Hegemony Core
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☰☆☰Hegemony Core☰☆☰ BEFJR-Defend the Walls Adam Aurioles Mitchel Pickard
Uniqueness AT: Dollar Decline No Yuan Hegemony Now Global Times 3-26 (Global Times (China), Chinese Daily Newspaper on International Issues, 3-26-15, “China has no aim to recreate Bretton Woods”, Lexis Nexis, Accessed 7-5-15, AA) The bank is not yet in operation, and it will take time for people to come to grips with its purpose. However, overblown hype from foreign media claiming that China is seeking financial hegemony could create preconceived notions for people who are not familiar with it. The Bretton Woods system refers to the international financial order that prevailed in the post-WWII era. It is also perceived as a triumph of dollar hegemony and gave birth to the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as its two representative global organizations. The system held until 1971, when the US ended the convertibility of the dollar to gold. But the dollar had already become the bedrock of the international monetary system, and it remains so today. Some foreign observers claim that the AIIB is the beginning of the Chinese yuan's hegemony. What they are actually trying to imply is that "China is another US.” This kind of statement is nonsensical, which uses historical experience to fool readers. It is divorced from the truth and shows no common sense and doesn't stand up to any scrutiny. Through the Bretton Woods system, the US was able to wield supreme influence over its allies which had been severely battered during the war. China today is in a totally different position. Founding the AIIB is only a China-led initiative. Over 30 countries from Europe and Asia have so far applied to join, some of which even have territorial disputes or political divergences with China. They are not courting Beijing, or pushing yuan hegemony. What they are pursuing is the win-win principle of cooperation. The AIIB will not confront the WB or IMF, nor will it turn the current international monetary order upside down. The spirit of the AIIB is diversity and justice. International relationships are entering an era of democracy that means pursuing hegemony is a wrong path whether one is an existing power or a rising power. China always maintains a low profile when it comes to showing the strength of our nation. Moreover, the Chinese media resists the hype over describing China as "number one" or a "superpower." Chinese people would like to see that most of our economic and political resources can be used for the country's domestic construction. We support our government to pursue equal rights for development in the international arena, but we don't support pursuit of hegemony. The Bretton Woods system is a product of the old days. The new global trends created the AIIB and there is no room to look back to the old days of one currency's hegemony.
New Chinese IB does not threaten Western Dollar Hegemony NYT 5-16 (New York Times Editorial Board 5-16-15, “Past Time to Reform Bretton Woods”, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/opinion/sunday/past-time-to-reform-bretton-woods.html?_r=0, Accessed 7-5-15, AA) The reluctance of American and European officials to give developing nations a greater role in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank risks making those institutions less relevant and effective than they could be. The two trace their founding to 1944, when officials from the United States, Britain and other countries met in Bretton Woods, N.H., to restructure the global economic system. At the time, America held most of the economic cards. World War II was devastating Europe and Japan, a brutal civil war in China would soon resume, and India was still a British colony. The global economy has changed greatly since then, but who calls the shots at the two institutions has not. Both are based in Washington. The United States and European countries collectively are the largest shareholders, and they appoint the top executives. Despite their rapid growth, China, India and other developing countries have much smaller votes than their relative size in the global economy. For many years, officials in developing countries quietly grumbled about Western control of these two organizations, and for good reason. The I.M.F. lends to financially troubled nations, and the World Bank finances development projects in poor countries. Why shouldn’t developing countries have a bigger say? Nevertheless, they did not dare to openly challenge the status quo. That may be changing. China has decided that it will wait no longer for a bigger role on the global economic stage. Recently, it said it would create the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, a rival to the World Bank that has already attracted many European and Asian countries as members. And last year, it enlisted Brazil, India, Russia and South Africa to create the New Development Bank. Together, the two China-led banks will have about $150 billion in capital, an amount that is roughly 70 percent of the World Bank’s $223 billion. China has also lent tens of billions of dollars to countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia through bilateral loans. Some Western leaders, including many Europeans and the president of the World Bank, have said the West should welcome these new Chinese banks and invest alongside them. One reason is to make sure they operate at the same high standards as the I.M.F. and the World Bank, though Western leaders should have no illusions about their influence, since China intends to dominate both organizations. The new banks pose a challenge to the West to modernize the old institutions. Even though the I.M.F. has too often pushed countries to adopt destructive austerity policies, and the World Bank has been slow to adapt to the needs of fast-growing developing countries, they remain the best tools the world has to address economic crises and finance development. No alternative to the dollar in the near future-past attempts failed Warner 14 (Jeremy Warner, 3-5-14, The Daily Telegraph, “Russia's threats to set up an alternative to the dollar will come to nothing”, Lexis Nexis, Accessed 7-5-15, AA) THANKS to the indiscretion of a UK official, who was snapped going into Downing Street with his briefing documents on display for all the world to see, we basically know that Britain at least, and by implication the European Union as a whole, is not prepared to go through with meaningful trade and financial sanctions against Russia. The price is thought too high, with everyone losing in equal measure from such actions - a still deeply depressed Europe would be pushed back into recession, and Russia into financial and fiscal meltdown. Yet this doesn't seem to have stopped the Russians threatening retaliatory action against the threat of non sanctions. One possibility, says the Kremlin economics aide Sergei Glazyev, is for Russia to abandon the US dollar as a reserve currency, or to figure out a way to use a new payments system that was not reliant on US dollars for international transactions. Good luck with that one. I've written before about the inevitability of decline for the dollar as the world's major reserve currency, but this process is on a very long fuse and basically depends on China eventually displacing the US as the world's largest economy. That's not going to happen in the foreseeable future. In the meantime, the dollar remains overwhelmingly the currency of choice for international transactions, More than 60pc of global foreign exchange reserves are held in US dollars, which also account for more than 80pc of global foreign exchange trading. So important is dollar liquidity in global trade that if, for instance, you wanted to sell Singapore dollars and buy South African rand, your forex dealer would first typically buy US dollars with your Singapore dollars and then use them to buy the South African rand.
The dollar is the middle currency in the vast bulk of international transactions. By the same token, US
Treasuries are the very backbone of the global financial system. They are the supposed "risk-free asset" against which everything else is benchmarked, and as such are the collateral of choice in a huge array of financial market transactions. The dollar is also the currency used to price most commodities, from oil to gold. Repeated attempts to set up alternative pricing arrangements have all come to nothing. The dollar's hegemony is all pervasive. This has given the greenback a degree of leverage unmatched by any other reserve currency in history. If China starts to sell dollar assets, it will only weaken the dollar, undermining Chinese exports and reducing the value of its remaining portfolio of dollar assets. For the time being the euro, the next biggest reserve currency, comes nowhere close. This is not about to www.change.No, there is absolutely no chance of Russia establishing a viable alternative to the dollar in international trade at any stage in the imaginable future. There is of course nothing to stop Russia and its satellites absenting themselves from the global economy, and returning to the closed economy of the Soviet era, but I don't imagine this is what Mr Glazyev had in mind. To do so would be to return the East to the economic penury of the Cold War years, when ordinary Russians could only look miserably on as American consumerism delivered a standard of living they could only dream of in their self-inflicted isolation. None of this is to deny the wider point that dollar hegemony is a most unsatisfactory way of organising the global monetary system. Virtually all emerging markets have to a greater or lesser extent been victims of it at some stage. It's not just the Kremlin. Rarely has international dissatisfaction with the dollar's role as reserve currency to the world been as great as it is now. The most visible anger comes from China, with more than $3 trillion of dollar foreign exchange reserves, $1.3 trillion of them held in US Treasuries. For ordinary Chinese, it came as a revelation to discover they owned so much American debt when recent political stalemate on Capitol Hill raised the very real prospect of default. Given the obvious disparity in incomes, there was understandable fury. The Chinese too talk about building a de-Americanised world. Federal Reserve "tapering", which has prompted capital flight from many emerging markets, has served further to highlight the unsatisfactory and destabilising nature of what Giscard d'Estaing called America's "exorbitant privilege". What's good for the US economy is very often not so good for everyone else. Yet establishment of a genuinely neutral, global reserve currency is not going to happen for an awfully long time, and it's certainly not something that can occur without a much higher degree of international co-operation and harmony than we see today. If this is one of Russia's ambitions, then it has just torpedoed it out of existence with its actions in Ukraine. General Heg Good Stuff Transition Wars Hegemonic decline leads to transition wars-empirics prove Kupchan 14< Security Studies Volume 23, Issue 2, 2014 The Normative Foundations of Hegemony and The Coming Challenge to Pax Americana Charles A. Kupchan Dr. Kupchan is Professor of International Affairs in the School of Foreign Service and Government Department at Georgetown University pages 219-257 Publishing models and article dates explained Published online: 16 May 2014> In order to advance understanding of the normative dimensions of hegemony, this article has thus far examined different orders in isolation rather than focusing on the interaction among them. However, extending the analysis to periods of systemic transition, when hegemons intensely interact with one another, only confirms this article's core claims. During hegemonic transitions, great powers compete not just over the international pecking order, but also over the norms and rules that each power seeks to enforce internationally. After the Roman Empire split into eastern and western halves in the fourth century, competition between Rome and Constantinople was about governance, culture, and religious doctrine as much as status or territory. The conflict that raged between the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Persia during much of the sixteenth century was rooted in competition between Sunni and Shiite traditions. World War I, World War II, and the Cold War were contests over ideology as well as hierarchy and territory, with liberal democracies generally lining up against monarchic, fascist, and communist alternatives. It can hardly be accidental that the only peaceful power transition in history occurred between Great Britain and the United States; the baton was passed “within the family,” from one Anglo-Saxon great power to another. It is of important geopolitical consequence that hegemony has normative dimensions and that power transitions entail clashes among competing norms. The world is entering a period of transformation as power shifts from the West to the rising rest. One school of thought—which dominates in Washington—holds that emerging powers are poised to embrace the existing international order; Western norms are universal norms, and the dictates of globalization are ensuring their worldwide spread. According to Ikenberry, “The United States’ global position may be weakening, but the international system the United States leads can remain the dominant order of the twenty-first century.” The West should “ sink the roots of this order as deeply as possible ” to ensure that the world continues to play by its rules even as its material preponderance wanes. “China and other emerging great powers,” he concludes, “do not want to contest the basic rules and principles of the liberal international order; they wish to gain more authority and leadership within it.”82 A loss of US Heg would lead to massive destabilization Ikenberry, International Affairs Professor at Princeton, Brooks, Associate Professor of Government at Brooks, Dartmouth government professor, et al., 13 [Brooks, Stephen G., Ikenberry, G. John, Wohlforth, William C., STEPHEN G. BROOKS is Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. G. JOHN IKENBERRY is Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and Global Eminence Scholar at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. WILLIAM C. WOHLFORTH is Daniel Webster Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, Foreign Affairs, “Lean Forward”, Jan/Feb2013, Vol. 92, Issue 1, Academic Search Complete, accessed 7-4-13, AA] Of course, even if it is true that the costs of deep engagement fall far below what advocates of retrenchment claim, they would not be worth bearing unless they yielded greater benefits. In fact, they do. The most obvious benefit of the current strategy is that it reduces the risk of a dangerous conflict. The United States' security commitments deter states with aspirations to regional hegemony from contemplating expansion and dissuade U.S. partners from trying to solve security problems on their own in ways that would end up threatening other states. Skeptics discount this benefit by arguing that U.S. security guarantees aren't necessary to prevent dangerous rivalries from erupting. They maintain that the high costs of territorial conquest and the many tools countries can use to signal their benign intentions are enough to prevent conflict. In other words, major powers could peacefully manage regional multipolarity without the American pacifier. But that outlook is too sanguine. If Washington got out of East Asia, Japan and South Korea would likely expand their military capabilities and go nuclear, which could provoke a destabilizing reaction from China. It's worth noting that during the Cold War, both South Korea and Taiwan tried to obtain nuclear weapons; the only thing that stopped them was the United States, which used its security commitments to restrain their nuclear temptations. Similarly, were the United States to leave the Middle East, the countries currently backed by Washington--notably, Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia--might act in ways that would intensify the region's security dilemmas. There would even be reason to worry about Europe. Although it's hard to imagine the return of great-power military competition in a post- American Europe, it's not difficult to foresee governments there refusing to pay the budgetary costs of higher military outlays and the political costs of increasing EU defense cooperation. The result might be a continent incapable of securing itself from threats on its periphery, unable to join foreign interventions on which U.S. leaders might want European help, and vulnerable to the influence of outside rising powers. Given how easily a U.S. withdrawal from key regions could lead to dangerous competition, advocates of retrenchment tend to put forth another argument: that such rivalries wouldn't actually hurt the United States. To be sure, few doubt that the United States could survive the return of conflict among powers in Asia or the Middle East--but at what cost? Were states in one or both of these regions to start competing against one another, they would likely boost their military budgets, arm client states, and perhaps even start regional proxy wars, all of which should concern the United States, in part because its lead in military capabilities would narrow. Greater regional insecurity could also produce cascades of nuclear proliferation as powers such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan built nuclear forces of their own. Those countries' regional competitors might then also seek nuclear arsenals. Although nuclear deterrence can promote stability between two states with the kinds of nuclear forces that the Soviet Union and the United States possessed, things get shakier when there are multiple nuclear rivals with less robust arsenals. As the number of nuclear powers increases, the probability of illicit transfers, irrational decisions, accidents, and unforeseen crises goes up. The case for abandoning the United States' global role misses the underlying security logic of the current approach. By reassuring allies and actively managing regional relations, Washington dampens competition in the world’s key areas, thereby preventing the emergence of a hothouse in which countries would grow new military capabilities. For proof that this strategy is working, one need look no further than the defense budgets of the current great powers: on average, since 1991 they have kept their military expenditures as A percentage of GDP to historic lows, and they have not attempted to match the United States' top-end military capabilities. Moreover, all of the world's most modern militaries are U.S. allies, and the United States' military lead over its potential rivals .is by many measures growing. On top of all this, the current grand strategy acts as a hedge against the emergence regional hegemons. Some supporters of retrenchment argue that the U.S. military should keep its forces over the horizon and pass the buck to local powers to do the dangerous work of counterbalancing rising regional powers. Washington, they contend, should deploy forces abroad only when a truly credible contender for regional hegemony arises, as in the cases of Germany and Japan during World War II and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Yet