The Relevance of American Power

THE RELEVANCE OF AMERICAN POWER Robert E. Hunter he political debate about America's foreign and defense policy regularly returns to the theme of U.S. power: just how powerful is the United States? The question implies that there exists an absolute quantity of power to be measured. Yet the question has meaning only ifcompared with a standard of how much power we "need" or "want"—in simplest terms, the relevance of power to the uses to which it is put. For example, how does U.S. power relate to our security needs (broadly defined), to our commitments abroad, and to the evolving circumstances of the outside world? The following analysis examines several components of U.S. power and the ways in which it has been changing, thereby providing a backdrop to ongoing debate about other aspects of U.S. foreign policy. Since World War II most Americans have tended to think of power primarily in terms of military might and its application. This is so because of the searing effect of Pearl Harbor on the national consciousness, the demands and disappointments of postwar relations with the Soviet Union, and the particular challenges to U.S. interests as a result of a new sense of American responsibilities. The United States has, for the first time in its history, maintained large standing peacetime military forces that continue to make it at least second to none, if not number one. However, in considering military power, a critical distinction must be made between its potential for direct use and its psychological attributes: Robert E. Hunter is director of European studies at the Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). 11 12 SAIS REVIEW its underpinning of nonmilitary aspects of U.S. foreign policy, its contribution to the elusive concept of "influence" with other countries, and its impact on the feelings of individual Americans about their country and America's place in the world. The potential for using military power to promote U.S. objectives has also been subject to another critical distinction: the difference between nuclear and conventional weaponry. Because of the direct evidence at Hiroshima and Nagasaki of the destructive potential of nuclear weapons, as well as the Soviets' acquisition of these same weapons, we have long and successfully adapted to the notion that this important element of the U.S. force structure must not be used except in the direst of circumstances. Given the potential consequences of an all-out nuclear war, this has certainly been a wise reaction. At the same time, the depth of revulsion against the possible use of nuclear weapons —even where their use would be unlikely to lead to Armageddon— has led us and others to oppose any use, anywhere, of nuclear weapons and their further spread to nations not now possessing them. This is a remarkable and salutary phenomenon in human history. There is even popular resistance to "thinking about the unthinkable ." This has been reflected in reactions to revelations that the United States contemplated using nuclear weapons in the Korean War, and to periodic statements by government officials on limited nuclear war, and to other concepts in the theory of deterrence. There is a dilemma, however: A natural and warranted reaction to the prospect of using nuclear weapons is in conflict with both the need to think about ways to stop a nuclear war should one ever begin and the role that nuclear weapons play in the strategy of the nato alliance. The latter aspect of the dilemma is particularly difficult to deal with; indeed, it has been present in the nato alliance in similar guise for three decades. Attempts to resolve it—for instance, through the advocacy of no-first-use of nuclear weapons in Europe—do not go to the heart of the problem. That problem is how to assure our European allies of stalwart U.S. commitment to their defense without either imposing the financial burdens of a purely conventional defense or (perhaps simultaneously) raising the specter of "decoupling" from the fate of Western Europe. Even in this case, however, the debate does not center on the usability of nuclear weapons, but on how to prevent their use and...