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Economy Economy Key to Heg

Economic wealth is key to hegemonyMichael Beckley 12, research fellow in the International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 2012, “China’s Century?,” International Security, Vol. 36, http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/Chinas_Century.pdf Wealth functions as a source of power because it insulates a state from dependence on others and provides things of value that can be used in bargaining situations. As Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye point out, economic interdependence involves relations of asymmetric vulnerability.80 Wealthy states are better equipped to wield market access and economic sanctions as tools of influence over others. They also have more capital to fund technological innovation and military modernization. All states face the dilemma of balancing short-term spending against long-term economic growth. This predicament, however, is less acute for wealthy states, which can sustain significant investments in innovation and military power with a relatively small percentage of their total resources . Innovation is key to hegemonyMichael Beckley 12, research fellow in the International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 2012, “China’s Century?,” International Security, Vol. 36, http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/Chinas_Century.pdf The ability to innovate, defined as the creation of new products and methods of production, also constitutes a source of power. Like wealthy states, innovative countries are less dependent on others and more capable of producing goods that others value . Innovation also creates wealth and tends to beget further innovation as individual discoveries spawn multiple derivative products and improvements. Innovative activity therefore tends to cluster in particular places and provide certain countries with significant technological and military advantages. As Joshua Goldstein has shown, “The country creating a major cluster of innovations often finds immediate military applications and both propels itself to hegemonic status and maintains that status by that mechanism .”81

Surplus wealth is key to hegemony Michael Beckley 12, research fellow in the International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 2012, “China’s Century?,” International Security, Vol. 36, http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/Chinas_Century.pdf The case for the decline of the United States and the rise of China rests heavily on a single statistic: GDP. Over the last twenty years, China’s GDP has risen relative to the United States’ in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), though it has declined in real terms.84 Regardless of which measure is used, however, most projections have China overtaking the United States as the world’s largest economy before 2050, and some as early as 2015.85 Economic size, however, does not necessarily make China a contender for superpower status. After all, China was the largest economy in the world throughout most of its “century of humiliation,” when it was ripped apart by Western powers and Japan. The U nited K ingdom , on the other hand, ruled a quarter of the globe for more than a century, but was never, even at its peak, the largest economy in the world. Britain’s GDP was far smaller than China’s and India’s for all of the eighteenth century and much of the nineteenth century.86 Britain, however, was able to establish imperial control over India and to defeat China militarily, imposing unequal treaties on Beijing, acquiring Hong Kong and various other concessions, and establishing a sphere of influence in East Asia. This dominance stemmed not from the absolute size of Britain’s economy, but from its superior level of economic development , measured in terms of per capita income , which was the highest in the world and several times higher than China’s and India’s at the time.87 This is not to say that size is irrelevant. Luxembourg’s per capita income is almost double that of the United States, but its tiny population precludes it from raising a meaningful army, let alone entering the ranks of the great powers. It is, however, important to

recognize that GDP is not synonymous with national power, and that countries with larger economies do not necessarily have more resources at their disposal. Half a billion peasants will produce a large volume of output, but most of it will be immediately consumed, leaving little left over for national purposes. As Klaus Knorr argued, what matters for national power is not wealth, but “surplus wealth.”88 It is therefore significant that the average Chinese citizen is more than $17,000 poorer relative to the average American than he was in 1991 (see figure 1).

Economy Outweighs Military Economic strength precedes military power Michael Beckley 12, research fellow in the International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 2012, “China’s Century?,” International Security, Vol. 36, http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/Chinas_Century.pdf The key point is that national power is multifaceted and cannot be measured with a single or a handful of metrics. In the analyses that follow, I allot more space to economic indicators than to military indicators. This is not because economic power is necessarily more important than military power, but rather because most declinist writings argue that the United States is in economic, not military, decline. Moreover, military power is ultimately based on economic strength . International relations scholars tend to view civilian and military realms as separate entities, but militaries are embedded within economic systems. In a separate study, I show that countries that excel in producing commercial products and innovations also tend to excel in producing military force.83 Part of this advantage stems from greater surplus wealth, which allows rich states to sustain large military investments. Economically developed states, however, also derive military benefits from their technological infrastructures, efficient production capacities, advanced data analysis networks, stocks of managerial expertise, and stable political environments. In short, economic indicators are , to a significant degree, measures of military capability. Focusing on the former, therefore, does not imply ignoring the latter.

Military Power Hard Power Key to Heg

Conventional military capabilities are key to hegemonyMichael Beckley 12, research fellow in the International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 2012, “China’s Century?,” International Security, Vol. 36, http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/Chinas_Century.pdf Military power is generally considered to be the “ultima ratio” of power because it functions as a decisive arbiter of disputes when it is used and shapes outcomes among states even when it is not. Military capabilities can be used to destroy , to back up coercive threats, and to provide protection and assistance. When performed well, these actions can alter the behavior of other states . Military superiority can also generate wealth by, for example, making a country a more secure and attractive place to invest, as well as provide the means to coerce other countries into making economic concessions. The RAND study found that nuclear weapons were of less importance than conventional capabilities for national influence. Thus, I do not consider them in the following analyses. The authors of the RAND study explain: “Even though nuclear weapons have become the ultima ratio regum in international politics, their relative inefficacy in most situations other than those involving national survival implies that their utility will continue to be significant but highly restricted. The ability to conduct different and sophisticated forms of conventional warfare will , therefore, remain the critical index of national power because of its undiminished utility, flexibility, responsiveness and credibility.”82

Hegemony Impacts Solves War

The Loss of hegemony leads to a domino effect ending in the apocalypse Andrea E. Varisco 13, Ph.D. candidate at the Post-War Reconstruction and Development Unit of the University of York, holds a Master in International Affairs, Peace and Conflict Studies specialisation from the Australian National University and the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo and a Master in Politics and Comparative Institutions from the University of Milano, 6/3/13, “Towards a Multi-Polar International System: Which Prospects for Global Peace?,” http://www.e-ir.info/2013/06/03/towards-a-multi-polar-international-system-which-prospects-for-global-peace/A return to multi-polarity will therefore imply more instability among great powers . But g reat power rivalry will not be the only source of possible i nstability for the future multi-polar world . The current distribution of power allows not only great powers but also middle, small powers and non-state actors to have military capabilities that could threaten the global security. In particular, the presence of nuclear weapons constitutes a further reason of concern and implies that the future world could carry not only the potential instability of multi-polarity and great powers rivalry, but also the dangers entailed in nuclear proliferation. The future multi-polar world will thus be potentially more unstable than all the other multi-polar periods history has experienced until nowadays: for the first time in history, the world could become both multi-polar and nuclear. While some scholars argue that nuclear deterrence “could reduce the war-proneness of the coming multi-polar system” (Layne, 44-45), the majority of them consider the presence of nuclear weapons as a source of instability (McNamara; Rosen; Allison). In particular, regional powers and states that are not great powers armed with nuclear capabilities could represent a cause of concern for global security. A nuclear Iran could for example attack – or be attacked – by Israel and easily involve in this war the rest of the world (Sultan; Huntley). A war between Pakistan and India , both nuclear states, could result in an Armageddon for the whole Asia. An attack from the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Japan or South Korea will trigger an immediate reaction from the US and “a nuclear proliferation ‘domino effect’ in East Asia” (Huntley, 725). Terrorists armed with nuclear weapons could wreak havoc and target the heart of the most powerful countries of the world (Bunn and Wier). Iran, Pakistan, DPRK, terrorist groups will rarely be great powers or poles in a future multi-polar world. Nevertheless, the effects of their actions could easily reverberate all over the globe and represent another cause of potential instability . For the first time in history, the stability of the future world will therefore depend not only on the unpredictable effects of the rivalry among great powers, but also on the dangerous potential of middle and small powers and non-state actors armed with nuclear weapons.

US unilateralism can stop conflicts before arising and is key to the global economic orderAndrea E. Varisco 13, Ph.D. candidate at the Post-War Reconstruction and Development Unit of the University of York, holds a Master in International Affairs, Peace and Conflict Studies specialisation from the Australian National University and the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo and a Master in Politics and Comparative Institutions from the University of Milano, 6/3/13, “Towards a Multi-Polar International System: Which Prospects for Global Peace?,” http://www.e-ir.info/2013/06/03/towards-a-multi-polar-international-system-which-prospects-for-global-peace/This unbalanced preponderance has been promoted and reinforced by some factors. The US geographic position assured the security of the country for many years: while other states – for example China, Russia and the European countries – are land powers surrounded by potential enemies, the US is isolated and too far away from its potential threats. As a result, no country in the last 70 years tried to attack American soil. This geographical security is strengthened by an unchallengeable military power. According to latest data of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), in 2011 US military spending accounted for more than 40 per cent of the world total, followed by China with approximately 8 per cent, and Russia, United Kingdom and France with a percentage between 4 and 3.5 per cent each (Background Paper on Military Expenditures, 5). US military capabilities assure it a strong sea and air power and allow it to projects its force globally , enabling it to hit a target everywhere at every time . Yet the notion of hegemony does not only imply geographical security and military preponderance, but also influence and cultural hegemony . In Gramsci’s notion of hegemony – one of the most quoted definitions of the concept – the hegemonic ruling class of a capitalist society has for example the power to influence and persuade the subordinated social classes to accept and adopt its values. As a great power during the Cold War, and as a lonely superpower in the last 20 years, the US played a key role in the architecture of the new world order (Ikenberry). From an economic point of view, the US laid the foundations of the global liberal economic order long before the unipolar era, supporting the Bretton Woods system, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade which was replaced in 1994 by the World Trade Organization, and indirectly controlling some international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Nowadays, the US controls around the 17 per cent of the total votes of the IMF and it is the largest shareholder in the World Bank, leading to the tradition that the President of the World Bank has always been a US citizen nominated by the US President, while the President of the IMF has always been a European.