there is already a potential contender for regional hegemony--China--and to balance it, the United States will need to maintain its key alliances in Asia and the military capacity to intervene there. The implication is that the United States should get out of Afghanistan and Iraq, reduce its military presence in Europe, and pivot to Asia. Yet that is exactly what the Obama administration is doing. The only threat the world faces is a world absent US Heg Brooks, Dartmouth government professor, et al., 13 [Brooks, Stephen G., Ikenberry, G. John, Wohlforth, William C., STEPHEN G. BROOKS is Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. G. JOHN IKENBERRY is Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and Global Eminence Scholar at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. WILLIAM C. WOHLFORTH is Daniel Webster Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, Foreign Affairs, “Lean Forward”, Jan/Feb2013, Vol. 92, Issue 1, Academic Search Complete, accessed 7-4-13, AA] Should America come home? For many prominent scholars of international relations, the answer is yes--a view that seems even wiser in the wake of the disaster in Iraq and the Great Recession. Yet their arguments simply don't hold up. There is little evidence that the United States would save much money switching to a smaller global posture. Nor is the current strategy self-defeating: it has not provoked the formation of counterbalancing coalitions or caused the country to spend itself into economic decline. Nor will it condemn the United States to foolhardy wars in the future. What the strategy does do is help prevent the outbreak of conflict in the world's most important regions, keep the global economy humming, and make international cooperation easier. Charting a different course would threaten all these benefits. This is not to say that the United States' current foreign policy can't be adapted to new circumstances and challenges. Washington does not need to retain every commitment at all costs, and there is nothing wrong with rejiggering its strategy in response to new opportunities or setbacks. That is what the Nixon administration did by winding down the Vietnam War and increasing the United States' reliance on regional partners to contain Soviet power, and it is what the Obama administration has been doing after the Iraq war by pivoting to Asia. These episodes of rebalancing belie the argument that a powerful and internationally engaged America cannot tailor its policies to a changing world. A grand strategy of actively managing global security and promoting the liberal economic order has served the United States exceptionally well for the past six decades, and there is no reason to give it up now. The country's globe-spanning posture is the devil we know , and a world with a disengaged America is the devil we don't know. Were American leaders to choose retrenchment, they would in essence be running a massive experiment to test how the world would work without an engaged and liberal leading power. The results could well be disastrous. Deterrence Theory Hegemony is the Key Internal Link to stopping war Kim 14
There is only a choice between action and surrender-appeasement fails Reagan 64 (Ronald, 40th President of the United States, 10-27-64, speech, “A TIME FOR CHOOSING”, http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/reference/timechoosing.html, Accessed 7-7-15, AA) We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skins, we're willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Now let's set the record straight. There's no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there's only one guaranteed way you can have peace—and you can have it in the next second— surrender. Admittedly, there's a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face—that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand—the ultimatum. And what then—when Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we're retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the final ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary, because by that time we will have been weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he's heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he'd rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us. You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin—just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well it's a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." "There is a point beyond which they must not advance." And this—this is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said, "The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we're spirits—not animals." And he said, "There's something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty." You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness. Their scholarship is flawed-calling ours alarmist is ignorant of history Sowell 2-18 (Thomas, 2-18-15, Ph.D Econ U Chicago Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, “Don't ignore lessons of appeasement”, http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell021815.php3, Accessed 7-7-15, AA) When Alfred E. Neuman said "What me worry?" on the cover of Mad magazine, it was funny. But this message was not nearly as funny coming from President Barack Obama and his National Security Advisor, Susan Rice. In a musical comedy, it would be hilarious to have the president send out his "happy talk" message by someone whose credibility was already thoroughly discredited by her serial lies on television about the Benghazi terrorist attack in 2012. Unfortunately — indeed, tragically — the world today is about as far from a musical comedy as you can get, with terrorists rampaging across the Middle East, leaving a trail of unspeakable atrocities in their wake, and with Iran moving closer to producing a nuclear bomb, with an intercontinental missile on the horizon. We will be lucky to get through the remainder of President Obama's term in office without a major catastrophe, from which we may or may not recover. Iran has announced repeatedly that it plans to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. But you don't need an intercontinental missile to reach Israel from Iran. Teheran is less than a thousand miles from Jerusalem. As was said long ago, "Send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee." It was painfully ironic to hear Ms. Rice tell us that the danger we face today is not as serious as the dangers we faced in World War II. Anyone who has actually studied the period that led up to World War II knows that the Western democracies followed feckless policies remarkably similar to those that we are following today. And anyone who studies that war itself knows that the West came dangerously close to losing it before finally getting their act together and turning things around. In a nuclear age, we may not have time to let reality finally sink in on our leaders and wake up the public to the dangers. There was lots of "happy talk" in the West while Hitler was building up his Nazi war machine during the 1930s, as the Western intelligentsia were urging the democracies to disarm. The dangers of Hitler's sudden rise to power in Germany during the early 1930s were played down, and even ridiculed, by politicians, journalists and the intelligentsia in both Britain and France. A temporary political setback for the Nazis in 1933 was hailed by a French newspaper as "the piteous end of Hitlerism" and a British newspaper said even earlier that Hitler was "done for." Prominent British intellectual Harold Laski opined that Hitler was "a cheap conspirator rather than an inspired revolutionary, the creature of circumstances rather than the maker of destiny." In other words, Hitler and the Nazis were the "junior varsity" of their day, in the eyes of the know-it-alls. Even after Hitler consolidated his political power in Germany, imposed a dictatorship and began building up a massive war machine, the Western democracies continued to believe that they could reach a peaceful understanding with him. There was euphoria in the West when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned from a conference in Munich, waving an agreement signed by Hitler, and declaring that it meant "peace for our time." Our time turned out to be less than one year before the biggest and most ghastly war in history broke out in 1939. Today, when people can graduate from even our most prestigious colleges and universities utterly ignorant of history, many people — even in high places — have no idea how close the Western democracies came to losing World War II. For the first three years of that war, the West lost battle after battle in both Europe and Asia. France collapsed and surrendered after just six weeks of fighting, and few expected the British to survive the blitzkrieg Hitler unleashed on them from the air. Americans were defeated by the Japanese in the Philippines and, as prisoners of war, faced the horrors of the infamous Bataan death march. When the British finally won the battle of El Alamein in North Africa in November 1942, this was their first victory, more than three years after Britain entered the war. A nuclear war is not likely to last three years, so there is unlikely to be time enough to recover from years of glib, foolish words and catastrophic decisions. AT: Heg=Imperialism American Primacy creates a world unconducive to imperialism-decline turns this Gartzke and Rohner 11 (ERIK GARTZKE [UCSD Political Science Prof.] AND DOMINIC ROHNER [University of Zurich Economics Professor], 2011, “The Political Economy of Imperialism, Decolonization and Development”, http://pages.ucsd.edu/~egartzke/publications/gartzke_rohner_BJPS_2011.pdf, Accessed 7-6-15, AA) The lust for territory subsided among powerful nations as it became cheaper to make than to take, and as the global mercantilist system gave way to freer trade. Empire is unappealing when appropriative technology is low, domestic labour is scarce or when global markets are obstructed. In contrast, the desire to control land, rooted labour and minerals remains strong in the developing world. Poor countries still covet territory, though they often lack the capacity to project power beyond their borders. In places where labour is cheap and abundant and capital is expensive, conquest and other activities designed to allow the state to acquire a larger pool of rents will remain appealing. A final factor is American enforcement of a norm of territorial integrity, though this could decay if the United States weakens or developing states become more capable of conquest.118 Paradoxically, successful development could increase the number of ‘middle tier’ economies, which could then overwhelm internal or external inhibitions against territorial aggression. Rapid development could see nations cross the military effectiveness threshold (r^) faster than the rise in the cost of labour. At the same time, technological innovation might again increase the ability of the most advanced nations to take rather than make. Automation and smart weaponry could dramatically lower the cost of empire. Alternatively, political instability or dramatic price increases in critical resources could spark efforts to control mineral-rich regions. Global political competition could also ignite efforts to capture and control scarce minerals. We must hope that rising powers see themselves as beneficiaries of the global economy and endorse open markets in due course. Finally, what should be made of the revived empire debate? At least some of the controversy follows from different conceptions of what empire entails. Proponents of American Exceptionalism seem in fact to be advocating American leadership. To the degree that our results suggest an important role for the hegemon in promoting open markets, we can support this limited form of leadership. However, much of the advocacy is overblown and confused, precisely because sponsorship of global markets limits the incentives for powerful states to pursue other aspects of empire. Critics, too, seem to exaggerate the continuity between recent American policies and earlier incarnations of territorial empire. There is something different about how the current hegemon treats territory, but in contrast to George W. Bush, we see this change as applicable to every nation, not just the United States. Multi/Uni Debate Unipolarity Good Unilateral Decision Making Calculus is Inevitable and avoids the delay and failure of multilateralism Podliska 10 (Bradley F, 2010, DoD Analyst, MA in security Studies from Georgetown Ph.D in Political Science from Texas A&M, Acting alone: a scientific study of American hegemony and unilateral use-of-force decision making, page #42-43, AA) In this section, I detail the benefits of unilateralism and make the following arguments: (1) the unilateral decision bears lower costs; (2) the president receives little domestic pressure to act multilaterally, as the public is ambivalent about how force should be used; and (3) presidents are more likely to rely solely on the U.S. military, as the severity of the crisis increases. Benefits of Unilateralism Based on the work of Corbetta and Dixon, Stewart Patrick, and Luck, a list of international- based reasons a president may act unilaterally can be deduced.203 These reasons are summarized in table 2.5. First, the U.S. and a potential, less powerful ally may simply have conflicting interests. Second, the U.S. may fear erosion of its power and status, if it agrees to join a coalition. Third, less powerful allies may not share the burden. They may offer insignificant political or military support and may even be a hindrance to U.S. military commanders. Fourth, multilateralism suffers from free riders and inaction. The U.S. has the military capability to act quickly and win conflict; so, garnering political and military support may cause unnecessary, even costly, delays.
Hegemony is economically sustainable, counterbalancing won’t happen and Multipolarity is not on the rise Podliska 10 (Bradley F, 2010, DoD Analyst, MA in security Studies from Georgetown Ph.D in Political Science from Texas A&M, Acting alone: a scientific study of American hegemony and unilateral use-of-force decision making, page #43-44, AA) Unilateralism: The Lower Cost Option Examining the international-level costs assumed to be associated with unilateralism, Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth conclude that unilateralism does not necessarily have high costs. 204 Rather, it makes sense for a president to act multilaterally based on the substance of a given issue/crisis, rather than blindly as part of a process. 205 They examine the key cost arguments of unilateralism: (1) U.S. power will be checked by the formation of a counterbalancing coalition (balance-of-power theory); (2) reduced efficiency and lost opportunities realized through institutional cooperation (institutionalism) and (3) the legitimacy of the U.S.-led international order will be undermined (constructivism). 206 For the first argument against unilateralism—U.S military power, Brooks and Wohlforth identify three causal factors that make counterbalancing against the U.S. “improbable.” 207 The first is geography. The U.S. is isolated from Eurasia, and historically, counterbalancing coalitions have occurred against centrally located land powers. The second is material capabilities. The gap between the U.S. and all other states is larger than any other gap in the history of the modern system. The U.S. is dominant militarily and economically, other leading states have been dominant militarily or economically but not both simultaneously. Moreover, the U.S. maintains its military dominance with devoting only a small proportion of its economy to national defense (about 4 percent of GDP in 2008), and the U.S. leads the way in terms of technology and shifting to new military revolution paradigms. The third factor is American primacy. Historically, counterbalancing coalitions were established to check a rising power from reaching hegemony, but the U.S. is clearly the hegemonic power. Also, potential counterbalancers seem unwilling to pay the costs to overthrow American hegemony, given the problems of coalitional collective action and free rider problems. 208 For the second argument against unilateralism—reduced efficiency gains from institutionalized cooperation, Brooks and Wohlforth believe that the costs of unilateralism may apply to economic matters but not to military matters.209 The U.S. has asymmetric bargaining power and absorbs little cost if it fails to establish multilateral cooperation. 210 Institutionalists claim a loss of reputation if the U.S. squanders its multilateral reputation, but Brooks and Wohlforth specify George Downs and Michael Jones’s 2002 rational choice model, in which states have multiple reputations with each reputation specific to an agreement or issue area. 211 So, the U.S. failure to act multilaterally in terms of the military will probably not impact its efforts to gain cooperation on an economic issue. 212 For the third argument against unilateralism—undermining legitimacy of the American-led international order, Brooks and Wohlforth argue that the fear of American policy makers creating a cognitive and social mind-set in other actors that American hegemony offers unilateral military action without legitimate authority is underspecified. 213 They argue that some unilateral actions threaten legitimacy more than others, compensating strategies may mitigate the costs of unilateralism, and unilateralism can produce legitimacy benefits. For this latter point, they cite the U.S. response to the 9/11 attacks and the U.S. pushing through new rules based on an expanded definition of self-defense as potentially leading other states to see the American action as the new standard of legitimacy. 214 Multilat Multilateralism fails- it breeds free-riding Podliska 10 (Bradley F, 2010, DoD Analyst, MA in security Studies from Georgetown Ph.D in Political Science from Texas A&M, Acting alone: a scientific study of American hegemony and unilateral use-of-force decision making, page #34-35, AA) A Problem of Burden-sharing Multilateralism makes burden-sharing difficult. It minimizes U.S. coercive power and makes it difficult to extract payment from free riders. From a choice-theoretic perspective, multilateralism does not seem a "convincing bargain."1-6 Multilateral arrangements include transaction costs, which is defined as all exchange costs, including "the costs of acquiring information, bargaining, and enforcement, as well as the opportunity cost of the time allocated to these activities."1-7 Transaction costs "almost certainly" increase as the number of actors involved increases.128 These institutionalized inefficiencies are why neoliberals argue that multilateralism will fail, especially as obstacles are raised with increasing member- ship.129 Mancur Olson specifies three reasons to explain an inverse relationship between increasing group size and likelihood of providing a collective good: (1) the group benefit fraction received by an individual declines as group size increases; (2) larger groups are less likely to engage in small-group strategic interaction; and (3) organization costs increase with a group size increase.'30 Rather, bilateral arrangements, such as the ones the U.S. negotiated in East Asia, represent a better deal to minimize opportunistic behavior and free riding.1*1 While South Korea and Japan receive a U.S. military presence for "cheap," the U.S. wins as well. South Korea, Japan, and its other Asian allies provide the U.S. with forward-basing options, intelligence on adversaries, and military support.132 As a result, the U.S. is better positioned to counter China (and North Korea), which follows the Pentagon's strategy countering emerging capabilities rather than intentions. Realists argue that multilateralism fails because hegemonic powers, such as the U.S., can exploit their power advantage in a bilateral bargain without the scrutiny of other nations.1*4 In a bilateral arrangement, both sides agree to fund defense, and the U.S. does so without forgoing autonomy.1*5 Establishing nuclear deterrence bilateral deals is the cheapest form of extending security, as the U.S. can extend the nuclear umbrella with little or no cost and without detracting from the security of others.'