CIA: US is a "declining power". posted by Richard Seymour

While not quite as bleak for the US as the Wallerstein thesis , the CIA's prognosis is remarkable in that it abets warnings issued by neoconservatives , who argued since the early 1990s that other potential superpowers had been silently germinating behind the iron curtain, particularly the Chinese , and that America had better sieze the 'window of opportunity' afforded by the end of the Cold War to frustrate any such challenge.

The CIA concludes:

The likely emergence of China and India ... as new major global players—similar to the advent of a united Germany in the 19th century and a powerful United States in the early 20th century—will transform the geopolitical landscape with impacts potentially as dramatic as those in the previous two centuries.

I say this conclusion corroborates neoconservative thinking, but they are no Cassandras. Robert Kagan of the Project for the New American Century argues that US legitimacy is diminishing with friends and "like-minded" peoples as a result of US unipolarity. Europe prefers the “constraining egalitarian quality of international law” while enjoying the security provided by the “behemoth with a conscience”. America, contrary to common wisdom, can “go it alone”, and does so. (Robert Kagan, “Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order”, London, 2003; also, Robert Kagan, “Looking for Legitimacy in all the Wrong Places”, Foreign Policy, July/August 2003). According to Professor of International Law Michael Glennon the UN's “irrelevance” is actually a product of US "unipolarity" in a post-Cold War world. France, Russia, Germany and China also believe the world is becoming "unipolar". France's former foreign minister Hubert Vedrine believes "a politically unipolar world" is unacceptable, and therefore France is "fighting for a multipolar world". Russia and China formalised an agreement in July 2001 affirming their commitment to a multipolar constellation of global powers. (Michael J. Glennon, “Why the Security Council Failed”, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2003).

This is an argument accepted by much of the Left. Peter Gowan, in "The Global Gamble", outlines what the book's subtitle calls America's "Faustian bid for global dominance". America, according to Gowan, is the last remaining empire, a "Hegemon" dominating economically through the Dollar-Wall Street Regime, and politically through military incursions into the former Yugoslavia. ( In this, he represents a strand of thinking relatively popular on the left. Gregory Elliot suggests that Hubert Vedrine's term "hyperpower" most closely encapsulates the United States' "awesome dominion". (Peter Gowan, “The Global Gamble: America’s Faustian Bid for Global Dominance”, London, 1999; Gregory Elliot and John Rees, “The Balance of Global Forces”, Institute of Education, July 2001).

Underpinning these arguments is some conception of what the "bipolar world" represented, and how the collapse of one of those poles has affected the world. Most of those cited above would assent to the suggestion that the USSR was some form of post-capitalist state, that it was an ideological, as well as military and economic, competitor with the United States. During the Cold War, local powers were almost inevitably sucked up into the rubric of one of the two main competing powers. The over-arching framework of bipolarity seemed to render other struggles and rivalries nothing more than local manifestations of the Cold War. When the Russian Empire collapsed not only Stalinism, but also most forces and discourses of resistance appeared to collapse. The various communist parties in Europe disbanded, disintegrated or dissembled. The social-democratic left, far from benefiting from this state of affairs, was dragged into the void with their embarrassing militant cousins. There remained only one serious narrative for the future - the free market capitalist one whose vanguard was a victorious US.

This is an optical illusion. Instead of treating the USSR as a leader of the global revolution, we should treat it as any other polity. Instead of US unipolarity, we have multipolarity. The fall of the Russian Empire has rendered existing tensions, such as those between the US and the EU, more visible. Trade disputes have been supplemented by geopolitical disputes, as several European countries refused to support the occupation of Iraq, denying the US a vital source of legitimacy. Additionally, nuclear states have proliferated. Local conflicts between India and Pakistan, and between North and South Korea, resonate well beyond their own borders. China, too, is a rapidly growing power which, according to the American international relations analyst John Mearsheimer, could "be much wealthier than its Asian rivals", its huge population base enabling it to "build a far more powerful army than either Russia or Japan could". China "has the potential to be considerably more powerful than even the United States." (JJ Mearsheimer, “The Tragedy of Great Power Politics”, New York, 2001).

Another view is that the US has "crash landed". For Gore Vidal, America resembles nothing so much as "Rome before the fall", while for E.M. Wood present US strategy is “ultimately self-defeating”. (Gore Vidal, “United States: Collected Essays, 1952-92”, New York, 1992; Ellen Meiksins Wood, “Empire of Capital”, London, 2003). This thesis is most eloquently espoused by Immanuel Wallerstein, who asserts that American behaviour, far from providing surety of future strength, is indicative of present weakness. The US has not won a serious victory since losing Vietnam. Having abandoned interventions in Lebanon and Somalia, the US has only been able to defeat minor powers and even those victories are not as complete as they appear. The first Gulf War, for instance, resulted in the status quo being restored, with Hussein smashing the Shi'ites and Kurds, and the Kuwaiti monarch returned to his throne. (Immanuel Wallerstein, “The Eagle Has Crash Landed”, Foreign Policy, July/August 2002). Another apparent victory, this time in the Balkans, does not bear close scrutiny either. The war ended with a deal, negotiated by Ahtisaari and Chirnomyrdin, which was much closer to Milosevic's proposed terms as the war began than to Nato’s terms at Rambouillet. (See Noam Chomsky, “Nato and the New Military Humanism: Lessons from the bombing of Yugoslavia”, London, 1999; Wallerstein, op cit, argues that US bombing did little to alter the course of Balkans history, while Kagan, in “Paradise and Power…” op cit, suggests that the war was primarily fought to preserve the unity of the transatlantic alliance, although Americans had “compelling moral reasons” to be involved – as, no doubt, did Turkey). With barely a tank dented, Milosevic gained a “defeat” more flattering than he had any right to expect. Not US military power, but Serbian people power, put Milosevic in the dock. American power is therefore on the wane, and its present conduct may serve to hasten that decline rather than prolong its longevity.

That's putting the case too strongly if you ask me. It is true that the US is losing much of its purchase on Latin America, South East Asia and the Middle East - its traditional zones of dominance. But the fact that the world is already a multipolar one does not mean that the US cannot frustrate its rivals, as it is presently attempting to do - supporting dictators here, quietly coopting branded revolutions there, launching imperialist missions elsewhere.

But. Iraq has been a huge miscalculation for the present administration, and this was reflected in the distinct back-pedalling of many hawks several months back. However much momentum the neoconservatives get out of the discontent in Lebanon, however much they succeed in splitting off the majority Shias from the Sunnis in Iraq and shutting down the military resistance, the fact is that Iraq is now a major millstone round their necks. The elections in Iraq represent the success of Shi'ite resistance rather than the culmination of US strategy, while the acceptance that Iraq is to be run by anti-American, pro-Iranian and pro-Syrian parties represents the biggest failure of all. It is unlikely that Bremer's diktats on the economy will survive for very long if the Shi'ite groups get their way - even though they do not in fact govern at the moment, they represent a material power which America's best torture centres and tanks cannot quite break. And the big oil companies have already won a battle with neoconservative ideologues to keep Iraq's oil nationalised. The naked corruption of the process of reconstruction is making it unlikely that American taxpayers will be willing to subsidise future wars. Meanwhile, they are losing politically on the domestic front - the success of anti-recruitment campaigns makes it difficult for the US to sustain another intervention without drafting.

The "Iraq syndrome" will weigh down on future generations of policy-makers. The emergence of a superpower rival may be just the thing to help shake it off.