thecomingandgoingoftheunipolarworld

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2007 The Australian National University

The Coming and Going of the Unipolar World

Coral Bell*

Paper presented at the Australian Defence College,Weston Creek , Canberra

16 April 2007

The unipolar world; that is the world of unchallenged US paramountcy in the society ofstates, was with us only rather brieflyfor approximately 10 years, from January 1992 untilSeptember 2001. The first of those dates, the beginning of unipolarity, marks the dissolutionof the old Soviet Union at the end of December 1991, and the emergence of a much weaker

Russia, and 14 other sovereignties, from its ruins. The second date, obviously, marks thetraumatic challenge, by a non-state actor, not only to US power, but to the entire globalstructure of which it was the paramount power. That traumatic challenge came not only froma non-state actor, but from a newly-potent force in the Islamic, the non-Western, worlda jihadist movement headed by a stateless (originally Saudi) millionaire, Osama bin Laden,under the protection of a group of Islamic militants in Afghanistan.

The brevity of those 10 years of unipolarity would not have come as a surprise to the USjournalist who first gave the term its currency. He called his article The Unipolar Moment,and moment is an appropriate term for 10 years in history. But neither he nor anyone elsecould have anticipated the way in which that moment would end. The journalist concernedwas a neo-conservative, and there were others among that ideological group who believedunipolarity could be made to last much longer, maybe even forever, by Washingtonsdiscouraging other sovereign states from attaining any real equality of power (especiallymilitary power) with the United States.

For the first eight months of 2001, before 11 September 2001, that aspiration had lookedalmost possible. China was, and still is, a long way from being able to even consider amilitary challenge. Russia, though still in possession of a vast nuclear strike-capacity, wasthen in such a state of internal malaise that it seemed likely to take decades to recover. TheEuropean Union and Japan, though both economically powerful, had no reason to try tomatch the United States militarily. Both had lived comfortably enough under the US nuclearumbrella, which saved them a lot of defence costs.

So, no challenge from a rival great power to US paramountcy.

Dr Coral Bell was formerly Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex (UK), and earlier amember of the Australian Diplomatic Service. She was awarded an Order of Australia (AO) in 2005. Dr Bell'sresearch interests are mainly in crisis management and the interaction of strategic, economic and diplomaticfactors in international politics, especially as they affect US and Australian foreign policies. Her latest book entitledA World Out of Balance: American Power and International Politics in the Twenty-First Centurywas co-publishedby The Diplomatmagazine and Sydney-based Longueville Books, and her monograph Living with Giants(a studyof Australian policy in a changing world power-balance) was published as a Strategy paper by the AustralianStrategic Policy Institute (ASPI) in April 2005. She also authored a chapter entitled 'The International System andChanging Strategic Norms' in Ball and Ayson (eds), Strategy and Security in the Asia-Pacific, Allen & Unwin,

Melbourne, 2006.

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The intelligence services of the Western powers knew quite a lot about bin Laden and the jihadists. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) indeed had supported him with weaponryafter 1979, because of his role in the resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Theyhad been conscious, moreover, ever since the attack on the Marine barracks in Lebanon in1983, that the US presence in Muslim lands was a source of Islamist rage and resentment.There had been an attempt to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, and an attack on theUSS Cole in Aden Harbour, Yemen in 2000. But very few people, even in the CIA, thenbelieved that the jihadists capabilities could ever match their ambitions. So they did not, aswas said after 11 September 2001, connect the dots.

Thus the foundations of the unipolar world seemed, to many people at that time, strongenough to sustain it for a few decades. The rise and rise of US paramountcy had then beengoing on for more than a century, from the time of the war with Spain in 1898, and in allthose 100-plus years, was hardly met with a check. Early in the 20th century, the UnitedStates overtook Britain in naval power, and after 1945 it was very much the dominanteconomic power in the world, only rivalled by the European Union until the rise and rise ofChina and India very late in the century. And its diplomatic clout of course reflected its

economic and military ascendancy. So, in 2000, one could say that the unipolar world restedon three apparently very sturdy pillars: US unequalled military capacity, its long-sustainedeconomic ascendancy (then also unrivalled), and its worldwide diplomatic clout.

The story of the years since is the story of how those three pillars have become erodedrapidly, especially over the last four years. I will talk about the demographic and economicchanges later, but the most surprising aspect of the change was to me on the military side,and I know that must be of most professional interest to you, so let us look at it first.