Hegemony creates peace by preventing both great power and regional conflictsStephen M. Walt, 2002, American professor of international affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, “AMERICAN PRIMACY: Its Prospects and Pitfalls”, http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/swalt/files/art1-sp2.pdfA second consequence of U.S. primacy is a decreased danger of great-power rivalry and a higher level of overall international tranquility. Ironically, those who argue that primacy is no longer important, because the danger of war is slight, overlook the fact that the extent of American primacy is one of the main reasons why the risk of great-power war is as low as it is. For most of the past four centuries, relations among the major powers have been intensely competitive, often punctuated by major wars and occasionally by all-out struggles for hegemony. In the first half of the twentieth century, for example , great-power wars killed over eighty million people . Today, however, the dominant position of the U nited S tates places significant limits on the possibility of great-power competition, for at least two reasons. One reason is that because the U nited S tates is currently so far ahead, other major powers are not inclined to challenge its dominant position . Not only is there no possibility of a “hegemonic war” (because there is no potential hegemon to mount a challenge), but the risk of war via miscalculation is reduced by the overwhelming gap between the U nited S tates and the other major powers . Miscalculation is more likely to lead to war when the balance of power is fairly even, because in this situation both sides can convince themselves that they might be able to win. When the balance of power is heavily skewed , however, the leading state does not need to go to war and weaker states dare not try . 8 12 NAVAL WAR COLLEGE REVIEW The second reason is that the continued deployment of roughly two hundred thousand troops in Europe and in Asia provides a further barrier to conflict in each region. So long as U.S. troops are committed abroad, regional powers know that launching a war is likely to lead to a confrontation with the United States. Thus, states within these regions do not worry as much about each other, because the U .S. presence effectively prevents regional conflicts from breaking out. What Joseph Joffe has termed the “American pacifier” is not the only barrier to conflict in Europe and Asia, but it is an important one . This tranquilizing effect is not lost on America’s allies in Europe and Asia. They resent U.S. dominance and dislike playing host to American troops, but they also do not want “Uncle Sam” to leave.9 Thus, U.S. primacy is of benefit to the United States, and to other countries as well , because it dampens the overall level of international insecurity. World politics might be more interesting if the United States were weaker and if other states were forced to compete with each other more actively, but a more exciting world is not necessarily a better one. A comparatively boring era may provide few opportunities for genuine heroism, but it is probably a good deal more pleasant to live in than “interesting” decades like the 1930s or 1940s.

Hegemony has proven to prevent great power wars; multipolarity failsAndrea E. Varisco 13, Ph.D. candidate at the Post-War Reconstruction and Development Unit of the University of York, holds a Master in International Affairs, Peace and Conflict Studies specialisation from the Australian National University and the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo and a Master in Politics and Comparative Institutions from the University of Milano, 6/3/13, “Towards a Multi-Polar International System: Which Prospects for Global Peace?,” http://www.e-ir.info/2013/06/03/towards-a-multi-polar-international-system-which-prospects-for-global-peace/During the 20th century multi-polar international systems resulted in instability and led to two world wars in less than 50 years. The balance of power and the system of alliances of the early 20th century was swept away by the assassination of Franz Ferdinand of Austria in 1914. That event triggered World War I, a global conflict that caused the death of more than 15 million people in less than five years. After few decades, the multi-polar world emerged by World War I with a new system of alliances and the multilateral body of the League of Nations was not able to tame the totalitarian aspirations of Hitler. The German invasion of Poland in 1939 triggered World War II, the deadliest conflict of the history which resulted in millions of deaths and in the holocaust. Since the end of the World War II the world has never been multi-polar again , nevertheless these historical accounts seem to indicate how multi-polarity often created an unstable and unpredictable world, characterized by shifting alliances and by the aspiration of the rising powers to change the balance of power and create a new order. These historical features of multi-polarity will likely distinguish also the future multi-polar world, in spite of its strong economic interconnection and institutionalization. History indeed has also shown how the effects on stability of a global economy and of multilateral institutions have been sometimes overestimated. The multi-polar world at the beginning of the 20th century was highly economically interconnected and characterized by a large cross-border flows of goods, capital and people, at the point that the ratio of trade to output indicates that “Britain and France are only slightly more open to trade today than they were in 1913, while Japan is less open now than then” (The Economist, 99; Van den Bossche, 4). Nevertheless, this high interconnection was swept away by World War I. Furthermore, the presence of the League of Nations did not prevent World War II; likewise, the multilateral organization of the UN has not always been effective in promoting peace and securit y, and membership in the European Union did not prevent European countries from having different positions and antithetic behaviors in the wake of US war in Iraq in 2003. A shifting from a well defined hierarchy of power to a great power rivalry will therefore result in a less stable world order.

Hegemony is key for a secure nation, and stable global economyStephen M. Walt, 2002, American professor of international affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, “AMERICAN PRIMACY: Its Prospects and Pitfalls”, http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/swalt/files/art1-sp2.pdfPrimacy Provides Security . Perhaps the most obvious reason why states seek primacy—and why the United States benefits from its current position—is that international politics is a dangerous business. Being wealthier and stronger than other states does not guarantee that a state will survive, of course, and it cannot insulate a state from all outside pressures. But the strongest state is more likely to escape serious harm than weaker one s are, and it will be better equipped to resist the pressures that arise . Because the U nited S tates is so powerful, and because its society is so wealthy, it has ample resources to devote to whatever problems it may face in the future . At the beginning of the Cold War, for example, its power enabled the United States to help rebuild Europe and Japan, to assist them in developing stable democratic orders, and to subsidize the emergence of an open international economic order.7 The U nited S tates was also able to deploy powerful armed forces in Europe and Asia as effective deterrents to Soviet expansion . When the strategic importance of the Persian Gulf increased in the late 1970s, the U nited S tates created its Rapid Deployment Force in order to deter threats to the West’s oil supplies ; in 1990–91 it used these capabilities to liberate Kuwait. Also, when the United States was attacked by the Al-Qaeda terrorist network in September 2001, it had the wherewithal to oust the network’s Taliban hosts and to compel broad international support for its campaign to eradicate Al-Qaeda itself. It WALT 11 would have been much harder to do any of these things if the United States had been weaker. Today, U.S. primacy helps deter potential challenges to American interests in virtually every part of the world. Few countries or nonstate groups want to invite the “focused enmity” of the United States (to use William Wohlforth’s apt phrase), and countries and groups that have done so (such as Libya, Iraq, Serbia, or the Taliban) have paid a considerable price. As discussed below, U.S. dominance does provoke opposition in a number of places, but anti-American elements are forced to rely on covert or indirect strategies (such as terrorist bombings) that do not seriously threaten America’s dominant position. Were American power to decline significantly, however, groups opposed to U.S. interests would probably be emboldened and overt challenges would be more likely. This does not mean that the United States can act with impunity, nor does it guarantee that the United States will achieve every one of its major foreign policy objectives. It does mean that the U nited S tates has a margin of security that weaker states do not possess. This margin of safety is a luxury, perhaps, but it is also a luxury that few Americans would want to live without.

Hegemony key to prevent terrorism, and destabilize the possibility of Asian WarRichard N. Haas November/December 2014, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, The Unraveling: How to respond to a Disordered World, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2014-10-20/unravelingBut if attempts at regime change should be jettisoned, so, too, should calendar-based commitments. U .S. interests in Iraq were not well served by the inability to arrange for the ongoing presence of a residual U.S. force there , one that might have dampened the feuding of Iraqi factions and provided much-needed training for Iraqi security forces. The same holds for Afghanistan, where all U.S. forces are due to exit by the end of 2016. Such decisions should be linked to interests and conditions rather than timelines. Doing too little can be just as costly and risky as doing too much. Other things outsiders could usefully do in the region include promoting and supporting civil society, helping refugees and displaced people, countering terrorism and militancy, and working to stem the proliferation of weapons of mass d estruction (such as by trying to place a meaningful ceiling on the Iranian nuclear program). Degrading ISIS will require regular applications of U.S. airpowe r against targets inside both Iraq and Syria, along with coordinated efforts with countries such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey to stem the flow of recruits and dollars. There are several potential partners on the ground in Iraq, but fewer in Syria -- where action against ISIS must be undertaken in the midst of a civil war. Unfortunately, the struggle against ISIS and similar groups is likely to be difficult, expensive, and long. In Asia , the prescription is considerably simpler: implement existing policy assiduously . The Obama administration’s “pivot,” or “rebalance,” to Asia was supposed to involve regular high-level diplomatic engagement to address and calm the region’s all-too-numerous disputes; an increased U.S. air and naval presence in the region; and the building of domestic and international support for a regional trade pact. All these actions can and should be higher administration priorities, as should a special attempt to explore the conditions under which China might be prepared to reconsider its commitment to a divided Korean Peninsula.

Lack of a hegemon leads to global disorder Richard N. Haas November/December 2014, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, The Unraveling: How to respond to a Disordered World, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2014-10-20/unravelingIn his classic The Anarchical Society, the scholar Hedley Bull argued that there was a perennial tension in the world between forces of order and forces of disorder, with the details of the balance between them defining each era’s particular character. S ources of order include actors committed to existing international rules and arrangements and to a process for modifying them; sources of disorder include actors who reject those rules and arrangements in principle and feel free to ignore or undermine them. The balance can also be affected by global trend s , to varying degrees beyond the control of governments, that create the context for actors’ choices. These days, the balance between order and disorder is shifting toward the latte r. Some of the reasons are structural, but some are the result of bad choices made by important players -- and at least some of those can and should be corrected. The chief cauldron of contemporary disorder is the Middle East. For all the comparisons that have been made to World War I or the Cold War, what is taking place in the region today most resembles the Thirty Years’ War, three decades of conflict that ravaged much of Europe in the first half

of the seventeenth century. As with Europe back then, in coming years, the Middle East is likely to be filled with mostly weak states unable to police large swaths of their territories, militias and terrorist groups acting with increasing sway, and both civil war and interstate strife. Sectarian and communal identities will be more powerful than national ones. Fueled by vast supplies of natural resources, powerful local actors will continue to meddle in neighboring countries’ internal affairs , and major outside actors will remain unable or unwilling to stabilize the region.

Solves Econ and PeaceU.S leadership is key to the nation’s core objectives, interstate cooperation and expanding the global economyStephen G. Brooks, G. John Ikenberry and William C. Wohlforth 12, Brooks is an Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth, B.A. University of California at Santa Cruz, M.A. Yale University, M. Phil. Yale University, Ph.D. Yale University, expert in international relations theory and international security and globalization, Ikenberry is a Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, Co-Director of Princeton’s Center for International Security Studies, Global Eminence scholar, served as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on U.S.-European relations, Wohlforth is a Professor of Government at Dartmouth and a Daniel Webster Professor, teaches and conducts research on international relations, with an emphasis on international security and foreign policy, expert in US foreign policy, has a degree in international relations from Beloit College, worked as legislative aid in U.S House of Representatives and attended Yale, earning in MA in international relations and a PhD in Political Science, Winter 2012/13, “Don’t Come Home, America, The Case against Retrenchment,” http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00107

Grand strategy is a set of ideas for deploying a nation’s resources to achieve its¶ interests over the long run.7 For more than sixty years, t he United States has sought to advance its core interests in security , prosperity , and domestic liberty by pursuing three overlapping objectives : managing the external environment to reduce near- and long-term threats to U.S. national security ; promoting a liberal economic order to expand the global economy and maximize domestic prosperity; and creating, sustaining , and revising the global institutional order to secure necessary interstate cooperation on terms favorable to U.S. interests.¶ The pursuit of these three core objectives underlies what is arguably the¶ United States’ most consequential strategic choice: to maintain security commitments to partners and allies in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East. U.S.¶ administrations have consistently maintained that the security commitments in these regions are necessary to shape the global environment and thus advance¶ the grand strategy’s three core objectives. During the Cold War, the commitments¶ served primarily to prevent the encroachment of Soviet power into¶ regions containing the world’s wealthiest, potentially most powerful, and¶ most resource-rich states. After the Cold War, the aim became to make these¶ same core regions more secure, and so make the world safer for the United¶ States. The commitments also allow the United States to shape the security environment¶ facing potential rivals to induce them to accommodate its core interests¶ and, should that fail, constitute a hedge against the need to contain a¶ future peer rival.¶ Woven through official U.S. speeches and strategy documents over the last¶ six decades is a set of broader grand strategic arguments that the security commitments¶ are a necessary condition of U.S. leadership, and that leadership is necessary to pursue the strategy’s three core objectives. Without the security commitments , U.S. leverage for leadership on both security and nonsecurity issues declines . Leadership facilitates cooperation to address security challenges and expand the global economy , and moves the cooperative equilibrium closer to U.S. preferences. The commitments and associated leverage, moreover, are necessary pillars of a larger institutional and normative order whose maintenance will make the U nited S t ates more secure and prosperous over the long term. Embedding U.S. leadership in these institutions has major benefits for¶ Washington and its partners: functional benefits (reduction of transaction costs, establishment of credible commitments, facilitation of collective action, creation of focal points, monitoring, etc.) as well as political and legitimacy benefits (mitigation of politically awkward aspects of hegemony). Because the United States is not strongly constrained by its institutional commitments, the benefits far outweigh the costs.

