Earlier this month, two prominent figures in the defense community – Retired Gen. David Petraeus and Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Michael O’Hanlon, wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post promoting reforms to the energy, manufacturing and IT sectors, among others, that they argue would ensure a bright American future. It is not too surprising that they put the onus on the U.S. and Western Europe to bolster a struggling global economy. It is somewhat surprising to read two prominent defense experts write about securing America’s future without mentioning defense. It is a trend: last former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Jones spoke at the Atlantic Council about the importance of the pending U.S.-EU Free Trade Agreement. Such an effort to foster mutually-supporting economic growth, Jones argued, would lay the foundation for future security on both sides. Jones, another senior military leader, was touting a traditional military goal (security) through a new route (economics.)
Conservatives who decry other forms of government spending reject defense spending cuts (a phenomenon Paul Krugman and others have called this “Weaponized Keynesianism”), and both job killers and self-inflicted wounds that reduce U.S. power and prestige, and hence make it more vulnerable. Liberals tend to see many more areas where many more defense dollars could be put to more efficient use domestically. Standing alongside this tug-of-war over the level of U.S. defense spending that is in own interest is a second argument: what level of U.S. defense spending is in the world’s interest?
Robert Kagan of Brookings examines this question in his 2012 book The World America Made. Kagan argues that the U.S. led the creation of post-World War II global order. More than half a century later, it is still the preeminent global peacekeeper. Other major powers, concentrated in Europe, have under-spent on defense; first by choice, and now, in a time of budget deficits and weak growth, by necessity. Add similar budget pressures on the U.S. to the mix, and the world is threatened by the declining capacity among its most robust democracies to defend its security. Moreover, the trend of spreading democracy may be reversing, Kagan argues. The number of democratic governments has declined within the last decade, and a”hollowing out” of existing democracies may be underway, with press freedoms and individual rights under strain. Kagan’s main thesis rejects a view of democracy as an inevitable “end of history.” Democracy is reversible; it needs defenders. U.S. strength was primarily responsible for the expansion of democracy in the 20th century; its weakness may be the greatest threat to it in the 21st.
This argument threatens to gloss over the bill and the body count the U.S. and its allies have amassed attempting to establish two lasting democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade. Local elections were held in Iraq last week under tight security, without violence and with the combination of activism and voter apathy seen in so-called “advanced” democracies. But sectarian violence has continued. While recent experience in Iraq and Afghanistan differs significantly from the development of Western democracy, America’s own experience as a developing democracy (about which Kagan has also written) may have some relevance. For the first few decades of its existence, it was not a given that the U.S. would maintain the independence it had achieved. Other countries that were beneficiaries of U.S. support – South Korea, for example – took decades to develop into stable democracies. It’s helpful to be mindful that Iraq is in a tenuous near-term of its democratic development.
Commitment to defense in the U.S. and EU, Kagan writes, has two dimensions: the ability of each to defend itself, and the ability each possesses to foster democracy elsewhere. The latter point does not refer to installing new democracies by force; it refers to aiding home-grown efforts at democracy and maintaining a welcoming global community of democracies. Kagan is particularly concerned with Europe’s long-term ability to defend itself, and secondarily to defend others. He writes: “… the European Union may be a warning. No group of nations has ever come closer to achieving the liberal internationalist ideal, the Kantian perpetual peace. But the price has been a Europe increasingly disarming itself while the other great powers refuse to follow on its journey. Would this postmodern Europe even survive if it truly had to fend for itself in a world that did not play by its rules?”
So Kagan’s first concern for Europe is self-preservation. Following closely on that, however, is the contribution Europe makes to collective security. In a follow-up interview on the Foreign Policy Association/PBS Great Decisions series, Kagan discusses the impact of its current sovereign debt crisis on an attitude towards defense spending that was already far more limited than the U.S.: “Well, obviously everyone would like to see Europeans paying a larger share on defense—I think most people think that’s really in the cards now, especially given the economic difficulties—but European leaders themselves say they ought to be paying more, so I don’t think that’s really in dispute…But there’s no question that the United States has a stake—not only an economic stake, but really in the health of Europe, however configured—and I would say, given the choices that Europeans have made, I think that means, in the health of the European Union. It’s always been America’s interest for a strong, capable, independent, and influential Europe. Europe is America’s leading partner in the world for a variety of reasons, and, in my view, it always will be unless Europe ceases to have that capacity.”
The U.S. may have a long-term interest in Europe developing defense capabilities that enable it to act as a high-functioning junior partner, generally obliging to U.S. strategic goals. Europe may have a long-term interest in defense capabilities at a level that allow it to contribute to military operations around which there is an international consensus (as in Libya recently), but not at a level that would allow it to spearhead campaigns comparable to Iraq, which proved politically contentious. Meantime, both sides must deal with financial constraints posed by low growth over the short term and high sovereign debt over the long-term. Over the next decade, while the U.S. and EU address their debt issues, they will also see if Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and other attempts to foster democracy will “long endure.” Kagan argues that a decline in U.S. power during the formative phase of new democracies threatens their long-term chances. Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass reaches a conclusion similar to Kagan’s in a recent Washington Post op-ed: “The alternative to a U.S.-led 21st century is not an era dominated by China or anyone else, but rather a chaotic time in which regional and global problems overwhelm the world’s collective will and ability to meet them.”
A decline in U.S. power does not pose an immediate threat that another power will step in to fill the vacuum. The threat is the vacuum.
