Think tank: If the United States does not die, no one will shake the hegemony of the United States

Foreign Policy, May 1, 2024, Anatole Levin

The U.S. security elite is obsessed with the threat posed by China and Russia to U.S. global primacy. This is a serious strategic miscalculation. The U.S. has a strong global network of allies and bases, while China and Russia have almost none, and the U.S. has an unrivaled blue-water navy and the only truly global currency, meaning that no other country can challenge Washington on the world stage.

In fact, there is no actual evidence that they wish to do so. A non-nuclear strike on NATO is far beyond Russia's capabilities, and Russia has been trying to woo Germany and France before a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia has no interest in inciting the United States into a naval blockade of it, which would undermine Russia's energy exports, and China has no interest in undermining the global trade and financial system on which it depends for most of its trade. As long as America's allies or alliance systems are limited to self-defense, they are not threatened by competitors. Washington firmly controls the economic powers of the seas of Western Europe and East Asia, as well as its own hemisphere.

All other things being equal, the global hegemony of the United States will be consolidated for a long time to come. The problem is that all other conditions are not equal.

Since the end of the Cold War, too many American strategists have forgotten one basic rule of geopolitics and warfare: all real forces, in the final analysis, are local and relative. That is to say, it is the force, money or influence that a country is able and willing to use on a particular issue or in a particular place compared to the force, money or influence that an adversary country can use. Therefore, the situation is real for the whole world, however, it may be completely untrue for eastern Ukraine or the South China Sea.

The U.S. experience with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan exemplify this truth. No one will seriously consider Iran to be a real adversary of the United States on the world stage, let alone Pakistan. However, Tehran and Islamabad proved themselves strong in Iraq and Afghanistan, respectively.

Of course, there are local historical, cultural, and religious factors to this, but more importantly, unlike Washington, Tehran and Islamabad were, are, and will continue to be neighbors of both countries. Therefore, they have the distance, the ability, the willingness, and the patience to exert greater power and take greater risks than the United States.

As US President Barack Obama pointed out in 2016, the same is true of Ukraine. Ukraine is where Russia's core interests lie, but not for the United States. Recently, it was reported that the Biden administration has urged Ukraine to stop attacks on Russian oil refineries, which are key to Russia's war in Ukraine. The reason is that the Biden administration is concerned that these attacks could push up U.S. gasoline prices and prevent U.S. President Joe Biden from being re-elected in November. At the same time, Russia reconfigured its economy for the war and cost tens of thousands of soldiers' lives to dominate Ukraine.

However, the United States finds itself challenging Russia, China, and Iran on a territory in which they have a huge and growing advantage. Washington is repeating a typical military mistake: risking the loss of the main position, throwing resources into the defense of outposts that could not be defended in the end, in the process, at the risk of both exhaustion and multiple local defeats in detail, which ultimately led to a complete defeat.

The issue at hand is the war in Ukraine. Washington's proposal to join NATO a country that the U.S. government never intended to defend at war has made Ukraine likely to face catastrophe and a great humiliation for the United States and NATO. High-tech weapons of the United States are very important for the defense of Ukraine, however, the industry of the United States and the European Union has been very unsuccessful in supplying Ukraine with essential ammunition in sufficient quantities. Of course, Western countries will not be able to provide Ukraine with new soldiers to strengthen its severely depleted forces, unless they personally enter the war, risking nuclear annihilation, to fight for places that until recently no one in the West considered critical. On the other hand, Russia was able to defeat the country in eastern Ukraine, which, of course, cost Russia huge casualties and equipment. None of this means that Russia has the ability or willingness to launch a direct attack on NATO.

Therefore, the wise strategic course of the United States is to seek a compromise peace, similar to the Austrian State Treaty negotiated with the Soviet Union in 1955. According to the treaty, the vast majority of Ukraine remains independent but neutral, and the issue of the territories occupied by Russia will be postponed until a negotiated settlement in the future. In fact, Washington has done this for the past 40 years with regard to Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus. Such an agreement should not be seen as a defeat for the United States, but as a tactical retreat from an indefensible salient to a prepared position. This should be combined with actions in Europe to rearmament and strengthen the defense of existing NATO member states (especially the Baltic states) bordering Russia.