*6 Steve Weber argues that one of the major goals with regard to NATO was to create a multipolar world with Europe bearing the costs of its own defense.'" This effort failed as the U.S. decided preventing Soviet victory was better than avoiding European dependency, and as illustrated in table 2.4, Europe has continued to lag behind the U.S. in terms of military resources and means.'*8 This lack of burden-sharing continues in a post-9/11 world, as the U.S. continues to provide financial incentive payments to coalition partners (e.g., Coalition Solidarity Fund).1*9 Multilateralism Fails-it breeds inaction empirics prove Podliska 10 (Bradley F, 2010, DoD Analyst, MA in security Studies from Georgetown Ph.D in Political Science from Texas A&M, Acting alone: a scientific study of American hegemony and unilateral use-of-force decision making, page # 36-37, AA) A Problem of Inaction While unilateralism is blindly criticized as illegitimate and a violation of a state's right to act as a sovereign, some international lawyers and leaders have raised questions about unilateralism being a better choice than doing nothing at all.1*0 Multilateralism often means inaction."1 Enter the "good Samaritan" of unilateralism, in which actors capable of responding to a crisis will act and will not be stymied by the antiquated process of obtaining UN approval.1" Originally, the UN was expected to have a permanent international military force established under Article 43 in order to respond quickly to international threats. But, a military force was never established, and the founders did not envision a competing U.S.-Soviet bipolar world in which the veto power of the permanent Security Council members would stymie most international responses to humanitarian crises.1*' Whether intentional or not, the UN for the past several decades has played a "peripheral" role in international relations.1** Not only has the UN failed to respond rapidly to crises (e.g., Kosovo and Rwanda), but it also has largely failed to respond at all to vital crises (e.g., Vietnam and the Middle East peace process)."5 Fear of abuse (i.e., citing humanitarian intervention as a camouflage for illegal intervention) is used as an argument against unilateralism.1*6 Even a seemingly clear-cut humanitarian case, such as Kosovo, draws criticism. Before being arrested on April 1, 2001, Serbian (and later Yugoslav) President Slobodan Milosevic had overseen the unilateral killing of hundreds of thousands of people and turning approximately 1.6 million more into refugees as part of a 10-year reign of violence.1*7 In doing so, he had violated a formal 1991 European foreign ministers condemnation, a 1992 UN peace plan, the 1995 Dayton Accords, a 1998 NATO ultimatum, as well as Security Council Resolutions 713 (1991), 1160 (1998), 1199 (1998) and 1203 (1998).IM Gwyn Prins writes of the collective failure, "Milosevic was told formally on November 9, 1991], with all of Europe's assembled will, to cease and desist from the bombardment of the ancient city [Dubrovnik], or else; and he did not; and we did nothing."1*9 But, at least NATO eventually took action in Kosovo. There was no Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty (ANZUS) response to the humanitarian crisis in East Timor in 1999. One thousand people were killed before Australian peacekeepers arrived to restore order.150 The actions of General Manuel Noriega in Panama in 1989 are another example of inaction. With the international community (including OAS) condemning U.S. actions. President George H.W. Bush invoked Article 51 Article 21 of the OAS charter and invaded Panama on order to restore democracy, protect Americans living Noriega to justice on drug trafficking charges.151The inaction problem can be traced to the UN's relative lack of power, given the paralysis of the Security Council.1" Collective action requires power, and power is often a zero-sum exchange: increases in UN influence reduce state-based influence.153 But, a post-Cold War UN, specifically its Security Council, is only willing to take multilateral action in cases of sovereignty violations (e.g., Iraq's invasion of Kuwait). The Security Council becomes paralyzed by vetoes in matters of intra-state problems (e.g., human rights violations in Kosovo).15* Rudolf Dolzer even goes so far as to describe the Council member voting system as a form of unilateralism.155 Each member of the five permanent member Council has the right to block an international military action, and thus prevent a multinational-based military solution from being labeled multilateralism. Russia and China's blocking of a UN response to the genocide in Kosovo is a prime example. Multilateralism Fails-No reciprocity so the US always loses Podliska 10 (Bradley F, 2010, DoD Analyst, MA in security Studies from Georgetown Ph.D in Political Science from Texas A&M, Acting alone: a scientific study of American hegemony and unilateral use-of-force decision making, page #38-39, AA) Multilateralism requires a diffuse reciprocity arrangement between states.16* Reciprocity is defined as the exchange of "roughly equivalent values in which the actions of party are contingent on the prior actions of the others in such a way that good is returned for good, and bad for bad." Diffuse reciprocity, while not establishing a quid pro quo exchange as in specific reciprocity, does require that a state benefit over the long term from a relationship with other states.165 This long-term benefit is often lacking in multilateral situations given the incentives to free ride.166 The "rough equivalence" requirement is also lacking in terms of U.S. military capabilities vis-a-vis its allies, as such the U.S. cannot expect reciprocity in terms of military actions with its allies.167 The prime example of the failure of reciprocity is NATO's response to military operations in Afghanistan following the September 11 th attacks. The U.S. practically rejected NATO assistance in Afghanistan, instead relying heavily on the Russians for their experience in the area. The high-tech American military has interoperability problems with NATO members (a significant issue also in Kosovo), and the interoperability gap continues to increase as the U.S. defense budget increases relative to European defense budgets.168 Multilateralism Fails-can’t create international legitimacy Podliska 10 (Bradley F, 2010, DoD Analyst, MA in security Studies from Georgetown Ph.D in Political Science from Texas A&M, Acting alone: a scientific study of American hegemony and unilateral use-of-force decision making, page #39-42, AA) A Problem of Legitimacy The problem of legitimacy represents, as Lyman writes, the "increasingly blurred" dividing line between domestic and international explanations.1" Presidents seek international support, but this often fails due to Russia and China vetoes on the Security Council. Failing a lack of UN support, presidents will "shop around" for legitimacy, but as Edward Luck Finds, international legitimacy matters little for domestic audiences and whether or not they support a use-of- force action.1" Presidents want international legitimacy when they decide to use force.174 Nico Krisch and others cite the 1998 airstrikes on Iraq as an example of an attempt to justify unilateral military actions based on UN Security Council legitimacy."5 With the 1998 airstrikes, Iraq began prohibiting UNSCOM (UN Special Commission) from visiting strategic sites associated with disarmament obligations in January 1998. After a series of Iraqi provocations, the U.S. and UK attacked Iraq from December 16th to 20th to force compliance with disarmament obligations.176 In attacking Iraq, the U.S. and the UK claimed a multilateral basis, specifically Iraq's violations of Security Council Resolutions 678 (1990), 687 (1991), 1154 (1998), and 1205 (1998). Western nations mainly supported the airstrikes, while opposing nations, such as Russia and China, cited legal arguments against it.1" Krisch cites the enforcement of the no-fly zones as a second example of presidents claiming unilateral military actions are based on UN consensus.17* In enforcing the no-fly zones, the U.S., UK, and France (up until 1998) attacked Iraqi aircraft and sites in January 1993, September 1996, and December 1998.17* In doing so, the allies justified their actions by referring to Security Council Resolution 688 (1991)."° Russia and China opposed the actions, citing the lack of UN Security Council authorization.181 These are examples of action taken in the context of UN Security Council resolutions, but in general, the veto powers of UN Security Council members make approval difficult and raises the costs for presidents seeking multilateral approval.182 So, if UN Security Council support is not possible, presidents can resort to regional organizations for legitimacy. Presidents have often relied on the OAS to convey legitimacy for essentially unilateral action in the Western hemisphere.181 But, legitimacy cannot be conveyed, if no region-wide organization exists to convey it, as is the case in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. For example, the Arab League is limited due to the fact Israel is not a member. In Europe, there is NATO, the EU, and the Council of Europe, but none of these organizations include all European countries.181 If no institution exists to convey legitimacy, presidents can adapt or create an entity willing to endorse their action. For example. President Clinton was forced to improvise, selecting an option of "narrow multilateralism," in dealing with the former Yugoslavia.185 President Clinton and his European allies initially sought EU legitimacy, then UN legitimacy, and then they created a group to include NATO allies and Russia. Eventually, a group of 19 democratic countries endorsed the war against Serbia.186 A more prominent example is the "coalition of the willing" for the 2003 Iraq invasion.187 The U.S. from 1990 to 2002 followed a multilateral path through the UN, overseeing 16 resolutions passed against Saddam Hussein. It even scored a diplomatic victory with Resolution 1441 passing (15-0 vote) on November 8, 2002, but as Peter Dombrowski and Rodger Payne describe, the process for authorizing UN force became "bogged down" as some states began pleading for more time.188 President Bush's response to a mid-March 2003 final, failed new UN resolution is well known. He organized a 46-state coalition, representing 20 percent of the total world population and invaded Iraq. In this coalition, the UK and Australia were the only countries to pro- vide a substantial number of troops (though it should be noted that Poland did contribute troops).1*9 r—I But, most importantly, presidents do not need international legitimacy to increase domestic support for a use of force. Luck cites the 1991 Gulf War, invasions of Grenada, Panama, and Haiti, as evidence of the modest influence of legitimacy on domestic support."*0 President George H.W. Bush has acknowledged that he would have acted without a UN mandate, probably by putting together a multinational coalition to invade Iraq.191 President Reagan tried to win UN and OAS approval but ended up being internationally condemned for the Grenada invasion. The footage of the jubilant returning students and their testimony of the danger on the island was all that was needed to convince the American public that it was a legitimate operation. President Bush invaded Panama without consulting the UN and OAS, and as in the case of Grenada, the invasion was internationally condemned. But, the American public viewed the unilateral invasion as legitimate based on national interests, the values at stake, the high probability of success, and the modest military commitment.192 President Clinton, unlike Reagan with Grenada and Bush with Panama, did win UN approval for invading Haiti. But, international legitimacy did not compensate for a doubting public and Congress that did not see U.S. national interests at stake. The operation was carried out successfully and President Clinton received a modest boost in approval ratings but not the significant boost that Reagan and Bush received for Grenada and Panama, respectively.193 In short, a president is less concerned with the rules and procedures of legitimacy than making a unilateral-multilateral decision based on benefit-cost calculations.194 So, presidents, wanting legitimacy in a U.S.-dominated system, have many options, and as realists, they will bypass an inept international organization, whether it is the UN or another organization, in finding a military solution that serves U.S. interests. They can turn to regional organizations (e.g., OAS) or existing alliances (e.g., NATO) if individual Security Council members (e.g., Russia and China) stymie a UN response. A UN response may not even be an "ideal" multilateral response. Often, the U.S. and UN nations are involved in a quid pro quo deal; the U.S. leads a UN response and furthers its interest in exchange for legitimacy.195 For example, Charles Krauthammer describes the Council authorization to use force in the 1991 Gulf War as "pseudo-multilateralism."196 Samuel Huntington writes of the legitimacy-leadership tradeoff: Decisions made at the U.N. Security Council... that reflect the interests of the West are presented to the world as reflecting the desires of the international community. The very phrase "world community" has become the euphemistic collective noun (replacing the "Free World") to give global legitimacy to actions "the United States and other Western powers.1*7 st operationalization of multilateralism—UN Security Council Approval—a country still has to militarily lead the operation. The UN does not possess command elements; so, this task often falls to the U.S.19* A fact recognized by the UN Secretary-General when asked about Iraqi compliance with UN inspections in February 1998, "You can do a lot with diplomacy, but with diplomacy backed up by force you can get a lot more done.""9 The UN Security Council passes a resolution (or two), and the U.S. enforces the resolution with military force.200 Krisch labels this process the "unilateral enforcement of the collective will," Jules Lobel and Michael Ratner term it "contracting out," and Yutaka Kawashima calls it "giving the green light."201 Security Council authorization leaves the U.S. with wide discretion to initiate, conduct, and terminate conflicts based on ambiguous resolutions. Security Council resolutions are implicit, not explicit authorizations.202 All of this suggests that even in UN- authorized multilateral actions, there are problems of legitimacy. A president may simply be using the UN as cover for an operation that serves U.S. interests. Multipolarity American hegemony is inevitable is just a question of effectiveness Podliska 10 (Bradley F, 2010, DoD Analyst MA in security Studies from Georgetown Ph.D in Political Science from Texas A&M, Acting alone: a scientific study of American hegemony and unilateral use-of-force decision making, page #24-26, AA) America is certainly a great military power, and as illustrated in table 2.2, the U.S. is willing to spend a significant portion of its budget to maintain its military advantage. The U.S. has superior military technology, training, skills, and weapons vis-a-vis any adversary.51 This is an especially poignant point in a post-Cold War unipolar world in which the U.S. possesses a historically rare "total package" of the world's best army in terms of lethality, technological competence, and ability to project force globally." Clyde Prestowitz and John Ikenberry write about the totality of the package the U.S. military can bring to bear in projecting power.51 The U.S. has 12 carrier battle groups (no other country has even one battle group). One forward deployed carrier with more than 50 strike aircraft can deliver more than 150 strikes a day, if called upon to do so. The U.S. has more than 250,000 troops at more than 700 U.S. installations in 40 countries. It has a 40 percent share of the total defense spending of all countries in the world, spending as much as the next 14 countries combined. It accounts for 80 percent of world military research and development. Prestowitz writes, "In terms of sheer military dominance the world has never seen anything like this."51 This type of power disparity between the U.S. and other world powers, as illustrated in table 2.3, reduces incentives to act multilaterally.55 Multilateralism may even impugn a nation's deterrence capability, if an adversary can block any international effort against it. Ruth Wedgwood cites the credibility costs of multilateralism if adversaries can block the "mechanisms of multilateral machinery."56 This may result in more international conflict, thus it is wise for the U.S. to maintain a reputation of a willingness to act alone and avoid the time-consuming, cumbersome process of establishing a multilateral coalition. Types of Heg Naval heg Naval power is the single most important part to hegemonic presence Velandy, Major USMC, 14 (Siddhartha M., Spring, 2014, Major, United States Marine Corps Reserve, “THE ENERGY PIVOT: HOW MILITARY-LED ENERGY INNOVATION CAN CHANGE THE WORLD”, 15 Vt. J. Envtl. L. 672, Lexis, AA)
The United States military plays in its own league. Accounting for close to forty percent of the world's total military spending, the U.S. military budget dwarfs all others. And of course, the financial ledger does not tell the whole story. China's People's Liberation Army is the largest military force in the world, with an advertised active strength of around 2.3 million personnel. n16 Even so, the ability to project power is a critical variable. In this area, the United States has the sizable advantage. The United States Navy is the premier vehicle of American force projection. The Navy sails ten nuclear powered aircraft carriers, with two more under construction. n17 They are the largest ships in the world, each designed for an approximately
50-year service life, with only one mid-life refueling. n18 As Ray Mabus, Secretary of the Navy, stated recently: [T]he Founding Fathers . . . recognized that having a Navy and Marine Corps to sail the world's oceans and protect our commerce and national interest was vital in making the United States a player on the world stage. From George Washington's first schooners . . . the Navy was seen as important, yes in wartime, but also in peacetime . . . that is called presence.