Hegemony is key to economic growthStephen M. Walt, 2002, American professor of international affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, “AMERICAN PRIMACY: Its Prospects and Pitfalls”, http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/swalt/files/art1-sp2.pdfBy facilitating the development of a more open and liberal world economy, American primacy also fosters global prosperity. Economic interdependence is often said to be a cause of world peace, but it is more accurate to say that peace encourages interdependence—by making it easier for states to accept the potential vulnerabilities of extensive international intercourse.10 Investors are more willing to send money abroad when the danger of war is remote , and states worry less about being dependent on others when they are not concerned that these connections might be severed. When states are relatively secure, they will also be less fixated on how the gains from cooperation are distributed . In particular, they are less likely to worry that extensive cooperation will benefit others more and thereby place them at a relative disadvantage over time.11 By providing a tranquil international environment, in short, U .S. primacy has created political conditions that are conducive to expanding global trade and investment . Indeed, American primacy was a prerequisite for the creation and gradual expansion of the E uropean U nion , which is often touted as a triumph of economic self-interest over historical

rivalries. Because the United States was there to protect the Europeans from the Soviet Union and from each other, they WALT 13 It may not be politically correct to talk about “enjoying” the exercise of power, but most people understand that it is better to have it than to lack it. could safely ignore the balance of power within Western Europe and concentrate on expanding their overall level of economic integration. The expansion of world trade has been a major source of increased global prosperity, and U.S. primacy is one of the central pillars upon which that system rests.12 The U nited S tates also played a leading role in establishing the various institutions that regulate and manage the world economy . As a number of commentators have noted, the current era of “globalization” is itself partly an artifact of American power. As Thomas Friedman puts it, “Without America on duty, there will be no America Online.”13

Hegemony is key to peace and the economyArthur C. Brooks October 4th, 2010, President of the American Enterprise Institute, ”Peace Doesn't Keep Itself”, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704483004575524763315951380Global prosperity requires commerce and trade, and this requires peace . But the peace does not keep itself. The Global Trends 2025 report, which reflects the consensus of the U.S. intelligence community, anticipates the rise of new powers—some hostile—and projects a demand for continued American military power. Meanwhile we face many nonstate threats such as terrorism, and piracy in sea lanes around the world. Strength , not weakness, brings the true peace dividend in a global economy.We have not done enough to help our military preserve the peace and deter (and if necessary, defeat) our enemies. Americans have fought superbly in Iraq and Afghanistan, and have prevented any further terrorist attacks on the scale of 9/11. But faced with a nuclear Iran, or a Chinese People's Liberation Army that can deny access to U.S. ships or aircraft in the Asian-Pacific region, there are many missions ahead.

Solves DemocracyHegemony allows for democratic influence which leads to stabilityAndrea E. Varisco 13, Ph.D. candidate at the Post-War Reconstruction and Development Unit of the University of York, holds a Master in International Affairs, Peace and Conflict Studies specialisation from the Australian National University and the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo and a Master in Politics and Comparative Institutions from the University of Milano, 6/3/13, “Towards a Multi-Polar International System: Which Prospects for Global Peace?,” http://www.e-ir.info/2013/06/03/towards-a-multi-polar-international-system-which-prospects-for-global-peace/With the end of the Cold War and the collapse and dissolution of the USSR, the bipolar international system transformed in unipolarity and the US emerged as the only superpower. In a unipolar system the power of a state is not balanced and controlled by the other states, this inequality allows the hegemon of the international system to influence and shape the rest of the world . After 1989 the US has been considered the militarily, economically and technologically leading country of the world (Brooks and Wohlforth), a lonely superpower “able to impose its will on another countries” (Huntington, 39) and, in some cases such as the 2003 war to Iraq waged without the United Nations (UN) Security Council consensus, to act outside the laws of the international community. Traditional analytic approaches have little to offer in making sense of these seemingly contradictory trends. One conventional route, for example, would be to frame the international dynamic as one of rising and falling powers, pitting China’s advance against the United States’ decline. But this exaggerates the United States’ weaknesses and underestimates China’s. For all its problems, the United States is well positioned to thrive in the twenty-first century, whereas China faces a multitude of challenges, including slowing growth, rampant corruption, an aging population, environmental degradation, and wary neighbors. And no other country is even close to having the necessary mix of capacity and commitment to be a challenger to the U nited S tates for global preeminence .

Heg HighThe U.S. has global Hegemony now due to its nuclear weapons capabilitiesKeir Leiber 2006, Associate Professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and the Department of Government at Georgetown University, “The End of MAD?” The Nuclear Dimension of U.S”. “Primacyhttp://www.dartmouth.edu/~dpress/docs/Press_End_of_MAD_IS.pdfFor nearly half a century, the world’s most powerful nuclear-armed countries have been locked in a military stalemate known as mutual assured destruction (MAD). By the early 19 60s , the U nited S tates and the Soviet Union

possessed such large, welldispersed nuclear arsenals that neither state could entirely destroy the other’s nuclear forces in a ªrst strike. Whether the scenario was a preemptive strike during a crisis, or a bolt-from-the-blue surprise attack, the victim would always be able to retaliate and destroy the aggressor. Nuclear war was therefore tantamount to mutual suicide. Many scholars believe that the nuclear stalemate helped prevent conºict between the superpowers during the Cold War, and that it remains a powerful force for great power peace today.1 The age of MAD, however, is waning. Today the U nited S tates stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy vis-à-vis its plausible great power adversaries. For the ªrst time in decades, it could conceivably disarm the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a nuclear ªrst strike . A preemptive strike on an alerted Russian arsenal would still likely fail, but a surprise attack at peacetime alert levels would have a reasonable chance of success. Furthermore, the Chinese nuclear force is so vulnerable that it could be destroyed even if it were alerted during a crisis. To the extent that great power peace stems from the pacifying effects of nuclear weapons, it currently rests on a shaky foundation.American Hegemony is alive and wellSalvatore Babones, June 11th, 2015, an associate professor of sociology and social policy at the University of Sydney. He is a comparative sociologist who writes on comparative international development and on quantitative methods for the social sciences, “American Hegemony Is Here to Stay “,http://nationalinterest.org/feature/american-hegemony-here-stay-13089IS RETREAT from global hegemony in America’s national interest? No idea has percolated more widely over the past decade—and none is more bogus. The U nited S tates is not headed for the skids and there is no reason it should be . The truth is that America can and should seek to remain the world’s top dog. The idea of American hegemony is as old as Benjamin Franklin, but has its practical roots in World War II . The U nited S tates e merged from that war as the dominant economic, political and technological power. The only major combatant to avoid serious damage to its infrastructure, its housing stock or its demographic profile, the U nited S tates e nded the war with the greatest naval order of battle ever seen in the history of the world . It became the postwar home of the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. And, of course, the United States had the bomb. America was, in every sense of the word, a hegemon . “Hegemony” is a word used by social scientists to describe leadership within a system of competing states. The Greek historian Thucydides used the term to characterize the position of Athens in the Greek world in the middle of the fifth century BC. Athens had the greatest fleet in the Mediterranean; it was the home of Socrates and Plato, Sophocles and Aeschylus; it crowned its central Acropolis with the solid-marble temple to Athena known to history as the Parthenon. Athens had a powerful rival in Sparta, but no one doubted that Athens was the hegemon of the time until Sparta defeated it in a bitter twenty-seven-year war. America’s only global rival in the twentieth century was the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union never produced more than about half of America’s total national output. Its nominal allies in Eastern Europe were in fact restive occupied countries, as were many of its constituent republics. Its client states overseas were at best partners of convenience, and at worst expensive drains on its limited resources. The Soviet Union had the power to resist American hegemony, but not to displace it. It had the bomb and an impressive space program, but little else.

AT: Causes Overuse of Military Power “International activism” and primacy arguments miss the boat – having global military presence does not necessitate use of itStephen G. Brooks, G. John Ikenberry and William C. Wohlforth 12, Brooks is an Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth, B.A. University of California at Santa Cruz, M.A. Yale University, M. Phil. Yale University, Ph.D. Yale University, expert in international relations theory and international security and globalization, Ikenberry is a Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, Co-Director of Princeton’s Center for International Security Studies, Global Eminence scholar, served as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on U.S.-European relations, Wohlforth is a Professor of Government at Dartmouth and a Daniel Webster Professor, teaches and conducts research on international relations, with an emphasis on international security and foreign policy, expert in US foreign policy, has a degree in international relations from Beloit College, worked as legislative aid in U.S House of Representatives and attended Yale, earning in MA in international relations and a PhD in Political Science, Winter 2012/13, “Don’t Come Home, America, The Case against Retrenchment,” http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00107

Why “deep engagement” best describes the current grand strategy:¶ Critics of deep engagement often call it “primacy,”10 but this term inology obscures more than it clarifies because it begs the core strategic questions at issue. Primacy is not strategy but a fact of international life : even if America “came home” and slashed military spending, it would retain the world’s greatest latent power potential . Indeed, the grand strategy debate presumes primacy—it is the United States’ unrivaled power and favorable geographical¶ position that give it such a wide range of strategic choice.11 The strategic question¶ is whether to translate that latent power into the global capacity to manage¶ security affairs in multiple regions.¶ Other terms such as “international activism” make the opposite error by defining the strategy as a specific behavior—“the regular use of military power,”¶ as Barry Posen puts it.12 Such terms imply that U.S. global security commitments necessitate regularly using

military force —either to impose democracy on other societies, or, as Posen contends, “to change other societies so that they look more like ours.”13 In fact, deep engagement’s focus on leadership —even assertive leadership— does not imply the aggressive use of force to overturn the international status quo or force U.S. preferences on other societies. Military power is indeed a central tool of influence, as we discuss below, but not ¶ in the way Posen and other retrenchment advocates imply. The use of military power—especially to promote democracy or respond to humanitarian crises—¶ is a choice. Having a large global military presence enables this choice but does not necessitate it. Countries that have radically different grand strategies—¶ Britain and France come to mind—also sometimes choose to intervene militarily¶ for humanitarian or other purposes. Many countries use military power frequently,¶ but their grand strategies are hardly comparable to the United States’.¶ The main point is that oft-used terms such as “primacy” and “international activism” miss the overarching questions at the center of the debate. First,¶ should the United States continue to maintain a wide roster of global security¶ commitments? Second, should it sustain a significant overseas military presence?¶ And third, should it seek to lead the liberal institutional order? On many¶ other pressing foreign policy questions—notably armed humanitarian intervention¶ and democracy promotion—advocates of retrenchment and deep engagement¶ do not have uniform opinions.14 On these three questions, however,¶ supporters of deep engagement uniformly answer “yes,” whereas advocates for¶ retrenchment just as consistently answer “no.”15 The question is, who’s right?