In retrospect, high noon for US military ascendancy was clearly at the time of the KosovoCampaign of 1999. The Europeans (who had originally claimed that they were the naturalcrisis-managers for the long-running Balkan crisis) were obliged to acknowledge their

continuing dependence on US power by needing to call in the United States Air Force(USAF) to induce Serbia to take its troops out of Kosovo, a small province of only about2 million people, which should have been quite manageable by the Europeans themselves.The USAF bombing in Serbia forced Slobodan Milosevic to the conference table in about8 weeks, without a single casualty among its air-crew, even though Serbia had considerableair-defences. American capacity looked invincible, and the Europeans ridiculously weak. Thiswas particularly the case for the Russians. Serbia had been their old ally, and a fellow-SlavOrthodox protectorate from earlier centuries. The policymakers in the Kremlin did make a bidof sorts for influence on the outcome, but it came to nothing much. China too was beginningits rise to diplomatic influence as well as economic stardom, but was not then expected tohave much influence outside East Asia.

The Gulf War of 1991 had already created on impression in the world that victory in hostilitieswould inevitably go swiftly and almost without cost to US power, especially for the USAF, andKosovo seemed to confirm it. So as I implied earlier, as the new century opened, Americanparamountcy in a unipolar world looked to many people as if it might last forever. A fewpolicymakers, mostly in the Pentagon rather than the State Department or the CIA, felt that itcould and should be made to do so. You can see a hint of that in the National SecurityStrategy of the United States of America (http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html) ofSeptember 2002.


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The Coming and Going of the Unipolar World Coral Bell


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Those of you who are interested in US military doctrine, and I guess that is most of you,might like to consider the probability that those previous 10 years, 19922002, of almostunbroken military success for US forces, must have been a contributing factor in DonaldRumsfelds decision to mount the invasion of Iraq with what many US generals thought fromthe start were seriously inadequate land forces, and with no apparent consideration of theneeds of the occupation, as against the initial drive to Baghdad, which as I am sure you allremember took only three weeks, and led the President to proclaim victory, in effect, at thebeginning of May 2003, four years ago, from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. But thatwas actually just the beginning of the asymmetric war, which has been with us in Iraq andAfghanistan ever since.

As there are already whole libraries of books about what went wrong in Iraq, I will not lingeron that point. We need also to consider the years of the mostly bipolar balance of power, theyears of the Cold War, from 1946 to 1989, and why they ended as they did, in a period ofunipolarity. Some commentators are rather given to forecasting a new Cold War, a bit laterthis century, between the United States and China, and I want to explain why I do not thinkthat to be likely. Basically it is because the next balance of power will be multipolar which,

although more complex than a bipolar balance, will allow for more diplomatic adjustment.

The reason I say that the military balance of power in the world was mostly but not alwaysbipolar during those 43 years of the Cold War was that China sometimes added an elementof tripolarity to the balance, by swinging this way or the other. For the first nine years afterMao Zedong came to power in 1949, China defined itself as a close ally of the Soviet Union,so in those years there was no ambiguity in its stance. However, in 1958 Mao began toquarrel with Nikita Khrushchev, who at that time was Josef Stalins successor at the Kremlin,so the Sino-Soviet alliance really began to fall apart after only eight years. The reason theyquarrelled was very significant as it was over basic strategy in the Cold War, which indicatesthat Maos views were already then for more hawkish than those coming from Moscow.

At the time there was (as usual) a crisis in the Middle East, and (as later) it concerned regimechange in Iraq. In 1958, there occurred the first military coup, the one which removed theHashemite constitutional monarchy, installed by the British (mostly Winston Churchill andT.E. Lawrence) way back after the First World War. It was run at the time by an individualcalled Nuri Pasha al-Said, who had actually ridden with Lawrence, but he and the monarchywere butchered by the new military autocracy. The United States and Britain were so worriedby what was happening that they sent troops to Lebanon, and the British went into Jordan. Atabout the same time, there was another crisis going on in the Pacific, in the Taiwan Strait,over two little islandsQuemoy and Matsuwhich are very close to the mainland, but arestill held by Taiwan, even now, 50 years on.

What happened back then was that Mao wanted Khrushchev to take some vigorous action in

the Middle East, but Khrushchev, who understood much better the significance of Americannuclear superiority, refused, very sensibly, to do so. In terms of the then existing Sino-Sovietalliance, this meant that Moscow began to understand that it had a rather dangerous ally inChina, and Mao became resentful that Moscow was not going to take any risks on behalf ofChinas interests. So the alliance decayed little by little over the next 11 years until, by 1969,Beijing and Moscow appeared close to hostilitiesover a small border island called Zhenbao(which the Russians call Damansky).