Presence is what we do; presence is what the Navy and Marine Corps are all about. n19
Naval presence is the base of overall US grand strategy Cropsey, Center for American Seapower Director, 11 (Seth, Jan Feb 11, Deputy Undersecretary of the Navy in the Reagan and Bush administrations, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute [Areas of Expertise: Foreign Policy, Terrorism & Radical Ideologies, Defense Strategy, Security Alliances, National Security], World Affairs, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011,“Anchors Away: American Sea Power in Dry Dock”, http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/anchors-away-american-sea-power-dry-dock, AA)
The danger that a single power would control the European continent remained after the Nazis disappeared, when the USSR’s power reached the border of divided Germany. Again, US grand strategy aimed to prevent a hostile power from dominating the continent. NATO was a coalition of continental democratic states that stood between the Soviets and the waters surrounding the European peninsula. Our allies could be certain that we would resupply them with secure seaborne supplies and ground troops. At the same time, US naval combatants would whittle down Moscow’s submarine-borne strategic reserve and provide diversionary assaults on the flanks of the large Soviet ground force if it struck westward. For a century, in other words, American grand strategy has, through alliances backed by maritime power, aimed to prevent the rise of dangerous peer competitors on distant continents. Seaborne power has helped maintain coalitions and, through its very presence, deterred nuclear exchanges. Perhaps most important, sea power, through its encompassing, trans-oceanic role, has protected freedom of navigation and occasionally acted to enforce standards of national sovereignty and non-aggression, which serve America’s broadest interest in a peaceful global order.
Empirically proven – naval power key to winning wars Cropsey, Center for American Seapower director, 11 (Seth, Jan Feb 11, Deputy Undersecretary of the Navy in the Reagan and Bush administrations, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute [Areas of Expertise: Foreign Policy, Terrorism & Radical Ideologies, Defense Strategy, Security Alliances, National Security], World Affairs, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011,“Anchors Away: American Sea Power in Dry Dock”, http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/anchors-away-american-sea-power-dry-dock, AA) Grand strategy is the set of objectives that unite a nation’s foreign and military policies at any single moment and give a coherent view over a long period of time of how a state protects itself and its interests. Since it became a major world power early in the twentieth century, the United States has been guided by
Britain’s centuries-old maritime grand strategy. British policy used naval power to secure the sea- lanes on which its trade and eventually its colonial empire depended, to support and reassure its continental allies, and to protect itself from waterborne assault. Complementing its maritime strategy was the long-standing effort to preserve security by building continental alliances and coalitions—contributing ground forces only where necessary—to prevent the emergence of a dominant European power that might eventually challenge Britain at sea. America’s own grand strategy formed around maritime power, beginning with wars against the Barbary pirates and continuing with the War of 1812 and the riverine and coastal encirclement that helped the Union choke the Confederacy during the Civil
War. At the end of the nineteenth century, the war with Spain ended the last of European holdings in the Americas and simultaneously secured US interest in and responsibility for the Philippines. By 1914, the Panama Canal allowed US sea power to move smoothly and strategically between the Atlantic and Pacific, acknowledging America’s increasing interest in the great breadth of ocean on each of its coasts. Theodore Roosevelt’s construction and around-the-world deployment of a large US battle fleet underlined the same idea: that the world’s oceans provided in-depth strategic defense for
America’s increasingly global interests. US policy during World War I rested as much on safe transit of a large number of American troops and a huge amount of logistical support through the Atlantic’s U-boat- patrolled seas as it did on a coalition strategy with allied forces on the ground in northern Europe. When conflict broke out again two decades later, the dovetailing relationship between sea and land power remained central to American grand strategy. The United States supplied the tools Winston Churchill asked for, but only after they traveled safely over water first.
Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery told an audience nearly a decade and a half after the end of World War II that “the Second World War was fundamentally a struggle for the control of the major oceans and seas—the control of sea communications—and until we had won that struggle we could not proceed with our plans to win the war.”
The Navy ensures peace in peacetime but the tides are turning Cropsey, Center for American Seapower director, 11 (Seth, Jan-Feb 11, Deputy Undersecretary of the Navy in the Reagan and Bush administrations, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute [Areas of Expertise: Foreign Policy, Terrorism & Radical Ideologies, Defense Strategy, Security Alliances, National Security], World Affairs, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011,“Anchors Away: American Sea Power in Dry Dock”, http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/anchors-away-american-sea-power-dry-dock, AA)
The danger that a single power would control the European continent remained after the Nazis disappeared, when the USSR’s power reached the border of divided Germany. Again, US grand strategy aimed to prevent a hostile power from dominating the continent. NATO was a coalition of continental democratic states that stood between the Soviets and the waters surrounding the European peninsula. Our allies could be certain that we would resupply them with secure seaborne supplies and ground troops. At the same time, US naval combatants would whittle down Moscow’s submarine-borne strategic reserve and provide diversionary assaults on the flanks of the large Soviet ground force if it struck westward. For a century, in other words, American grand strategy has, through alliances backed by maritime power, aimed to prevent the rise of dangerous peer competitors on distant continents. Seaborne power has helped maintain coalitions and, through its very presence, deterred nuclear exchanges. Perhaps most important, sea power, through its encompassing, trans-oceanic role, has protected freedom of navigation and occasionally acted to enforce standards of national sovereignty and non-aggression, which serve America’s broadest interest in a peaceful global order. Several major policy changes since the end of the Cold War show that this fundamental idea of grand strategy has shifted. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the continuing war in Afghanistan are continental struggles in which no threat of a rising peer competitor exists. Allies were called on and coalitions formed. Naval power is employed in the War on Terror. But US grand strategy has come loose from the moorings, namely, that significant hegemony in either of the world’s two most important continents, Europe and Asia, constitutes a perilous threat to American security, and that partnership with the states that separate these threats from the world’s major oceans offers the first and surest way to protect America’s interest in preventing the approach of danger. Aerial Heg Close Air Support (CAS) Key to overall strategic success Jones 13 (Brianna Jones, Air Force, 12/17/13,“Close-air support key to strategic success”, http://www.af.mil/News/ArticleDisplay/tabid/223/Article/467764/close-air-support-key-to-strategic- success.aspx”, Accessed 1/12/15, AA) AVIANO AIR BASE, Italy (AFNS) -- Before the sun rises, the sound of an F-16 Fighting Falcon can be heard taking off, breaking the dull silence of the morning as they participate in a two week close-air support training exercise with various squadrons and units. Known as CAS, the training uses military aircraft in an attack against enemy ground forces that are in close proximity to friendly forces. This requires detailed coordination with ground troops and is typically conducted by joint terminal attack controllers. The use of CAS during wartime can be a critical strategic military tactic that has serious impacts on the outcome of ground warfare. Aerospace key to airpower decline risks global instability and conflict Pfaltzgraff 10 [Robert L, Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of International Security Studies at. The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and President of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, et al., Final Report of the IFPA-Fletcher Conference on National Security Strategy and Policy, “Air, Space, & Cyberspace Power in the 21st-Century”, p. xiii-9]
Deterrence Strategy In stark contrast to the bipolar Cold War nuclear setting, today’s security environment includes multiple, independent nuclear actors. Some of these independent nuclear weapons states are potential adversaries, some are rivals, and some are friends, but the initial decision for action by any one of them may lie beyond U.S. control. The United States may need to influence, signal, and restrain enemies, and it may need to continue to provide security guarantees to non-nuclear friends and allies. America may also face catalytic warfare, where, for example, a U.S. ally such as Israel or a third party such as China could initiate action that might escalate to a nuclear exchange. Although the United States would not be a party to the nuclear escalation decision process, it could be drawn into the conflict. Compared to a bipolar world, very little is known about strategic nuclear interaction and escalation in a multipolar world. The U.S. nuclear deterrent must restrain a wider variety of actors today than during the Cold War. This requires a range of capabilities and the capacity to address specific challenges. The deterrent must provide security guarantees and assurance sufficient to prevent the initiation of catalytic warfare by an ally, while deterring an adversary from resorting to nuclear escalation. America may also need simultaneously to deter more than one other nuclear state. Deterrence requirements include four critical elements: early warning, C2, delivery systems, and weapons. The Air Force plays an indispensable role in furnishing the U.S. early warning system in its entirety through satellites and radar networks. In commynd and control, infrastructure is provided by the Air Force, including Milstar satellites and, in the future, advanced extremely high frequency (AEHF) satellites. In the area of delivery systems and weapons, two-thirds of the strategic triad – intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and bombers – is furnished by the Air Force and its Global Strike Commynd. U.S. Overseas Basing and the Anti-Access/Area-Denial Threat The increased availability of anti-access/area-denial assets coupled with growing threats to the sea, air, space, and cyberspace commons are challenging the power projection capabilities of the United States. These threats, in the form of aircraft and long-range missiles carrying conventional or nuclear munitions, present problems for our overseas bases. States such as North Korea, China, and Iran jeopardize the notion that forward-deployed U.S. forces and bases will be safe from enemy attack. Consequently, the United States must create a more flexible basing structure encompassing a passive and active defense posture that includes these features: dispersal, hardening, increased warning time of attack, and air defenses. Simultaneously, the United States must continue to develop long-range, offensive systems such as low-observable mynned and remotely piloted strike aircraft, precision missiles, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms to penetrate heavily defended A2/AD environments. This approach will increase the survivability of U.S. forward-deployed assets and power projection capabilities and thus bolster deterrence and U.S. guarantees to America’s allies and friends. Asymmetric Challenges The increasing number of actors gaining access to advanced and dual-use technologies augments the potential for asymmetric attacks against the United States and its allies by those who are unable to match U.S. military capabilities. Those actors pose increasing challenges to the ability of the United States to project power through the global commons. Such attacks could target specific U.S. vulnerabilities, ranging from space assets to the financial, transportation, communications, and/or energy infrastructures, and to the food and water supply, to mention only the most obvious. Asymmetric attacks denying access to critical networks and capabilities may be the most cost-effective approach to circumventing traditional U.S. force advantages. The USAF and DoD must develop systems and technologies that can offset and defend against asymmetric capabilities. This will require a robust R&D program and enhanced USAF cooperation with its sister services and international partners and allies. Space Dominance Space is increasingly a contested domain where U.S. dominance is no longer assured given the growing number of actors in space and the potential for kinetic and non-kinetic attacks, including ASAT weapons, EMP, and jamming. As a result, the United States must protect vital space-based platforms and networks by reducing their vulnerability to attack or disruption and increasing the country’s resilience if an attack does occur. Required steps include hardening and incorporating stealth into next generation space systems and developing rapid replenishment capacity (including micro-satellite technologies and systems and new launch capabilities). At the same time, America must reduce its dependence on space capabilities with air-based substitutes such as high altitude, long endurance, and penetrating ISR platforms. Increased cooperation among the services and with U.S. allies to develop such capabilities will also be paramount. Cyber Security Cyber operations are vital to conducting USAF and joint land, sea, air, and space missions. Given the significance of the cyber threat (private, public, and DoD cyber and information networks are routinely under attack), the United States is attempting to construct a layered and robust capability to detect and mitigate cyber intrusions and attacks. The USAF’s cyber operations must be capable of operating in a contested cyber domain to support vital land, sea, air, and space missions. USAF cyberspace priorities include developing capabilities to protect essential military cyber systems and to speed their recovery if an attack does occur; enhancing the Air Force’s capacity to provide USAF personnel with the resolution of technical questions; and training/recruitment of personnel with cyber skills. In addition, the USAF and DoD need to develop technologies that quickly and precisely attribute attacks in cyberspace. Cyber attacks can spread quickly among networks, making it extremely difficult to attribute their perpetrator, and therefore to develop a deterrence strategy based on retaliation. In addition, some cyber issues are in the legal arena, including questions about civil liberties. It is likely that the trend of increased military support to civil authorities (for example, in disaster relief operations) will develop in the cyber arena as well. These efforts will entail greater service, interagency, international, and private-sector collaboration. Organizational Change and Joint Force Operations To address growing national security challenges and increasing fiscal constraints, and to become more effective, the joint force needs to adapt its organizations and processes to the exigencies of the information age and the security setting of the second decade of the twenty-first century. This entails developing a strategy that places increased emphasis on joint operations in which each service acts in greater concert with the others, leverages capacities across the services (two land services, three naval services, and five air services) without duplicating efforts, and encourages interoperability. This would provide combatant commynders (CCDRs) with a greater range of capabilities, allowing heightened flexibility to use force. A good example of this approach is the Air-Sea Battle concept being developed jointly by the Air Force and Navy, which envisions heightened cooperation between the two services and potentially with allies and coalition partners. Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Capabilities There is an increasing demand for ISR capabilities able to access and persist in contested airspace in order to track a range of high-value mobile and hard-to-find targets, such as missile launchers and underground bunkers. This increases the need for stealthy, survivable systems and the development of next-generation unmynned platforms. The USAF must continue to emphasize precision targeting, both for strike and close-air-support missions. High- fidelity target identification and discrimination enabled by advanced radars and directed-energy systems, including the ability to find, track, and target individuals within a crowd, will provide battlefield commynders with improved options and new opportunities for leveraging joint assets. Engagement and International Security Cooperation Allies and coalition partners bring important capabilities from which the USAF and other services have long benefited. For example, allies and coalition partners can provide enhanced situational awareness and early warning of impending crises as well as assist in understanding the interests, motivations, traditions, and cultures of potential adversaries and prospective coalition partners. Moreover, foreign partner engagement and outreach are an avenue to influence partner and adversary perspectives, thus shaping the environment in ways favorable to U.S. national security interests. Engagement also may be a key to realizing another Air Force and joint priority: to sustain or gain access to forward operating bases and logistical infrastructure. This is particularly important given the growing availability of A2/AD assets and their ability to impede U.S. power projection capabilities. Procurement Choices and Affordability The USAF needs to field capabilities to support current operations and pressing missions while at the same time pursuing promising technologies to build the force of the future. Affordability, effectiveness, time urgency, and industrial base issues inevitably shape procurement choices and reform. The Air Force must maintain today’s critical assets while also allocating resources to meet future needs. Given the long lifespan anticipated for many weapon systems, planners need to make the most reliable cost estimates and identify problems at the outset of a weapons system’s development phase so that they can be corrected as early and cost-effectively as possible. Support to Civil Authorities As evidenced in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquakes in Haiti and Chile (the Chile earthquake hit after this conference), the USAF has a vital role to play in the U.S. response to international relief operations and support to civil authorities. In Haiti, the USAF reopened the airport and deployed contingency response elements, while also providing ISR support for the joint forces in the theater. In Chile, USAF satellite communication capabilities were critical to the recovery and relief efforts. USAF civil support roles are likely to grow to include greater use of the Reserve Components. Consequently, USAF planners should reassess the active and reserve component mix of forces and capabilities to identify potential mobilization and requirement shortfalls. CLOSING CONFERENCE THOUGHTS A recurring conference theme was the need for the USAF to continue to examine specific issues of opportunity and vulnerability more closely. For example, a future initiative could include focused working groups that would examine such questions and issues as: • How can air, space, and cyberspace capabilities best support deterrence, preserve U.S. freedom of action, and support national objectives? • How should the USAF leadership reconceptualize its vision, institutional identity, and force posture to align as closely as possible with the future national security setting? • What is the appropriate balance between high-end and low- end air and space capabilities that will maximize military options for national decision makers, given emerging threats and fiscal constraints? • What are the opportunities, options, and tradeoffs for investment and divestment in science and technology, infrastructure, and programmed capabilities? • What are additional interdependent concepts, similar to Air-Sea Battle, that leverage cross-service investments to identify and foster the development of new joint capabilities? • What are alternative approaches to officer accessions and development to support shifting and emerging Air Force missions, operations, and force structure, including cyber warfare? • How can the USAF best interact with Congress to help preserve or refocus the defense- industrial base as well as to minimize myndates and restrictions that weigh on future Air Force investments? Finally, the USAF must continue to be an organization that views debate, as the Chief of Staff of the Air Force put it in his opening conference address, “…as the whetstone upon which we sharpen our strategic thinking.” This debate must also be used in pursuit of political support and to ensure that the USAF maintains and develops critical capabilities to support U.S. national security priorities. The 38th IFPA-Fletcher Conference on National Security Strategy and Policy was conceived as a contribution to that debate. Almost a century has passed since the advent of airpower and Billy Mitchell’s demonstration of its operational potential with the sinking of the Ostfriesland on July 21, 1921. For most of that time, the United States has benefitted from the rapid development of air and space power projection capabilities, and, as a result, it has prevailed in successive conflicts, contributed to war deterrence and crisis management, and provided essential humynitarian relief to allies and friends around the world. As we move into the second decade of the twenty-first century, the U.S. Air Force (USAF), like its service counterparts, is re-assessing strategies, operational concepts, and force structure. Across the conflict spectrum, security challenges are evolving, and potential adversaries–state and non-state actors–are developing anti-access and other asymmetric capabilities, and irregular warfare challenges are becoming more prevalent. The potential exists for “hybrid” warfare in which state adversaries and/or non-state actors use a mix of conventional and unconventional capabilities against the United States, a possibility made more feasible by the diffusion of such capabilities to a larger number of actors. Furthermore, twenty-first-century security challenges and threats may emynate from highly adaptive adversaries who ignore the Geneva Conventions of war and use military and/or civilian technologies to offset our military superiority. As it develops strategy and force structure in this global setting, the Air Force confronts constraints that will have important implications for budget and procurement programs, basic research and development (R&D), and the maintenance of critical skills, as well as recruitment, education, training, and retention. Given the dynamic nature of the security setting and looming defense budget constraints, questions of where to assume risk will demand bold, innovative, and decisive leadership. The imperative for joint operations and U.S. military-civilian partnerships is clear, underscoring the need for a whole-of- government and whole-of-society approach that encompasses international and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). THE UNITED STATES AS AN AEROSPACE NATION: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES In his address opening the conference, General Norton A. Schwartz, Chief of Staff of the Air Force (CSAF), pointed out how, with its inherent characteristics of speed, range, and flexibility, airpower has forever changed warfare. Its advent rendered land and maritime forces vulnerable from the air, thus adding an important new dimension to warfare. Control of the air has become indispensable to national security because it allows the United States and friendly forces to maneuver and operate free from enemy air attack. With control of the air the United States can leverage the advantages of air and space as well as cyberspace. In these interdependent domains the Air Force possesses unique capabilities for ensuring global mobility, long-range strike, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). The benefits of airpower extend beyond the air domain, and operations among the air, land, maritime, space, and cyber domains are increasingly interdependent. General Schwartz stated that the Air Force’s challenge is to succeed in a protracted struggle against elements of violent extremism and irreconcilable actors while confronting peer and near-peer rivals. The Air Force must be able to operate with great precision and lethality across a broad spectrum of conflict that has high and low ends but that defies an orderly taxonomy. Warfare in the twenty-first century takes on a hybrid complexity, with regular and irregular elements using myriad tools and tactics. Technology can be an enabler but can also create weaknesses: adversaries with increased access to space and cyberspace can use emerging technologies against the United States and/or its allies. In addition, the United States faces the prospect of the proliferation of precision weapons, including ballistic and cruise missiles as well as increasingly accurate mortars, rockets, and artillery, which will put U.S. and allied/coalition forces at risk. In response to mounting irregular warfare challenges American leaders have to adopt innovative and creative strategies. For its part, the USAF must develop airmyn who have the creativity to anticipate and plan for this challenging environment. Leadership, intellectual creativity, capacity, and ingenuity, together with innovative technology, will be crucial to addressing these challenges in a constrained fiscal environment. System Versatility In meeting the broad range of contingencies – high, low, regular, irregular, and hybrid – the Air Force must maintain and develop systems that are versatile, both functionally (including strike or ISR) and in terms of various employment modes, such as mynned versus remotely piloted, and penetrating versus stand-off systems. General Schwartz emphasized the need to be able to operate in conflict settings where there will be demands for persistent ISR systems able to gain access to, and then loiter in, contested or denied airspace. The targets to be identified and tracked may be mobile or deeply buried, of high value, and difficult to locate without penetrating systems. General Schwartz also called attention to the need for what he described as a “family of systems” that could be deployed in multiple ways with maximum versatility depending on requirements. Few systems will remain inherently single purpose. Indeed, he emphasized that the Air Force must purposefully design versatility into its new systems, with the majority of future systems being able to operate in various threat environments. As part of this effort further joint integration and inter-service cooperation to achieve greater air-land and air-sea interoperability will continue to be a strategic necessity. Space Access and Control Space access, control, and situational awareness remain essential to U.S. national security. As potential rivals develop their own space programs, the United States faces challenges to its unrestricted access to space. Ensuring continuing access to the four global commons – maritime, air, space, and cyberspace – will be a major challenge in which the USAF has a key role. The Air Force has long recognized the importance of space and is endeavoring to make certain that U.S. requirements in and for space are met and anticipated. Space situational awareness is vital to America’s ability to help evaluate and attribute attacks. Attribution, of course, is essential to deterrence. The USAF is exploring options to reduce U.S. dependence on the Global Positioning System (GPS), which could become vulnerable to jamming. Promising new technologies, such as “cold atoms,” pseudolites, and imaging inertial navigation systems that use laser radar are being investigated as means to reduce our vulnerability. Cyber Capabilities The USAF continues to develop cyber capabilities to address opportunities and challenges. Cyber threats present challenges to homeland security and other national security interests. Key civilian and military networks are vulnerable to cyber attacks. Preparing for cyber warfare and refining critical infrastructure protection and consequence management will require new capabilities, focused training, and greater interagency, international, and private sector collaboration. Challenges for the Air Force General Schwartz set forth a series of challenges for the Air Force, which he urged conference participants to address. They included: • How can the Air Force better address the growing demand for real- time ISR from remotely piloted systems, which are providing unprecedented and unmatched situational awareness? • How can the USAF better guarantee the credibility and viability of the nation’s nuclear forces for the complex and uncertain security environment of this century? • What is the way ahead for the next generation of long-range strike and ISR platforms? What trade- offs, especially between mynned and unmynned platforms, should the USAF consider? How can the USAF improve acquisition of such systems? How can the USAF better exploit the advantage of low-observables? • How can the Air Force better prepare itself to operate in an opposed network environment in which communications and data links will be challenged, including how to assure commynd and control (C2) in bandwidth-constrained environments? • In counter-land operations, how can the USAF achieve improved target discrimination in high collateral damage situations? • How should the USAF posture its overseas forces to ensure access? What basing structure, logistical considerations, andprotection measures are required to mitigate emerging anti- access threats? • How can the Air Force reduce its reliance on GPS to ensure operations in a GPS-denied environment? • How can the USAF lessen its vulnerability to petroleum shortages, rising energy prices, and resulting logistical and operational challenges? • How can the Air Force enhance partnerships with its sister services and the interagency community? How can it better collaborate with allies and coalition partners to improve support of national security interests? These issues were addressed in subsequent conference sessions. The opening session focused on the multidimensional and dynamic security setting in which the Air Force will operate in the years ahead. The session included a discussion of the need to prioritize necessary capabilities and to gauge “acceptable risks.” Previous Quadrennial Defense Reviews (QDRs) rested on the basic assumption that the United States would be able to support operations simultaneously or nearly simultaneously in two major regional contingencies, with the additional capacity to respond to smaller disaster-relief and/or stability operations missions. However, while the 2010 QDR1 maintains the need for U.S. forces to operate in two nearly simultaneous major wars, it places far greater emphasis on the need to address irregular warfare challenges. Its focus is maintaining and rebalancing U.S. force structure to fight the wars in which the United States is engaged today while looking ahead to the emerging security setting. The QDR further seeks to develop flexible and tailored capabilities to confront an array of smaller-scale contingencies, including natural disasters, perhaps simultaneously, as was the case with the war in Afghanistan, stability operations in Iraq, and the Haiti relief effort. The 2010 QDR highlights important trends in the global security environment, especially unconventional threats and asymmetric challenges. It suggests that a conflict with a near-peer competitor such as China, or a conflict with Iran, would involve a mix, or hybrid, of capabilities that would test U.S. forces in very different ways. Although predicting the future security setting is a very difficult if not an impossible exercise, the 2010 QDR outlines major challenges for the United States and its allies, including technology proliferation and diffusion; anti-access threats and the shrinking global basing infrastructure; the possibility of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) use against the U.S. homeland and/or against U.S. forces abroad; critical infrastructure protection and the massed effects of a cyber or space attack; unconventional warfare and irregular challenges; and the emergence of new issue areas such as Arctic security, U.S. energy dependence, demographic shifts and urbanization, the potential for resource wars (particularly over access to water), and the erosion or collapse of governance in weak or failing states. TECHNOLOGY DIFFUSION Technology proliferation is accelerating. Compounding the problem is the reality that existing multilateral and/or international export regimes and controls have not kept pace with technology, and efforts to constrain access are complicated by dual-use technologies and chemical/biological agents. The battlefields of the future are likely to be more lethal as combatants take advantage of commercially based navigation aids for precision guidance and advanced weapons systems and as global and theater boundaries disappear with longer-range missile systems becoming more common in enemy arsenals. Non-state entities such as Hezbollah have already used more advanced missile systems to target state adversaries. The proliferation of precision technologies and longer-range delivery platforms puts the United States and its partners increasingly at risk. This proliferation also is likely to affect U.S. operations from forward operating locations, placing additional constraints on American force deployments within the territories of allies. Moreover, as longer-range ballistic and cruise missiles become more widespread, U.S. forces will find it increasingly difficult to operate in conflicts ranging from irregular warfare to high-intensity combat. As highlighted throughout the conference, this will require that the United States develop and field new-generation low- observable penetration assets and related capabilities to operate in non-permissive environments. PROLIFERATION TRENDS The twenty-first-century security setting features several proliferation trends that were discussed in the opening session. These trends, six of which were outlined by Dr. Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr., President of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of International Security Studies, The Fletcher School, Tufts University, framed subsequent discussions. First, the number of actors–states and armed non-state groups–is growing, together with strategies and capabilities based on more widely available technologies, including WMD and conventional weapons. This is leading to a blurring of categories of warfare that may include state and non-state actors and encompass intra-state, trans-state, and inter-state armed conflict as well as hybrid threats. Second, some of these actors subscribe to ideologies and goals that welcome martyrdom. This raises many questions about dissuasion and deterrence and the need to think of twenty-first-century deterrence based on offensive and defensive strategies and capabilities. Third, given the sheer numbers of actors capable of challenging the United States and their unprecedented capabilities, the opportunity for asymmetric operations against the United States and its allies will grow. The United States will need to work to reduce key areas of vulnerability, including its financial systems, transportation, communications, and energy infrastructures, its food and water supply, and its space assets. Fourth, the twenty-first-century world contains flashpoints for state-to-state conflict. This includes North Korea, which possesses nuclear weapons, and Iran, which is developing them. In addition, China is developing an impressive array of weaponry which, as the Commynder of U.S. Pacific Commynd stated in congressional testimony, appears “designed to challenge U.S. freedom of action in the region and, if necessary, enforce China’s influence over its neighbors – including our regional allies and partners’ weaponry.”2 These threats include ballistic missiles, aircraft, naval forces, cyber capabilities, anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons, and other power-projection capabilities. The global paradigm of the twenty-first century is further complicated by state actors who may supply advanced arms to non-state actors and terrorist organizations. Fifth, the potential for irregular warfare is rising dramatically with the growth of armed non-state actors. The proliferation of more lethal capabilities, including WMD, to armed non-state actors is a logical projection of present trends. Substantial numbers of fractured, unstable, and ungoverned states serve as breeding grounds of armed non-state actors who will resort to various forms of violence and coercion based on irregular tactics and formations and who will increasingly have the capabilities to do so. Sixth, the twenty- first-century security setting contains yet another obvious dimension: the permeability of the frontiers of the nation state, rendering domestic populations highly vulnerable to destruction not only by states that can launch missiles but also by terrorists and other transnational groups. As we have seen in recent years, these entities can attack U.S. information systems, creating the possibility of a digital Pearl Harbor. Taken together, these trends show an unprecedented proliferation of actors and advanced capabilities confronting the United States; the resulting need to prepare for high-end and low-end conflict; and the requirement to think of a seamless web of threats and other security challenges extending from overseas to domestic locales. Another way to think about the twenty-first-century security setting, Dr. Pfaltzgraff pointed out, is to develop scenarios such as the following, which are more illustrative than comprehensive: • A nuclear Iran that engages in or supports terrorist operations in a more assertive foreign policy • An unstable Pakistan that loses control of its nuclear weapons, which fall into the hands of extremists • A Taiwan Straits crisis that escalates to war • A nuclear North Korea that escalates tensions on the Korean peninsula What all of these have in common is the indispensable role that airpower would play in U.S. strategy and crisis management. Specific Scenarios Prolif Hegemony is key to non-proliferation and stopping nuclear war Deudney 14 (Daniel, 7-21-14, Prof. of Political Science at Johns Hopkins, “Power, Order, and Change in World Politics”, Page #213, AA) Another dimension of the relationship between liberal hegemony and nuclear weapons is the relationship between the arms control project and liberal hegemony. As we saw earlier, the view of the nuclear revolution centered around deterrence accords little importance to arms control. Conversely, its main rival view of the nuclear revolution holds that nuclear arms control is vital for achieving security in the nuclear era, and that the extensive, but incomplete, nuclear arms control that has occurred has made an important contribution to security. If this second view is correct, then the role of the liberal character of the United States and its relationship to nuclear arms control may be of very great importance. The United States has never pursued a grand strategy which was solely focused on advancing nuclear arms control, and many measures pursued by the United States were quite contrary to the arms control agenda. But it also seems clear that the United States has been more significantly supportive of the arms control project than any other major state in the nuclear era, and that the arms control project has deep links to the general liberal character of the American hegemony. If nuclear arms control has, as its advocates maintain, lowered significantly the likelihood of deterrence failure and general war, and if the United States has made such significant contributions to international arms control because of its significantly liberal character, then the fact that the hegemon during this period was a liberal state has made a significant, perhaps crucial, contribution to the avoidance of nuclear war and civilizational collapse. Us hegemony deters prolif Miller 14< Miller, Nicholas L. (Nicholas LeSuer) Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science. Publisher: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Date Issued: 2014> Contrary to longstanding of predictions of nuclear tipping points, the number of states interested in nuclear weapons has sharply declined in recent decades. In contrast to existing explanations, this dissertation argues that the decline is largely attributable to US nonproliferation policies, in particular the threat of sanctions that was instituted in the late 1970s. By credibly threatening to cut off economic and military support to countries pursuing nuclear weapons, I argue that this threat of sanctions deters states within the US sphere of influence from proliferating, reducing the overall rate of proliferation and also explaining why recent nuclear aspirants have exclusively been "rogue" states outside the US sphere of influence. Because states that depend on the United States have been deterred from proliferating in recent decades, the observed success rate of sanctions should be low, since they will generally be targeted at states that do not rely on US resources. This dissertation also offers a theory of the sources of US nonproliferation policy, arguing that fears of nuclear domino effects are necessary to explain (1) why US policy strengthened so dramatically in the wake of Chinese and Indian nuclear tests in the 1960s and 1970s, and (2) why the US abandoned a selective nonproliferation policy and decided to enforce nonproliferation across the board. To test these two arguments, this dissertation employs a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods. First, I draw on archival documents to show that fears of nuclear domino effects motivated US nonproliferation policy advances in the 1960s and 1970s, and that this motivation was prominent in individual cases of nonproliferation. Second, I show quantitatively that states dependent on the United States have been less likely to pursue nuclear weapons since sanctions policies were instituted in the late 1970s, that observed cases of sanctions have been largely ineffective, and that the deterrent effect of sanctions largely accounts for the temporal decline in proliferation. Case studies of US policy toward Pakistan and Taiwan demonstrate that a credible threat of sanctions can arrest ongoing nuclear programs when the proliferator is dependent on the United States and underestimated the likelihood of sanctions. ISIS Hegemony key to the fight against ISIS The Hill 9-22 (Kristina Wong - 09/22/14, “Supporters see role for A-10 in ISIS fight”, http://thehill.com/policy/defense/air-force/218578-supporters-see-role-for-a-10-in-isis-fight, Accessed 1/13/15, AA) Supporters of the A-10 “Warthog” fighter say the Pentagon should halt plans to scrap the jet, saying it is needed in the campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The Pentagon has pushed for years to retire the A-10, which provides close air support for troops on the ground in battle, anticipating the need for more advanced aircraft in future ground wars. But as military leaders acknowledge that U.S. troops in Iraq could face combat against ISIS militants, the A-10’s backers say it is not a good time to replace the popular jet. “Defeating ISIS will require effective close air support — not just dropping bombs from high altitude on isolated targets —and there is no better CAS aircraft than the A-10,” said Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.). “The A-10 is staple of our fleet and I believe we should continue the program for the foreseeable future,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), an Iraq veteran and member of the Illinois Air National Guard. “It provides close air support in a way no other aircraft can and is beloved by our troops for the countless lives it has saved,” he told The Hill in a statement. Pentagon officials say that budget concerns have not changed, and insist the Cold War-era jet must be retired in favor of advanced fighters such as the F-35 that can also provide close air support to ground troops. “The A-10 has saved many lives, including those of some fellow Army officers and some fellow enlisted men,” said Frank Kendall, undersecretary of Defense for acquisition at an Air Force Association conference on Wednesday. “Today it has become unaffordable within our available budgets. Kendall has previously said that retiring the A-10 would “help the Air Force maintain and acquire more cutting-edge technology and weapons systems.” Air Force officials say the F-15, F-16, the F-18 and the B-1 bomber can all offer close-air support, and so far have not used A-10s in the fight against ISIS. However, the Pentagon has quietly made plans to deploy a dozen A-10s to the Middle East in early October. Military officials say those aren’t specifically part of President Obama’s campaign against ISIS, but could play a role in the future. “The A-10 ‘Warthog’ is uniquely suited for the Combatant Commander’s needs, and the Blacksnakes are the right team to bring that capability to combat,” said Col. Patrick R. Renwick, commander of the 122nd Fighter Wing, on Wednesday, using a nickname for the unit. Defense experts and proponents of the Warthog say there is no better aircraft to perform close air support and hit enemy targets in combat than the A-10, known as the “tank killer.” “The kind of conflict that President Obama wants to fight against ISIS is typically of the role the A-10 performs,” said Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Project On Government Oversight. “It can do this mission better than any other airplane.” “It can identify exactly what targets they’re going to hit — whether it’s the right target, or friendly forces. It has accurate weapons, especially the Gatling gun,” he said in an interview with The Hill. Pentagon leaders say they have no choice but to retire the aircraft, due to automatic defense budget caps imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act. Lawmakers had raised defense budget caps, but they are due to go into effect again in October 2015. The Pentagon sought to retire the A-10 in 2015, but measures in the House and Senate defense policy and spending bills — if passed — would delay retiring the aircraft for another year. Advocates are looking to ramp up their opposition to those retirement plans as U.S. troops possibly head back into battle. “It can loiter over the battlefield longer to help attack and suppress enemy forces. The most important thing is that there is a cadre of trained air crew who know how to do this mission, rather than take on the mission as a part-time job,” Wheeler said. He cited an incident in June where a B-1 bomber killed 5 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. A traditional problem in battlefield support is to make sure the right targets are hit, he added. “The A-10 does that better than any other airplane,” said Wheeler. Russia China Alliance Russia-China Alliance Fails-rhetoric gives way to mistrust Nye 15 (Joseph S, 1-20-2015, Prof. at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Is the American Century Over, page #36-38, AA) What are the prospects for a Russia-China alliance being the cause? Traditional balance of power politics might predict such a response to American primacy in power resources. And there is historical precedent: in the 1950s, China and the Soviet Union were allied against the United States. After Nixon's opening to China in 1972, the triangle worked the other way, with the United States and China cooperating to limit what both saw as a threatening Soviet power. That alliance ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1992, Russia and China declared their relations a "constructive partner- ship," in 1996 a "strategic partnership," and in July 2001 they signed a treaty of "friendship and cooperation." They have cooperated closely in the UN Security Council and taken similar positions on international control of the internet. The have used various diplomatic frameworks, such as the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, to coordinate positions, and Presidents Putin and Xi Imping have struck up a good working relationship based on common domestic illiberalism and a desire to counter American ideology and diplomacy. Despite the rhetoric, however, there are serious obstacles to an alliance between China and Russia that go a long way beyond tactical diplomatic coordination. As a rising power, China has more to gain than Russia from the status quo, including access to American trade and technology. Moreover, a residual historical mistrust persists between Russia and China. They compete for influence in Central Asia, and Russians are rankled by China's view of trade with Russia as exchanging manufactures for raw materials. The demographic situation in the Far East, where the population on the Russian side of the border is 6 million, and on the China side is up to 120 million, creates a degree of anxiety in Moscow. Russia's economic and military decline has increased its concern about the rise of Chinese power. In 2009. Russia announced a new military doctrine that explicitly reserved the right to first use of nuclear weapons (as the United States did to deter Soviet conventional superiority in Europe during the Cold War), and it continues to hold a large number of short-range tactical nuclear weapons. Many military observers believe the Russian doctrine is a response to Chinese conventional superiority in East Asia. EU Rise The EU is unlikely to challenge the US-lacks unity, demographic problems and birth rates Nye 15 (Joseph S, 1-20-2015, Prof. at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Is the American Century Over, page #24-28, AA) When it acts as an entity, Europe is the largest economy in the world. Although the American economy is four times larger than Germany's, the total GDP of the European Union is slightly larger than that of the United States, and Europe's population of nearly 500 million is considerably larger than America's 310 million. American per capita income is higher than that of the EU, but in terms of human capital, technology, and exports, Europe is very much an economic peer competitor for the United States, Until the crisis of 2010, when fiscal problems in Greece and elsewhere created anxiety in financial markets, some economists speculated that the Euro might soon replace the dollar as the world's primary reserve currency. In terms of military resources, Europe spends less than half of what the United States does on defense, but has more men under arms. Britain and France possess nuclear arsenals, and a limited capacity for overseas intervention in Africa and the Middle East. In soft power, European cultures have long had a wide appeal in the rest of the world, and the sense of a Europe uniting around Brussels had a strong attraction for its neighbors, though this was eroded somewhat after the financial crisis. Europeans have also played central roles in international institutions. The key question in assessing Europe's power resources is whether the EU will develop enough political and social-cultural cohesion to act as one on a wide range of international issues, or whether it will remain a limited grouping of countries with different nationalisms, political cultures, and foreign policies. Europe's power conversion capability - or what Francis Fukuyama has called the discount rate between resources and outcomes - is limited, and it varies with different issues. On questions of trade and influence within the World Trade Organization, Europe is the equal of the United States and able to balance American power. Europe's role in the International Monetary Fund is second only to that of the United States (though the financial crisis dented confidence in the Euro.) On anti-trust issues, the size and attraction of the European market has meant that American firms seeking to merge have had to seek approval from the European Commission as well as the US Justice Department. In the cyber world, the EU is setting the global standards for privacy protection which multinational companies cannot ignore. At the same time, Europe faces significant limits on its degree of unity. Although some young people identify primarily as Europeans, national identities remain stronger than a common European identity, as elections for the European Parliament have demonstrated. European institutions are unlikely to produce a strong federal Europe or a single state. None of this is to belittle European institutions and what they have accomplished. Legal integration is increasing, and European Court verdicts have compelled member countries to change policies. On the other hand, legislative and executive branch integration has lagged, and, while Europe has created a president and a central figure for foreign relations, the integration of foreign and defense policy is still limited. European nations may not be in one boat, but the ways the national boats are lashed together is historically unique. While Europe is always changing, it is unlikely to surpass the United States. Europe faces serious demographic problems, both in birth rates and in