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Commentary
On “World without Wars,” arising from the 2010 Current Strategy Forum
I have just attended the 2010 Current Strategy Forum at the Naval War College, Newport, RI. The uninhibited exchange of perspectives on the classic “war college” topic of strategy and policy continuum1 succeeded in underscoring this year’s theme of examining the emerging new world order on the balance of powers. I submit that a prospect of a new world without major wars among nations, may be at hand if the United States could succeed in smartly living up to its de facto superpower role in leading the world to higher strata.
EMERGING WORLD ORDER
Small-group “Seminars” where every attendee of the forum gets to speak out on non-attribution basis served to reveal the issues the responsible minds—of multifaceted and collectively vast experiences in the nation’s strategic operations down to tactical levels—hold as their facts of the matter.
The seminar I attended2, for example, with the uniformed Navy, Marine and Army as well as retired military and civilian members of the concerned community clearly put the fingers on the key elements and issues of the global geo-strategy today:
- the unquestionably superlative war-fighting capability and readiness of the U.S. fleet and troops,
- “wars on terror” professionally being fought but under a variable and shifting policy-vs- strategy “struggle,”3 as well as the politically and analytically challenged goals of the unanchored war policies,
- the obvious priority being placed by the world’s nations on the economic-competition advantage over the classic military victory or territorial gain,
- the growing new concern over the Chinese military buildup and associated apparent hegemony ambition in the western pacific, which immediately touches America’s allies Japan and South Korea, beyond China’s known Taiwan ‘covetousness,’
- in parallel, China’s imbedded differences with the bordering nations: India, Russia, Pakistan, North Korea, et al., which complicates U.S. and allies’ China watch but might open opportunities in diplomatic maneuvering,
- China’s highly competitive industrial and trade stands vis-à-vis the United States,
- the importance of maintaining the U.S. lead in technology in the world,
- the need for but anticipated difficulty in maintaining the existing defense capability and capacity of the U.S. in the current fiscal straits in America,
- and impacts of the domestic socio-economic issues and policies on the nation’s foreign policies and geo-strategies and execution thereof, among others.
Those “gut” issues in turn were comprehensively articulated, analyzed, evaluated and (implications) projected in the formal addresses and panel discussions of the forum by the Navy leaders (including the Secretary of the Navy, Honorable Raymond Mabus, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Gary Roughead and the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps, General James Amos) and nation’s leading strategic policy scholars.
Some characterizations by the speakers help to discern the keynotes of the new world order. For instance, Navy’s unique role of “military presence offshore”4 in the “coming global anarchy”5 may put a new light on the Navy’s basic doctrines of forward presence and show of force. With “sovereignty gaps”6 across the globe which are not amenable for diplomatic negotiation but coalition-based sanction or peacekeeping intervention, the “overmatched”7 U.S. military asset when visibly present in the international waters could be the only effective primary ‘tool’ for “conflict avoidance”8 and ultimate “prevention of war.”9 That is, if indeed “threats have no actors but environments” as Drezner of Tufts suggests and further notes that “no (major) nation has been so desperate to launch a war since 1945.”10
This leads then to the call for “global partnership”11—of as many as 102 countries as counted by the CNO. Alliance begets cooperation via “other actors falling on line.”12 “Engaging others” prevents an uneconomical and strategically and diplomatically unwise U.S. “overreach.”13 On the other hand, maintaining the United States’ “unsurpassed superpower” (Fact) and Americans’ “getting used to the hegemony”14 (Psyche) and the U.S. standing up as the “strategic leader in the world”15 (Challenge) would be considered imperative for apt “political influence”16 towards protection and assurance of the alliances (Goal).
