The National Interest
Summer 2001

Who's Afraid of Mr. Big?

by Josef Joffe

 

Why is there no real ganging up against the United States? Why does NATO endure, why is there no "GTO", a "Global Treaty Organization" directed against the one and only global power?

The simplest answer is because it is not necessary. The United States is a hegemon different from all its predecessors. America annoys and antagonizes, but it does not conquer. Indeed, the last time the United States actually grabbed territory was a hundred years ago, when it relieved Spain of Cuba and the Philippines. This is a critical departure from the traditional ways of the high and mighty. For the balance of power machinery to crank up, it makes a difference whether the rest of the world faces a huge, but usually placid elephant or a carnivorous tyrannosaurus rex. In the days of the Habsburgs, Bourbons and Hohenzollerns, counter-alliances formed so rapidly because expansion and war was the full-time job of kings and potentates, not to speak of Hitler and Stalin.

This is not the place to review the burgeoning literature that seeks to explain why postindustrial democracies like the United States no longer go to war for land and glory. Suffice it to say: he who does not conquer does not provoke literal counter-alliances and war. America's "hard power" inspires discomfort, not existential angst, pace Messrs. Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic and Osama bin Laden. Still, such an assessment cannot completely assure the others. For great power creates balancing incentives willy-nilly; an elephant, no matter how benign, is no pussycat.

Since America's existential sting is well concealed or well contained, strategic balancing against this hegemon falls short of the classic pattern; it is internal, illicit or implicit. Internal balancing is what the Russians and Chinese do when they try to preserve (Moscow) or expand (Beijing) their military panoplies. Illicit balancing goes by the name of international terror. It is deployed against the United States more or less privately, as by Saudi freelance bombardier bin Laden, or more or less officially, as by those Arab countries suspected of being sources of "state-sponsored terrorism." Implicit balancing is what the EU does when it fields a rapid reaction force under the umbrella of its "European security and defense policy" (ESDP). . .