political acceptance of immigrants. At its heyday in 1900, Europe accounted for a quarter of the world's population. By 2060, it may account for just 6 percent - and almost a third of these will be over 65 years. In terms of military expenditure, Europe is second only to the United States, with 15 percent of the world total (compared to 11 percent for China and 5 percent for Russia), but the number is misleading because Europe lacks military integration. In terms of economic power, Europe has the world's largest market and represents 17 percent of world trade compared to 12 percent for the United States. Europe dispenses half the world's foreign assistance, compared to 20 percent for the United States, but this has not produced much influence in distant regions like Asia. In terms of soft power, while Europe has 27 universities ranked in the top 100 (compared to 52 for the United States), the United States spends 2.7 per cent of GDP - twice as much as Europe - on universities and research and development. And while Europe's cultural industries are impressive, their size is less than that of their American counterparts. The EU's "creative industries" contributed about 7 percent to GDP, compared to 11 percent in the United States.1 UNESCO found that in 2009, 14 out of the top 20 feature films were produced entirely in the United States; even in Europe, US motion pictures dominate the box office, accounting for 73 percent of revenue.2 If Europe were to overcome its internal differences and try to become a global challenger to the United States in a traditional balance of power, these assets might partly balance, but not equal, American power. On the other hand, if Europe and America remain allied or even neutral, these resources could reinforce each other. Despite inevitable friction, economic separation is unlikely. Direct investment in both directions is higher than with Asia and helps knit the economies together. In addition, US-European trade is more balanced than US trade with Asia. At the cultural level, Americans and Europeans have sniped at each other for centuries, but they share values of democracy and human rights more with each other than with any other regions of the world. Neither the United States nor Europe is likely to threaten the vital or important interests of the other side. While political frictions will exist, the probability of a united Europe becoming more powerful than the United States and helping to cause the end of the American century is very low. India Rise India wont balance against the US-lacks ability to scale up Nye 15 (Joseph S, 1-20-2015, Prof. at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Is the American Century Over, page #38-41, AA) With a population of 1.2 billion people. India is four times larger than the United States, and likely to surpass China in population by 2025. Some Indians predict a tripolar world by mid-century: the United States. China, and India. But population alone is not an index of power unless those human resources are developed, and India has lagged seriously behind China in terms of literacy and economic growth rates. For decades. India suffered from what some called the "Hindu rate of economic growth" of a little over 1 percent per capita. After independence in 1947, India followed an inward-looking planning system that focused on heavy industry. After market-oriented reforms in the early 1990s, the pattern changed and growth rates rose to over 7 percent. Higher projections of double digits failed to materialize, however, and before the 2014 elections, growth had slumped BO 5 percent. After the election, a new prime minister, Narendra Modi, vowed to reverse the slump. India has an emerging middle class of several hundred million, and English is an official language spoken by some 50 to 100 million. Building on that base, Indian information industries are able to play a global role, and India has an active space program, which sent a satellite to Mars in 2014. India has significant military power resources, with an estimated 90 to 100 nuclear weapons intermediate range missiles, 1.3 million military personnel, and annual military expenditure of nearly $50 billion -or 3 percent of the world total. In terms of soft power, India has an established democracy, and a vibrant popular culture with transnational influence. India has an influential diaspora, and its motion picture industry, "Bollywood," is the largest in the world in terms of the number of films produced yearly, out-compering Hollywood in parts of Asia and the Middle East, and now Latin America. At the same time, India remains very much an underdeveloped country, with hundreds of millions of illiterate citizens living in poverty. Around a third of India's 1.1 billion people live in conditions of acute poverty. India's GDP of $3.3 trillion is little over a third of China's $8 billion, and 20 percent that of the United States, India's per capita income of $2,900 (in purchasing power parity) is half of China's and a fifteenth of the United States. Even more sinking, while 95 percent of the Chinese population is literate, the number for India is only 63 percent. Each year, India produces about twice as many engineers as America, but, according to The Economist, fewer than one-fifth of them "are employable by an IT services company, even with six months' training."' A symptom of this is the poor performance of India in international comparisons of universities, with none ranked in the top 100. India's high-tech exports are only 5 percent of its total exports, compared to .10 percent for China. India is unlikely to develop the power resources to become a global challenger to the United States in the first half of this century, but it has considerable assets that could be added to the scales of a Sino-Indian coalition. Trade between the two countries is growing rapidly, but the likelihood that such a coalition would become a serious anti-American alliance is small. Just as there is lingering suspicion in the Sino-Russian relationship, so there is a similar rivalry between India and China. While the two countries signed agreements in 1993 and 1996 that promised peaceful settlement of the border dispute that led them to war in 1962, the border became controversial again after Chinese actions in 2009. While Indian officials are often discreet in public about relations with China, their security concerns remain intense in private. Rather than becoming an ally, India is more likely to become part of the group of Asian nations that will tend to balance China. It has already begun to strengthen its diplomatic relations with Japan. It seems unlikely that a challenge from India will precipitate the end of the American century. Russia Rise Russia will not balance or overtake the US Nye 15 (Joseph S, 1-20-2015, Prof. at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Is the American Century Over, page #32-38, AA) In the 1950s, many American* feared that the Soviet Union would surpass the United States as the world's leading power. The Soviet Union had the world's largest territory, third largest population, second largest economy, and produced more oil and gas than Saudi Arabia. It possessed nearly half the world's nuclear weapons, had more men under arms than the United States, and the highest number of people employed in research and development. Soviet propaganda actively fostered a myth of the inevitability of the triumph of communism, and Nikita Khrushchev- famously boasted in 1959 that the Soviet Union would overtake the United States by 1970 or 1980. Instead, in 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev described the Soviet economy as "very disordered. We lag in all indices."1 And in 1991, the USSR collapsed. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left Russia with half the population and economy of the USSR. Moreover, the soft power of communist ideology, already eroded, had virtually disappeared. Russia retained a vast nuclear arsenal even larger than that of the United States, but its global power projection capabilities were greatly diminished. Regionally, however, it was able to use force effectively against its weak neighboring states - Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. In economic resources, Russia's $2.5 trillion gross domestic product is one-seventh that of the United States, and its per capita income (in purchasing power parity) of $18,000 is roughly a third that of the United States. Its economy is heavily dependent on energy. Oil and gas account for two-thirds of Russian exports, half of state revenues, and 20 percent of GDP. High-tech exports represent only 7 percent of its manufactured exports (compared to 28 percent for the United States). There is an inefficient allocation of resources across the economy, and private investment is not sustained because of a corrupt institutional and legal structure. Despite the attractiveness of traditional Russian culture and President Vladimir Putin's calls for an increase in Russian soft power, his bullying tactics toward his neighbors and his emphasis on Russian nationalism had the opposite effect of sowing mistrust. Few foreigners watch Russian films, and only one Russian university is ranked in the top global 100. The likelihood of ethnic fragmentation, though still a threat in areas like the Caucuses, is less than in Soviet days. Non-Russians made up half of the former Soviet population; they are now 20 percent of the Russian Federation and occupy 30 percent of the territory. The political institutions for an effective market economy are largely missing, and robber baron state capitalism lacks the kind of effective regulation and rule of law that creates trust. The public health system is in disarray, mortality rates have increased, and birth rates are declining. The average Russian male dies in his early sixties, an extraordinary statistic for an advanced economy. Mid-range estimates by UN demographers suggest that Russia's population may decline from 145 million today to 121 million by mid-century. Many futures are possible, but at this point Russia appears to be in decline - a "one crop economy" with corrupt institutions and insurmountable demographic and health problems. This decline should not be exaggerated, since Russia has talented human resources and some areas like the defense industry can produce sophisticated products. Some analysts believe that with reform and modernization, Russia will be able to surmount these problems, and former President Dmitry Medvedev, who worried that Russia would stagnate in a "middle income trap," laid out plans "for Russia to modernize its economy, wean itself from a humiliating dependence on natural resources and do away with Soviet-style attitudes that he said were hindering its effort to remain a world power."4 But little has been implemented, and pervasive corruption has made modernization difficult. Under Vladimir Putin, Russia's post-imperial transformation has failed and n remains preoccupied with its place in the world and torn between its historical European and Slavophile identities. Declining powers like the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires in 1914 can prove highly disruptive in the international system. Putin's Russia lacks a strategy for long-term recovery and reacts opportunistically (and sometimes successfully in the short run) to domestic insecurity, perceived external threats, and the weakness of neighbors. Russia thus becomes a revisionist spoiler of the status quo seeking to become a catalyst for other revisionist powers which chafe at American pre-eminence. But an ideology of anti-liberalism and Russian nationalism is a poor source of soft power. Rather than having a universal appeal beyond Russia's borders, it tends to be self-limiting by creating mistrust. Thus the prospects for Russian plans for a Eurasian Union to compete with the European Union are limited. Whatever the outcome of Putin's revisionism, because of its residual nuclear strength, its oil and gas, its skills in cyber technology, its proximity to Europe, and the potential of alliance with China, Russia will have the resources to cause problems for the United States, and Putin's reliance on populist nationalism for domestic support provides an incentive. But Russia will not have the capacity to balance American power that it had during the Cold War, nor is its challenge likely to be the cause of the end of the American century. What are the prospects for a Russia-China alliance being the cause? Traditional balance of power politics might predict such a response to American primacy in power resources. And there is historical precedent: in the 1950s, China and the Soviet Union were allied against the United States. After Nixon's opening to China in 1972, the triangle worked the other way, with the United States and China cooperating to limit what both saw as a threatening Soviet power. That alliance ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1992, Russia and China declared their relations a "constructive partner- ship," in 1996 a "strategic partnership," and in July 2001 they signed a treaty of "friendship and cooperation." They have cooperated closely in the UN Security Council and taken similar positions on international control of the internet. The have used various diplomatic frameworks, such as the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, to coordinate positions, and Presidents Putin and Xi Imping have struck up a good working relationship based on common domestic illiberalism and a desire to counter American ideology and diplomacy. Despite the rhetoric, however, there are serious obstacles to an alliance between China and Russia that go a long way beyond tactical diplomatic coordination. As a rising power, China has more to gain than Russia from the status quo, including access to American trade and technology. Moreover, a residual historical mistrust persists between Russia and China. They compete for influence in Central Asia, and Russians are rankled by China's view of trade with Russia as exchanging manufactures for raw materials. The demographic situation in the Far East, where the population on the Russian side of the border is 6 million, and on the China side is up to 120 million, creates a degree of anxiety in Moscow. Russia's economic and military decline has increased its concern about the rise of Chinese power. In 2009. Russia announced a new military doctrine that explicitly reserved the right to first use of nuclear weapons (as the United States did to deter Soviet conventional superiority in Europe during the Cold War), and it continues to hold a large number of short-range tactical nuclear weapons. Many military observers believe the Russian doctrine is a response to Chinese conventional superiority in East Asia. Russia still poses a potential threat to the United States, largely because it is the one country with enough missiles and nuclear warheads to destroy the United States, and its relative decline has made it more reluctant to renounce its nuclear status. Russia also possesses enormous scale, an educated population, skilled scientists and engineers, and vast natural resources. But it seems unlikely that Russia would again possess the resources to present the same sort of balance to American power that the Soviet Union presented during the four decades after World War II or that its recovery' would precipitate the end of the American century. China Rise China won’t rise above the United States Nye 15 (Joseph S, 1-20-2015, Prof. at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Is the American Century Over, page #46-48, AA) Many analysts view China as the most likely contender to balance American power, surpass it, and end the American century. The historian Niall Ferguson has said "the 21st century will belong to China." One recent book is even entitled When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order."1 Already in the 1990s, polls showed half the American public thought China would pose the biggest challenge to US world power status in the twenty-first century.2 While most projections of Chinese power are based on the rapid growth rate of its GDP, China also has other significant power resources. Its territory is equal to that of the United States and its population is four times greater. It has the world's largest army, more than 250 nuclear weapons, and modern capabilities in space and cyber space (including the world's largest number of internet users.) In soft power resources, China still lacks cultural industries able to compete with Hollywood or Bollywood; its universities are not top ranked; and it lacks the many nongovernmental organizations that generate much of America's soft power. However, it has always had an attractive traditional culture, and it has created hundreds of Confucius Institutes around the world to promote it. Already in the 1990s, I wrote that the rapid rise of China might cause the type of conflict described by Thucydides when he attributed the Peloponnesian War to the rise in the power of Athens and the fear it created in Sparta.' The political scientist John Mearsheimer flatly asserts that China cannot rise peacefully.4 Historical analogies are also drawn to World War I, when Germany had surpassed Britain in industrial power and the Kaiser was pursuing an adventurous, globally oriented foreign policy that was bound to bring about a clash with other great powers. In contrast, China still lags far behind the United States in all three dimensions of power, and has focused its policies primarily on its region and on its economic development. While its "market Leninist" economic model provides soft power in some authoritarian countries, it has the opposite effect in many democracies/ Nonetheless, the rise of China recalls Thucydides' other warning that belief in the inevitability of conflict can become one of its main causes.* Each side, believing it will end up at war with the other, makes reasonable military preparations which then are read by the other side as confirmation of its worst fears. In this regard, a possible source of optimism is Jonathan Fenby's judgment that China "will not have the economic, political and human resources to dominate the world, even if it wished to do so."