A2: Alt. Actors and Multi-LatUS Influence is key to peace and global economic prosperityWilliam Odom 2007, a retired Army lieutenant general who was a senior military and intelligence official in the Carter and Reagan administrations, “American Hegemony: How to Use It, How to Lose It William Odom” http://www.middlebury.edu/media/view/214721/original/OdomPaper.pdfTo sum up, whether domestic or international, Liberal institutions —not democracy— are the key source of American power at home and abroad . Democracy does become an indispensable component of constitutional regimes , but it is Liberal institutions on which such regimes ultimately rest. The states within the American empire today produce 70 percent of the world’s G ross P roduct with only 17 percent of the world’s population . That figure alone gives us a real sense of how much more productive power Liberal institutions can generate compared to any other kind. It also shows that the main obstacle to peace and prosperity in those countries outside the American empire is not money, but rather, a shortage of constitutional government . No amount of economic aid will either compensate for, or produce that kind of government. In fact, most economic aid makes it less likely that poor countries will achieve effective government. Unfortunately, no one knows” precisely how to create Liberal institutions. Their emergence is highly problematic and rare; moreover, most of them have arisen only after periods of violence that led to compromise among the elites and some type of a deal between elites to abide by rules. At the same time, vi olence has far more often thrown countries off the track to a compromise. The record to date suggests that ethnic, racial, and sectarian fragmentation in a country makes a constitutional breakthrough virtually impossible. It also suggests that most political cultures outside of the traditional Western world are highly resistant to the idea of a “contract state” and inalienable civil rights. On this point, Japan, Turkey, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore stand out as huge exceptions; they are not fully constitutional in all cases, but certainly close to it. US growth is key to maintain HegemonyStephen M. Walt, 2002, American professor of international affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, “AMERICAN PRIMACY: Its Prospects and Pitfalls”, http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/swalt/files/art1-sp2.pdfU.S. power is the main source of American international influence and the ultimate guarantor of the nation’s sovereignty. It is the main reason why the support of the U nited S tates is valued and why its opposition is feared. Increasing the U.S. lead still further might not be worth the effort (given that the United States is already far ahead), but allowing others to catch up would squander most of the advantages that primacy now provides. This means that the U nited St ates should continue to worry about the overall distribution of world power . In addition to devoting an adequate share of national wealth to the creation of politically meaningful capabilities (including military power, technological expertise, etc.), Washington must project how global trends will affect the nation’s position over time. In particular, U.S. leaders will eventually have to decide whether it makes sense to try to slow the growth of certain powers and take steps to discourage the formation of even tacit anti-American coalitions. In particular, encouraging the emergence of a strong and wealthy China may not be in America’s long-term interest, even if China were eventually to become more democratic.

Multi-Lateralism is Impossible and fails due to different national interestsRichard N. Haas November/December 2014, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, The Unraveling: How to respond to a Disordered World, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2014-10-20/unravelingAs for global governance , international accords are often hard to come by for many reasons . The sheer number of states makes consensus difficult or impossible . So, too, do divergent national interests. As a result, attempts to construct new global arrangements to foster trade and frustrate climate change have foundered . Sometimes countries just disagree on what is to be done and what they are prepared to sacrifice to achieve a goal, or they are reluctant to support an initiative for fear of setting a precedent that could be used against them later. There is thus decidedly less of an “international community” than the frequent use of the phrase would suggest .

A2: ResilientA healthy Hegemon is necessary to solve climate change and stop terrorism, nuclear proliferation and secure a healthy world (iffy tag)Richard N. Haas November/December 2014, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, The Unraveling: How to respond to a Disordered World, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2014-10-20/unravelingAt the global level, the goal of U.S. policy should still be integration , trying to bring others into arrangements to manage global challenges such as climate change, terrorism, proliferation, trade, public health, and maintaining a secure and open commons . Where these arrangements can be global, so much the better, but where they cannot, they should be regional or selective, involving those actors with significant interests and capacity and that share some degree of policy consensus. The United States also needs to put its domestic house in order, both to increase Americans’ living standards and to generate the resources needed to sustain an active global role. A stagnant and unequal society will be unlikely to trust its government or favor robust efforts abroad. This need not mean gutting defense budgets, however; to the contrary, there is a strong case to be made that U.S. defense spending needs to be increased somewhat. The good news is that the United States can afford both guns and butter, so long as resources are allocated appropriately and efficiently. Another reason to get things right at home is to reduce American vulnerability. U.S. energy security has improved dramatically in recent years, thanks to the oil and gas revolutions, but the same cannot be said about other problems, such as the country’s aging public infrastructure, its inadequate immigration policy, and its long-term public finances.

Cooperative Hegemony Good Cooperative Heg Good

Cooperative hegemony is a better alternative to unilateral hegemony Thomas Pedersen 2002, , 11/6/02, “Cooperative hegemony: power, ideas and institutions in regional integration,” Review of International Studies, Volume 28, Issue 04, http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0260210502006770What then more precisely is co-operative hegemony? It is a grand strategy and, to the extent that it is successful, a type of regional order. Essentially, it implies soft rule within and through co-operative arrangements based on a long-term strategy. My use of the term strategy is not accidental. The theory of co-operative hegemony is based upon an ideational-institutional realism, not a structural realist theory. While attentive to the constraints that geopolitics and the international system impose upon states it regards ideas as important factors in international relations, it accords state leaders a considerable freedom of action when it comes to devising strategies and it assumes that states may learn and in the process incorporate causal ideas and principled beliefs in revised state strategies.35 The ideational-institutional realism implies that although the strategy of co-operative hegemony will normally be pursued by militarily weak major powers, it may also be pursued by very powerful big powers with a global reach wishing to consolidate their rule. It also implies the existence of counter-strategies to co-operative hegemony.36 Three key preconditions for the adoption of a strategy of co-operative hegemony are a capacity for power-sharing vis-à-vis smaller states in a region, for power aggregation on the part of the predominant regional state(s) and for commitment to a long-term regionalist policy strategy. It is useful to think in terms of a continuum of forms of co-operative hegemony ranging

from hard to soft co-operative hegemony (see below). Grieco is one of the few scholars to have elaborated upon the hegemonic perspective on regionalism. In one of his works he examines the correlation between resource asymmetry and regional institutionalisation.37 In another work he focuses upon the interest of the secondary states in a region, introducing the concept of voice-opportunity.38 The voice-opportunity proposition is interesting but leaves unexplained the motives of the predominant state(s) in a region. Nor does he address the possibility that regional hegemony may be shared. Grieco’s few remarks on the motives of institutionalizing hegemons are not integrated into his overall argument. His contributions are inspiring and help us transcend traditional hegemonic theory. Yet, focusing upon resource asymmetries poses problems fo r a traditional hegemonic theory in that both Europe and Asia are anomalies. In fact, the region with the highest degree of institutionalization (Europe) is also the region with the lowest degree of resource asymmetry . Far from invalidating the hegemonic perspective the blatant European anomaly may however suggest a need for revising the theory of hegemony. Should one focus upon perceptions and strategy rather than upon aggregate resources? Could it be that regional institutionalization reflects a particular hegemonic strategy? How may regional institutionalization help regional big powers achieve their goals? Waltzean neorealism claims that rising big powers are sooner or later balanced by single states or by coalitions of states. Translated into the regional setting this could lead to the proposition that regional institutions are mainly instruments of secondary and minor states trying to balance the dominant state by institutional means.39 If, however, we abandon balance-of-power theory and rely instead on Stephen Walt’s balance-of-threat theory, another line of thought suggests itself.40 If balancing is not automatic, the biggest state is left with some strategic discretion. Seen in this light regional institutionalization could be an element in the strategy of the biggest power in a region . Such a state may opt for institutionalization as a way of preventing balancing . To the extent that fear of the strongest state in the region can be removed or reduced, the pressure for balancing can be reduced. We may thus talk about a regional balance-of-fear. To the extent that band-wagoning behavior can be stimulated in a region this will also assist the regional unipole in its power aggregation project. Side payments and differentiation of the integration system (core groups) can be effective ways of fostering band-wagoning behavior. The existence of external threats is another factor affecting power aggregation capacity (see below). Apart from hostile balancing, regional big powers have an interest in preventing defection. Defection is here defined broadly in the sense of a military, political or economic exit from the zone of influence of a big power. Military exit may be the prelude to balancing, although there is no inevitability about this. Economic exit may imply a loss of market access. Political exit implies loss of global diplomatic clout for the regional great power in question. Regional institutionalization may also help a big power to acquire influence over the external and internal affairs of neighboring states in subtle ways . Thus Charles Kupchan has introduced the concept of ‘benign regional unipolarity’.41 Attempting to bridge realist and idealist approaches to the preservation of peace, Kupchan argues that regional orders based on unipolarity may emerge from a consensual bargain between core and periphery. In his own words . . . ‘the center engages in self-restraint . . . in return the periphery enters willingly into the core’s zone of influence’.42 A strategy of co-operative hegemony may be pursued by a global big power wishing to consolidate its position and reassure potential adversaries. By way of illustration there were clear elements of co-operative hegemony in the Clinton administration’s strategy of ‘Cooperative Security’ versus China.43

