America Is Stronger Than It Looks

The world's attention may be fixed on Russia's challenge to Ukraine, but the Biden administration faces something much larger: an intensifying challenge by China, Russia and opportunists such as Iran and North Korea to the global order that the U.S. inherited from a faltering British Empire in the 1940s.  

While Vladimir Putin tightened his grip on Belarus and stepped up his war of nerves against Ukraine, China signaled its support for Russia's Ukraine policy, sent record numbers of fighter jets through Taiwan's defense zone, conducted joint naval drills with Russia near Japan, and beefed up its naval presence between Japan and Taiwan. While China's ambassador to the U.S. warned of a growing danger of war over the island, Jin Canrong, a leading Chinese academic with extensive contacts in the Chinese Communist Party, predicted that China would carry out an "armed unification" with Taiwan by 2027.

For some, this crescendo of global crises illustrated the overextension of American power. Why, they ask, does every problem in the world end up in America's inbox? Why not give the world a rest and turn our attention to urgent problems at home?

It is an appealing idea, but the last time we tried it things didn't end well. In the 1920s Americans hoped that standing for democratic principles, international law and economic cooperation with other countries could prevent another world war. It didn't, and after the shock of World War II and Stalin's postwar hostility, American policy makers decided that constructing an Americanized version of the old British world system, a global economic order backed by U.S. military might, was the safest and cheapest way to defend core American interests.

That post-1945 system proved resilient and effective, brushing back the Soviet challenge, providing for the integration of postcolonial countries into an expanding world economy, and bringing both Germany and Japan into the system as "responsible stakeholders" in a world order they had once tried to destroy. After the fall of the Soviet Union, American policy makers hoped to extend that system further, with Russia and China joining Germany and Japan among the principal pillars of an American-led but internationally responsive world order. At the same time, Americans sought to purify and elevate a world order that no longer faced hostile communist rivals, with a greater emphasis on human rights, women's equality, democracy promotion and such transnational issues as climate change and migration.

That post-1990 version of the 1945 project has hit a wall, with Russia and China categorically refusing to accept the American vision of a post-Cold War world. With American opinion increasingly divided over basic elements of our world-order-building strategy ranging from free trade to global security guarantees and the place of such issues as climate change and LGBTQ rights in American foreign policy, it is growing harder for presidents to summon the domestic support for energetic foreign policy even as the global situation turns grim.

But the pessimism is easily overdone. History did not start in 1945, and there are important structural reasons why both Britain and the U.S. were able to construct and defend a liberal capitalist world system that in some respects dates back to the 17th-century wars between Britain and France. The British model of a liberal and pro-business society at home focused on global trade and sea power proved robust and durable. Louis XIV, Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Adolf Hitler, Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union all tried to break the evolving Anglo-American world system. They all made history, and they all shook the order to its foundations. But they still all fell short.

The factors making for the long-term success of Anglo-American order building are still present today. An open society and competitive business climate promote the technological progress and economic growth that underwrite our foreign policy. 

As a global sea power interested in preventing large land powers from dominating either Europe or Asia, Americans are the natural allies of smaller states seeking to protect themselves against the ambitions of aspiring hegemons like China and Russia. 

Overbearing Chinese policies in the Indo-Pacific have strengthened U.S. alliances there, and Russia's threats to Ukraine are reinvigorating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and reminding Europeans why Washington, warts and all, is a good ally.

Winston Churchill prepared himself for the struggle against Hitler by studying his ancestor John Churchill's military and diplomatic path to victory over Louis XIV. Theodore Roosevelt was a serious student of both British and American history, as was his cousin Franklin. 

Unfortunately, the American educational system in recent decades has treated the study of the foundations of American success with suspicion and disdain. Americans seeking to prepare themselves for the struggles of our era would do well to renew their acquaintance with the history of the world system we are called again to defend." [1]

1. America Is Stronger Than It Looks
Walter Russell Mead. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 01 Feb 2022: A.13.