear target to threaten or destroy, but many are also motivated by nonnegotiable concerns, such as the establishment of a caliphate or their own separate state. Worse still, violence is for many a source of social cohesion. China is a totalitarian threat Machado, April 23, 2020, Arthur Machado is the Cincinnati Regional Vice President for a business analysis firm, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/china-ultimate- geopolitical-paper-tiger-and-america-must-challenge-it-147326, China Is the Ultimate Geopolitical Paper Tiger And America Must Challenge It The Western Worldʼs attempt to bring China into the world of Democratic nations using economic incentives has failed. The laissez-faire approach favored by the West has revealed China and its leadership do not intend to allow their country to enter the modern era of personal freedom. Although China has embraced modern economics and the advance of technology this has not led to the adoption of a modern political and human-rights ideology. If anything Chinaʼs rejection of individual human https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 7/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! rights has grown even more abusive as it suppressed information about the coronavirus, places over one million Muslim, Uighurs, in thinly disguised concentration camps, and adopts a computer-driven social rating and internal spy system that persecutes its own citizens restricting everything from the individual right of travel to job prospects and what consumer products the unworthy can buy. As China oppresses its own people, it has attacked Taiwanʼs free and open elections and exerted unprecedented control over international and multinational entities bringing organizations ranging from the NBA, Uber, and even a worldwide technological behemoth like Google, to heel. If the United States stays the course, and, what used to be known as the free world, can put aside its petty political machinations, then the Chinese goal of world economic, military and political dominance can be stopped. The United States is challenging China for the first time since Richard Nixon opened the door to Chinese economic expansion in the seventies. This challenge has shown us that China is a paper tiger and it will never Feedback have a greater effect on the world than it does now if we stay the course. Had the political opposition been less vicious and unrelenting and if U.S. leaders can unify on foreign policy and trade, as it has in the past, then the West would be in an even better position to control Xi Jinpingʼs attempt to assert Chinese hegemony then it is now. China is not a military threat and could be cut off economically if it engaged in aggression Machado, April 23, 2020, Arthur Machado is the Cincinnati Regional Vice President for a business analysis firm, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/china-ultimate- geopolitical-paper-tiger-and-america-must-challenge-it-147326, China Is the Ultimate Geopolitical Paper Tiger And America Must Challenge It Chinaʼs military strength is also overblown. Overly regimented and isolated, it has substandard land and air forces and little strategic naval power or a naval tradition on which to build one. Certainly not a nation any country would want to invade, the narrow trade routes leading to Chinese ports mean U.S. naval forces could blockade and stop Chinese aggression by sea and it is unlikely, even with its https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 8/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! obsolete and underfunded forces, Russia would be unable to stop Chinese aggression to the west. Oil, the lifeblood of its economy, could be stopped far from the Chinese coast and naval exit pathways out of China must pass by major United Statesʼ military installations throughout the Pacific. Absent an unexpected surprise, or a nuclear attack, in the event of war it is unlikely any Chinese shipping would get into or out of the East and South China Seas. Leaving its only supply routes overland through Russia, India or Central Asia which would require years of infrastructure build- up in the west and other than Russia, which might see an opportunity to hurt the United States none of these countries have any great interest in helping China. Transatlantic ties increasing, will continue to strengthen James Carafano, Vice President, Heritage Foundation, April 11, 2020, The Great U.S.- China Divorce Has Arrived, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/great-us-china- Feedback divorce-has-arrived-146177 Transatlantic Community. No strategic partnership is more important to the free world than the transatlantic community. The U.S. isnʼt going to give up on this partnership (https://www.heritage.org/europe/report/how-and-why-american-conservatives- must-fight-the-future-the-transatlantic-community). Neither should Europe. If Europeans want to keep their freedoms, they canʼt be neutral observers in the competition between the U.S. and China. Even Switzerland canʼt be Switzerland anymore. Post-COVID, expect renewed investments in the transatlantic community (https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/coronavirus-europe-us-need-each-other-james- carafano), not just to restart our joint economic engine, but to marginalize the malicious influences of China. Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran all threaten the US Popescu, April, 15, 2020, Dr. Ionut Popescu is an assistant professor of political science at Texas State University and an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve. He is the author of Emergent Strategy and Grand Strategy: How American Presidents Succeed https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 9/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! in Foreign Policy (Johns Hopkins, 2017). The opinions expressed here are entirely his own, and do not represent the views of the U.S. Navy or the Department of Defense, Itʼs Time to Get Real About Great-Power Politics, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/its-time-get-real-about-great-power-politics- 144742 An offensive American grand strategic framework for the new era of great-power competition rests on three core principles. First, in order to address the only realistic threat of a hostile regional hegemon dominating one of the three key geopolitical areas of the world (Europe, Asia, Middle East) and thus reaching global co-superpower status, the United States should center its grand strategy around the containment of Chinese power and influence both in Asia and globally. This is the single most significant threat to U.S. national interest in the long-run. The second principle outlines three second-order threats: Russiaʼs resurgence as a hostile geopolitical Feedback player, destabilizing nuclear proliferation on the part of rogue regimes such as in North Korea and likely Iran, and the continued fight against radical jihadist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda. These security threats of significant but nevertheless lesser strategic importance will need to be dealt with in a cost-effective manner, so as to free resources for the main goal of containing China. And third, the United States needs to be ready to ruthlessly compete diplomatically and economically in shaping the contours of an emergent realist world order (and regional orders) that is gradually replacing the post–World War II liberal world order. Economic ties and regionalism have not stopped Chinese and Russian aggression Popescu, April, 15, 2020, Dr. Ionut Popescu is an assistant professor of political science at Texas State University and an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve. He is the author of Emergent Strategy and Grand Strategy: How American Presidents Succeed in Foreign Policy (Johns Hopkins, 2017). The opinions expressed here are entirely his own, and do not represent the views of the U.S. Navy or the Department of Defense, https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 10/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! Itʼs Time to Get Real About Great-Power Politics, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/its-time-get-real-about-great-power-politics- 144742 In contrast with these two paradigms, offensive realismʼs pessimistic view of great power politics more accurately anticipated that the “holiday from history” of the past two or three decades will come to an end sooner rather than later. As former Obama administration officials, Kurt Campbell and Ely Ratner observed (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-02-13/china-reckoning), “Neither carrots nor sticks have swayed China as predicted. Diplomatic and commercial engagement have not brought political and economic openness. Neither U.S. military power nor regional balancing has stopped Beijing from seeking to displace core components of the U.S.