The Gift of American Power

Only occasionally does someone write something that causes me to smile broadly and do a little fist-pump.  Robert Kaplan's piece yesterday in Real Clear World was just such an occasion.  Coming as it did on the same day as Usha Sahay's piece at War on the Rocks entitled "No, America is Not in Retreat" made for two interesting and somewhat orthogonal views.  Kaplan stakes his claim here:  

"But what about all those new global and regional institutions and organizations, to say nothing about the growth and opportunity that has come from financial markets? Aren't they the other, more positive half of reality? They are. But then the question arises: Why have they been able to come into being in the first place? What ultimately undergirds them? The answer is one that many members of the global political and financial aristocracy do not want to hear: raw American power."

And then speaks clearly to the nature of that power here:

"It is the various U.S. Navy fleets and numbered air forces that are the ultimate guarantor of stability in the key theaters of the globe...The U.S. Navy calls itself a global force for good. That claim would pass the most stringent editorial fact-checking process. Without that very naked American ambition, which allows the Navy and the Air Force to patrol the global commons, the world is reduced to the sum of its parts: a Japan and China, and a China and India, dangerously at odds and on the brink of war; a Middle East in far wider war and chaos; a Europe neutralized and emasculated by Russian Revanchism; and an Africa in even greater disarray."

Contrast this with Sahay's piece:

"It’s certainly true that America is changing its role on the world stage. But that’s not the same as retreating from that stage altogether. In fact, the opposite is true: by many measures, the Obama administration has increased American engagement with the world. What has changed is not the amount of engagement, but its nature. Obama has sought to re-orient our foreign policy away from a military-first approach, and toward a more comprehensive approach that leans more on diplomatic and economic tools."

And:

"Critics who believe that Obama has pulled back from the world stage are confusing quantitative changes in the nature of U.S. engagement with a qualitative decline in that engagement."

Read both articles.  For Kaplan, it is hard power that ultimately backs up diplomatic engagement.  For Sahay-who not once, but twice, refers to pre-Obama foreign policy is terms of "militarism", engagement is self-perpetuating.  

Bryan McGrath