THE CASE FOR HEGEMONY
By Robert T. McLean
American Thinker, AZ
May 10 2007
On April 30th, the State Department released a report noting a 25%
increase in terrorist attacks around the world in 2006, ostensibly
signaling the emergence of a period of unparalleled danger. Indeed,
the end of the Cold War did not usher in an era of universal peace,
but rather unleashed both rogue regimes and non-state actors to
pursue ambitious and destabilizing goals. Today global hostilities
are covered with unprecedented scrutiny magnifying their destruction
and expanding the perception that the world has become concurrently
more perilous and exceedingly unpredictable. This has unleashed a
nostalgic desire for the simplicity of the past that has now expanded
to virtually every corner of the globe.
The bipolar international structure of the Cold War is often warmly
remembered as a time when the balance of power – aided by the commonly
understood inevitability of mutual assured destruction – ensured
a relatively peaceful world where a war between the superpowers was
largely unfeasible. By contrast, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the
threats of international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons
of mass destruction, and the instability of the greater Middle East
draw many to the deduction that perhaps a multipolar world where no
single power maintains hegemony is the preferable path towards a more
stable and peaceful future.
Such judgments have justified, if not formed the basis for, the current
strategies of Russia and China to balance the power of the United
States. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently derided Washington’s
attempts to create a unipolar world while speaking at the Munich
Conference on Security Policy in February, as he explained that such
actions have led to an increasing number of global conflicts. Defense
Minister Sergey Ivanov clarified Putin’s remarks to Itar-Tass,
Russia’s main government news agency, when he noted the following:
"We say that a unipolar world does not lead to anything good, there
are many times more conflicts now than at the time of the Cold War."
To be sure, this line of thinking is neither new nor confined to those
outside the United States apprehensive of the unquestioned primacy
of a single foreign power. Writing in the Atlantic Monthly in August
1990, University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer wrote an essay
self-explanatorily titled "Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War." The
central supposition was simple: with the loss of order provided by
the structural compositions of the Cold War, a Hobbesian anarchy was
destined to shape the future of international relations. Of course
Mearsheimer was not alone in his views. He has been joined by not
only a growing number of "realists" weary of the costs associated
with hegemony, but also a different sort of critic represented by the
increasing number of anti-American leftists in the United States who
are inherently suspicious of American power.
With the growing level of agreement that the United States should
abandon its role as world’s lone superpower, some questions must be
asked. May Mearsheimer and his radical leftist counterparts have been
right? Is the Kremlin accurate in its assessment they we have indeed
reached a time of unprecedented conflict and global disorder?
A rather simple exploration of history illustrates that, on the
contrary to those who disparage the preservation of American hegemony,
the world has indeed become significantly more peaceful since the
end of the Cold War.
According to data compiled by the University of Maryland, an average
of 52.5 wars occurred per decade of the Cold War through 1984. As a
result of those conflicts, an average of nearly 4.6 million people died
per decade. This is hardly peaceful. By contrast, the Uppsala Conflict
Data Program in Sweden found that state-based conflicts decreased by
approximately 40% from 1992 to 2005. Battle deaths since 1990 make up
only a small fraction of those incurred through any decade during the
Cold War, and the frequency of attempted military coups has dropped
significantly; an average of 12.8 occurred per year between 1962
and 1991, while just 5.9 were attempted per year from 1992 through
2006. From 1989 to 2005 the number of genocides decreased by 90%.
A common misperception of the post-Cold War era maintains that while
conventional battles between states have decreased, globalization
and the deterioration of stability have put civilian lives at risk
as the barriers between combatant and civilian have broken down from
the growing number terror attacks and civil conflicts. However, as
the authors of the University of British Columbia’s Human Security
Brief 2006 noted in their latest annual report: "notwithstanding
the increase in terrorist attacks, the number of civilian victims of
intentional organized violence remains appreciably lower today than it
was during the Cold War years." Thus, all of the leading indicators –
number of wars, battle deaths, civilian lives lost – point to a more
peaceful and stable world under American primacy.
