Driving Them Together

In his Wall Street Journal column Walter Russell Mead articulates what may be an argument counter-intuitive to some of you, that U. S. global power has increased over the last few years:

The circus atmosphere of the Trump presidency sometimes obscures this, but the past few years have witnessed a marked increase in American power. Washington’s reach is expanding, its ability to enforce its will on others has grown, and it has become more willing and able to use its power disruptively. Moreover, as recent protests in Moscow and Hong Kong demonstrate, liberal ideas still have the power to challenge the world’s autocrats. Russia and China have decided to work together more closely in large part because both countries are more worried about the U.S.

Intelligent people disagree about the wisdom of the Trump administration’s Iran policy, and success is far from certain—but as a demonstration of American power, the economic isolation of a major oil producer in the teeth of stiff European, Chinese and Russian opposition is an extraordinary spectacle. To Russia—another major oil producer dependent on trade with the West that has felt the bite of American sanctions—it is terrifying.

Three factors contribute to this surge in American power. First, the success of fracking and related technologies together with the increased use of renewable energy in the West makes world energy markets more resilient. Oil prices are stable and relatively low even though Iran and Venezuela have essentially been forced out of the market.

Second, the growing sophistication of information technology means that U.S. authorities can track complex transactions and enforce secondary sanctions to an unprecedented degree. European governments have been shocked to discover that they cannot protect national companies wishing to do business with Iran from American law. Moscow and Beijing cannot help but notice that these tools could one day be turned against them.

The third factor is Mr. Trump. By using trade and tariffs as weapons in unrelated negotiations, the president has increased America’s clout. European efforts to resist U.S. sanctions on Iran, for example, must be carried out in the shadow cast by Mr. Trump’s threats to impose massive tariffs on key European products on vaguely defined “national security” grounds.

I don’t think I would phrase it in quite that way. I think I would say that over the last 25 years the U. S. has shown an increasing predisposition to use more of the power it has. I am unsure as to whether U. S. power is actually increasing, decreasing, or remaining the same. I’m not even sure how one would go about measuring that.

What I agree with is that our predisposition to use our power has driven Russia and China into a sort of marriage of convenience. Our actions in Libya was an important turning point that in that. We assisted in the overthrow of the government of another country when it was not particularly in our interest to do so and contrary to UN Security Council resolutions.

I also think that marriage of convenience will sooner rather than later end in an quickie divorce. Russia and China are inevitable geopolitical competitors not congenial companions with common interests other than countering the United States.