Cooperative hegemony good – 4 reasons Thomas Pedersen 2002, , 11/6/02, “Cooperative hegemony: power, ideas and institutions in regional integration,” Review of International Studies, Volume 28, Issue 04, http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0260210502006770More specifically, co-operative hegemony has four main advantages as seen from the perspective of the big power: 1. Advantages of scale. As already indicated, regionalism implies power aggregation. Such aggregation is of particular importance to a major regional power aspiring to a global role. If the co-operative hegemon is economically the most efficient state in the region, the advantages of a unified regional market may be very considerable. For a regional big power surrounded by small or very small states, the advantages of scale accruing from regionalism are marginal. 2. Advantages of stability. If fear of the biggest state in a region is high, stability becomes an important goal. An extensive extra-territorial economic presence also puts a premium on stability-generating strategies. The greater the regional economic and security externalities, the greater the incentive for co-operative hegemony from the point of view of the biggest state. As a form of rule cooperative hegemony is more stable than unilateral hegemony, since at a certain level of institutionalization hostile balancing and defection on the part of the secondary states in a region becomes exceedingly difficult . Yet the risk of popular rebellion against a co-opted government in a subordinate state still remains. Power-sharing and side payments thus have to display a certain visibility. Cooperative hegemony is attentive to the long-term benefits of legitimate rule . 3 . Advantages of inclusion. Key dimensions of inclusion could be said to be secure access to scarce raw materials and the possibility of integrating diasporas of the hegemonic state through regional institutionalization, witness Russian policy in the CIS. If successful, co-operative hegemony thus provides an alternative to coercive extra-territorial control.44 4. Advantages of diffusion. An institutionalized regional system is not only a constraint on the regional big power. It is also an asset in the sense of providing an arena for diffusion of the hegemon’s ideas. Such diffusion may occur in various ways and to varying degrees. Thus regional institutionalization may serve to ‘lock in’ neighboring states in a set of rules largely determined by the co-operative hegemon witness German diffusion of its monetary ideas and principles through EMU and US promotion of liberal principles within APEC. So far the literature has viewed lock-in strategies from the perspective of domestic politics, but it may just as well be interpreted as part of the strategy of a hegemonic actor vis-à-vis subordinate states in a region.

Cooperative hegemony is comparatively better than unilateral hegemony Thomas Pedersen 2002, , 11/6/02, “Cooperative hegemony: power, ideas and institutions in regional integration,” Review of International Studies, Volume 28, Issue 04, http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0260210502006770While the strategy of co-operative hegemony promises benefits, especially long-term benefits, it also involves costs, the most important of which is the requirement that the regional great power share power with its neighbors on a permanent basis . Figure 1 provides a more systematic survey of the advantages and disadvantages of unilateral and co-operative hegemony respectively. Unilateral hegemony has certain advantages over co-operative hegemony: it does not restrain the hegemonic state to the extent that does co-operative hegemony with its attendant institutional and procedural obligations. It is also a more flexible strategy in that changes in policy can be undertaken quickly with little consideration for the views of other states. Under conditions of technological globalization, cooperative hegemony may thus be argued to be particularly costly in that ceteris paribus it reduces decision-making speed and adds to legislative and agency costs. However, what seen from one angle is rigidity is seen from another angle as durability and reduced uncertainty . The drawbacks of unilateral hegemony are significant. First it invites balancing on the part of a coalition of secondary and smaller states . European history from the sixteenth to the mid twentieth century offers a number of examples of unilateralist big powers being cut down to size by balancing coalitions often with Britain playing a leading role as balancer. In 1704 at the battle of Blenheim the 1st Earl of Marlborough stopped Louis XIV in his attempt to make France the hegemonic power in Europe. In 1945 a distant relation of his, Winston Churchill, could look back on five years of successful struggle against the German attempt to establish itself as Europe’s hegemon. Interestingly, the longevity of the British empire can, I would argue, in part be explained by Britain’s skillful use of elements of the strategy of co-operative hegemony as a way of consolidating its position. Unilateral hegemony is thus less stable than co-operative hegemony which is a significant drawback for states with massive extra-territorial investments. Second, it involves extensive free-riding, unless the hegemonic power opts for coercion, in which case it risks prompting early balancing or attempts at defection. By contrast, given the long shadow of the future and the possibility of linkage-politics and nested games in an institutionalized setting, a co-operative hegemon should be capable of preventing free-riding without the hegemon incurring high costs.

Hegemony Impact Answers/Defense Doesn’t Solve War

Hegemony does not prevent wars; leads to unrest and terrorismRichard N. Haas November/December 2014, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, The Unraveling: How to respond to a Disordered World, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2014-10-20/unravelingJust why have things begun to unravel? For various reasons, some structural, others volitional. In the Middle East, for example, order has been undermined by a tradition of top-heavy, often corrupt, and illegitimate governments; minimal civil society; the curse of abundant energy resources (which often retard economic and political reform); poor educational systems; and various religion-related problems, such as sectarian division, fights between moderates and radicals, and the lack of a clear and widely accepted line between religious and secular spheres. But outside actions have added to the problems, from poorly drawn national borders to recent interventions. With more than a decade of hindsight, the decision of the United States to oust Saddam and remake Iraq looks even more mistaken than it did at the time. It is not just that the articulated reason for the war -- ridding Saddam of weapons of mass destruction -- was shown to be faulty. What looms even larger in retrospect is the fact that removing Saddam and empowering Iraq’s Shiite majority shifted the country from balancing Iranian strategic ambitions to serving them, in the process exacerbating frictions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims within the country and the region at large. Nor did regime change have better results in two other countries where it was achieved. In Egypt, the American call for President Hosni Mubarak to leave office contributed to the polarization of the society. Subsequent events demonstrated that Egypt was not yet ready for a democratic transition, and U.S. withdrawal of support from a longtime friend and ally raised questions elsewhere (most notably in other Arab capitals) about the dependability of Washington’s commitments. In Libya, meanwhile, the removal of Muammar al-Qaddafi by a combined U.S. and European effort helped create a failed state, one increasingly dominated by militias and terrorists. The uncertain necessity of the intervention itself was compounded by the lack of effective follow-up, and the entire exercise -- coming as it did a few years after Qaddafi had been induced to give up his unconventional weapons programs -- probably increased the perceived value of nuclear weapons and reduced the likelihood of getting other states to follow Qaddafi’s example.In Syria, the United States expressed support for the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad and then did little to bring it about. Obama went on to make a bad situation worse by articulating a set of redlines involving Syrian use of chemical munitions and then

failing to act even when those lines were clearly crossed. This demoralized what opposition there was, forfeited a rare opportunity to weaken the government and change the momentum of the civil war, and helped usher in a context in which the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), which has declared itself the Islamic State, could flourish. The gap between rhetoric and action also further contributed to perceptions of American unreliability. In Asia, too, the chief criticism that can be levied against U.S. policy is one of omission. As structural trends have increased the risks of traditional interstate conflict, Washington has failed to move in a determined fashion to stabilize the situation -- not raising the U.S. military’s presence in the region significantly in order to reassure allies and ward off challengers, d oing little to build domestic suppor t for a regional trade pact, and pursuing insufficiently active or sustained consultations to shape the thinking and actions of local leaders.Hegemons don’t prevent conflict because they view conflicts in a detached mannerStephen M. Walt, 2002, American professor of international affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, “AMERICAN PRIMACY: Its Prospects and Pitfalls”, http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/swalt/files/art1-sp2.pdfIf the United States is so powerful, why doesn’t it always get what it wants? The reason is simple—although the U nited S tates is much stronger than most other c ountries, other states often care more about the issues at stake than America does. American leaders worry about the spread of nuclear weapons in South Asia , for example, but their Indian and Pakistani counterparts care more about acquiring a deterrent than the Americans care about stopping them . Similarly, the United States and its Nato allies were vastly stronger than Milosevic’s Serbia, but he resisted their pressure for nearly a decade, because his regime cared more about the issues at stake than they did. The same dynamic limits U.S. influence in the Middle East; although the United States would like to foster a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians, its influence is limited, because the antagonists care more about the final outcome than it does. Once again, the fact that other states are usually more motivated than the United States with respect to their own regional issues does not reflect some failure of strategic vision, lack of leadership, or loss of will on the part of the United States. Rather, this is a direct result of its favorable international position. Other states care more about many issues because their fates are more intimately tied to the results. Conflict in the Middle East does affect the U nited S tates, but American survival is hardly at stake in the same way that it is for the Israelis, the Palestinians, or their neighbors. If one of the great benefits of primacy is that it allows the U nited S tates to view many international issues in a detached fashion, that relative disinterest means that weaker states may be willing to pay a large price to thwart U.S. objectives . Hegemony overlooks smaller conflicts (iffy tag)Stephen M. Walt, 2002, American professor of international affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, “AMERICAN PRIMACY: Its Prospects and Pitfalls”, http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/swalt/files/art1-sp2.pdf

The first problem created by America’ s favorable global position is a loss of public support for an active and engaged foreign policy . When asked, Americans still favor “engagement” over “isolationism,” but public interest in foreign issues is declining , and support for a costly foreign policy is especially weak . In a 1998 poll by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, for example, when Americans WALT 15 were asked to name two or three important problems facing the nation, foreign policy issues did not make the top seven; they constituted only 7.3 percent of all issues mentioned. When asked to name “two or three foreign policy problems facing the nation,” the most common response (at 20 percent) was “Don’t know.” Support for traditional U.S. allies has also declined significantly .19 Thus, the U nited S tates withdrew from Somalia after eighteen soldiers were lost, stayed out of Rwanda completely, was visibly reluctant to send ground troops to Bosnia or Kosovo , and fought the air war in Kosovo from fifteen thousand feet. Public support for key international institutions has also declined, and foreign policy issues played at most a minor role in the 2000 presidential campaign. It is also worth noting that a key element of President George W. Bush’s campaign platform was the need for the United States to be more “selective” in its overseas commitments. This is a far cry from the call to “pay any price and bear any burden” that animated U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. To be sure, there has been a surge of public interest and support in the wake of the 11 September terrorist attacks and the subsequent war against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Yet even here, the United States has relied heavily on proxy forces and remains ambivalent about taking on a long-term security role in Central Asia. Unless Al-Qaeda proves more resilient than it now appears, public attention is certain to wane over time. As it does, U.S. leaders will once again find themselves having to weigh their international ambitions against a rather modest level of popular interest and backing. These shifts are not simply a function of partisan politics or of former president William Clinton’s delicate relationship with the U.S. military. Rather, they are a direct consequence of America’s remarkably favorable world position . Because America is in such good shape, most Americans tend to ignore international politics and to focus their attention on other problems . The point is not that Americans are unwilling to run risks or bear costs; it is that they are reluctant to do so for the kinds of interests that are now at stake. This tendency will discourage any U.S. president from pursuing an activist foreign policy, because public support for it will be thin. Paradoxically, the very strength of America’s present position reduces public support for using that power in costly or risky ways, except in those (one hopes rare) moments when the United States is attacked directly. Indeed, this policy may even make sense—when the world is already one’s oyster, there is not much more to gain.20