-led system. And the liberal international order has failed to lure or bind China as powerfully as expected. Feedback China has instead pursued its own course, belying a range of American expectations in the process.” Similarly, Vladimir Putinʼs (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2018-06-14/russia-it) strategy (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2017-10-16/responding-russias- resurgence) is clearly aimed at expanding Russiaʼs sphere of influence in the former Soviet States and to weaken Americaʼs military and diplomatic presence in Eastern Europe. Some defensive realists might argue that Russiaʼs aggressiveness in Ukraine was provoked by the Westʼs pursuit of closer ties with Kiev, but this argument is hard to reconcile with Putinʼs disproportionate military response that led to the actual seizure of Crimea, or with Russiaʼs aggressive rhetoric towards NATO since that time. The “tragedy of great power politics” is that conflict is the natural state of relations among them, something that is as true today as it always has been. Aggressive Russian and Chinese expansionism now https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 11/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! Popescu, April, 15, 2020, Dr. Ionut Popescu is an assistant professor of political science at Texas State University and an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve. He is the author of Emergent Strategy and Grand Strategy: How American Presidents Succeed in Foreign Policy (Johns Hopkins, 2017). The opinions expressed here are entirely his own, and do not represent the views of the U.S. Navy or the Department of Defense, Itʼs Time to Get Real About Great-Power Politics, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/its-time-get-real-about-great-power-politics- 144742 As a decidedly pessimistic theory of great-power politics, offensive realism admittedly does not offer either the uplifting vision of peace and prosperity under an ever- expanding liberal world order advocated by liberal internationalists nor the financial savings and benign isolation implied in the retrenchment paradigm proposed by defensive realists. However, recent developments on the international scene fit Feedback better with the theoretical expectations of offensive realism than with those of its alternative paradigms. The current era is dominated by the resurgence of great- power revisionism, with China and Russia aggressively expanding their spheres of influence both regionally and globally in a way that offensive realists such as Mearsheimer expected all along. In the 1990s and 2000s, the Washington foreign policy elites, operating broadly speaking under a liberal internationalist worldview, assumed that deepening the economic engagement with rising great powers will serve to diminish traditional geopolitical conflicts, and instead lead Beijing and Moscow to accept the rules and norms of the Western liberal world order. Restraint advocates, while critical of the liberal assumptions that economic and diplomatic integration will lead to peaceful cooperation amongst the great powers, nevertheless fail to account for the aggressive recent moves of China in the South China Sea or for Russiaʼs military adventurism in Georgia, Ukraine and now Syria. For defensive realists, security is plentiful in the international system, and these great powers should feel secure enough in their regions instead of aggressively attempting to expand their regional influence and control even at the risk of inviting balancing coalitions against them. https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 12/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! Transition to multipolarity risks war Popescu, April, 15, 2020, Dr. Ionut Popescu is an assistant professor of political science at Texas State University and an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve. He is the author of Emergent Strategy and Grand Strategy: How American Presidents Succeed in Foreign Policy (Johns Hopkins, 2017). The opinions expressed here are entirely his own, and do not represent the views of the U.S. Navy or the Department of Defense, Itʼs Time to Get Real About Great-Power Politics, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/its-time-get-real-about-great-power-politics- 144742 What happened? And what does this shift tell us about the best theoretical paradigm to understand and shape U.S. grand strategic decisionmaking in the years to come? Over the past two decades, while the United States spent vast resources for little Feedback strategic gain in conflicts across the Middle East, China and Russia took decisive steps to increase their spheres of influence at the expanse of Washington and its regional allies. While puzzling from the liberal internationalist perspective still prevalent in the Washington foreign policy establishment, the aggressive actions of Beijing and Moscow, as well as the increasingly confrontational U.S. response, all these developments are easily explained by the offensive realist school of international relations theory. The “tragedy of great power politics (https://www.amazon.com/Tragedy-Great-Power-Politics- Updated/dp/0393349276),” as John Mearsheimer long ago recognized, is that an increasingly multipolar system, such as todayʼs world, leads to intense strategic rivalries and potential military conflicts among the great powers. World is now multipolar Popescu, April, 15, 2020, Dr. Ionut Popescu is an assistant professor of political science at Texas State University and an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve. He is the author of Emergent Strategy and Grand Strategy: How American Presidents Succeed in Foreign Policy (Johns Hopkins, 2017). The opinions expressed here are entirely his https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 13/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! own, and do not represent the views of the U.S. Navy or the Department of Defense, Itʼs Time to Get Real About Great-Power Politics, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/its-time-get-real-about-great-power-politics- 144742 Every era of world order (https://www.amazon.com/World-Order-Henry- Kissinger/dp/0143127713) in international politics is shaped by a combination of the structural balance of power among the most significant actors on the one hand, and the ideas, norms, and institutions governing their interactions on the other. Over the past decade, the international system transitioned from an American-dominated unipolar era shaped by subdued great power rivalries to a multipolar (https://nationalinterest.org/feature/america-ready-multipolar-world-14964) era, one in which the key shaping factor is the aggressive geopolitical competition among the United States, China, and to a lesser extent Russia Feedback China is a threat to Taiwan Kent Wang, 4-15, 20 is a research fellow at the Institute for Taiwan-America Studies (ITAS), a conservative Washington-based think tank focusing on those aspects of the United States-Taiwan relations, and is broadly interested in the United States-Taiwan- China trilateral equation, as well as in East Asian security architecture, April 15, 2020, Could the Coronavirus Start a War Between Taiwan and China?, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/could-coronavirus-start-war-between-taiwan- and-china-144642 The implications of Chinaʼs military modernization are profound. “Conservatives have also long warned that Chinaʼs ambitions go well beyond simply taking over Taiwan,” Rick Fisher, a China military analyst, said. “What China will try to do to Taiwan is simply the template for how it will eventually threaten every other democracy.” The challenge posed by The implications of Chinaʼs military modernization are profound. “Conservatives have also long warned that Chinaʼs ambitions go well beyond simply taking over Taiwan,” Rick Fisher, a China military analyst, said. “What https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 14/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! China will try to do to Taiwan is simply the template for how it will eventually threaten every other democracy.” The challenge posed by Chinese military expansion requires a Cold War-type response, as itʼs one of the most ambitious military modernization efforts in recent history. Chinaʼs buildup of missiles, warships, aircraft, space weaponry and cyber capabilities has accelerated under President Xi Jinping. The decades-long military buildup now poses a threat to Taiwan security not just in Indo-Pacific but also around the globe, and the great consequence of Chinaʼs invasion could emerge at this flashpoint. Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran all threaten the US Popescu, April, 15, 2020, Dr. Ionut Popescu is an assistant professor of political science at Texas State University and an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve. He is the author of Emergent Strategy and Grand Strategy: How American Presidents Succeed Feedback in Foreign Policy (Johns Hopkins, 2017). The opinions expressed here are entirely his own, and do not represent the views of the U.S. Navy or the Department of Defense, Itʼs Time to Get Real About Great-Power Politics, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/its-time-get-real-about-great-power-politics- 144742 An offensive American grand strategic framework for the new era of great-power competition rests on three core principles. First, in order to address the only realistic threat of a hostile regional hegemon dominating one of the three key geopolitical areas of the world (Europe, Asia, Middle East) and thus reaching global co-superpower status, the United States should center its grand strategy around the containment of Chinese power and influence both in Asia and globally. This is the single most significant threat to U.S. national interest in the long-run. The second principle outlines three second-order threats: Russiaʼs resurgence as a hostile geopolitical player, destabilizing nuclear proliferation on the part of rogue regimes such as in North Korea and likely Iran, and the continued fight against radical jihadist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda. These security threats of significant but nevertheless lesser strategic importance will need to be dealt with in a cost-effective manner, so as to free https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 15/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! resources for the main goal of containing China. And third, the United States needs to be ready to ruthlessly compete diplomatically and economically in shaping the contours of an emergent realist world order (and regional orders) that is gradually replacing the post–World War II liberal world order. Transition to multipolarity risks war Popescu, April, 15, 2020, Dr. Ionut Popescu is an assistant professor of political science at Texas State University and an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve. He is the author of Emergent Strategy and Grand Strategy: How American Presidents Succeed in Foreign Policy (Johns Hopkins, 2017). The opinions expressed here are entirely his own, and do not represent the views of the U.S. Navy or the Department of Defense, Itʼs Time to Get Real About Great-Power Politics, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/its-time-get-real-about-great-power-politics- Feedback 144742 What happened? And what does this shift tell us about the best theoretical paradigm to understand and shape U.S. grand strategic decisionmaking in the years to come? Over the past two decades, while the United States spent