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Shifting Strategy: Offshore Balancing As the Way to American Security

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Shifting Strategy: Offshore Balancing As the Way to American Security Shifting Strategy: Offshore Balancing as the Way to American Security Jared Bulla IAFF 1005(33): Intro to International Affairs April 7, 2017 Bulla 1 During the transition to the new administration, there has been increasing debate about what America’s Grand Strategy in the World should be. President Trump has often advocated in favor of positions that would be a radical shift in American foreign policy in the last seventy years. His comments spark conversation about what America’s role in the larger world community should be. Should we continue to lean into our role as global hegemon and defender of the world order, or should we take a more restrained positon thorough offshore balancing? As many new actors have entered the World Stage since the end of the Cold War, skepticism has grown over how effective the current strategy of American hegemony in the global order really is. Offshore balancing is built on the idea that the United States should take less of a hegemonic role and re-evaluate its position in global affairs. Proponents argue that the country should focus on maintaining order and stability in three regions that are vital to American interests: Europe, Northeast Asia, and the Persian Gulf. To achieve this stability, the United States should work through regional allies to maintain security instead of providing for the security itself. I will address both sides of this argument utilizing relevant and current scholarship before I recommend policy actions that the new administration should take to put America on the Grand Strategy path of offshore balancing that will allow the nation to remain a secure and prosperous superpower for generations to come. Following the end of the Cold War, the United States remained the only power with the ability to project significant force around the globe in almost any region. The economic system and ideology of the United States had prevailed as the new global order. After the incursion into Kuwait, the United States “was the ‘indispensable nation,’ as Bill Clinton would proclaim— Bulla 2 indispensable, that is, to the preservation of a liberal world order.”1 This military intervention saw swift victory for the United States and its allies, which led to an inflated sense of ability in easily upholding the international order that the US now defended. From that time on the United States has intervened to promote and defend the American hegemonic order in all corners of the globe. This intervention evokes an image of the United States as an Atlas holding up the liberal order of the world alone.2 During the 1990s there was no nation with the power or economy to challenge the United States in any region. Consequently, the policy of hegemony and intervention was effective in dealing with threats to the international system. But this short time period, dubbed the unipolar moment, has come to pass in the 21st Century as a growing China and a resurgent Russia have increased their ability to project power globally, while the United States has been bogged down diplomatically and militarily in a string of international missteps. Having this historical context in mind, I will now turn to why the United States should take an offshore balancing approach to accommodate this new and still evolving international environment. Offshore Balancing: Readjusting America’s Global Role The United States has been extremely blessed by geography in terms of security and political interactions with the rest of the world. Our secure location between two oceans, a desert, and an arctic forest means that any invasion with conventional forces would be destined to collapse from the logistical nightmare of supplying armies across any of these approaches.3 This security affords the US the opportunity to maintain a relatively small military to defend the heartland of the nation, which is the area of highest national interest. While this is not the only area of national 1 Robert Kagan, “Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire,” May 26, 2014, https://newrepublic.com/article/117859/superpowers-dont-get-retire. 2 Ibid. 3 Tim Marshall, Prisoners of Geography: 10 Maps that Explain Everything About the World (New York: Scribner, 2015), 66. Bulla 3 interest to offshore balancers, we need to recognize that this is the core security interest for the country. Alternatively, the current grand strategy is built “on the assumption that every nook and cranny of the globe is of great strategic significance and that there are threats to U.S. interests everywhere.”4 This approach may offer a sense of pride in considering America as the pre-eminent authority on all international political matters, but in reality this is not a responsible conclusion to the question of where America’s vital interests lie. Offshore balancing is politically responsible because it rests on the fact that America has three regions of national interest outside of the Western Hemisphere: Europe, Northeast Asia, and the Persian Gulf. The US should focus on politically engaging and empowering its allies to maintain balance in these regions by checking rising powers, only stepping in if allies cannot achieve this balance.5 This allows US allies the ability to act as regional leaders under the watchful eye of the United States. In addition, the United States would be viewed as less intrusive in potential rivals’ political interests, which reduces the perceived security threat of the US in the eyes of these rivals. Just as in physics, every action creates an equal but opposite reaction, “left unbalanced, hegemonic power threatens the security of the other major states in the international system.”6 There is greater likelihood for stability when states feel secure, and if the US adopts a more reserved strategy, it could halt the trend of being viewed as a threat to regional rising powers, in turn making them feel more secure. Offshore balancing would reassure these powers of our friendly intentions, while giving our allies the opportunity to lead in their neighborhoods as defenders of the international order in their own right. 4 John J. Mearsheimer, “America Unhinged,” The National Interest 129 (2014): 9. 5 John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, “The Case for Offshore Balancing: A Superior U.S. Grand Strategy,” Foreign Affairs 95 (2016): 71. 6 Christopher Layne, “Offshore Balancing Revisited,” The Washington Quarterly 25 (2002): 248. Bulla 4 The liberal hegemonic order is also not a cheap affair, costing the US many billions of dollars in defense spending. Since 2001, the US has spent $4-6 trillion on several conflicts that it has gotten itself into contributing heavily to the US national debt.7 These economic costs are also opportunity costs that could have been spent elsewhere in the United States improving our domestic situation. If the US had achieved strategic goals or secured some kind of victory in these recent wars, the costs could be partially overlooked. But “if you look at America’s performance over the past twelve years in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Libya and Syria, it is batting 0 for 5.”8 Effectively throwing away trillions of dollars attempting to uphold some strategy that is built on an outdated worldview in the midst of recession and increasing domestic costs is inexcusable. Looking at the Middle East today, where much of this money has been spent, you would conclude that it is more unstable than it was before the US got involved. State and non- governmental actors have clashed in the wake of regime collapses from Iraq to Libya. The average American is capable of seeing these costs, as “an April 2016 Pew poll found that 57 percent of Americans agree that the United States should ‘deal with its own problems and let others deal with theirs the best they can.’”9 This is a clear mandate to roll back our involvement in foreign conflicts and to focus on the domestic issues we swept aside in order to pay for our military incursions. Additional costs are the human lives that have been lost in combat and post combat related incidents, including “that the suicide rate in the U.S. military increased by 80 percent from 2002 to 2009.”10 The government is failing to help combat veterans with issues such as physical and mental healthcare upon their return, while it instead continues to spend more on defense. An offshore strategy would eliminate the need for increased defense 7 Mearsheimer, “Unhinged,” 23. 8 Ibid., 22. 9 Mearsheimer and Walt, “Case for Offshore Balancing,” 70. 10 Mearsheimer, “Unhinged,” 24. Bulla 5 spending because America would be taking a less intrusive role in global conflict. Spending less on defense would also encourage our allies to boost their own defense spending instead of blindly free riding off of US spending. They would realize that they have to step up to the plate in defending the economic order, instead of completely outsourcing that role to the United States. In turn, our allies would be more effective at helping deter any local aggression by flexing their own military muscle. American soft power in international affairs has been one of its strongest assets in the past, and the present time is no different. The draw of democracy, classical liberalism, and liberty remains a major asset in helping fight authoritarian regimes abroad. America has wasted many of the benefits of this asset by overexerting its military presence. Unsurprisingly, many “foreign peoples react with hostility to outsiders trying to control their lives.”11 This kind of involvement relies far too heavily on military power when the power of ideas would be far less expensive and also give people the same sense of self determination that Americans demanded in the Revolutionary War.
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