Hegemony creates a “swing for the fences” approach, which in turn leads over-confidence and failure in global conflictsStephen M. Walt, 2002, American professor of international affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, “AMERICAN PRIMACY: Its Prospects and Pitfalls”, http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/swalt/files/art1-sp2.pdfA second pitfall is the opposite of the first—when a nation is as strong as the U nited St ates, there is a tendency for its leaders to assume that they can do almost anything . Public support for an ambitious foreign policy may be thin, but U .S. leaders may ignore that fact if they b elieve they can accomplish a great deal at a relatively low cost . They may also find it difficult to avoid being dragged into various quagmires and responsibilities in many parts of the world, because America’s present margin of superiority makes it harder to draw the line against further commitments. As the late Senator Richard Russell once warned, “If America has the capacity to go anywhere and do anything, we will always be going somewhere and doing something.” Consider the past decade. In addition to the various achievements discussed above, the United States tried to broker a final Arab-Israeli peace settlement, re-create a stable multiethnic democracy in Bosnia in the wake of a bloody civil war, and stabilize the entire Balkan region in the aftermath of the war in Kosovo. The United States also provided logistic support for peacekeeping efforts in East Timor, Cambodia, and Sierra Leone; attempted to cement Western influence in the Black Sea and Caspian regions; and tried to get India and Pakistan to refrain from testing nuclear weapons. At the same time, it also committed itself to building a national missile defense system in the face of foreign opposition and enormous technical obstacles. American leaders have also worked to liberalize the world economy, establish a constructive relationship with a rising China, and achieve a workable agreement to combat global warming. Now consider what the campaign against terrorism has added to America’s overloaded foreign policy agenda. To support its military operations in Afghanistan (and possibly elsewhere), the United States has taken on new security obligations in Pakistan and Uzbekistan. To keep the coalition together and rebuild relations with the Arab world, the United States is trying to convince Israel and the Palestinians to make additional concessions after more than a year of bloody violence. To stabilize the Pervez Musharraf government and encourage it to sever its ties to Islamic extremists, Washington is providing economic aid to Pakistan and trying to reduce tensions between Pakistan and India. Having toppled the Taliban, the United States must now take on the challenge of nation building in an impoverished region where it has little background or experience. To ensure that Al-Qaeda does not reemerge somewhere else, the United States is trying to root out terrorist cells in a host of other countries and attempting to cut off the covert financial flows that nurture these networks. To accomplish any one of these goals will be difficult; to achieve the entire agenda will be nearly impossible. WALT 17 Given these ambitions, it is hardly surprising that the United States does not accomplish everything it tries to do. The real lesson , however, is that strong states are invariably tempted to take on extremely ambitious goals—and they often find this temptation impossible to resist . In baseball, a batter who “swings for the fences” may hit more home runs than others but will probably strike out more often, too. Weaker states cannot accomplish as much as strong ones, but they may be better at recognizing the limit s of what they can realistically hope to achieve and be less likely to overextend themselves. There is an obvious tension between the first two pitfalls, but not a complete contradiction. On the one hand, the fact that foreign policy simply is not very important to most Americans (because the United States is already in very good shape) reduces public support for ambitious foreign policies. On the other hand, fifty years of international activism and America’s extraordinary capabilities can lead its leaders to believe that they can achieve almost anything at an acceptable cost. The danger, of course, is that Washington will establish commitments and pursue goals for which there is little domestic support, only to be blindsided by public opposition should the costs exceed the low initial expectations.

Unipolarity increases the prospect of warBenjamin H. Friedman 2014, research fellow in defense and homeland security studies. He writes about U.S. defense politics, focusing on strategy, budgeting, and wars, graduate of Dartmouth College, a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an Adjunct Lecturer at George Washington’s Elliot School of International Affairs, “Debating American Engagement: The Future of U.S. Grand Strategy”, http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_c_00140Temptation. Primacy increases motives for military action in two ways. The first is its capacious definition of threats. For example, if proliferation cascades are the looming danger that Brooks et al. say they are, then the strategy can reasonably be interpreted to suggest wars to prevent them.20 Advocates of the Iraq War and a prospective war on Iran employ similar logic.21 Second, primacy requires military capacity easily used for other ends. Forces stationed abroad in the name of primacy enable wars justiªed by humanitarianism, liberalism, and other goals outside primacy’s logic. Brooks et al. agree that primacy “expands opportunities to use force” (p. 31) but deny that the resulting military interventions are costly. Iraq is the exception, they argue, and the relatively cheap 1990s interventions the norm. Those interventions, however, cost something, risked more, and gained little or nothing . The fact that allies contributed more to these actions relative to their gross domestic product is barely relevant. What matters more is that U.S. returns were trivial and the results could have been worse. Why did Slobodan Miloševib surrender to NATO rather than force a ground invasion? Why did the Haitian junta not resist in 1994? Political science offers few answers and little basis for concluding that the United States has mastered coercive diplomacy and nation building.22 Moreover, if Brooks et al. believe these interventions served U.S. strategic interests, then they should not deny that primacy requires a steady stream of military activity (pp. 32–33).

Heg Credibility creates a misperception which sets up unneeded conflict and irrational foreign policyChris Fettweis 2010, Associate Professor, Tulane University, Department of Political Science, 2012-present, “Threat and Anxiety in US Foreign Policy”p.61-62,http://web.b.ebscohost.com.turing.library.northwestern.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=b3304f16-980f-4384-9ec6-c359f80193c0%40sessionmgr111&vid=1&hid=115For individuals as well as states, pathologies – mistaken or incorrect beliefs that inspire irrational action – create their own reality and drive behaviour accordingly. In individuals, pathologies reside in the mind, while state-level pathologies exist as shared irrational beliefs among leaders and the public . Strategic pathologies, then, are incorrect beliefs that drive destructive, or at least counterproductive, state behaviour. The United States suffers from sev eral. The credibility imperative is a clear example, one that continues to have a particularly strong influence upon the United States.7 Credibility, when used in policy debates, is a code word for the prestige and reputation of a state ; it is, in Henry Kissinger’s words, ‘the coin with which we conduct our foreign policy’, an intangible asset that helps states influence the actions of others.8 In periods of high credibility, policymakers believe, a state can deter and compel behaviour and accomplish goals short of war. When credibility is low, skeptical adversaries and allies may be tempted to ignore threats and promises. national leaders, therefore, healthy credibility seems to be the equivalent of many armed divisions, and is worth protecting at almost any cost. This belief rests on a shaky foundation, to put it mildly. Decades of scholarship have been unable to produce much evidence that high credibility helps a state achieve its goals, or that low credibility makes rivals or allies act any differently.9 Although study after study has refuted the basic assumptions of the credibility imperative, the pathology continues to affect policymaking in the new century, inspiring new instances of irrational, unnecessary action. The imperative, like many foreign-policy pathologies, typically inspires belligerence in those under its spell.10 Credibility is always maintained through action, usually military action, no matter how small the issue or large the odds. Insecurity, likewise, whether real or imagined, leads to expansive, internationalist, interventionist grand strategies. The more danger a state perceives, the greater its willingness to go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. The ‘preventive’ war in Iraq is the most obvious consequence of the inflated US perception of threat, but is hardly the only one. America’s insecurity pathology is in need of diagnosis and cure, lest Iraq be not a singular debacle but a harbinger of other disasters to come. Strategic performance can be improved if pathologies are recognised and eliminated. Better policy would result from a dispassionate, rational analysis of material costs and benefits of proposed action. In other words, although states do not always act rationally, they would usually be better off if they did. Of course, this sometimes involves the oversimplification of reality, because such calculations are not normally possible in the real world where neither costs nor benefits are knowable a priori. If they were – if rationality were not bounded – foreign-policy decisions would be easy to make. And any discussion of rationality necessarily implies assumptions about values, since rarely are costs and benefits neatly comparable. No equation can tell a policymaker precisely how many lives are worth sacrificing in pursuit of a particular national interest. Nonetheless, states can take steps toward maximising the chance for rationality in their choices. One obvious way is to recognise the States do not always act rationally irrational motivators for behaviour, and work to eliminate those impulses that tend to have a high probability of producing low-quality results. Good foreign policy cannot be built upon

an irrational foundation. Indeed, rationality in decision-making should be thought of as a minimum requirement for sagacious leaders, for their own good and for that of the international system as a whole.

The world was more peaceful when US military intervention and spending was lowChris Fettweis 2010, Associate Professor, Tulane University, Department of Political Science, 2012-present, “Threat and Anxiety in US Foreign Policy”p.61-62,http://web.b.ebscohost.com.turing.library.northwestern.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=b3304f16-980f-4384-9ec6-c359f80193c0%40sessionmgr111&vid=1&hid=115One potential explanation for the growth of global peace can be dismissed fairly quickly: US actions do not seem to have contributed much. The limited evidence suggests that there is little reason to believe in the stabilising power of the US hegemon, and that there is no relation between the relative level of American activism and international stability . During the 1990s, the United States cut back on its defence spending fairly substantially. By 1998, the United States was spending $100 billion less on defence in real terms than it had in 1990, a 25% reduction.29 To internationalists, defence hawks and other believers in hegemonic stability, this irresponsible ‘peace dividend’ endangered both national and global security. ‘No serious analyst of American military capabilities’, argued neo-conservatives William Kristol and Robert Kagan in 1996, ‘doubts that the defense budget has been cut much too far to meet America’s responsibilities to itself and to world peace’.30 And yet the verdict from the 1990s is fairly plain: the world grew more peaceful while the United States cut its forces. No state seemed to believe that its security was endangered by a less-capable US military , or at least none took any action that would suggest such a belief. No militaries were enhanced to address power vacuums ; no security dilemmas drove insecurity or arms races; no regional balancing occurred once the stabilizing presence of the US military was diminished. The rest of the world acted as if the threat of international war was not a pressing concern, despite the reduction in US military capabilities. Most of all, the U nited S tates was no less safe . The incidence and magnitude of global conflict declined while the U nited S tates cut its military spending under President Bill Clinton, and kept declining as the George W. Bush administration ramped the spending back up. Complex statistical analysis is unnecessary to reach the conclusion that world peace and US military expenditure are unrelated.

