From Superpower to Besieged Global Power: Restoring World Order after the Failure of the Bush Doctrine

2: American Military Power and Challenges to International Security

31 chapter two American Military Power and Challenges to International Security Patrick M. Morgan This chapter outlines the perspectives and policies the armed forces developed to meet the responsibilities and challenges associated with protecting national security, as well as those associated with the American management of global order and security.1 It also considers how both the armed forces and their political superiors have contributed to recent American military failures. The International Strategic Situation The armed forces operate now in a distinctive security environment, amid considerable debate about how long the features that make it distinctive will endure. Most important is the absence of the intense great-power political competition that generates military rivalries and insecurities. Significant preparations for a possible war figure into only one great-power relationship currently—that of China and the United States over Taiwan—but thus far the threat of military confrontation is due less to the two nations’ overall relationship than to a particularly thorny localized dispute. Missing is the security/insecurity mechanism that had been foremost in past international politics—intense, dangerous great-power conflicts and wars (see Jervis 2005, 11–15; Freedman 2006, 9–10). There has been no war among great powers since 1953; chances of one have been declining since 1962 and especially since 1990. (In fact, wars among all governments have become rare and internal wars have declined.) The great powers’ threat perception is so subdued that they do little planning for wars with each other. Another central feature of the current security environment is globalization (Tangredi 2000b). An enormous and controversial phenomenon, it is usually 32 American Military Strategy deemed strategically significant for a couple of reasons. First, rising economic interdependence is associated by analysts both with heightened conflict and reduced chances of interstate warfare. Second, and countering the capacity of economic interdependence to limit interstate warfare, globalization is stimulating development and thus putting greater strains on world resources, particularly energy, which, in the past, has provoked interstate warfare. Rising economic interaction also creates a greater need for security and stability, which the United States, more than any other actor, has been providing. Increased interdependence is also, in part, why disturbing international ripples are generated by domestic internal decay and unrest, failed states and “rogue states,” regional conflicts, and any domestic conditions that breed a flow of refugees . The range of system-threatening disturbances now extends beyond states’ international behavior to encompass their political nature and their societies’ limitations. In addition, nonstate actors have increasingly acquired the power to mount threats; under some circumstances they could be as dangerous as states. Another feature of today’s system is the increasing pressure on countries to acquire or develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The international community regards proliferation as threatening in and of itself and also because of parallel proliferation of modern delivery vehicles. Enlarging the concern is possible WMD transfers to terrorists. Security management in this system is hegemonic in character. In international relations theory hegemony is a structural characteristic, a particular distribution of military strength for wars among states. It is not any specific pattern of security management (though the hegemon’s dominant role in that management is assumed) nor does the success or failure of any pattern necessarily affect a given hegemonic structure. In military capabilities, the United States is clearly the hegemon . Somewhat surprising is the disinterest others show in competing for that position; none display the necessary “lean and hungry look.” Only the United States maintains a consistently global involvement, perspective, and capability for military action. This hegemony is not new. As of the early 1990s the United States had accumulated enough relative military power, and relevant other forms of power, that it duplicated its situation back in 1945. It held a hegemonic position then. During the cold war observers and analysts were hypnotized by the concept of bipolarity; in fact, however, the United States maintained its position as dominant state, the one with truly global military reach, throughout the cold war, even though it faced a stiff challenge from a serious, formidable opponent. Currently, it is without such an opponent. Still, as after 1945, such extreme military dominance will be fleeting —various constraints on American military power and limitations on its political influence have already emerged, as this volume makes abundantly clear. Military Power and Security 33 Thus the United States is hardly a...