And at that point, there appeared in Washington a new and resourceful foreign policymaker,Dr Henry Kissinger, who actually understood how to manage the balance of power, and thestrategy of dtente as a mode of swaying it in the direction you wanted it to go. So, first heconstructed a dtente with the weaker of Americas two potential adversariesChina

starting with a visit to Beijing in 1971; then came a dtente with Moscow in the mid-1970s. Bythen, the balance was trilateral, and Washington was on better terms with Beijing and


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Moscow than either was with the other. Yet, as I am sure you all remember, by 1974, Nixonhad been removed from power over Watergate, and his successor, Gerald Ford, had only ayear or so to go. In 1976, Jimmy Carter was elected.

The crisis over Iran, the fall of the Shah in 1979, and the subsequent hostage crisis, soovershadowed his time that Carter was not really able to do much, despite good intentionsand a senior foreign policy adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who has been entirely right aboutIraq. So the central balance wavered a bit between bilateral and trilateral in the next fewyears.

But the truly decisive moment for our contemporary world had actually happened in 1976,though its importance was not apparent for several years. Mao died that year, and wassucceeded by Deng Xiaoping. Maos closest associates, the Gang of Four, went to jailwithin a month, and Deng was visiting Washington by 1978, and proclaiming To get rich isglorious, a view with which every capitalist can agree. So China actually began its economicrevolution about 15 years before either Russia or India. Out of that Chinese economicrevolution has grown the current close economic interdependence between China and the

United States.

This interdependence is an enormously important factor in keeping the current balance ofpower stable, and reducing the probability of a cold war between the United States andChina, along the lines of that which existed between the United States and the Soviet Union.In fact, it is largely economic and demographic changes which have created the currentglobal balance. To my mind it is made up of six great powers: the United States, theEuropean Union, China, India, Russia and Japan, with the United States undoubtedly theparamount power for the foreseeable future, because it alone has a full quota of all threevarieties of power: economic, military and diplomatic.

The European Union has plenty of economic power and much diplomatic clout because of

that, together with two nuclear powers (Britain and France) and a large number of well-trained conventional forces within the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Yet it lacksmany US capacities, especially in air power, and is clearly unwilling to spend its funds onacquiring them.

China, obviously, also has a lot of economic power these days. According to GoldmanSachs, it will be the largest economy in the world by 2042. It is building strategic assets, butcontinues to seriously lack things like power-projection capacity, a blue-water navy and such.

India is also growing very fast, both demographically and economically. It will have a largerpopulation than China by mid-century, and the structure will be more conducive to furthereconomic growth than that of China. Incidentally, the advent of China and India as the largest

populations and economies in the world is nothing new, historically speaking. According toeconomic historians, China and India were probably the largest economies in the world aslate as 1842.

India could be a very valuable ally in Asia, as President George W. Bush seems to haverealised lately, but it has serious vulnerabilities, the enmity with Pakistan, and a very largeMuslim minority. Moreover, the Indian Government will not be anyones cats paw. It will beguided by Indian national interests, which may not always coincide with those of the UnitedStates.

Russia still has a massive nuclear strike capacity, although it is rather ill-kept. It is the onlycountry that currently could still deliver a really devastating attack on the US homeland,

though only of course at the cost of having its own cities destroyed. It is now growing quitefast economically, and its assets in gas and oil give it much diplomatic bargaining power,


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especially in the European Union. In some ways Russia seems to me to have more optionsin the future balance than any of the other five. To China, it could offer a strategicpartnership, like the old Sino-Soviet alliance, and that would make a large change in theglobal balance of power. Alternatively, it could offer the same to India, against China. Itcould, however, also define itself as a European power, cultivate the relationship with NATO,and even negotiate to join the European Union, which would be economically beneficial toboth sides and, strategically, would expand the nuclear powers within the European Union tothree, with one of themRussiaholding massive stocks. Of course, this would only happenif the Atlantic Alliance had broken down completely. I will address that possibility in amoment.

Finally, we come to Japan. It is clearly the most vulnerable of the five to the rising power ofChina, and is fully conscious of that fact. China has many old grudges against it, dating fromthe 1930s. So it clings very visibly to the US alliance. Yet the current Japanese PrimeMinister, Shinzo Abe, seems much less adroit diplomatically than his predecessor, JunichiroKoizumi, and the Japanese have to reflect that Washington might not always identify itsnational interests with those of Japan. After all, until 1949, China was its chosen friend in

Asia. If the US-Japan relationship ever seriously deteriorated, I think Japan might well decideto have its own nuclear arsenal, and that would cause a crisis in the entire Pacific alliancesystem.

