CIAO DATE: 03/2011
January 2011
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
How can the US maintain its relative primacy in an age of power-shifts and interdependence? Power-shifts generate multiple peer competitors, who first establish their predominance within their geopolitical neighbourhoods, and then selectively challenge the US for leadership of global strategic agendas. The net strategic effect is the incremental erosion of US relative primacy. By contrast, growing interdependence generates a shared realization that all states are weakened by structural and systemic threats which no one state – even the US – can manage alone. Paradoxically, with regards to US relative primacy, the net strategic effect is the same: to maintain its relative primacy, the US must take the lead in managing structural and systemic strategic challenges interdependence generates; if this management is to be effective, efficient and legitimate then power needs to be shared, “prime player” status is eroded, primacy is lost by design. Can the US escape this strategic dilemma? The Obama administration implicitly redefines the meaning of primacy for the 21st century: the US acts as primus inter pares, as the “indispensable partner” in a “multi-partner world” – “coalitional primacy” replaces primacy of the “unipolar moment”. The realization of “coalitional primacy” is predicated on two implicit assumptions holding: first, hegemonic transition will not be violent and it is not imminent; second, shared threats generate the need for collective action which translates into collective policy responses. The first assumption holds, though its strategic effect does not: the emergence of Great Power-led regional orders does change the relative nature and quality of US primacy. As yet there is little empirical evidence to support the second implicit assumption. Multiple challenges and dilemmas undercut effective, efficient and legitimate collective action.
Resource link: The Global Puzzle: Order in an Age of Primacy, Power-Shifts and Interdependence [PDF] - 255K