The Hinge of History and the Rebuilding of American Statecraft

“Our hands rest purposely on history's door and it depends on us to push it in the right direction”.

US Secretary of Defense James B. Mattis, George C. Marshall Center, 28 June 2017

Hinges of power

Alphen, Netherlands. 13 September.  Whither American statecraft? L’Entente Cordiale, World War One, America’s entry into World War One, Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points and Treaty of Versailles, the League of Nations and America’s refusal to join it, the Great Depression, the rise of Hitler, the Rhineland occupation, Munich, World War Two, the Battle of Britain, Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into World War Two, Stalingrad and the defeat of Nazism, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Indian independence, the Berlin Airlift and the start of the Cold War, NATO, the Schuman Plan, the Korean War, German re-armament and the Warsaw Pact, the Treaty of Rome, Sputnik, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Ostpolitik, the Yom Kippur War, Euromissiles and the INF saga, Gorbachev and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Treaty of Maastricht, Gulf War I, the Wars of the Yugoslav Succession, 911, Gulf war II, the Russian seizure of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. Oh, and I should add another, the collapse of Lehman Brothers ten years ago today which helped trigger the twin banking and Eurozone crises, accelerated the relative decline of the West and tipped many states into political lunacy. These are all greater or lesser hinges upon which power turned and all of which have involved Americans, Europeans and Russians but few of which, in this ever less Eurocentric world involved Asian powers, beyond the ghastly tragedy of millions slain during the 1931-45 Asia-Pacific War. Today, we could be witnessing another hinge – Vostok 18 – in which the real battle lines of twenty-first century geopolitics are confirmed.

The geopolitical significance of Vostok 18

On the face of it Vostok 18 is just another of those ‘showy’, expensive, Russian-led military exercises that friends and allies in Central and Eastern Europe are only too aware of, even whilst much of Western Europe sleeps the sleep of the purposively self-deluded.  In fact, the military stats of an exercise that involves some 300,000 Russian troops, 1000 aircraft, 36000 military ‘assets’ are far less important than the political symbolism and strategic shift Vostok 18 is primarily designed to communicate.  The most important statistic is the 900 Chinese tanks believed to be taking part but above all the 1 parallel meeting between China’s President Xi and Russia’s President Putin.

The strategic messaging is clear.  The global strategic space is now to be contested by the two Great Illiberal Powers by all means possible – political, military and economic.  Vostik 18, the message goes on, is thus another hinge of history and with it the final, definitive end of an era of constructive coexistence between China and the West, precisely because it also marks the definitive end to decades of deep suspicion between China and Russia.  That the world is entering a new era of strategic competition is clear, but are the battle-lines being as neatly and as dangerously drawn as Vostok 18 clearly seeks to suggest?

At present, illiberal China is clearly on a collision course with the US and its allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region.  Fuelled by aggressive Han Chinese nationalism and a regime that believes that one great purpose of economic wealth is the projection of strategic influence based on the development of great military power, contemporary China is a very traditional Great Power that Bismarck would have recognised.  And yet, my sense is that unlike Russia which locked itself into strategic hooliganism Beijing is as yet not as implacably anti-Western as Moscow would like it to be. Yes, Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative and the Maritime Silk Road is clearly designed to expand China’s at the expense of the West.  Yes, China will use all means possible – foreign engagement, debt diplomacy and, I suspect, the implied threat of military coercion on occasions to ease the West out of places Westerners have long taken for granted, most notably Africa.

The Rebuilding of American Statecraft

How should the West respond? In fact, the real question is how should America respond because in reality Russia is to China pretty much what contemporary Britain is to America – the very junior partner?  History offers us insight. Back in 1971, Henry Kissinger visited Mao’s China in the wake of a series of border conflicts between the then Soviet Union and Communist Peking, as it then was. Ever the political opportunist Kissinger’s boss, President ‘tricky Dicky’ Richard M. Nixon, had seen a chance to divert attention away from the failing Vietnam War and reinforce the Containment of Moscow as the Détente of the late 1960s began to fade.  This strategic gambit of gambits worked.  At the same time, Nixon and Kissinger also unintentionally set China on a path to a new relationship between the state and capital that laid the foundations for the superpower China that is emerging today.

The problem is that without a consistent US world-view and the organising principles to realise it American power and influence are evaporating. Take China. What Beijing wants from Washington is some sense that the Americans see China as an equal rather than another regional potentate screwing American workers by unfair trade practices, all of which is true by the way. The problem is that Trump’s China Policy, with its emphasis on sanctions, tariffs and short-term trade-offs almost plays into the hands of Xi and his need for an enemy and reinforces Putin and his penchant for bullying. Worse, the transactional low ground approach to foreign and security policy championed by President Trump is destroying US statecraft, the art of conducting state affairs through the application of considered ways via a range of means in pursuit of ambitious and legitimate ends.