vast resources for little strategic gain in conflicts across the Middle East, China and Russia took decisive steps to increase their spheres of influence at the expanse of Washington and its regional allies. While puzzling from the liberal internationalist perspective still prevalent in the Washington foreign policy establishment, the aggressive actions of Beijing and Moscow, as well as the increasingly confrontational U.S. response, all these developments are easily explained by the offensive realist school of international relations theory. The “tragedy of great power politics (https://www.amazon.com/Tragedy-Great-Power-Politics- Updated/dp/0393349276),” as John Mearsheimer long ago recognized, is that an increasingly multipolar system, such as todayʼs world, leads to intense strategic rivalries and potential military conflicts among the great powers. World is now multipolar https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 16/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! Popescu, April, 15, 2020, Dr. Ionut Popescu is an assistant professor of political science at Texas State University and an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve. He is the author of Emergent Strategy and Grand Strategy: How American Presidents Succeed in Foreign Policy (Johns Hopkins, 2017). The opinions expressed here are entirely his own, and do not represent the views of the U.S. Navy or the Department of Defense, Itʼs Time to Get Real About Great-Power Politics, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/its-time-get-real-about-great-power-politics- 144742 Every era of world order (https://www.amazon.com/World-Order-Henry- Kissinger/dp/0143127713) in international politics is shaped by a combination of the structural balance of power among the most significant actors on the one hand, and the ideas, norms, and institutions governing their interactions on the other. Over the past decade, the international system transitioned from an American-dominated Feedback unipolar era shaped by subdued great power rivalries to a multipolar (https://nationalinterest.org/feature/america-ready-multipolar-world-14964) era, one in which the key shaping factor is the aggressive geopolitical competition among the United States, China, and to a lesser extent Russia Further weakening of US security commitments trigger nuclear proliferation Ivo Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, served as U.S. Ambassador to NATO from 2009 to 2013, March 6, 2020, Can 50 years of minimizing nuclear proliferation continue?, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/opinion/minimizing-nuclear-proliferation.html (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/opinion/minimizing-nuclear- proliferation.html) The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has mostly succeeded in keeping more countries out of the nuclear club. But as U.S. alliances fray, its future success is not assured. Imagine we are living in the year 2030. New seismic activity indicates an underground nuclear explosion somewhere near the Arctic Circle. One more country announces itʼs https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 17/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! joining the once-exclusive club of nuclear weapons states that has now grown to 20 nations – more than double the number in 2020. The trouble started in 2023, when a group of former allies of the United States renounced their adherence to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and opted to acquire the very nuclear weapons capabilities that they foreswore decades earlier. Since then, nations across the world had raced to acquire the bomb, and the global security situation had become increasingly precarious. Sooner or later, as centers of nuclear decision making multiplied, one of those weapons was bound to go off, with consequences incalculable for all. A far- fetched future? Perhaps. The nonproliferation treaty entered into force 50 years ago, on March 5, 1970. At the time, only five nations – the United States, the Soviet Union, China, Britain and France – were recognized as nuclear weapons states. Just four more countries – India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea – have since acquired the bomb. And, yet, this scenario is more plausible now than many may think. To understand why, we need to go back to 1963, when President John F. Kennedy warned Feedback of a “world in which 15 or 20 or 25 nations may have these weapons.” Kennedy expressed the widely held belief that further proliferation was likely, if not inevitable. Every nation that possessed the capability to build a bomb had done so and American officials worried that the trend was about to accelerate. That didnʼt happen. Having stood at the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union redoubled efforts to stabilize their nuclear relationship and prevent other states from crossing the nuclear threshold. The nonproliferation treaty was one result of those efforts. Under the treaty, states that didnʼt have nuclear weapons pledged not to develop or acquire them, while those that did committed to eventual nuclear disarmament. But it wasnʼt just U.S.-Soviet arms control negotiations that turned the proliferation tide in the 1960s. Even more important was Washingtonʼs determination to assure its allies in Europe and Asia that they could rely on America for their nuclear security. Only after they were convinced that the American nuclear guarantee was credible, did allies like Germany and Japan decide to forego a national nuclear option and join the nonproliferation treaty. Whenever new developments seemed to call the American guarantee into question – as when a new generation of Soviet medium-range missiles were deployed in Europe in the 1970s and when North Korea expanded its nuclear and missile programs in the 1990s and 2000s – https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 18/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! Washington worked to reassure its allies that its nuclear commitment remained strong and credible. In recent years, new questions about the credibility of the American nuclear guarantee have returned. One reason is the changing strategic environment. In Europe, a more adventurous and better-armed Russia no longer shies away from using military force, as its invasion of Ukraine and its support for the Assad regime in Syria have underscored. In Asia, Chinaʼs rapid rise has expanded its military reach throughout the Asia-Pacific, and North Korea has emerged as a potent foe, armed with nuclear weapons and long-range missiles that threaten the entire region. Even as threats have multiplied, allied doubts about the American commitment have grown perceptibly since Donald Trump entered the White House expressing deep distrust of alliances. His early failure to reconfirm NATOʼs Article 5 mutual defense commitment, his threat to leave NATO if allies did not sharply increase military spending, his insistence that Asian allies greatly increase their financial contributions to maintain the U.S. military presence, his musings about some allies acquiring their own nuclear Feedback capabilities – all these have increased uncertainty in allied capitals about whether they can still count on the United States. Which raises the question: if not the United States, who will assure their nuclear security? So far, few experts argue that the answer lies in a national nuclear program. But as worries about Americaʼs security commitments continue to grow, more countries may reach that conclusion. In-country US forces necessary to protect nuclear guarantees that stop allied proliferation Nuclear News, March 2019, Atomic Assurance: The Alliance Politics of Nuclear Proliferation, p 10 Atomic Assurance: The Alliance Politics of Nuclear Proliferation, by Alexander Lanoszka. Do alliances curb efforts by states to develop nuclear weapons? This book looks at what makes alliances sufficiently credible to prevent nuclear proliferation; how alliances can break down and so encourage nuclear proliferation; and whether security guarantors like the United States can use alliance ties to end the nuclear efforts of their allies. The author concludes that military alliances are less useful in preventing allies from acquiring nuclear weapons than conventional wisdom https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 19/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! suggests. Through case studies of West Germany, Japan, and South Korea, as well as a series of smaller cases on Great Britain, France, Norway, Australia, and Taiwan, Atomic Assurance shows that it is easier to prevent an ally from initiating a nuclear program than to stop an ally that has already started one; that in-theater conventional forces are crucial in making American nuclear guarantees credible; that the American coercion of allies who started, or were tempted to start, a nuclear weapons program has played less of a role in forestalling nuclear proliferation than analysts have assumed; and that the economic or technological reliance of a security-dependent ally on the United States works better to reverse or to halt that allyʼs nuclear bid than anything else. Crossing diplomatic history, international relations, foreign policy, grand strategy, and nuclear strategy, Atomic Assurance reworks our understanding of the power and importance of alliances in stopping nuclear proliferation. Feedback Iran isnʼt going nuclear now Spacacan, April 11, 2020, John Spacapan is the Wohlstetter Public Affairs Fellow at Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, Why America Should Believe Iran When It Says It Doesnʼt Want Nuclear Weapons, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/middle- east-watch/why-america-should-believe-iran-when-it-says-it-doesnt-want-nuclear- weapons If news reports (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/archive-of- secret-iranian-nuclear-documents-draws-fresh-scrutiny-as-tehran-stockpiles- enriched-uranium/2020/03/05/342894c6-5e44-11ea-b29b- 9db42f7803a7_story.html) are correct, then Iran wants to build a bomb. But in the two months since its muted response to the American strike that killed Iranʼs Maj. Gen Qassim Suleimani and the country seems intent on signaling