Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony

Since the end of the Cold War, scholars, commentators, and practitioners of foreign policy have debated what structure of world power would follow the bipolar U.S.-Soviet competition, and what U.S. foreign policy would replace containment. Those who hypothesized a long "unipolar moment" of extraordinary U.S. relative power have proven more prescient than those who expected the relatively quick emergence of a multipolar world. ¹ Those who recommended a policy of "primacy"—essentially hegemony—to consolidate, exploit, and expand the U.S. relative advantage have carried the day against those who argued for a more restrained U.S. foreign policy. ² One can argue that the jury is still out, the "moment" will soon pass, and the policy of hegemony enabled by great power will be fleeting. But the evidence does not support such predictions. Unipolarity and U.S. hegemony will likely be around for some time, though observers do suggest that the United States could hasten its own slide from the pinnacle through indiscipline or hyperactivity. ³

The new debate on U.S. grand strategy is essentially about which variant of a hegemonic strategy the United States should pursue. The strategy proposed by President George W. Bush is, in caricature, unilateral, nationalistic, and oriented largely around the U.S. advantage in physical power, especially military power. ⁴ This is "primacy" as it was originally conceived. The last years of Bill Clinton's administration saw the emergence of a strategy that also depended heavily on military power, but which was more multilateral and liberal, and more concerned with international legitimacy. It aimed to preserve the dominant U.S. global position, including its military position, which was understood to be an essential underpinning of global activism. ⁵ That strategy has recently been elaborated, formalized, and defended under the rubric of "selective engagement" by Robert Art. ⁶ Though this is too big an argument to settle on the sole basis of a military analysis, the understanding of U.S. military power developed below suggests that selective engagement is likely to prove more sustainable than primacy.

One pillar of U.S. hegemony is the vast military power of the United States. A staple of the U.S. debate about the size of the post-Cold War defense budget is the observation that the United States spends more than virtually all of the world's other major military powers combined, most of which are U.S. allies. ⁷ Observers of the actual capabilities that this effort produces can focus on a favorite aspect of U.S. superiority to make the point that the United States sits comfortably atop the military food chain, and is likely to remain there. This article takes a slightly different approach. Below I argue that the United States enjoys command of the commons—command of the sea, space, and air. I discuss how command of the commons supports a hegemonic grand strategy. I explain why it seems implausible that a challenge to this command could arise in the near to medium term. Then I review the arenas of military action where adversaries continue to be able to fight U.S. forces with some hope of success—the "contested zones." I argue that in the near to medium term the United States will not be able to establish command in these arenas. The interrelationship between U.S. command of the commons and the persistence of the contested zones suggests that the United States can probably pursue a policy of selective engagement but not one of primacy.

I purposefully eschew discussing U.S. military power in light of the metrics of the current and previous administrations. The Clinton administration planned to be able to fight two nearly simultaneous major theater wars; theBush administration's emerging, and even more demanding, metric is the "4-2-1" principle—that is, deter in four places, counterattack in two, and if necessary, go to the...