Despite all this, Washingtons decisions will remain the most vital factor in world politics. Theleader of an alliance system has to convince the other governments in that alliance that itsstrategic choices will be wise and prudent, and will take into consideration the interests of therest of that system. You would have to search hard to find many decision-makers in eitherEurope or Asia who would currently argue that the Bush Administration has been either wiseor prudent in its strategic choices. The choice of war with Iraq seems to me, as to manystrategic analysts in the United States, one of the most disastrous strategic errors in UShistory. It represents a classic case, in my view, of the wrong choice of battlefield, and an

underestimation of the enemy.

Yet there will be new policymakers in the White House by late January 2009, and Americasallies are carefully scrutinising the alternative possibilities. On the current signals comingfrom Washington, Republicans as well as Democrats are retreating rapidly from theunilateralism and military hubris that marked the years 20022004 and led Washington intoIraq. So, Rumsfeld is gone and his replacement, Robert Gates, appears a model of reason,most of the neo-conservatives have also left (or are rapidly deserting the sinking ship of theBush Administration) and Dick Cheney is under a cloud. The word impeachment has beenheard in Congress (from Democratic Senator Russ Feingold), while Republican SenatorChuck Hagel is bluntly critical of Bush.

The US Secretary of State, Dr Condoleezza Rice, is carefully cultivating possible allies.Washington has discovered that it needs Russia to help cope with Iran, China to help copewith North Korea, and the Europeans to help fill the ranks of the NATO troops in Afghanistan.Once it has decided to cut its losses in Iraq, the first strategic task will be to shore up theposition in Afghanistan, and for that it is clearly also going to need Pakistan, Russia and theCentral Asians. So, whoever is in the White House, he or she is going to need hardworkingpeople in the National Security Council, and the Departments of both State and Defense.

To get back to the global balance of power, it is already more multipolar than it has everbeen since the 19th century. Since 1905, when the old system began to collapse, thedecision-makers of the great powers have never had a viable, stable multipolar balance towork in. Only the Europeans (including the Russians) have a sort of institutional memory,

within their foreign policy archives, of how to work such a system to best advantage for theirrespective national interests.


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Only time will tell, but I am very optimistic that India and China will adapt fairly readily to mostof them. The basic concept is so old that it is still usually expressed in Latin as cuius regio,eius religio (translated here as the ruler gets to make the rules in his own domain). Thisconcept is in fact more cherished in China and many other former Third World sovereigntiesthan it is in the West, where it has been much eroded by newer concepts like humansecurity. But the real problem is reconciling the Islamic concept of the umma (thecommunity, world-wide, of believers) with the traditional concept of the society of states as acommunity of basically mostly secular and religiously diverse equal sovereignties. It waseasier to gloss over in the 19th century, when the Ottoman Empire could be regarded as thesovereign political embodiment of Islam, and was made formally a member of the Concert ofPowers in 1856, though it was never really quite a full member of the club.

Finally, to sum up, I think we can see the next landscape of world politics glimmering throughthis lingering twilight of the unipolar world. It will, to my mind, be a world of six great powers:the United States, the European Union, China, India, Russia, and Japan. The United Stateswill still be the paramount power, as Britain was for most of the 19th century, but in amultipolar world, not the unipolar world in which it had no challengers. Always optimistic, I

believe we can see signals from Washington (even in this lame-duck period of the BushAdministration) that many US policymakers understand this change and are adapting to it.Unilateralism appears on the out.

As well as the great powers, and the usual assortment of middle and minor powers, there willbe (in a society of states that runs to almost 200 sovereignties, some of which are very small)as many as 14 emerging major powers. These will be so large demographically andeconomically that they will carry considerable clout, diplomatically and strategically.According to UN demographers there will, by mid-century, 19 or 20 countries of over100 million people, many of which will be growing fast economically.

There is to my mind a diplomatic technique already flexible enough to cope with this

prospective process of change. It is usually called the Group of Eight (G8), but it can beincarnated as the G20 (though this is currently only for economic issues, so attendance islimited to Treasurers). (The most recent G20 Summit was held in Melbourne in November2006.) China and India have been invited to attend the last few meetings of the moreimportant G8 as guests. When they have become full members, which would turn it into theG10, I would regard their meetings as a rough first approximation of a Concert of Powers forthe 21st century. Actually the process by which it has come into being is surprisingly similar tothat which created the old 19th century version. Both began as a Group of Four: Britain,Russia, Prussia and Austria in 1815, as compared with Britain, the United States, France andGermany in 1975. If future decision-makers do as well as their distant predecessors, whoavoided hegemonial war for 99 years (18151914), the world will have much to bethankful for.

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