rather than proliferating. In January, Iranʼs foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, threatened to withdraw (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-zarif/if-nuclear-issue- is-referred-to-un-iran-will-pull-out-of-the-npt-iran-foreign-minister- idUSKBN1ZJ0YK) from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 20/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! (NPT). But has made no further indication to do so since then. Last week, Tehran invited the IAEA (https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/03/09/world/europe/ap- eu-iran-nuclear.html) to observe that it had tripled its stockpile of low-enriched uranium, an initial step toward restarting a nuclear weapons program but a move short of qualifying as a renewed weapons program. At first glance, Iranʼs hesitance flies in the face of conventional wisdom. North Korea (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/12090658/North- Korea-cites-Muammar-Gaddafis-destruction-in-nuclear-test-defence.html), Putin (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-putin/russias-putin-warns-west-not-to- meddle-idUSTRE81P0U020120226), and American neo-realist scholars (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/01/opinion/iran-is-rushing-to-build-a-nuclear- weapon-and-trump-cant-stop-it.html) alike assert that enemies of the United States pursue nuclear weapons because itʼs the obvious and rational choice to make. Just look at Muammar el-Qaddafi, they say. He gave up his nuclear weapons program in Feedback 2003, and within a decade fell victim to a Western-backed revolution that left him at the mercy of his own people and to the wrong side of a gun. But Iran may understand the lessons of Libya and the Arab Spring far better than the Russians, the North Koreans, or many U.S. academics. The last decade has taught Tehran that dictators in the Middle East are far more likely to be killed or overthrown by their own people than by the United States. In the last nine years, all three of Libyaʼs Arab neighbors have succumbed to regime change. In many ways these regimes were the lucky ones, they werenʼt murdered like Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen or engaged in a decade of civil war-like Bashar al-Assad in Syria. In none of these cases would nuclear weapons have deterred uprising from within. With this reality in mind, spending more resources on a nuclear weapons program may not seem any more attractive to Iran now than it did to Libya seventeen years ago. Nuclear arms proliferation experts have noted (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/iran/2006-09-01/how- keep-bomb-iran) that financials weighed heavily on the mind of Qaddafi during the late 1990s and early 2000s. While Iran is much closer to acquiring a weapon today than Qaddafi was back then, to cross the finish line and then maintain a relevant nuclear arsenal requires Tehran to spend vital resources it needs to bolster its domestic economy. Iran, like Qaddafi in the early 2000s, may fear a future under international https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 21/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! isolation more than a future without nuclear weapons. Iran, like Libya, has an economy dependent on energy export and advanced technology and machinery import, making it particularly vulnerable to sanctions. With oil prices plummeting to a shocking $34 barrel for Brent Crude, the regimeʼs future will depend on the foreign investment put toward economic diversification. It also has a population hungry for change, just like Libyans and the broader Arab street in 2011. For Iran, further economic isolation would eventually make an already tenuous domestic situation explode. US draw-down triggers allied proliferation, trigger nuclear war and nuclear terrorism Pete McKenzie, March 25, 2020, Pete McKenzie is an independent journalist based in New Zealand. He co-hosts “The Un-Diplomatic Podcast” on international affairs and national security with Dr. Van Jackson. He has written about national security and Feedback politics for The Guardian and other outlets, and is a New Zealand correspondent, https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2020/03/americas-allies-are-becoming- nuclear-proliferation-threat/164057/, Americaʼs Allies Are Becoming a Nuclear- Proliferation Threat As the Trump administration scrambles traditional foreign-policy practice, experts warn that some of Americaʼs longest allies are increasingly considering what would previously have been unthinkable: the pursuit of nuclear weapons. Days after the 2016 American election, Reuters published an interview (https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-germany-usa-nuclear-idUSKBN13B1GO) with Roderich Kiesewetter, foreign policy spokesperson for German Chancellor Angela Merkelʼs conservative bloc. Reacting to President Trumpʼs victory, Kiesewetter declared, “Europe needs to think about developing its own nuclear deterrent.” It was shocking. Germanyʼs flirtations with nuclear weapons have been minimal since it committed to nonproliferation in the 1960s. But prominent academics and journalists joined Kiesewetter. The publisher of one influential conservative newspaper even suggested (https://www.ft.com/content/277695dc-ec52-11e6-ba01- 119a44939bb6?mhq5j=e2) that Germany develop its own nuclear arsenal. “We https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 22/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! initially thought this was going to go away because of how vociferous the opposition was; that it was a phantom debate among fringe elements,” said Tristan Volpe, fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peaceʼs nuclear program. “But itʼs come back at least four times with some serious people weighing in as proponents.” Germany is not unique. Of all the Trump administrationʼs global impacts, one of the most worrying is a sudden increase in the risk of nuclear proliferation among American allies, many of whom are considering a nuclear path which America may be unable to control. This debate has been most intense in South Korea, which began pursuing a nuclear weapons program in the 1970s only to abandon it under intense pressure. The idea remained popular; upwards of 60 percent of South Koreans favor (https://thebulletin.org/2019/10/dont-be-surprised-when-south-korea-wants- nuclear-weapons/) pursuing nuclear weapons. “South Korea has become much more serious,” said David Santoro, nuclear policy director at Pacific Forum, a Honolulu thinktank. “A number of politicians have been making the case that South Korea should Feedback develop a nuclear arsenal.” Former South Korean foreign minister Song Min-soon told (https://thebulletin.org/2019/10/dont) an American audience last year that “the Republic of Korea taking its own measures to create a nuclear balance on the peninsula” was “widely touted.” The most significant steps by an American partner are being taken by Saudi Arabia. It is pursuing civil nuclear capabilities and, according to Carnegieʼs Volpe, “have been quite reluctant to foreswear the option to enrich uranium down the road. Theyʼve been very coy around it. Well, working-level officials in Saudi Arabia have been very coy.” That reticence does not extend to Saudi leaders. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman warned (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/22/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-nuclear.html) in 2018 that if Iran “developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.” These shifts are partly the product of long-term trends. Never since the Cold War has Americaʼs global position seemed more fragile, making its commitments seem questionable. And North Koreaʼs success in acquiring long-range nuclear capabilities was guaranteed to spook nearby American allies. As Mira Rapp-Hooper, Senior Fellow for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, has observed (https://warontherocks.com/2019/11/decoupling-), “The trouble is, the United States has far less incentive to intervene on behalf of South Korea or Japan if North Korea can https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 23/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! respond with a nuclear strike against the U.S. homeland.” Iranʼs interest in nuclear weapons has similarly terrified regional rivals. But Trumpʼs behavior has accelerated those trends. Santoro noted that the nuclear discussion in South Korea is “taking off now because thereʼs a lot of discussions in Washington about whether or not the Trump administration is considering withdrawing troops.” Vipin Narang, associate professor of political science at MIT, said, “You can really boil this down to Trumpʼs instincts and style. For the first time in a long time, the allies have had to fundamentally question the credibility of the U.S.