Hegemons cast blankets over the globe that has many holesStephen M. Walt, 2002, American professor of international affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, “AMERICAN PRIMACY: Its Prospects and Pitfalls”, http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/swalt/files/art1-sp2.pdfAmerican primacy creates one final pitfall. As the only global superpower, the U nited S tates is engaged in virtually every corner of the globe and in almost every significant issue . Even when it tries to remain aloof—as it did in the Balkans in the 1990s and in the Middle East in the first half of 2001—long-standing commitments tend to drag it in . This condition also forces U.S. leaders to make important decisions on issues where they have little background or expertise . One need only reflect on American policy in the Balkans to realize how easy it is for the United States to become engaged in areas and disputes in which it has little experience or insight. By contrast, weaker states can focus their attention on a few key issues and ignore most of the others . To make matters worse , U.S. objectives in one region or on some particular issue often conflict with its purposes elsewhere, which means that success in one endeavor may make things worse somewhere else. For example, expanding Nato may help defuse tensions in Europe and promote democratic development there, but it inevitably undermines relations with Russia and complicates decision making within the alliance itself. Similarly, the United States wants to support Israel, wants to promote peace in the Middle East, and wants good relations throughout the Arab world; these are all worthy goals, but they are difficult to achieve simultaneously. This same problem is even more acute in the American relationship with China. The United States wants to promote a close economic relationship with China (both for strictly economic reasons and to encourage Chinese moderation), but it also wants to deter China from using force against Taiwan and to encourage Beijing to adopt more liberal human rights policies. Moreover, Washington wants to pursue these goals without alarming its other Asian allies, and to encourage democratic forces in China without destabilizing the Chinese government. The problem , of course, is that pushing hard for any of these objectives will inevitably make it more difficult to achieve others. Once again, this conundrum is directly related to America’s position of primacy . All states face trade-offs in the conduct of foreign policy, but the choices are more numerous and more complicated for the United States, because it has its fingers in many different problems. Lesser powers generally face fewer conflicts between different objectives, simply because they are not committed in as many places and are not trying to accomplish as much. Taken together, these pitfalls explain why even a country as powerful as the United States cannot achieve all of its foreign policy objectives. They also identify some of the obstacles that U.S. leaders must overcome when engaging with other countries. Thus the final question to consider is how the United States can best exploit its remarkable advantages and minimize the constraints that its preponderant position necessarily imposes.

Doesn’t Solve EconHegemony leads to economic decline and warRichard N. Haas November/December 2014, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, The Unraveling: How to respond to a Disordered World, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2014-10-20/unraveling

Once again, however, in recent years, developments in and actions by the U nited S tates have contributed to the problem. The post–Cold War order was premised on U.S. primacy , which was a function of not just U.S. power but also U.S. influence, reflecting a willingness on the part of others to accept the United States’ lead. This influence has suffered from what is generally perceived as a series of failures or errors, including lax economic regulation that contributed to the financial crisis, overly aggressive national security policies that trampled international norms, and domestic administrative incompetence and political dysfunction. Order has unraveled, in short, thanks to a confluence of three trends. Power in the world has diffused across a greater number and range of actors. Respect for the American economic and political model has diminished. And specific U.S. policy choices , especially in the Middle East, have raised doubts about American judgment and the reliability of the United States’ threats and promises. The net result is that while the United States’ absolute strength remains considerable, American influence has diminished.

Doesn’t Solve PeaceHegemony doesn’t produce peace, peace is a product of modern technologyBenjamin H. Friedman 2014, research fellow in defense and homeland security studies. He writes about U.S. defense politics, focusing on strategy, budgeting, and wars, graduate of Dartmouth College, a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an Adjunct Lecturer at George Washington’s Elliot School of International Affairs, “Debating American Engagement: The Future of U.S. Grand Strategy”, http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_c_00140An increasingly peaceful world. An array of research, some of which Brooks et al. cite, indicates that factors other than U.S. power are diminishing interstate war and security competition . These factors combine to make the costs of military aggression very high, and its benefits low .3 A major reason for peace is that conquest has grown more costly. Nuclear weapons make it nearly suicidal in some cases.4 Asia, the region where future great power competition is most likely, has a “geography of peace”: its maritime and mountainous regions are formidable barriers to conflict. Conquest also yields lower economic returns than in the past. Post-industrial economies that rely heavily on human capital and information are more difficult to exploit.6 Communications and transport technologies aid nationalism and other identity politics that make foreigners harder to manage. The lowering of trade barriers limits the returns from their forcible opening.7 Although states are slow learners, they increasingly appreciate these trends. That should not surprise structural realists. Through two world wars, the international system “selected against” hyper aggressive states and demonstrated even to victors the costs of major war. Others adapt to the changed calculus of military aggression through socialization.8Hegemony increases the chances of civil war and economic decline; Vietnam and Iraq proveChris Fettweis 2011, Associate Professor, Tulane University, Department of Political Science, 2012-present, “The Superpower as Superhero: Hubris in U.S. Foreign Policy”, http://chicago.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=889127119117080079064097066126098104036009058007026037005123123009020080073088026087018123040104049123008012096027011084085107001008088038013091102067025088118018006005066077104085106088111001006010025127007006028108096024007073113096029084001115022&EXT=pdf&TYPE=2As civil war slowly filled the vacuum left by Saddam Hussein’s regime, the Bush Administration and other supporters of the war were left horrified and somewhat flabbergasted. The conquest had been swift , as expected, but the aftermath was not going as planned . By the time that the 2007 “surge ” of troops and change in U.S. strategy helped to reduce the sectarian violence to perhaps more tolerable levels, untold tens – perhaps hundreds – of thousands were dead , including more than four thousand Americans, and millions more had fled . The Iraqi economy was a complete wreck, and de facto ethnic cleansing had divided the country . The U nited S tates had managed to do the impossible: It had actually made life in Iraq worse than it was under Saddam . I t was not supposed to have gone this way. In the lead-up to the war, the administration had assured a wary public that the war would be quick, easy, cheap and glorious. Former Pentagon official Kenneth Adelman famously predicted that “liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk,” which was the dominant message promoted by the war’s proponents, even if some bristled a bit at the use of that word.1 The Hussein regime was a house of cards, the American people were told, that would collapse with the slightest nudge (or the “first whiff of gunpowder,” according to Richard Perle).2 American troops would be greeted as liberators, not conquerors; the streets of Baghdad and Basra, according to the Vice President, were “sure to erupt with joy.”3 And while “ethnic differences” existed in Iraq, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was convinced that they were exaggerated.4 A healthy Iraqi democracy was waiting to replace Saddam’s tyranny,

needing only a little push to help bring it about. Furthermore, Iraqi oil would pay for it all. Post-conflict planning done by the State Department prior to the war was pushed aside, since there was going to be no need for its insights.5 “Today,” wrote William Kristol and Lawrence Kaplan before the war, “we may attack Iraq with minimal risk.”6 The fact that many – if not most – military professionals did not share this optimism was apparently of no consequence.7 Iraq was not the first time that U.S. leaders were misled by cakewalk expectations , and it probably will not be the last. Over and over again, the U nited S tates has overestimated its capabilities and as a result made decisions that, in retrospect, appear bafflingly ill-advised. From the Bay of Pigs through Vietnam to Iraq , Washington has repeatedly exhibited the kind of overconfidence that the Greeks would immediately recognize as hubris, or an inflated self-esteem that leads inevitably to folly. In fact, no country displays the symptoms of hubris as clearly as does the United States. Only in the United States could a secretary of state not be mocked for claiming that “if we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indespensible nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future.”8 Only a U.S. leader could proclaim that it was “our responsibility to history” to “rid the world of evil,” as did George W. Bush, and have his people rally behind him as if such a thing were actually possible.9 Only the United States feels that its ideals are not only appropriate everywhere but actual gifts from God, deserving of aggressive promotion in all corners of the world. The U nited St ates is more theological with its foreign policy than any other state , and committed theologues cannot help but display the haughtiness and intellectual arrogance that we normally associate as hallmarks of hubris.Hegemony fails to prevent dispute due to its perceptions of invincibility Chris Fettweis 2011, Associate Professor, Tulane University, Department of Political Science, 2012-present, “The Superpower as Superhero: Hubris in U.S. Foreign Policy”, http://chicago.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=889127119117080079064097066126098104036009058007026037005123123009020080073088026087018123040104049123008012096027011084085107001008088038013091102067025088118018006005066077104085106088111001006010025127007006028108096024007073113096029084001115022&EXT=pdf&TYPE=2Policymakers under the spell of hubri s are likely to misperceive more than their own capabilities . Because it is so deeply ensconced in themselves, narcissistic leaders have an especially difficult time putting themselves into the mind of others, whether adversary or ally.27 T he second effect that hubris has on foreign policy is the repeated misjudgment of the likely reactions to our initiatives. Like individuals, states inhabit a self-centered universe and ascribe disproportionate causal importance to their own actions. People tend to overestimate their influence on the decision making of others. “Because an actor’s actions loom large to him,” Robert Jervis argued in his classic work on misperception, “overgeneralizing often involves the belief that his behavior was a major influence on the outcome.”28 We are the most important actors in our world; it follows that we must be an important factor in their world, too. Actors tend to give too little weight to domestic or even stochastic factors as inspiration for the actions of others. When they do what we want them to do, therefore, it becomes evidence of our success; when they act against our wishes, they mean to insult us, and to revel in our failure. The United States lost China, therefore, but won the Cold War. None of this is meant to imply that the actions of others are not affected by our actions, of course, only that we are likely to place a greater explanatory role on us than is warranted. This phenomenon, which psychologists refer to as the 27 Post, “Current Concepts of the Narcissistic Personality,” p. 112. 28 Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 234. 9 “egocentric bias,” blocks empathy and understanding, and has a great deal of experimental evidence to support it.29 President Carter and his administration – indeed a large portion of the U.S. foreign policy community – interpreted the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as a major new initiative in the Cold War superpower relations.30 They assumed that it was meant to test U.S. mettle as the opening salvo of a drive to the Persian Gulf, rather than an effort to remove a puppet regime in its near abroad that had grown uncooperative, which is what we now know it was.31 Carter’s reaction – he called the invasion as the “greatest threat to peace since World War II” – turned a local crisis into a global one, and scuttled détente.32 Hubristic p olicymakers tend to overestimate the extent to which others will cooperate with, or at least not overtly resist, their overtures . They assume that their capabilities are as obvious to others as they are to themselves , which makes them assume that others will choose to cast their lot with the side that will certainly succeed. Specifically, then, hubris leads states to anticipate bandwagoning behavior, even in those cases where balancing would otherwise seem quite predictable. Hitler’s hubris caused him to believe that the British would seek an accommodation once France was crushed under Nazi armor, for example. Similarly, the Japanese were under the impression that the United States would sue for peace following a fait accompli at Pearl Harbor, rather than resist. Both misjudgments, as is typical of those generated by hubris, led on to disaster. It comes as something of a shock to U.S. policymakers when other states choose to balance against the U nited S tates, if softly, rather than bandwagon with its benevolent hegemony . 33