China faces multiple barriers-birth rates, innovation, dollar hegemony, and corruption Nye 15 (Joseph S, 1-20-2015, Prof. at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Is the American Century Over, page #48-56, AA) Economic power The "rise of China" is a misnomer; recovery is more accurate. China was the world's largest economy until it was overtaken by Europe and America in the past two centuries as a result of the industrial revolution. After Deng Xiaoping'* market reforms in the early 1980s, China's high annual growth rates of 8 to 10 percent led to a remarkable tripling of its GDP in the last two decades of the twentieth century, and many believe it will soon regain its place as the world's largest economy. Nonetheless, China has a long way to go to equal the power resources of the United States, and it still faces many obstacles to its development. Currently, the American economy is about twice the size of China's at official exchange rates, but, as mentioned in Chapter 1, China will soon pass the United States if measured at purchasing power parity |PPP>. All such comparisons and projections are somewhat arbitrary because they depend on the questions one wants to answer. PPP is an estimate that economists make to compare welfare in different societies, but it is also sensitive to population size. Thus India, the tenth largest economy measured at the dollar/rupee exchange rate, comes out as the world's third largest in terms of PPP. On the other hand, comparisons in terms of current exchange rates, although they may fluctuate depending on currency values, are often more accurate in estimating power resources. The value of a given salary in terms of being able to buy a haircut or a house is best compared by using PPP. On the other hand, the cost of imported oil or parts for an advanced aircraft engine is better judged at the exchange rates that must be used to pay for them. Even if overall Chinese GDP passes that of the United States (by whatever measure), the two economies will be equivalent in size, but not equal in composition and sophistication. China still has a vast underdeveloped countryside and faces a number of challenges, including rapid urbanization. Per capita income provides a better measure of the sophistication of an economy, and even measured in PPP, China's per capita income is only 20 percent of the American level and it will take decades to catch up (if ever). Of course, total size is an important aspect of economic power. Having a large attractive market and being the largest trading partner for a large number of countries is an important source of lever- age, which China wields frequently. But that is not the same as equality. For example, although China surpassed Germany in 2009 as the world's largest trading nation in terms of volume, the Chinese are concerned that their country "has yet to develop into a truly strong trading country," because trade in services is lackluster, many exports have low added value, and China lacks "top notch brands compared with world trade powerhouses like the United States and Germany" (19 of the top 25 global brands are American).' Of transnational corporations, 46 percent of the top 500 are owned by Americans.1' In other words, Chinese trade is larger but relatively less sophisticated than that of the United States* or Germany. Another illustration comes m the monetary area. China has studied the power (including financial sanctions) that the United States derives from the role of the dollar in the world. China has tried to increase its financial power by encouraging the use of the yuan for trade finance, and it now represents percent of the global total. But the dollar still accounts for 81 percent. The role of the yuan will increase, but it is unlikely to displace the dollar until China lets international markets set exchange rates, and develops deep and sophisticated domestic capital markets and an accompanying legal structure that engenders trust. As The Economist notes, "size and sophistication do not always go together .... In the 2020s China will probably be the world's biggest economy, but not its most advanced. America's sophistication is reflected in the depth of its financial markets." China's are only one-eighth as big and foreigners are permitted to own only a tiny fraction of these.10 Technology is yet another example of differences in sophistication. China has important technological achievements, but it also has relied heavily on a strategy of copying foreign technologies more than domestic innovation. In the words of the Chinese journal South Reviews, "China boasts the title of the largest factory powerhouse in the world (and China-based patents are growing fast and exceeding those of developed countries. But most patents obtained in China are less important in the entire industrial chain.... In short. China remains weak in science and technological innovation. Chinese often complain that they produce iPhone jobs, but not Steve Jobs. The trade volume shows up in Chinese statistics, but the value added shows up in the US figures. Looking ahead, at some point China's growth will slow, as all economies do once they develop. Some economists think China's growth will slow to 5 per- cent as it downsizes wasteful political investment in the inefficient state-owned sector, and it may have trouble maintaining that level as demographic problems set in after 2020.12 But even at lower rates China could continue to grow faster than much of the world. However, linear projections of growth trends can be misleading, because countries tend to pick the low hanging fruit as they benefit from imported technologies and cheap labor in the early stages of economic take-off and growth rates generally slow as economies reach the per capita levels of income (in PPP) that China is now approaching. This so-called "middle income trap" is not an iron law (as Japan and South Korea proved), but a regularity that many countries encounter if they fail to innovate and change their growth model. President Xi Jinping is well aware of the problem, and China is trying to implement market reforms to avoid it. The Chinese economy faces serious obstacles of transition from inefficient state-owned enterprises, growing inequality, environmental degradation, massive internal migration, an inadequate social safety net, corruption, and an inadequate rule of law. The north and east of the country have out- paced the south and west. Only 10 of 31 provinces have per capita income above the national average, and underdeveloped provinces include those with higher proportions of minorities, such as Tibet and Xinjiang. Moreover, China will begin to face demographic problems from the delayed effects of the one child per couple policy it enforced in the twentieth century." Newcomers to China's labor force started to decline in 2011, and China's labor force will peak in 2016. China is aging very rapidly: by 2030 it will have more elderly dependents than children. Chinese express concern that their country is "getting old before getting rich." Reducing saving and increasing domestic consumption as China plans is an obvious but not easy answer, because an aging population may keep household savings high, and high corporate savings reflect special interests and limited competition in some sectors. And although China holds the world's largest foreign currency reserves of nearly $4 trillion, it will have difficulty in increasing its financial leverage until it has an open bond market where interest rates are set by the market and not the government. Nor does China's massive holding of dollars give it much direct bargaining power with the United States, because in an interdependent relationship power depends on asymmetries in the interdependence. China holds dollars it receives from its sales to America, but the United States keeps its market open to Chinese products and that creates growth, jobs, and stability back in China. Despite irritations and temptations. China has not dumped its dollars on world financial markets. If it were to do so, it might bring America to its knees, but at the cost of bringing itself to its ankles. China's authoritarian political system has thus far shown an impressive power conversion capability in relation to specific targets - for example, building impressive new cities and high-speed rail projects. Whether China can maintain this capability over the longer term is a mystery both to outsiders and to Chinese leaders. Unlike India, which was born with a democratic constitution, China has not yet found a way to solve the problem of demands for political participation (if not democracy) that lend to accompany rising per capita income. The ideology of communism is long gone, and the legitimacy of the ruling party depends upon economic growth and ethnic Han nationalism. Will economic change bring political change when per capita GDP approaches $10,000 (PPP, as occurred in neighboring South Korea and Taiwan? There are now more billionaires in communist'" China than any country other than the United States, and the rich are not just getting richer, but "doing so at the expense of the poorest people in the land."14 Whether China is able to develop a formula that can manage an expanding urban middle class, regional inequality, and resentment among ethnic minorities remains to be seen. The basic point is that no tine, including Chinese leaders, knows how China's political future will evolve and how that will affect its economic growth. Cyber politics presents another complication. With 600 million users, China has the largest internet population, as well as a highly developed system of governmental controls and filters. Not only arc many internet users intensely nationalistic, but minority liberal views are filtered out and dis- sent is punished. Companies self-censor and follow government orders. Nonetheless, some leakage of information is inevitable. Coping with greatly increasing flows of information at a time when restrictions can hinder economic growth presents a sharp dilemma for Chinese leaders. Though the Communist Party elite is unlikely to lose control of the population, a China that cannot control flows of migration, environmental effects on the global climate, and internal conflict would pose a different set of serious problems. Politics sometimes has a way of confounding economic protections. China’s military will not achieve parity Nye 15 (Joseph S, 1-20-2015, Prof. at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Is the American Century Over, page #56-59, AA) As long as China's economy grows, it is likely that its military expenditure will increase. China spends about 2 percent of GDP on the military (half the US level), but GDP is griming rapidly. China's official 2014 budget of $132 billion was about a quarter of the American budget, but Chinese statistics on military expenditure do not include many items that are listed in the American defense budget. The International Institute of Strategic Studies adds another $20-30 billion to the official number. After a period of low investment, from 1989 to 2009 China's official military budget increased by double digits every year, and in 2013 it rose 12 percent. Once a large technologically unsophisticated force focused on land defense against the Soviet Union, the People's Liberation Army today has evolved into a more modern force focused on countering intervention by the United States in the East Asia region. At the same time, China's 11 percent of global military expenditure is far less than the American 39 percent. At current growth rates, China's military expenditure may be half that of the United States by 2020, and it may come close to parity in mid-century, but in accumulated stocks of modern military equipment, the United States retains at least a 10:1 advantage over China without even counting American allies.1' China has not developed significant capabilities for global force projection, and while it has increased its ability to complicate American naval operations off its coast, it is only just beginning the complex process of developing a blue water navy with carrier battle groups. As China becomes increasingly dependent on Middle Eastern oil, its navy will be relevant to smooth passage through the Strait of Malacca in Southeast Asia, but the American navy will remain crucial to the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. With one refurbished Ukrainian carrier (and two more at various stages of planning), China is still decades behind America's 10 carrier battle groups with long experience in global maneuvers. China is developing two different prototypes of fifth- generation stealth fighter aircraft, but again without the global reach of the Americans. At the global level. China has a limited number of intercontinental ballistic missiles and has been making impressive efforts to develop asymmetrical conflict capabilities in space and cyberspace, but it is still not the equal of the United States in these domains. And in the conventional arena, it lacks the alliances, overseas bases, long-range logistics, and the expeditionary experience of American forces. While the United States has some 240,000 troops based in dozens of foreign countries, China has a few thousand engaged primarily in UN peacekeeping missions. Other Inev Hegemony and Unilateralism are inevitable Podliska 10 (Bradley F, 2010, DoD Analyst, MA in security Studies from Georgetown Ph.D in Political Science from Texas A&M, Acting alone: a scientific study of American hegemony and unilateral use-of-force decision making, page #27-28, AA) Even when the U.S. does work through multilateral organizations, such as NATO, American technological superiority grants its unilateral power to define operations in its national interest. For example, the U.S. military capability for the 2001 Afghanistan campaign so far exceeded NATO’s capabilities that NATO’s capabilities “proved irrelevant.” Max Boot writes about the temptation of such overwhelming strength, “Power breeds unilateralism. It is as simple as that.” The unipolarity of the international order is what explains American unilateralism. Ikenberry dismisses domestic factors, “It matters little who is president and what political party runs the government.” Sustainable/Overstretch Hegemony is economically sustainable, counterbalancing won’t happen and Multipolarity is not on the rise Podliska 10 (Bradley F, 2010, DoD Analyst, MA in security Studies from Georgetown Ph.D in Political Science from Texas A&M, Acting alone: a scientific study of American hegemony and unilateral use-of-force decision making, page #43-44, AA) Unilateralism: The Lower Cost Option Examining the international-level costs assumed to be associated with unilateralism, Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth conclude that unilateralism does not necessarily have high costs. 204 Rather, it makes sense for a president to act multilaterally based on the substance of a given issue/crisis, rather than blindly as part of a process. 205 They examine the key cost arguments of unilateralism: (1) U.S. power will be checked by the formation of a counterbalancing coalition (balance-of-power theory); (2) reduced efficiency and lost opportunities realized through institutional cooperation (institutionalism) and (3) the legitimacy of the U.S.-led international order will be undermined (constructivism). 206 For the first argument against unilateralism—U.S military power, Brooks and Wohlforth identify three causal factors that make counterbalancing against the U.S. “improbable.” 207 The first is geography. The U.S. is isolated from Eurasia, and historically, counterbalancing coalitions have occurred against centrally located land powers. The second is material capabilities. The gap between the U.S. and all other states is larger than any other gap in the history of the modern system. The U.S. is dominant militarily and economically, other leading states have been dominant militarily or economically but not both simultaneously. Moreover, the U.S. maintains its military dominance with devoting only a small proportion of its economy to national defense (about 4 percent of GDP in 2008), and the U.S. leads the way in terms of technology and shifting to new military revolution paradigms. The third factor is American primacy. Historically, counterbalancing coalitions were established to check a rising power from reaching hegemony, but the U.S. is clearly the hegemonic power. Also, potential counterbalancers seem unwilling to pay the costs to overthrow American hegemony, given the problems of coalitional collective action and free rider problems. 208 For the second argument against unilateralism—reduced efficiency gains from institutionalized cooperation, Brooks and Wohlforth believe that the costs of unilateralism may apply to economic matters but not to military matters.209 The U.S. has asymmetric bargaining power and absorbs little cost if it fails to establish multilateral cooperation. 210 Institutionalists claim a loss of reputation if the U.S. squanders its multilateral reputation, but Brooks and Wohlforth specify George Downs and Michael Jones’s 2002 rational choice model, in which states have multiple reputations with each reputation specific to an agreement or issue area. 211 So, the U.S. failure to act multilaterally in terms of the military will probably not impact its efforts to gain cooperation on an economic issue. 212 For the third argument against unilateralism—undermining legitimacy of the American-led international order, Brooks and Wohlforth argue that the fear of American policy makers creating a cognitive and social mind-set in other actors that American hegemony offers unilateral military action without legitimate authority is underspecified. 213 They argue that some unilateral actions threaten legitimacy more than others, compensating strategies may mitigate the costs of unilateralism, and unilateralism can produce legitimacy benefits. For this latter point, they cite the U.S. response to the 9/11 attacks and the U.S. pushing through new rules based on an expanded definition of self-defense as potentially leading other states to see the American action as the new standard of legitimacy. 214 HEG K2 Econ US military alliances gives it control over the economic order Brooks, Dartmouth government professor, et al., 13 [Brooks, Stephen G., Ikenberry, G. John, Wohlforth, William C., STEPHEN G. BROOKS is Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. G. JOHN IKENBERRY is Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and Global Eminence Scholar at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. WILLIAM C. WOHLFORTH is Daniel Webster Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, Foreign Affairs, “Lean Forward”, Jan/Feb2013, Vol. 92, Issue 1, Academic Search Complete, accessed 7-4-13, AA] Preoccupied with security issues, critics of the current grand strategy miss one of its most important benefits: sustaining an open global economy and a favorable place for the United States within it. To be sure, the sheer size of its output would guarantee the United States a major role in the global economy whatever grand strategy it adopted. Yet the country's military dominance undergirds its economic leadership. In addition to protecting the world economy from instability, its military commitments and naval superiority help secure the sea-lanes and other shipping corridors that allow trade to flow freely and cheaply. Were the United States to pull back from the world, the task of securing the global commons would get much harder. Washington would have less leverage with which it could convince countries to cooperate on economic matters and less access to the military bases throughout the world needed to keep the seas open. A global role also lets the United States structure the world economy in ways that serve its particular economic interests. During the Cold War, Washington used its overseas security commitments to get allies to embrace the economic policies it preferred--convincing West Germany in the 1960s, for example, to take costly steps to support the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency. U.S. defense agreements work the same way today. For example, when negotiating the 2011 free-trade agreement with South Korea, U.S. officials took advantage of Seoul's desire to use the agreement as a means of tightening its security relations with Washington. As one diplomat explained to us privately, "We asked for changes in labor and environment clauses, in auto clauses, and the Koreans took it all." Why? Because they feared a failed agreement would be "a setback to the political and security relationship." More broadly, the United States wields its security leverage to shape the overall structure of the global economy. Much of what the United States wants from the economic order is more of the same: for instance, it likes the current structure of the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund and prefers that free trade continue. Washington wins when U.S. allies favor this status quo, and one reason they are inclined to support the existing system is because they value their military alliances. Japan, to name one example, has shown interest in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Obama administration's most important free-trade initiative in the region, less because its economic interests compel it to do so than because Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda believes that his support will strengthen Japan's security ties with the United States. The United States' geopolitical dominance also helps keep the U.S. dollar in place as the world's reserve currency, which confers enormous benefits on the country, such as a greater ability to borrow money. This is perhaps clearest with Europe: the EU'S dependence on the United States for its security precludes the EU from having the kind of political leverage to support the euro that the United States has with the dollar. As with other aspects of the global economy, the United States does not provide its leadership for free: it extracts disproportionate gains. Shirking that responsibility would place those benefits at risk. Military Tech Funding Claims that US defense tech is down is wrong-DARPA reforms solve Mehta 3-26 (Aaron, 3-26-15, Defense News, “DARPA Aiming for More Agility on Future Tech”, http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/policy-budget/2015/03/26/darpa-aiming-for-more-agility- biotechnology-big-data/70453764/, Accessed 7-8-15, AA) WASHINGTON — Biotechnology, undersea systems and big data are among the areas that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has identified as key to moving America's technology forward, according to a new report released today. The agency's bi-annual "Breakthrough Technologies for National Security" report acts as an analysis of recent DARPA work and a guide for what areas the agency expects to invest in over the coming years. Timed to coincide with today's testimony on the Hill by DARPA director Arati Prabhakar, the report concludes that while the US remains a leader in many technological areas, other nations continue to close that gap. Not helping that situation is the simple truth that the US has been forced to focus on the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq over the last decade. Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Prabhakar pointed to things like the Defense Innovation Initiative, more commonly known as the "third offset," as a result of the Pentagon working to quickly take stock in a changed world. "All of those are signs of a Defense Department that is taking a fresh look at the world, realizing we need to take that fresh look again after this intense period of a very particular focus on two ground wars," she said. "I think that's a very healthy and encouraging sign." For DARPA, that new look is manifesting itself in some internal inspection on how to speed up processes to keep pace with rapid innovation around the globe, inside and outside the defense sector, said Steven Walker, deputy director for the agency. "The pace at which we can develop and field new military systems is really important for who wins the next war," Walker said. "We're focused here at DARPA on rethinking how we develop new military systems. Some of our systems today are extremely capable, the most capable in the world, but they are very complex, they're costly and they take a long time to develop and field. So at DARPA we're spending a lot of time rethinking how we might develop these systems." Overall, there are eight general topics that DARPA is attempting to rethink: dominance in the electromagnetic spectrum, improving weapons that can operate in a GPS-denied environment, maintaining air superiority in contested environments, continuing development on hypersonics, cheaper launch solutions for space assets, maritime agility, new ground vehicles and counter-terrorism technologies. While DARPA is putting pressure on itself to help make the Pentagon more responsive, Prabhakar expressed confidence the US could remain in front of near-peer nations if it continues to invest in new technology development. "I really like our chances," Prabhakar said. "US technological capability is still phenomenal. It's just that we're not alone anymore. We're not the only ones that have this huge capability."