[nuclear protection] guarantee.” This uncertainty is fed by moves like Trumpʼs demand (https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/14/politics/trump- south-korea-troops-price-hike/index.html?utm_source=twCNN&utm_content=2019- 11-15T01 08 17&utm_med), since rescinded, that South Korea quintuple its contribution to the cost of maintaining American troops there. “The concern is that itʼs not a genuine negotiating position, that itʼs demanded as an excuse to eventually pull out of South Korea,” Narang said. “Thereʼs a deep enough thread in Trumpʼs thinking Feedback and rhetoric to suggest that he genuinely believes that American [nuclear] assurance and conventional deployments to these allies are a waste of money.” Experts emphasize that the risk of allies rapidly nuclearizing is low. “Thereʼs a number of hurdles that [allies] would have to get very powerfully motivated to overcome,” said Michael Mazarr, senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation. But Volpe observed that “opening that box and having to ask those questions about the U.S. commitment is worrisome…The proliferation risk is low. The problem is that itʼs increased. It was an almost 0 percent risk for a long time, and the reason thereʼs lots of interest is that that risk has gone up in a noticeable way.” Moreover, that risk will grow. According to Nicholas Miller, assistant professor of government at Dartmouth: “There are geopolitical trends that are making this happen, and are going to make it increasingly common…The shift towards multipolarity with the rise of China, the relative decline of the U.S, and Russia behaving increasingly assertively—that all makes a lot of our allies feel more insecure. Thatʼs going to persist, so these conversations will continue.” Part of the Trump administrationʼs legacy will be the corrosion of Americaʼs ability to control those risks. Previous administrations restrained proliferation by denying other governments access to technology, coercing them through threats, and reassuring them through commitments. But the rise of https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 24/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! Russian and Chinese nuclear-technology providers has made the first option far less effective. And it would be counterproductive to coerce already-nervous allies with the type of confrontational strategies used against states like Iran and North Korea. The only useful tool the next president will have is reassurance, itself badly dulled by the current president. “From an allied perspective, you look at the U.S. and you think, ‘Well, for four years Iʼll get assurance, but then the administration will change and the commitment might die againʼ,” Santoro said. “Itʼs going to be very hard for the next administration to recommit to U.S. obligations.” The consequences of proliferation among allies are dire. Miller explained that “the more countries with nuclear weapons, the more likely that a weapon gets used. That could be a deliberate attack, accident or nuclear terrorism.” Crucially, “the U.S. has adopted a strong stance against proliferation [because] weʼre very worried about cascades or tipping points. If one [ally] gets nuclear weapons, it gives others incentives to do the same”. As the 2020 election Feedback looms, this issue will grow in importance. “I think most allies are willing to give American until 2020, but if Trump is reelected, then I think these concerns will be really exacerbated,” said Narang. “Because thatʼs enough time for Trump to implement a vision of reducing Americaʼs footprint.” So as America negotiates its way through the Trump question, the answer it chooses may require it to confront a newly pressing nuclear challenge: holding back its own friends US global leadership has collapsed Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The World: A Brief Introduction, April 7, 2020, The Pandemic Will Accelerate History Rather Than Reshape It, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020- 04-07/pandemic-will-accelerate-history-rather-reshape-it One characteristic of the current crisis has been a marked lack of U.S. leadership. The United States has not rallied the world in a collective effort to confront either the virus or its economic effects. Nor has the United States rallied the world to follow its lead in addressing the problem at home. Other countries are looking after https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 25/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! themselves as best they can or turning to those past the peak of infection, such as China, for assistance. But if the world that follows this crisis will be one in which the United States dominates less and less—it is almost impossible to imagine anyone today writing about a “unipolar moment”—this trend is hardly new. It has been apparent for at least a decade. To some degree, this is a result of what Fareed Zakaria described as “the rise of the rest” (and of China in particular), which brought a decline in the United Statesʼ relative advantage even though its absolute economic and military strength continued to grow. But even more than that, it is a result of faltering American will rather than declining American capacity. President Barack Obama oversaw a pullback from Afghanistan and the Middle East. President Donald Trump has employed mostly economic power to confront foes. But he has essentially ended the U.S. presence in Syria, and seeks to do the same in Afghanistan, and, perhaps more significant, has shown little interest either in alliances or in maintaining the United Statesʼ traditional leading role in addressing major transnational issues…. Feedback But there is little reason to believe the past will repeat itself after this latest global calamity. The world today is simply not conducive to being shaped. Power is distributed in more hands, both state and nonstate, than ever before. Consensus is mostly absent. New technologies and challenges have outpaced the collective ability to contend with them. No single country enjoys the standing the United States did in 1945. What is more, this United States is not currently disposed to take on a leading international role, the result of fatigue brought on by two long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and rising needs at home. Even if a foreign policy “traditionalist” such as former Vice President Joseph Biden wins the November presidential election, resistance from Congress and the public will prevent the full- scale return of an expansive U.S. role in the world. And no other country, not China or anyone else, has both the desire and the ability to fill the void the United States has created. After World War II, the need to meet the looming communist threat galvanized the American public to support their country in assuming a leading role around the world. Former Secretary of State Dean Acheson famously said that the government had to make arguments “clearer than truth” to get the American people and Congress to buy into the effort to contain the Soviet Union. Some analysts suggest that invoking the threat of China could similarly galvanize public support today, but a foreign policy https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 26/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! based on opposing China is hardly suited to addressing the global challenges that shape todayʼs world. Meanwhile, appealing to the American people to put tackling those global problems at the heart of U.S. foreign policy will continue to be a tough sell. Accordingly, the more relevant precedent to consider may be not the period following World War II but the period following World War I—an era of declining American involvement and mounting international upheaval. The rest, as they say, is history Credibility of the US model has already declined Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The World: A Brief Introduction, April 7, 2020, The Pandemic Will Accelerate History Rather Than Reshape It, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020- 04-07/pandemic-will-accelerate-history-rather-reshape-it Feedback Just as consequential as U.S. policy choices is the power of Americaʼs example. Long before COVID-19 ravaged the earth, there had already been a precipitous decline in the appeal of the American model. Thanks to persistent political gridlock, gun violence, the mismanagement that led to the 2008 global financial crisis, the opioid epidemic, and more, what America represented grew increasingly unattractive to many. The federal governmentʼs slow, incoherent, and all too often ineffective response to the pandemic will reinforce the already widespread view that the United States has lost its way. Caronavirus has strengthened Dollar dominance Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University, April 3, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/03/united- states-can-still-win-coronavirus-pandemic-power/, Foreign Policy There is another reason why the United States may get out of this in better shape than one might initially think: the dollar. It remains the worldʼs reserve currency and is still considered a relatively safe asset in times of economic uncertainty. The rush to safety amid the global economic crisis prompted by the pandemic has strengthened it https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 27/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! already, and foreign demand for dollars will make it easier for the United States to borrow. Indeed, according (https://twitter.com/ProfPaulPoast/status/1243172840272265219) to Paul Poast of the University of Chicago, “If anything, the economic turmoil brought about by #COVID19 is simply reinforcing the dollar-dominance.” Insofar as the dollar has been an important aspect of Americaʼs enduring global influence, then the coronavirus may not do as much damage as one might otherwise think. Offshore balancing will force an increase in diplomacy needed to deal with the caronavirus and the global economy Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University, April 3, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/03/united- states-can-still-win-coronavirus-pandemic-power/, Foreign Policy Feedback Is my desire to see the United States exercise greater leadership at this moment at odds with my commitment to a grand strategy of offshore balancing and my repeated criticisms of liberal hegemony? Hardly. Offshore balancers (aka “restrainers”) do not oppose extensive U.S. engagement in world affairs; in fact, most of us favor strengthening the State Department and believe diplomacy should be Americaʼs first impulse and sanctions, coercion, and military force should be used sparingly, and only as a last resort. As I put it in The Hell of Good Intentions, “under offshore balancing, diplomacy takes center stage.” And this is true in spades when dealing with the combination of a global pandemic and looming global recession. Despite the ability, China has no desire to be the Middle Eastern hegemon Dr. James M. Dorsey, 4-2-2020, “China manoeuvres to protect its interests while keeping its hands clean,” Modern Diplomacy, <a class=”vglnk” href=”https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2020/04/02/china-manoeuvres-to-protect-its- interests-while-keeping-its-hands-clean/” https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 28/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! The question is not if, but when the long-standing American defence umbrella in the Gulf, the worldʼs most militarised and volatile region, will be replaced by a multilateral security arrangement that would have to include