The Scary New World

The Economist sounds a note of caution about Barack Obama's foreign policy. I think it's right to do so.

Obama's foreign policy basically relies on multilateralism - getting nations to work together to solve trans-national problems like terrorism, global warming, and the financial crisis. The Economist notes that this approach is a reaction to the failures of the Bush administration. But a reaction to Bush's failures is a solution to the problems of 2004, not 2008. And some, though by no means all, of our problems have changed.

What has stayed roughly the same is the terrorism problem. Al-Qaeda is still out there, Afghanistan still needs stabilizing, the Iraq war is still bleeding us dry of cash (if no longer of soldiers), and our European alliances still need repairing after the rift over Iraq. Obama has very solid approaches to solving all these problems (with the possible exception of Afghanistan).

What has changed is the international balance of power. From World War 2 through the end of the 20th century, the U.S. was big enough (in relative terms) to provide security to the world. We maintained most of the free world's nukes, most of its navy, and most of its air force. Pax Americana was expensive (remember the Reagan deficits?), but it was worth the price tag to create a peaceful world where commerce could flourish.

One single fundamental thing has changed since the 80s and 90s: China. For the first time in a century, an advanced industrial manufacturing economy has arisen to challenge U.S. economic predominance. China has 4.4 times our population, so make no mistake - their economy will be bigger than ours in the next few decades. And when that happens, it will mean that we no longer have the ability to unilaterally provide security to the world, because we just won't be able to afford being bigger than Everybody Else.

What does this mean for foreign policy? If global security isn't provided by a single hegemon, it'll have to be provided by a gang (or not at all). That means, if we want liberal democracy to continue to be the dominant political system of the Earth, we need allies. Big allies. Lots of allies. And we're going to need to remember how to play balance-of-power politics, a game that hasn't been popular since before World War 1.

Arguably, Bush's biggest foreign-policy failure was thinking we still lived in a Clinton-era world where U.S. values were taken for granted as the global standard and U.S. hegemony was widely accepted. If Obama makes the mistake of thinking we sill live in a Bush-era world, it could keep us from adequately preparing for the emerging multipolar world. Let's hope he doesn't make that mistake.