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The New Spheres of Influence

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The New Spheres of Influence COMMENTARY Graham Allison The New Spheres of Influence Sharing the Globe With Other Great Powers March/April 2020 By Graham Allison In the heady aftermath of the of influence hadn’t gone away; they States, that will require accepting Cold War, American policymakers had been collapsed into one, by the the reality that there are spheres of pronounced one of the fundamental overwhelming fact of U.S. hegemony. influence in the world today—and that concepts of geopolitics obsolete. Now, however, that hegemony is not all of them are American spheres. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice fading, and Washington has awakened THE WORLD AS IT WAS described a new world “in which great to what it calls “a new era of great-power Before making pronouncements power is defined not by spheres of competition,” with China and Russia about the new rules of geopolitics, influence . or the strong imposing increasingly using their power to assert post–Cold War U.S. secretaries of state their will on the weak.” Secretary of interests and values that often conflict should have looked back to the final State Hillary Clinton declared that with those of the United States. But months of World War II, when U.S. “the United States does not recognize American policymakers and analysts policymakers were similarly resistant spheres of influence.” Secretary of State are still struggling to come to grips with to accepting a world in which spheres John Kerry proclaimed that “the era of what this new era means for the U.S. of influence remained a central feature the Monroe Doctrine is over,” ending almost two centuries of the United States staking claim to its own sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere. Unipolarity is over, and with it Such pronouncements were right the illusion that other nations in that something about geopolitics had changed. But they were wrong about would simply take their what exactly it was. U.S. policymakers had ceased to recognize spheres of assigned place in a U.S.-led influence—the ability of other powers to international order. demand deference from other states in their own regions or exert predominant control there—not because the concept role in the world. Going forward, that of geopolitics. Competing views on the had become obsolete. Rather, the entire role will not only be different; it will issue lay at the core of a debate between world had become a de facto American also be significantly diminished. While two top Soviet experts in the U.S. sphere. Spheres of influence had given leaders will continue announcing government. way to a sphere of influence. The strong grand ambitions, diminished means On February 4, 1945, President still imposed their will on the weak; the will mean diminished results. Franklin Roosevelt met with Soviet rest of the world was compelled to play Unipolarity is over, and with it the leader Joseph Stalin and British Prime largely by American rules, or else face illusion that other nations would simply Minister Winston Churchill at Yalta. At a steep price, from crippling sanctions take their assigned place in a U.S.-led Roosevelt’s side was his translator and to outright regime change. Spheres international order. For the United principal adviser on the Soviet Union, www.belfercenter.org 2 Charles Bohlen. Just that morning, well-being and security and those of never be fought.” Bohlen had opened an urgent private the free non-Soviet world must . This bit of Cold War history should missive from his close colleague George draw [the non-Soviet world] closer serve as a reminder: a nation that is Kennan in Moscow. Kennan correctly together politically, economically, simultaneously idealistic and realistic forecast that the Soviet Union would financially, and, in the last analysis, will always struggle to reconcile attempt to maintain control of as much militarily in order to be in a position rationales and rationalizations of of Europe as it could. The question to deal effectively with the consolidated purpose, on the one hand, with realities was what the United States should do Soviet area. of power, on the other. The result, in the about that. Kennan asked, “Why could This conviction became a pillar foreign policy analyst Fareed Zakaria’s we not make a decent and definitive of the United States’ strategy for the apt summary, has been “the rhetoric compromise with it—divide Europe coming decades, and it rested on the of transformation but the reality of frankly into spheres of influence—keep acceptance of spheres of influence. accommodation.” Even at the height ourselves out of the Russian sphere and There would be areas that would be of U.S. power, accommodation meant keep the Russians out of ours?” subjected to Soviet domination, with accepting the ugly fact of a Soviet Bohlen was appalled. “Utterly often terrible consequences, but the sphere of influence. impossible,” he erupted in response. best course for the United States was to TECTONIC SHIFTS “Foreign policy of that kind cannot be bolster those powers on the periphery After nearly half a century made in a democracy.” Reflecting on of this Soviet sphere while reinforcing of competition, when the Cold this moment later, Bohlen explained: the strength and unity of its own sphere. War ended and the Soviet Union “The American people, who had fought For the four decades that followed, disappeared, in 1991, the United States a long, hard war, deserved at least an the United States and the Soviet was left economically, militarily, and attempt to work out a better world.” Union engaged in the great-power geopolitically dominant. In the first Between 1945 and 1947, Bohlen competition that we know as the Cold two decades of the post–Cold War era, worked alongside other leading figures War. In the Soviet sphere, the captive U.S. defense spending exceeded the in the Roosevelt and then the Truman nations of Eastern Europe remained defense budgets of the next ten nations administration to realize their “one under the boot of an “evil empire.” combined (five of them U.S. treaty world” vision, in which the allies who American presidents faced repeated allies). Operationally, that meant that, had fought together to defeat the Nazis crises in which they had to choose as Secretary of Defense James Mattis’s would remain allied in creating a new between sending troops into Soviet- 2018 National Defense Strategy put it, global order. But he ultimately resigned dominated nations to support freedom the United States “enjoyed uncontested himself to the world as it was—in short, fighters seeking to exercise rights that or dominant superiority in every Kennan had been right. “Instead of the American creed declares universal operating domain. We could generally unity among the great powers on the and standing by as those freedom deploy our forces when we wanted, major issues of world reconstruction— fighters were slaughtered or suppressed. assemble them where we wanted, and both political and economic—after the Without exception, U.S. presidents operate how we wanted.” The United war, there is complete disunity between chose to watch instead of intervene: States and its allies could welcome the Soviet Union and the satellites on consider Dwight Eisenhower when new members into NATO, applying to one side and the rest of the world on Hungarians rose up in 1956 and Lyndon them its Article 5 security guarantee, the other,” Bohlen acknowledged in the Johnson during the Prague Spring of without thinking about the risks, since summer of 1947 in a memo to Secretary 1968 (or, after the Cold War, George the alliance faced no real threat. In that of State George Marshall. “There are, in W. Bush when Russian troops attacked world, strategy in essence consisted short, two worlds instead of one.” Georgia in 2008 and Barack Obama of overwhelming challenges with When he finally came to share when Russian special forces seized resources. Kennan’s diagnosis, Bohlen did not Crimea). Why? Each had internalized But that was then. The tectonic shift shrink from the implications. His an unacceptable yet undeniable truth: in the balance of power that occurred memo to Marshall concluded: that, as U.S. President Ronald Reagan in the first two decades of the twenty- Faced with this disagreeable fact, once explained in a joint statement first century was as dramatic as any however much we may deplore it, the with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, shift the United States has witnessed United States in the interest of its own “a nuclear war cannot be won and must over an equivalent period in its 244 www.belfercenter.org 3 years. To paraphrase Vaclav Havel, Asian country, including U.S. allies. 18 of the last 18 Pentagon war games then the president of Czechoslovakia, (And as an aggressive practitioner involving China in the Taiwan Strait, it has happened so fast, we have not of economic statecraft, Beijing does the U.S. lost.” yet had time to be astonished. The U.S. not hesitate to use the leverage this Russia is a different matter. share of global GDP—nearly one-half provides, squeezing countries such as Whatever President Vladimir Putin in 1950—has gone from one-quarter in the Philippines and South Korea when might want, Russia will never again 1991 to one-seventh today. (Although they resist Chinese demands.) Globally, be his father’s Soviet Union. When the GDP is not everything, it does form China is also rapidly becoming a peer Soviet Union dissolved, the resulting the substructure of power in relations competitor of the United States in Russian state was left with less than among nations.) And as the United advanced technologies.
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