February 26, 2007

Power Incongruence and the Danger of Overreaching

 

Current leadership, perhaps along with many Americans, has perceptions of U.S. power that have not kept up with current reality. Acting on unrealistic or dated beliefs about U.S. power may be the most important current challenge to our long-term national security. Making use of real power in constructive ways is leadership. Attempting to employ imagined power is arrogance, often becoming dangerous weakness.

 

Power dynamics among countries shift over time. A country’s ability to accurately sense its place and act accordingly helps it benefit from its real strengths and create stability, and the best quality of life for its people and others.

 

Facing down Soviet warships outside Cuba was leadership, as, it appears, were recent negotiations with North Korea. Naming countries an “axis of evil” is one example of self-righteousness and arrogance – that we have some moral right to define good, and the ability to do something about bad, like punishing a small, naughty child. Overly adventurous words or deeds make us look arrogant, and eventually weak, when we can’t back up our words.

 

For many years U.S. superiority in the world has seemed the “normal” way things are, especially to Americans. So for many the suggestion of change seems strange, even threatening. Distinguishing natural power shifts from real threats is a key strategic skill in managing a powerful country. I’m afraid it is one we have been lacking.

 

Iran is probably not attempting to take over Texas, but rather to renegotiate its power relationship with the U.S. This doesn’t mean we should just give in to its interpretation, which may also be distorted, but that we should not react to its assertiveness as if it were Russian ICBM’s aimed at Washington or Al Qaeda plots.

 

Authentic power is when countries are buying our products in larger numbers than we buy theirs, not depending on borrowed resources to maintain our lifestyle. It is also close allies that genuinely support our positions and interests, trusting we will support theirs. It is about education, technology, productivity and perhaps the willingness of citizens to pay a personal price for change, versus complacency and a focus on individual benefits. In many areas the United States is weaker in recent years, through our own doing, and through factors beyond our control.

 

Power relationships, even if unequal, can be in equilibrium. Since most people in the world prefer a stable environment to work, raise families and do whatever they do to enjoy life, they may temporarily accept an unequal status quo. Problems can ensue when some mistake stability for objective fairness or permanent acceptance. This has sometimes been the case with Americans, something like being born on third base and believing you hit a triple.

 

Some inequalities have been institutionalized through mechanisms that make change more difficult, among them permanent membership in the powerful UN Security Council, arrangements that preserve a nuclear monopoly for some countries, long-term military presence of some countries in others, dominance in international economic institutions and asymmetrical arrangements in multilateral trade agreements. These arrangements may seem “normal” to some, but not to countries on the outside, especially if the power relationships that spawned them have run their course.

 

Iran seems to be challenging current assumptions about its power relationship with the U.S. Its insistence that others dispose of their enriched uranium as a condition for it doing so is one example. The proposal seems preposterous to some Americans. The presumption and nerve! Expecting to be judged by the same standards as the world’s great power and founder of the nuclear club. Iran sending ships to the Persian Gulf, where U.S. ships roam freely, is another example of its insistence on parity being seen as “chutzpah” according to the standards of the world.

 

This perspective is tricky to articulate without sounding like advocating voluntarily surrendering power. While having power can sometimes be more a problem than benefit, this perspective does not promote giving it up. On the contrary, focusing on policies that genuinely improve a country’s economic, political, social and perhaps moral position and options, rather than only military symbols of (past) power, make ours or any country genuinely stronger.

 

Authentic long-term benefits and stability will result from dynamics that are consistent with real power relationships. True, the U.S. and others may lose some benefits of perceived power advantage more quickly. But if its current perception is indeed off, then those benefits are the result of a bluff. Bluffing can be dangerous, in international affairs, as in high-stakes poker, even or especially if the bluffer doesn’t even know he is doing it.

 

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