China as well as Russia. The United Statesʼ perceived diminishing commitment to the Gulf and the broader Middle East and mounting doubts about the deterrence value of its defence umbrella leave the Gulf stuck between a rock and a hard place. The American umbrella is shrinking, but neither China nor Russia, despite their obvious interests, are capable or willing simply to shoulder the responsibility, political risk and cost of replacing it. On balance, Chinaʼs interests seem self-evident. It needs to secure its mushrooming political and economic interests in the Gulf, which includes ensuring the flow of oil and gas and protecting its infrastructure investment and the expanding Chinese diaspora in the region. Nonetheless, China has so far refrained from putting its might where its money is, free-riding instead (in the words of US officials) on Americaʼs regional military presence. Indeed, for the longest time China has been able to outsource the Feedback protection of its interests to the United States at virtually no cost. For the US, guaranteeing security in the Gulf has been anchored in an American policy which accepted that maintaining security far beyond the borders of the United States was in Americaʼs national interest, including the protection of Chinese assets. All China needed to do, therefore, was to make minimal gestures such as contributing to the multi-national effort in the Gulf and adjacent waters to counter Somali pirates. In the meantime, China could pursue a long-term strategy to bolster its capabilities. This included infrastructure projects related to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with dual- purpose potential (such as the strategic ports of Gwadar in Pakistan and Duqm in Oman as well as commercial investment in Dubaiʼs Jebel Ali), the creation of Chinaʼs first overseas military facility in Djibouti, and significant expenditure on upgrading the Chinese armed forces. All that potentially changed with the rise of US President Donald J. Trump, who advocated an America First policy that attributed little value to past US commitments or to maintaining existing alliances. Hence Trump embarked on a trade war with China – viewed as a strategic competitor – and appeared to fuel rather than resolve regional stability by uncritically aligning American policy with that of Saudi Arabia and Israel and targeted Iran as the source of all evil. This change has yet to translate into specific Chinese policy statements or actions. Nonetheless, the https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 29/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! anticipated shift from a unipolar to a multilateral security architecture in the Gulf has cast a new light on the first-ever joint naval exercise involving Chinese, Russian and Iranian naval forces, as well as Chinaʼs seemingly lukewarm support for a Russian proposal for a multilateral security approach in the Gulf. China was careful to signal that neither the joint exercise nor its closer military ties with a host of other Middle Eastern nations meant it was aspiring to a greater role in regional security any time soon. If anything, both the exercise and Chinaʼs notional support for Russiaʼs proposed restructuring of regional security suggest that China envisions a continued US lead in Gulf security, despite the mounting rivalry between the worldʼs two largest economies. The Russian proposal in many ways fits Chinaʼs bill. Its calls for a multilateral structure involving Russia, China, the United States, Europe and India that would evolve out of a regional security conference along the lines of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). While backing Russiaʼs proposal in general terms, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang stopped short of specifically Feedback endorsing it. Geng welcomed ‘all proposals and diplomatic efforts conducive to de- escalating the situation in the Gulf regionʼ. Chinaʼs reluctance to endorse the Russian proposal more wholeheartedly is rooted in differing approaches towards multilateralism in general and alliances in particular. China shies away from alliances, with their emphasis on geo-economics rather than geopolitics, while Russia still operates in terms of alliances. Despite favouring a continued American lead, China sees a broadening of security arrangements that would embed rather than replace the US defence umbrella in the Gulf as a way to reduce regional tensions. China also believes that a multilateral arrangement would allow it to continue to steer clear of being sucked into conflicts and disputes in the Middle East, particularly the Saudi-Iranian rivalry. A multilateral arrangement in which the US remained the key military player would further fit the pattern of Chinaʼs gradual projection of its growing military power beyond its borders. With the exception of the facility in Djibouti, Chinaʼs projection becomes less hardcore the further one gets from the borders of the Peopleʼs Republic. More fundamentally, Chinaʼs approach is grounded in the belief that economics rather than geopolitics is the key to solving disputes, which so far has allowed it to remain detached from the Middle Eastʼs multiple conflicts. It remains to be seen how sustainable this approach is in the long https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 30/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! term. Such an approach is unlikely to shield China forever from the Middle Eastʼs penchant for ensuring it is at the heart of the major external partiesʼ concerns. And as Jiang Xudong, a Middle East scholar at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, puts it: ‘Economic investment will not solve all other problems when there are religious and ethnic conflicts at playʼ. US hegemony has killed hundreds of thousands and failed to resolve conflict Stephen Wertheim, Wertheim is Deputy Director of Research and Policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a Research Scholar at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, March/April, 2020, Foreign Affairs, The Price of Primacy, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/afghanistan/2020-02-10/price-primacy Feedback The collapse of the Soviet Union revealed the bankruptcy of international communism. In time, the absence of a Cold War foe also exposed the bankruptcy of Washingtonʼs global ambitions. Freed from major challengers, the United States had an unprecedented chance to shape international politics according to its wishes. It could have chosen to live in harmony with the world, pulling back its armed forces and deploying them only for vital purposes. It could have helped build a world of peace, strengthening the laws and institutions that constrain war and that most other states welcome. From this foundation of security and goodwill, the United States could have exercised leadership on the already visible challenges ahead, including climate change and the concentration of ungoverned wealth. Instead, Washington did the opposite. It adopted a grand strategy that gave pride of place to military threats and methods, and it constructed a form of global integration that served the immediate interests of a few but imperiled the long-term interests of the many. At best, these were mistaken priorities. At worst, they turned the United States into a destructive actor in the world. Rather than practice and cultivate peace, Washington pursued armed domination and launched futile wars in Afghanistan in 2001, in Iraq in 2003, and in Libya in 2011. These actions created more enemies https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 31/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! than they defeated. They killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and overextended a generation of U.S. service members. They damaged laws and institutions that stabilize the world and the United States. They made the American people less safe. US leadership has not solved climate change Stephen Wertheim, Wertheim is Deputy Director of Research and Policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a Research Scholar at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, March/April, 2020, Foreign Affairs, The Price of Primacy, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/afghanistan/2020-02-10/price-primacy As the United States inflated military threats and then poured resources into Feedback countering them, it also failed to provide for the global common good. Although it has led some laudable efforts to address the AIDS pandemic and climate change, the overall record is grim. Since 1990, the United States, despite having only four percent of the global population, has emitted about 20 percent of the worldʼs total carbon dioxide, the main contributor to climate change. Although China is now the worldʼs top emitter, the United Statesʼ emissions per capita remain more than twice as high as Chinaʼs. American leaders have alternated between denying the problem and taking insufficient steps to solve it. It remains unclear whether humanity can prevent the overall global temperature from rising to between 1.5 and 2.0 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels; if not, the damage may prove irreversible, and fires, droughts, and floods may proliferate. US leadership has put capital first, increasing poverty Stephen Wertheim, Wertheim is Deputy Director of Research and Policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a Research Scholar at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, March/April, 2020, Foreign https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 32/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! Affairs, The Price of Primacy, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/afghanistan/2020-02-10/price-primacy Meanwhile, the economic growth that has contributed to climate change has not benefited enough people. True, extreme poverty has plummeted globally since the early 1990s. This spectacular achievement is substantially the result of growth in China and India, on terms accepted but hardly defined by the United States. In the same period, however, the share of income accruing to the wealthiest one percent of the worldʼs population has steadily climbed, whereas that of the bottom 50 percent has stagnated. The rest of the world, including the vast majority of Americans, has actually lost ground. Wealth is now concentrated to the point that an estimated 11.5 percent of global GDP lies offshore, untaxed and unaccountable. The populist revolts of the past few years were a predictable result. And American leaders bear direct responsibility for these outcomes, having spearheaded an economic order that puts Feedback capital first. US counterterrorism strategy has produced endless war Stephen Wertheim, Wertheim is Deputy Director of Research and Policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a Research Scholar at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, March/April, 2020, Foreign Affairs, The Price of Primacy, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/afghanistan/2020-02-10/price-primacy For most of the 1990s, the costs of this strategy remained somewhat hidden. With Russia flattened and China poor, the United States could simultaneously reduce its defense spending and expand NATO, launch military interventions in the former Yugoslavia and for the first time station tens of thousands of troops in the Middle East. Yet by the end of the decade, U.S. dominance had begun to generate blowback. Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist group declared war on the United States in 1996, citing the U.S. militaryʼs presence in Saudi Arabia as their top grievance; two years later, al Qaeda bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 33/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! Tanzania, killing 224 people. U.S. policymakers, for their part, were already exaggerating the threat posed by weak “rogue states” and gearing up for ambitious military interventions to promote democracy and human rights. These pathologies shaped Washingtonʼs overly militarized reaction to the 9/11 attacks, as the United States entered into successive conflicts in which its capabilities and interests did not exceed those of local actors. The result was endless war. US primacy is pushing China toward aggression Stephen Wertheim, Wertheim is Deputy Director of Research and Policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a Research Scholar at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, March/April, 2020, Foreign Affairs, The Price of Primacy, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/afghanistan/2020-02-10/price-primacy Feedback Now, as the United States struggles to extricate itself from the Middle East, China is growing into an economic and political powerhouse and Russia is asserting itself as a spoiler. That outcome is exactly what primacy was supposed to prevent. The rise of a near-peer competitor does not necessarily pose a grave danger to the United States, whose nuclear deterrent secures it from attack. But clinging to the dream of never- ending primacy will ensure trouble, mandating the containment of rivals and provoking insecurity and aggression in return. China has yet to undertake a costly bid for military dominance in East Asia, let alone the world, but U.S. actions could push Beijing in that direction. US primacy increases greenhouse gas emissions Stephen Wertheim, Wertheim is Deputy Director of Research and Policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a Research Scholar at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, March/April, 2020, Foreign Affairs, The Price of Primacy, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/afghanistan/2020-02-10/price-primacy https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 34/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! Primacy has not merely failed to provide security as it is narrowly defined. It has also damaged the environment, undercut the economic interests of most Americans, and destabilized democracy. The U.S. military consumes more oil and produces more greenhouse gases than any other institution on earth, according to Brown Universityʼs Costs of War Project. In 2017, the U.S. militaryʼs emissions exceeded those of entire industrialized countries, such as Denmark and Sweden. Primacy does not benefit the economy Stephen Wertheim, Wertheim is Deputy Director of Research and Policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a Research Scholar at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, March/April, 2020, Foreign Affairs, The Price of Primacy, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/afghanistan/2020-02-10/price-primacy Feedback Nor does primacy offer a net economic benefit. From the 1940s through the 1960s, U.S. military preponderance lubricated international capitalism by containing communism and facilitating the expansion of the dollar, to which all other currencies were pegged. But after the collapse of the Bretton Woods monetary system and then of the Soviet Union, currencies were floated, and global markets were integrated. As a result, U.S. military strength became largely detached from the international economic order. Today, the status of the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency, which allows Americans to borrow cheaply, rests largely on path dependence, the currencyʼs stability, and the dearth of attractive alternatives— factors that no longer rely on the global projection of U.S. force that helped usher them in originally. And the quest for primacy is now leading the United States to erode its own financial position by maintaining unnecessary hostilities with states such as Iran, imposing crippling sanctions on them and forcing third parties who use the dollar to follow suit. These actions have compelled European states to seek alternatives to the dollar and have driven down the dollarʼs share in global foreign exchange reserves. https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 35/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! Protecting commerce does not require hegemony and the costs of hegemony have gutted communities Stephen Wertheim, Wertheim is Deputy Director of Research and Policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a Research Scholar at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, March/April, 2020, Foreign Affairs, The Price of Primacy, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/afghanistan/2020-02-10/price-primacy The U.S. military contributes to global commerce by protecting the sea-lanes through which goods (including oil) flow. But doing so does not require globe- spanning dominance; it requires effective local partners to handle day-to-day tasks, with a light U.S. air and naval presence that can be reinforced if and when those partners cannot overcome a genuine challenge to maritime security. Feedback Whatever economic benefits primacy may indirectly yield, what is certain is that year after year, the United States spends half of its federal discretionary budget to fund a military that is costlier than the next seven largest armed forces combined. Military spending is one of the least efficient ways to create jobs, ranking behind tax cuts and spending on education, health care, infrastructure, and clean energy. The estimated $6.4 trillion poured into the “war on terror” so far could have rebuilt communities across the United States that were devastated by the financial crisis and the recession that followed. Now, many members of those communities resent the political elites who allowed them to crumble. Global retrenchment causes proliferation and nationalism Thomas Wright, March/April, 2020, Wright is the Director of the Center on the United States and Europe and a Senior Fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the Twenty-first Century and the Future of American Power https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 36/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! (https://www.amazon.com/All-Measures-Short-War-Twenty-First/dp/0300223285)., https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2020-02-10/folly-retrenchment, The Folly of Retrenchment Global retrenchment is fast emerging as the most coherent and ready-made alternative to the United Statesʼ postwar strategy. Yet pursuing it would be a grave mistake. By dissolving U.S. alliances and ending the forward presence of U.S. forces, this strategy would destabilize the regional security orders in Europe and Asia. It would also increase the risk of nuclear proliferation, empower right-wing nationalists in Europe, and aggravate the threat of major-power conflict. Retrenchment means withdrawing from Europe, Asia, the Middle East Thomas Wright, March/April, 2020, Wright is the Director of the Center on the United Feedback States and Europe and a Senior Fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the Twenty-first Century and the Future of American Power (https://www.amazon.com/All-Measures-Short-War-Twenty-First/dp/0300223285)., https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2020-02-10/folly-retrenchment, The Folly of Retrenchment Critics of the status quo argue that the United States must take two steps to change its ways. The first is retrenchment itself: the action of withdrawing (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2019-10-15/nonintervention-delusion) from many of the United Statesʼ existing commitments, such as the ongoing military interventions in the Middle East and one-sided alliances in Europe and Asia. The second is restraint: the strategy of defining U.S. interests narrowly, refusing to launch wars unless vital interests are directly threatened and Congress authorizes such action, compelling other nations to take care of their own security, and relying more on diplomatic, economic, and political tools. In practice, this approach means ending U.S. military operations in Afghanistan (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/afghanistan/2019-10-21/what- https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 37/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! withdrawal-afghanistan-would-look), withdrawing U.S. forces from the Middle East, relying on an over-the-horizon force that can uphold U.S. national interests, and no longer taking on responsibility for the security of other states. As for alliances, Posen (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/opinion/trump-aside- whats-the-us-role-in-nato.html)has