Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way.
Jiayuguan, Gansu Province, China, June 7th, 2014.
Salaroche


In the game of geopolitics, there are three basic choices that most countries can select from: They can lead, they can follow, or they can get out of the way. Those are the conventional interactive choices according to the existing Western international relations playbook.

But there’s an extra couple of choices of the unflattering kind that some countries might decide to select from: They can go around throwing monkey wrenches on the whole situation, or they can play the role of bullies who intimidate and abuse their neighbors. Neither of these two choices, however, looks any longer like a suitable option for any western nation.

As the situation stands today, some countries or political entities lead or try to lead the rest of the world (the US, the EU), some countries or regions follow or try to follow the leaders (Eastern Europe, South America), and some countries get or try to get out of the way (Costa Rica, Switzerland). By some very important measures, the US is still the leader of the world, although its supremacy is already being challenged by a couple of countries in a couple of ways.

The main three measures placing the US at the top of the heap are economic, military, and cultural. Economically, China is poised to soon overtake the US at the No.1 position, but militarily it still has a long way to go, even as it has the largest Army in the world. And culturally speaking there’s no chance that China might snatch the dominant position from the US any time soon (if ever).

Militarily, Russia has roughly one thousand nuclear heads more than the US, but the US has a superior air force and navy, as well as superior military technology in general. And as far as the other two measures go, Russia is today in no position to challenge the economic and cultural supremacy of the United Sates and, according to the way things are going, it probably never will.

The US, for its part, has been losing face and influence since the beginning of the century. The disastrous legacy of the G. W. Bush administration continues to impair the US ability to lead, while the US-generated 2008 financial debacle, Snowden’s squealing on the NSA’s international operations, the paralyzing ideological divide in Congress, and the manifest weakness of Obama’s foreign policy keep feeding the perceived and the real moral, ideological, and political decay plaguing America today.

Yet, despite those and other shortcomings, the US still stands essentially as a force for the betterment of the world, particularly in contrast to its main two rivals. As imperfect as it is, the US sociopolitical and economic system still generates plenty of ideas and technologies that keep it on top of the world. There are no new ideas of any relevant kind flowing out of Russia or China. Innovations keep mostly coming out of the West, and among Western nations the US is still the generator of the most advanced technologies, systems, and methods of the day.

Such facts, however, don’t preclude a good number of Americans from proposing isolationism as the best route for the country to follow. In their view, there are plenty of financial and moral reasons to support their argument, from the trillions of dollars thrown down the drain in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the loss of life suffered by US forces over there, to the need to concentrate on domestic rather than international issues, etc. But such isolationist views fail to see that, in retrenching to its home turf, that is, in abdicating to its well-earned No. 1 position, America would be left with only two lesser choices to select from: Either to follow, or to get out of the way.

But even if America decided to follow some other country’s lead, which would that leading country be? Russia? No way. China? Not in a thousand years. Europe? That might well be a possibility, if only the EU were in fact a world leader. As it is, however, Europe has trouble even administering its own internal affairs, not to mention its lack of a cohesive foreign policy and its nonexistent military force outside of NATO. So Europe is out of the question as well. Following, therefore, is not a viable option for America today, as there is nobody out there worth following.

That leaves us with the “get out of the way” option, which would merely be an alias for isolationism, which in turn would be just the equivalent of procrastination, for, if history is correct, America would eventually have to come out of its isolationist cocoon to fulfill its duty as the only Western shield against the thrust of expansionist autocratic and authoritarian regimes. As proof on this, just check out how the US has been forced to put the breaks on its present isolationist impulse to intervene in the Ukrainian situation.

The US has already gone down the isolationist route before, only to eventually be compelled to intervene in world affairs as a matter of necessity. For example, as part of the Monroe Doctrine articulated in 1823, and leaving aside the Spanish-American war of 1898, the US managed to steer clear of European quarrels for a few decades until it was forced back into the fray by circumstances beyond its control in April of 1917.

After WWI, America went back to minding its own business, refusing even to participate in the League of Nations, which was largely Woodrow Wilson’s brainchild, but such isolationism once again proved to be short-lived when Nazi Germany declared war on America on December 11, 1941, less than a week after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

At the end of WWII, as much as America would have loved to go back home and stay there, external threats once again did not allow it to do so. George Kennan’s 1946 “Long Telegram” from Moscow was the eye-opener that woke up America to the imminent danger that Soviet expansionist plans presented to the free world. As a result, the US had no option but to get involved in world affairs again, this time both openly, as in the Marshal Plan (1948), and covertly, as in proxy wars in the third world and secretive CIA operations around the globe.

With the official demise of the Soviet Union in 1992, and the end of the Cold War that such event represented, the US began growing a soft belly thinking that the days of large-scale global threats were over, but that perception was only partially true. 9/11 woke the world up to a new kind of low-intensity, small-scale, asymmetric conflicts that didn’t require large outstanding armies to deal with, so the US began reducing its military budget.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the US spent $600.4 billion in defense in 2013, thus still representing the single largest military expenditure in the world. China follows with a $112.2 billion defense budget, while Russia takes the third place with its $68.2 billion defense spending. The US still has military supremacy over the rest of the world, but that may not last much longer. American military spending fell by 7.8% in 2013, while China’s increased by 7.4% and Russia’s by 4.8%.

Russia has basically doubled its military spending since 2010 and intends to double it again over the next three years, and China expects to have doubled its defense budget by 2025. Any idea why these two countries are engaged in such military-budget race? No need to think twice: They just want to have a military strong enough to stand up to the United States, so that they may feel free to go around throwing their weight, intimidating and abusing their neighbors, thereby getting away with their expansionist designs.

And if you think the above paragraph is exaggerated or paranoid, just take a look at Russia’s recent annexation of Crimea or the Chinese oil-rig situation over Vietnam territorial waters, so that you may open your eyes to such glaring new reality. Large-scale military threats are back in the geopolitical scene, and anyone refusing to admit it needs to undergo a serious reality check.

As imperfect in every sense as the United States may be, there’s no single doubt in the mind of many of us that its leadership is absolutely necessary to preserve at least a fairly convincing resemblance of harmony and freedom in the world. This is why Obama’s recent announcement that the US will allocate $1 billion to the defense of Europe is highly welcome in many parts of the world, even as the Europeans should be pressured to foot half, or at least part, of that bill.

The world still looks up to the United States in situations like that of Crimea and no other country in the world would be capable of filling its shoes should the US abdicate to its leadership position. It may be hard for some idealists to admit that the world is not populated by innocent cherubs personifying the best-possible intentions for humanity, but some daily realities often show us that there are individuals, institutions, and political entities bent on raising havoc in the world so that out of the confusion they may come up victorious in their self-serving designs.

The triad of leading, following, or getting out of the way, therefore, doesn’t represent any option for the United States, for, even if it were possible, the world couldn’t afford to have a US that follows someone else’s lead or simply gets out of the way. As the present international situation increasingly demonstrates, either the US continues to lead, or the world will gradually get into much deeper trouble than it already is.

Salaroche