Therefore, if President Trump really wants to make America great again at this hinge of history he must reinvest in a national strategy worthy of the name and further reinvest in all the tools of American power and influence across the spectrum from soft to hard power. The Trump administration must also craft those means of power – be it NSC, Defense, State, CIA et al – into a coherent policy which means lifting them above the intense ‘divide et impera’ turf battles of an Administration seemingly more concerned with perceived enemies within than the potentially very real enemies the US faces without.  .

What really made America great

Leadership is not a burden that Americans must bear but a great prize that Americans should hold aloft. What made America great before to this friendly foreigner was how America rose to lead the free world in less than a decade under President Theodore Roosevelt and then maintained that leadership, albeit with bumps along the way, under Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan etc., etc. Yes, America had to pay a price for its leadership but it also accrued great benefits as visionaries like George Kennan and George C Marshall knew only too well it would.

If America continues to be so defensive and short-term it will destroy any claim to leadership Washington has and destroy ‘West’ the leadership of which it desperately needs to realise its national security objectives.  There is no-one else in the free world who can lead. Forget all the talk in Europe about ‘Europe’ stepping up to replace America.  Yesterday morning European Commission President Juncker in his last State of the Union address issued again that now empty refrain that the EU is preparing to ‘lead’. No chance. If there is a leader in Europe it is not the EU but rather Germany, which in the past year or has finally begun to craft a foreign policy no longer defined by either America or World War Two. Unfortunately, Germany might be America’s essential strategic partner in Europe but it is still very much a strategic adolescent that does not want to get its hands too dirty with power and which deep down still thinks it can rush ‘home’ to America if someone is too nasty to it. Little Britain, together with its Lilliputian leaders, has abandoned all and any pretence of strategic ambition.  President Macron talks a lot and often makes strategic sense, but his ideas are far grander than his country. The EU? The great tragedy of the Grand European Project is that with each passing European treaty the European state has become more emaciated but ‘Europe’ has become no stronger.

Making America really great again

The greatest mistake President Trump is making is to risk the destruction of inspirational America that millions around the world look up to with its unique fusion of values, interests and power that made America unique.  It is not entirely his fault. For some time the US has been descending from its shining city on a hill to become an ever more ‘European’ power.  It is not too late. American the Idea still has it within itself to be THE inspirational power, but only if it can again inspire itself, which at present it does not. 

If America can indeed again inspire itself and by extension, the rest of us the prize for Americans would be great – the forging of a new global West – idea rather than place - built on an American idea with the US the hub for a worldwide network of democracies. Do that and the apparent ‘power’ of this proto-Russo-China Axis will be revealed for what it is – a charade, an artifice of power between two states that actually still continue to harbour deep suspicions about each other and contempt for each other and their respective intentions.

There is perhaps a tragic symmetry in the passing of Senator John S. McCain – a great American. He was born to a generation and a patrician American class that saw a very big picture and laid the foundations for American internationalism. My hope is that his passing does not mark the passing of American internationalism for if it does Vostok 18 is just the beginning of an age of strategic bullying and coercion that could end God knows where.

Give history a push, America

Henry Kissinger, in his book On China, wrote, “Chess teaches the Clausewitzian concepts of “centre of gravity” and the “decisive point”—the game usually begins as a struggle for the centre of the board. Wei qi teaches the art of strategic encirclement.”  Both chess and Wei qi (the game ‘Go’ to the rest of us) are games about power that adopt very different approaches to arriving ultimately at the same place – dominance. There is no question that if left unchallenged the very nature of the nationalism that underpins the ambitious pragmatism of the Xi regime will ruthlessly seek to exploit all and every Western weakness.  China is clearly not a friend of the West, and is quite possibly an adversary, but is it as yet an enemy?  My sense is the patient application of American power and statecraft could do much to blunt Putin’s ambitions for a blatantly aggressive anti-Western alliance. For all that Vostok 18 must be seen as part of a grand strategic ‘game’, a Great Game if you will, and because of that both Americans and Europeans have no other choice other than to engage and to engage seriously and fast.

Over the past century, power has accelerated and the world has turned on many hinges, moments when the direction of power changed significantly or even decisively. Power is still accelerating, or rather the change it engenders is accelerating. America thus finds itself at another hinge of history and with it the wider West which can only exist if America leads it.  Therefore, if America really wants to be great again just go back to being American.  Stop blundering through power and release the power talent in Washington to do what it does best – apply immense power through strategy over time and distance in pursuit of the American interest, but above all the values that underpin it.  

You see for all President Putin’s penchant for the ‘cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war’ stuff America’s hand still rests on history's door and it is only America that can still push it in the right direction if it so chooses with, of course, some help from its friends.

So Yanks, stop messing around. We need you.

Julian Lindley-French