China represents the greatest local risk and the most complex local problem: the biggest risk is that China can cause a partial defeat for the United States and thus ruin America's status as a superpower, and the most complex problem is because China considers Taiwan to be part of its sovereign territory. Although, unlike in the case of NATO allies, the United States has no treaty obligation to defend Taiwan, it does have a moral commitment to work to save Taiwan from simple Chinese subjugation.

The United States is also obliged to work to prevent the simple subjugation of all of Ukraine by Russia, however, this does not mean that the United States is obliged to accept Ukraine into NATO, nor does it mean that the United States is obliged to protect all Ukrainian territory within the borders of the USSR.

Taiwan is also the stark contrast between U.S. global naval power and the weakening of its neighbors in China and perhaps Iran. With three aircraft carriers in the world's oceans, China has 11 aircraft carriers compared to 11 in the United States, plus two each from Britain, Japan and India, and China has no significant global allies or major naval bases to challenge the United States seriously beyond its own coastal waters. In such a situation, it is simply impossible for China to invade Australia, Guam or Japan.

And in these waters, the situation is completely different, and the lessons of Russia in the war in Ukraine can be described as quite unfavorable for the US Navy's chances of participating in the war in the Taiwan Strait. The Ukrainian Navy is insignificant compared to the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and before the war, it was widely believed that Russia would dominate the Black Sea and would not be seriously challenged. However, with ground-based missiles and swarms of air-sea drones, the Ukrainians largely wiped out the Russian fleet and drove it away from the port base of Sevastopol in Crimea. Yemen's Houthi rebels were able to wreak havoc on Red Sea trade with only a very limited number of airborne drones.

The Chinese industry can produce an almost unlimited number of cheap UAVs, and expensive American anti-aircraft missiles simply cannot shoot them down. Ukraine's MaguraV5 drone costs just $273,000 and has a range of about 500 miles, which can fly long distances autonomously, requiring only human manipulation when approaching the target. China is developing faster and more powerful drones and unmanned submarines. If they can disable enough U.S. escort ships, U.S. aircraft carriers will be vulnerable to Chinese missiles.

This does not mean that China can succeed in taking Taiwan, as China's amphibious forces themselves are extremely vulnerable to Taiwanese and American drones. But it does mean that China is likely to be able to impose a blockade on Taiwan in the future, which Washington will not be able to break without suffering catastrophic losses. The losses suffered by the United States, in turn, will damage America's global standing. It is also unlikely that the United States will win the war over the islands in the South China Sea occupied by China.

On the other hand, if this happens, Washington can and will block almost all of China's maritime trade, including energy supplies from the Persian Gulf. Otherwise, the Chinese Navy simply would not have been able to successfully acquire these supplies. China's Belt and Road Initiative and energy deals with Russia and Central Asian countries aim to reduce this threat, but they will not do so completely or anytime soon.

In this case, the United States is most motivated to do everything in its power to keep the Taiwan and South China Sea issues calm. Taiwan should not be ceded to Taiwan, but it should repeatedly and publicly assure China that the United States adheres to the "one-China" policy. Every effort should be made to avoid any provocative statements or actions by the United States that would call into question this policy.

China's sovereignty over the South China Sea should not be recognized, but it should not be challenged, just as the United States does not recognize, but does not challenge, India's sovereignty over much of Kashmir. Washington can also show goodwill and a desire for reasonable compromise on the island dispute between China and the Philippines by proposing solutions such as joint sovereignty between China and the Philippines.

A limited, orderly withdrawal is neither cowardly nor humiliating. Every great strategist does this when necessary. On the contrary, having the moral courage to do so is precisely one of the qualities of a true statesman, especially when America's goal of maintaining its global primacy is not a problem at all.