An interesting “holistic approach”17 in studying the changing international order is suggested by Nau of George Washington: an Obama-typical “jig saw puzzle view” and (G. W.) Bush-characteristic “chess game view” and the key being “how and when to combine the two.”18 This thesis reflects the complexity of the “climate change”19 and commensurate skills required in strategic and diplomatic survival and success. This change obviously is from the Cold War’s bifurcated-superpowers arms race and respective ideological proxy wars (in Korea and Vietnam) to today’s globalized, industrial-trade competitions among “economic superpowers.” The consequential need for an “international financial architecture,”20 under a concordant concern over a possible worldwide depression and a potential recourse to protective confrontations, is being addressed by world’s economic-power nations as, at this writing, in the G-20 meeting in Toronto, June 24, 201021 to be immediately followed by major G-8 economic superpowers’ meeting.22
WORLD IN A PSEUDO PEACE
Clearly, the world is in a pseudo peace of no major sovereign nations or alliances at war at one another but with an abundance of localized but damaging conflicts affecting all the major and developing nations one way or the other. Nations are each weighing its own economic strength and correspondingly-bound defense posture relative to each and all other nations’, and pursuing the best possible industrial-and-fiscal and sovereignty-protective strategic policy. In other words, nations have learned it is better to survive, exist and prosper than to conquer.
The poison in the well, however, is the stateless conflicts—of terrorism, piracy and other insurgencies—that could, inadvertently or via a series of esoteric misjudgments, result in convoluted armed confrontations of oft consuming consequences, as evolving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another conflict potential is the rampant, attention-seeking but effectively destabilizing nuclear-“possession” threat tactics of the “rogue” states, e.g., North Korea and Iran. And yet another destabilizing source in this pseudo peace is the potentially escalating confrontation of localized sovereignty insistence and ambition and increasing sentiment of trade protection at any cost. This category includes: (a) localized disputes such as of Israeli-Palestinian territorial claims; (b) border or territorial water incursions, e.g., recent South Korean frigate sinking incident; and (c) China and other developing nations’ defense build-up, in conjunction with their obvious economic rise, that may affect the balance of powers in the Pacific and respectively other oceans and eventually the whole world.
NEW WORLD ORDER AT A CROSSROADS
That said, the “emerging new world order” may be at or put at a crossroads for an even newer order possibly towards more stable peace. The responsible nations of the world may be in search of and ready for collaboratively developing an ‘international peace-keeping architecture’ along the line of the “international financial architecture” notion.23 That would be a physically present “mechanism” beyond the existing emergency-based UN Security Council resolution process. It would be an overwhelmingly superlative and ubiquitously responding or, better yet, globally preventive defense posture of the majority of the power-base nations united, organized and committed against those destabilizing elements.
The readiness for such a united approach is evident in the respectable contributions and sacrifices of the coalition nations—some in the face of their respective domestic political oppositions—in the Iraq and Afghanistan “wars” in response to the United States’ call for global partnership. The coalition naval response (this one to a UN Security Council resolution24) to patrol the Somali piracy was another example. The 47-nation response to the U.S. invited “nuclear security” summit in Washington in April 2010, characterized “voluntary commitments” by the Washington Post,25 and the June 2010 G-20 economic meeting in Toronto underscore the readiness as well.
ROLE FOR A SUPERPOWER
A construct for such a globally united “defense” posture logically calls for a smart (i.e., policy-, strategy- and diplomacy-wise astute and agile), able (with unquestionably superlative kinetic power base) and, above all, benevolent (commanding trust and respect of all member nations) leadership. That is, if to move the world consensus beyond the ongoing series of friendship meetings and individual nation-to-nation agreements and to spearhead in organizing an action group of all the major power nations—perhaps as a standing “peace keeping” alliance, if not a “force.”