If the confrontation of the Cold War is not a correct paradigm for a
peaceful future, perhaps one resembling that of the Concert of Powers
and the long held mutual goal of a balance of power that prevailed in
Europe between 1815 and 1914 would provide a greater blueprint for the
21st century. Such a restructuring of the world order has been called
for from analysts and commentators as diverse as Henry Kissinger and
Noam Chomsky. But was the world after the fall of Napoleon until the
outbreak of World War I really as peaceful as some of the advocates
of balance of power would lead you to believe?
While a continent-spanning great power conflict was avoided until the
outbreak of the First World War, the peace established at the Congress
of Vienna in 1815 did not last long. By 1829, the Russo-Turkish
War had concluded leaving more than 130,000 dead. This was not the
last time these two powers would go to war as an approximate 200,000
died in further hostilities in 1877 and 1878. In the meantime, the
Russians faced the Polish Insurrection between 1830 and 1831 – they
had been granted control of much of Poland at the Congress of Vienna
– leaving at least 20,000 dead, while the First Carlist War in Spain
ended only after more than 30,000 lost their lives. The Crimean War of
1854 to1856 resulted in approximately 300,000 deaths; the Seven Weeks
War in 1866 killed 35,000; and by the time the Franco-Prussian War
concluded in 1871 more than 200,000 had lost their lives. Additional
competition between the European powers for empire and the influence
and resources that go along with it was also not without incident.
In fact, it was largely the example of the tumultuous environment
of 19th century Europe that molded America’s earliest perceptions
of a proper security environment. What was essentially conceived
by George Washington and was later refined by John Quincy Adams,
American leaders have long sought to avoid entangling the nation in
any sort of foreign policy based on balance of power. Expressing his
deep seated reluctance for any type of balance of power in the Western
Hemisphere, Adams noted in 1811 that were the United States not to
emerge as the hegemon of the Americas, "we shall have an endless
multitude of little insignificant clans and tribe at eternal war
with one another for a rock or a fish pond, the sport and fable of
European masters and oppressors." Multipolarity, in the absence of
a global congruence of interests and widespread cooperation, will
inevitably lead to such a situation the world over.
Critics of American efforts to maintain its primacy often point
to the economic, political, and military costs associated with
such ambition. These concerns are not without merit, but they
also overlook the costs incurred when a peer competitor arises as
was the case throughout much of the Cold War. The average annual
percentage of GDP spent on defense during the Cold War was roughly
7% compared to less than 4% since 1991. Thus, the so-called "peace
dividend" would be more appropriately labeled the "primacy dividend"
as the United States was not at war at until the collapse of the
Soviet Union, but rather was in a costly struggle to outlast a peer
competitor. Additional criticisms about the costs in American lives
are also unfounded. During the Cold War an average of about 18,000
American military personnel died as a result of hostile action per
decade. Even if we count the civilian lives lost on 9/11, that number
has decreased a staggering 83% since 1990. Finally, the questions of
the political consequences incurred as a result of hegemony are, at
the minimum, significantly exaggerated. It was the not so not-aligned
Non-Aligned Movement that emerged out of the Cold War, and even "Old
Europe" is returning to the acknowledgement that there is a pervasive
parallel in values and interests with the United States.
Indeed, any future deterioration of American hegemony would be
accompanied by catastrophic consequences. History reveals that tragic
violence inevitably follows newly created power vacuums. The decline
of the Ottoman Empire brought on a massacre of the Armenians, and
the end of British rule in India resulted in massive devastation in
South Asia. As was persuasively illustrated in Niall Ferguson’s War
of the World, the weakening and contraction of Western empires were
indispensable contributors to the unprecedented bloodshed of the 20th
century. Make no mistake, history will repeat itself – beginning in
Iraq – should the United States loose its nerve and retract from its
responsibilities as the world’s lone superpower.
While it has become fashionable to proclaim that the 21st Century
will emerge as the "Asian Century," the United States – and its many
allies – should do everything in their powers to insure that we are
indeed at the dawn of a new American century.
Robert T. McLean is a Research Associate at the Center for Security
Policy in Washington, D.C.