argued that the United States should abandon the mutual-defense provision of NATO, replace the organization “with a new, more limited security cooperation agreement,” and reduce U.S. commitments to Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Retrenchment triggers regional insecurity and security competition Thomas Wright, March/April, 2020, Wright is the Director of the Center on the United States and Europe and a Senior Fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of All Measures Short of War: Feedback The Contest for the Twenty-first Century and the Future of American Power (https://www.amazon.com/All-Measures-Short-War-Twenty-First/dp/0300223285)., https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2020-02-10/folly-retrenchment, The Folly of Retrenchment This is a false promise, for a number of reasons. First, retrenchment would worsen regional security competition in Europe and Asia. The realists recognize that the U.S. military presence in Europe and Asia does dampen security competition, but they claim that it does so at too high a price (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/restraint-new- foundation-us-grand-strategy)—and one that, at any rate, should be paid by U.S. allies in the regions themselves. Although pulling back would invite regional security competition, realist retrenchers admit, the United States could be safer in a more dangerous world because regional rivals would check one another. This is a perilous gambit, however, because regional conflicts often end up implicating U.S. interests. They might thus end up drawing the United States back in after it https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 38/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! has left—resulting in a much more dangerous venture than heading off the conflict in the first place by staying. Realist retrenchment reveals a hubris that the United States can control consequences and prevent crises from erupting into war. Withdrawing from Europe increases Russian aggression in Europe Thomas Wright, March/April, 2020, Wright is the Director of the Center on the United States and Europe and a Senior Fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the Twenty-first Century and the Future of American Power (https://www.amazon.com/All-Measures-Short-War-Twenty-First/dp/0300223285)., https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2020-02-10/folly-retrenchment, The Folly of Retrenchment Feedback The progressivesʼ view of regional security is similarly flawed. These retrenchers reject the idea that regional security competition will intensify if the United States leaves. In fact, they argue, U.S. alliances often promote competition, as in the Middle East, where U.S. support for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates has emboldened those countries (http://www.columbia.edu/~saw2156/EndingEndlessWar.pdf) in their cold war with Iran. But this logic does not apply to Europe or Asia, where U.S. allies have behaved responsibly. A U.S. pullback from those places is more likely to embolden the regional powers. Since 2008, Russia has invaded (https://www.cfr.org/interactive/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/conflict-ukraine) two of its neighbors that are not members of NATO, and if the Baltic states were no longer protected by a U.S. security guarantee, it is conceivable that Russia would test the boundaries with gray-zone warfare. In East Asia, a U.S. withdrawal would force Japan to increase its defense capabilities and change its constitution to enable it to compete with China on its own, straining relations with South Korea. US retrenchment triggers global proliferation https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 39/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! Thomas Wright, March/April, 2020, Wright is the Director of the Center on the United States and Europe and a Senior Fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the Twenty-first Century and the Future of American Power (https://www.amazon.com/All-Measures-Short-War-Twenty-First/dp/0300223285)., https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2020-02-10/folly-retrenchment, The Folly of Retrenchment The second problem with retrenchment involves nuclear proliferation. If the United States pulled out of NATO or ended its alliance with Japan, as many realist advocates of retrenchment recommend, some of its allies, no longer protected by the U.S. nuclear umbrella, would be tempted to acquire nuclear weapons (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/2019-10-03/how-japan-could-go- nuclear) of their own. Unlike the progressives for retrenchment, the realists are Feedback comfortable with that result, since they see deterrence as a stabilizing force. Most Americans are not so sanguine, and rightly so. There are good reasons to worry about nuclear proliferation (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2018-10- 15/do-nuclear-weapons-matter): nuclear materials could end up in the hands of terrorists, states with less experience might be more prone to nuclear accidents, and nuclear powers in close proximity have shorter response times and thus conflicts among them have a greater chance of spiraling into escalation. Retrenchment increase nationalism Thomas Wright, March/April, 2020, Wright is the Director of the Center on the United States and Europe and a Senior Fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the Twenty-first Century and the Future of American Power (https://www.amazon.com/All-Measures-Short-War-Twenty-First/dp/0300223285)., https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2020-02-10/folly-retrenchment, The Folly of Retrenchment https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 40/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! Third, retrenchment would heighten nationalism and xenophobia. In Europe, a U.S. withdrawal would send the message that every country must fend for itself. It would therefore empower the far-right groups already making this claim—such as the Alternative for Germany (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/germany/2019-12-05/collapse- german-centrism), the League in Italy, and the National Front in France—while undermining the centrist democratic leaders there who told their populations that they could rely on the United States and NATO. As a result, Washington would lose leverage over the domestic politics of individual allies, particularly younger and more fragile democracies such as Poland. And since these nationalist populist groups (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/europe/2016-10-17/europe-s- populist-surge) are almost always protectionist, retrenchment would damage U.S. economic interests, as well. Even more alarming, many of the right-wing nationalists that retrenchment would empower have called for greater accommodation of China Feedback and Russia. Retrenchment triggers a China-Taiwan war Thomas Wright, March/April, 2020, Wright is the Director of the Center on the United States and Europe and a Senior Fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the Twenty-first Century and the Future of American Power (https://www.amazon.com/All-Measures-Short-War-Twenty-First/dp/0300223285)., https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2020-02-10/folly-retrenchment, The Folly of Retrenchment A fourth problem concerns regional stability after global retrenchment. The most likely end state is a spheres-of-influence (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2017-09-15/era-authoritarian- influence) system, whereby China and Russia dominate their neighbors, but such an order is inherently unstable. The lines of demarcation for such spheres tend to be unclear, and there is no guarantee that China and Russia will not seek to move them https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 41/124 4/28/2020 Offshore Balancing Daily Update – Public Forum: DebateUS! outward over time. Moreover, the United States cannot simply grant other major powers a sphere of influence—the countries that would fall into those realms have agency, too. If the United States ceded Taiwan (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2019-02-15/will-china-seize-taiwan) to China, for example, the Taiwanese people could say no. The current U.S. policy toward the country is working and may be sustainable. Withdrawing support from Taiwan against its will would plunge cross-strait relations into chaos. The entire idea of letting regional powers have their own spheres of influence has an imperial air that is at odds with modern principles of sovereignty and international law. Retrenchment means the spread of Chinaʼs authoritarianism Thomas Wright, March/April, 2020, Wright is the Director of the Center on the United States and Europe and a Senior Fellow in the Project on International Order and Feedback Strategy at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the Twenty-first Century and the Future of American Power (https://www.amazon.com/All-Measures-Short-War-Twenty-First/dp/0300223285)., https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2020-02-10/folly-retrenchment, The Folly of Retrenchment Such are the inherent flaws of retrenchment, downsides that would apply at any time in the post–Cold War era. But the strategy is particularly poorly suited for the current moment, when the United States finds itself in a systemic competition with China, in which each side threatens the other not just because of what they do but also because of what they are. To China and other autocracies, the United Statesʼ democratic system is inherently threatening. The free press promises to reveal vital secrets about the Chinese regime simply because it can, with American journalistsʼ 2012 (https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/business/global/family-of-wen-jiabao- holds-a-hidden-fortune-in-china.html) reports about elite corruption in China and Hong Kong and their 2019 (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-xinjiang- documents.html) revelations about the repression of Chinaʼs Uighurs serving as https://pf.debateus.org/blog/2020/04/10/offshore-balancing-evidence/ 42/124
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