At this point in the “new world order,” only the United States stands close to filling that leader role, albeit based solely on its de facto lone superpower kinetic asset, specifically the U.S. Navy’s existing capability of global forward presence.26
The rest of the “qualifications” for that leadership—should America choose to take it on—must be earned. And it would take an extraordinary strategic and diplomatic skill and statesmanship. The intellectual base of that diplomacy has to rise above the self-anointed champion of democracy and blind advocate of quick military solutions often popular in the Washington politics. The Unites States’ own benefit in this new order scenario, however, would not be at all minimal. The expanded U.S. trades and even the world’s leading economic status need the global-access availability and international good will and cooperation accruing from this mutual defense posture. Ultimately, America must also survive this multifaceted and dynamically changing pseudo peace of the world.
By far the most important task or challenge for “America” (as a nation regarded by others whether in the utopian or inauspicious sense), the Americans (who live, work and fight wars globally) and American leaders (effecting the nation’s policies, strategies and, above all, diplomacy) is to gain the trust—no matter liked or disliked—and respect—including legitimate fear—of the rest of the world’s nations and people. “Trust cannot be surged,” as advised by the Secretary of the Navy in the War College forum; so it’s a full time and continuous task.
WORLD WITHOUT WARS
The new world order of tomorrow should be a world without wars. The best approach to it is to prevent wars from occurring. The United States’ superpower status, gained by default or not, is an opportunity to “persuade” the world to that goal.
THOMAS S. MOMIYAMA
Notes
1. Carl von Krausewitz, “War as An Instrument of Policy,” On War, Penguin Books Ltd, London, Reprint 1968, pp 401-410
2. Naval War College Current Strategy Forum [2010], Seminar 10 by CDR N. Gandy, USN, 9 June 2010
3. “Policy and strategy should constantly struggle with one another. Strategy will have to change as operations evolve” in “The Proper Use of the Military” by ADM Mike Mullen, USN, chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 22 March 2010, page 66
4. ADM Gary Roughead, USN, Chief of Naval Operations, Keynote Address NWC CSF[2010]
5. Gregg Easterbrook, author, Keynote Address NWC CSF[2010]
6. Clare Lochart, director Institute for State Effectiveness, Keynote Address NWC CSF[2010]
7. ADM Gary Roughead, USN, CNO, Keynote Address NWC CSF[2010]
8. Ambassador R. Nicholas Burns, Harvard Kennedy School, Panel 3 Relationships to Partnerships NWC CSF [2010]
9. Ibid. (“Prevention of war is the mission of the Naval War College”)
10. Daniel W. Drezner, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, Panel 3 NWC CSF [2010]
11. ADM Gary Roughead, USN, CNO, Keynote Address NWC CSF[2010], “The first agenda on looking ahead is the global partnership”
12. Daniel W. Drezner, Tufts University, Panel 3 NWC CSF[2010]
13. Ibid. (Drezner on U.S.-China “G-2” approach: “China acting like … strategically ‘stupid’”)
14. Ibid.
15. The Honorable Raymond “Ray” Mabus, Secretary of the Navy, Keynote Address NWC CSF[2010]
16. Ambassador R. Nicholas Burns, Harvard Kennedy School, Panel 3 NWC CSF[2010]
17. Nancy E. Soderberg, The Connect U.S. Fund, Panel 2 The Emerging International System NWC CSF[2010] (called for “holistic approach” to look at the new world order)
18.. Henry R. Nau, Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, Panel 2 NWC CSF[2010]
19. Ibid.
20. Nancy E. Soderberg, The Connect U.S. Fund, Panel 2 NWC CSF[2010]
21. “G-20 assembles in a stormy climate,” The Washington Post, June 25, 2010
22. “At G-8, Obama faces hard sell on recovery,” The Washington Post, June 26, 2010
23. Nancy E. Soderberg, Panel 2 NWC CSF[2010] (the “international financial architecture” notion.)
24. Lesley Anne Warner, “Pieces of Eight,” Naval War College Review, Spring 2010, page 75
25. “Voluntary Commitments,” The Washington Post, April 11, 2010. page 66
26. The U.S. Navy’s Vision for Confronting Irregular Challenges, Department of the Navy, January 20010 Washington, DC.
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