Hegemonic Nation building fails miserablyChris Fettweis 2011, Associate Professor, Tulane University, Department of Political Science, 2012-present, “The Superpower as Superhero: Hubris in U.S. Foreign Policy”, http://chicago.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=889127119117080079064097066126098104036009058007026037005123123009020080073088026087018123040104049123008012096027011084085107001008088038013091102067025088118018006005066077104085106088111001006010025127007006028108096024007073113096029084001115022&EXT=pdf&TYPE=2Many times since the end of the World War II the U nited S tates has attempted to re-shape other countries to fit an image of its choosing. Washington made it a top Cold War priority to address the economic, political and even cultural strength of states that appeared vulnerable to communist infiltration. That impulse persists , providing the foundation for what has become known as “nation-building,” which today has replaced the anti-communist element with a paternalistic concern for the development of political and legal institutions, as well as economic growth and even religious evolution, all for strategic purposes. A 2007 RAND study pointed out that since the end of the Cold War the U nited S tates has embarked on a nation-building exercise on average once every two years . 41 Such interventions are invariably based on the belief that target states will prove willing and even eager to receive U.S. aid and advice, and will come to accept the notion that outsiders know better than they do about the functions of their societies. As it happens, however, many nations prove stubbornly resistant to building. The experiences in Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere ought to suggest at the very least that nation building is a daunting and difficult task , one that takes years of effort and billions of dollars to be successful . While sometimes worthwhile, these tasks should not be entered into lightly. “What is remarkable about this entire experience,” observed Francis Fukuyama, “is how little institutional learning there has been over time; the same lessons about the pitfalls and limitations of nation-building have to be relearned with each new involvement.”42 One of those central lessons should be that other people, even from less developed societies, are not likely to be passive consumers of received wisdom from the United States. The experience in Somalia is instructive, if misunderstood. The United States led the efforts of the international community to relieve a manmade famine in late 1992, and saved somewhere between 100 and 250 thousand lives.43 The mission was a resounding success, at least until the mission began to evolve beyond famine relief. “Combatants must be disarmed, retrained and re-employed,” explained Madeleine Albright, who was then the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. “Development aid must be delivered and efficiently used. Democratic institutions must be established. Those who disrupt the peace must be stopped.”44 Once the United States accepted the idea that its forces had to stay until a stable Somali state emerged, it began to engage in a wholly different task. It was nation-building, not humanitarian intervention, that failed in Somalia . The latter does not necessitate the former; presumably the international community could have left Somalia with the promise to return if the warlords allowed famine to break out again. The Somalis need to work out their own governance for it to be successful (and still do). They can use outside ideas, training and funds, no doubt, but not direction and micromanagement from outsidersHegemonic influence doesn’t result in cooperationF. Gregory Gause III 2005, Professor of International Affairs and Head of the International Affairs Department at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University, “Can Democracy Stop Terrorism?”, http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/20031706.pdf?acceptTC=trueEven if democracy were achieved in the Middle East, what kind of governments would it produce? Would they cooperate with the U nited S tates on important policy objectives besides curbing terrorism, such as advancing the Arab-Israeli peace process, maintaining security in the Persian Gulf, and ensuring steady supplies of oil? No one can predict the course a new democracy will take, but based on public opinion surveys and recent elections in the Arab world, the advent of democracy there seems likely to produce new Islamist g overnments that would be much less willing to cooperate with the U nited St ates t han are the current authoritarian rulers . The answers to these questions should give Washington pause. The Bush administration's democracy initiative can be defended as an effort to spread American democratic values at any cost, or as a long-term gamble that even if Islamists do come to power, the realities of governance will moderate them or the public will grow disillusioned with them. The emphasis on electoral democracy will not, however, serve immediate U.S. interests either in the war on terrorism or in other important Middle East policies.

Hegemons often abuses power; which in turn causes opposition and causes the rise of belligerent powersStephen M. Walt, 2002, American professor of international affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, “AMERICAN PRIMACY: Its Prospects and Pitfalls”, http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/swalt/files/art1-sp2.pdfA fourth pitfall follows from the familiar principle of the balance of power. In a world of independent states, the most powerful country will always appear at least somewhat threatening to others, who cannot be entirely sure it will use its power wisely and well. As a result, other states usually try to find ways to keep the power of the dominant state in check, often through formal or informal alliances . This tendency will be muted if the strongest

state acts in a benevolent fashion and its goals are broadly compatible with the interests of other major powers, but it never vanishes entirely.21 The tendency for states to “balance” the strongest power explains why France, Russia, and China joined forces to undercut U.S. policy toward Iraq and Serbia, and it underlies the principal motivation for the recent Sino-Russian Friendship Treaty .22 It also explains why European states want to strengthen and deepen the European Union, why President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela advocates global resistance to U.S. hegemony, and why President Putin of Russia has expressed hope that India will become a great power and help re-create a “multipolar world.”23 The desire to check U.S. influence is also evident in the recent vote ousting the United States from the United Nations Committee on Human Rights, as well as the hostile demonstrations that routinely accompany “Group of Eight” economic summits. Efforts to balance the United States have been modest thus far (surprisingly so, when one considers how powerful the United States is), because the United States is geographically isolated from the other major power centers and does not seek to dominate any of those regions. Indeed, America’s geographic position remains an enormous asset, because the major powers in Europe and Asia tend to worry more about their neighbors. But the desire to keep a leash on “Uncle Sam” is real, and U.S. leaders should not underestimate the potential for concerted anti-American action in the future.24 The tendency for the strongest power to provoke widespread opposition is probably the central challenge of contemporary U.S. foreign policy . The question is, how can the United States minimize the efforts of other states to keep it in check? U.S. policy cannot eliminate that tendency entirely, but it can almost certainly make the problem worse if it is insensitive to others’ concerns.

The first problem created by America’ s favorable global position is a loss of public support for an active and engaged foreign policy . When asked, Americans still favor “engagement” over “isolationism,” but public interest in foreign issues is declining , and support for a costly foreign policy is especially weak . In a 1998 poll by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, for example, when Americans WALT 15 were asked to name two or three important problems facing the nation, foreign policy issues did not make the top seven; they constituted only 7.3 percent of all issues mentioned. When asked to name “two or three foreign policy problems facing the nation,” the most common response (at 20 percent) was “Don’t know.” Support for traditional U.S. allies has also declined significantly .19 Thus, the U nited S tates withdrew from Somalia after eighteen soldiers were lost, stayed out of Rwanda completely, was visibly reluctant to send ground troops to Bosnia or Kosovo , and fought the air war in Kosovo from fifteen thousand feet. Public support for key international institutions has also declined, and foreign policy issues played at most a minor role in the 2000 presidential campaign. It is also worth noting that a key element of President George W. Bush’s campaign platform was the need for the United States to be more “selective” in its overseas commitments. This is a far cry from the call to “pay any price and bear any burden” that animated U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. To be sure, there has been a surge of public interest and support in the wake of the 11 September terrorist attacks and the subsequent war against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Yet even here, the United States has relied heavily on proxy forces and remains ambivalent about taking on a long-term security role in Central Asia. Unless Al-Qaeda proves more resilient than it now appears, public attention is certain to wane over time. As it does, U.S. leaders will once again find themselves having to weigh their international ambitions against a rather modest level of popular interest and backing. These shifts are not simply a function of partisan politics or of former president William Clinton’s delicate relationship with the U.S. military. Rather, they are a direct consequence of America’s remarkably favorable world position . Because America is in such good shape, most Americans tend to ignore international politics and to focus their attention on other problems . The point is not that Americans are unwilling to run risks or bear costs; it is that they are reluctant to do so for the kinds of interests that are now at stake. This tendency will discourage any U.S. president from pursuing an activist foreign policy, because public support for it will be thin. Paradoxically, the very strength of America’s present position reduces public support for using that power in costly or risky ways, except in those (one hopes rare) moments when the United States is attacked directly. Indeed, this policy may even make sense—when the world is already one’s oyster, there is not much more to gain.20

Hegemony cannot fight disease, defeat terrorism, and promote democracy; multi-polarity is keyJames M. Lindsay 2003, Senior Vice President, Director of Studies, Council of Foreign Relations, “The Globalization of Politics: American Foreign Policy for a New Century”, http://www.cfr.org/world/globalization-politics-american-foreign-policy-new-century/p6330In contrast, Globalists stress how globalization both limits and transforms America's capacity to use its power to influence events overseas. At bottom, the challenges and opportunities c reated by the forces of globalization are not susceptible to America acting on its own. Combating the spread of infectious diseases, preventing the spread of w eapons of m ass d estruction, defeating terrorism, s ecuring access to open markets, protecting human rights, promoting democracy, and preserving the environment all require the cooperation of other countries. As British Prime Minister Tony Blair put it succinctly following the September 11 attacks, "we are all internationalists now." But, Globalists argue, it is not simply that the nature of the issues arising from globalization limits the reach of American power and compels international cooperation. Globalization transforms the nature of power itself. No one has grappled with this problem more thoughtfully than Joseph Nye in his latest book, The Paradox of American Power. As Nye explains, "power today is distributed among countries in a pattern that resembles a

complex three-dimensional chess game." One dimension is military power, where the U nited S tates enjoys an unrivaled advantage, and the power distribution is therefore unipolar. The second dimension is economic, where power among the U nited S tates, Europe, and Japan is distributed more equally. The third dimension is transnational relations, where power is widely dispersed and essentially beyond government control. This is the realm of nonstate actors— from multinational companies and money managers to terrorist organizations and crime syndicates to nongovernmental organizations and the international media. "Those who recommend a hegemonic [or power-based] American foreign policy," Nye concludes, " are relying on woefully inadequate analysis. When you are in a three-dimensional game, you will lose if you focus on the interstate military board and fail to notice the other boards and the vertical connections among them."

Heg Fails---GeneralHegemony fails – extreme burdens of maintaining global order and stability Richard Maher 10, Ph.D. candidate in the Political Science department at Brown University, 12/10/10, “The Paradox of American Unipolarity: Why the United States May Be Better Off in a Post-Unipolar World,” Orbis, Volume 55, Issue 1, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0030438710000633Bearing Disproportionate Costs of Maintaining the Status Quo. As the preeminent power, the U nited S tates has the largest stake in maintaining the status quo. The world the United States took the lead in creating—one based on open markets and free trade, democratic norms and institutions, private property rights and the rule of law—has created enormous benefits for the United States. This is true both in terms of reaching unprecedented levels of domestic prosperity and in institutionalizing U.S. preferences, norms, and values globally. But at the same time, this system has proven costly to maintain. Smaller, less powerful states have a strong incentive to free ride, meaning that preeminent states bear a disproportionate share of the costs of maintaining the basic rules and institutions that give world politics order, stability, and predictability. While this might be frustrating to U.S. policymakers, it is perfectly understandable. Other countries know that the United States will continue to provide these goods out of its own self-interest, so there is little incentive for these other states to contribute significant resources to help maintain these public goods. 16 The U.S. Navy patrols the oceans keeping vital sea lanes open. During financial crises around the globe—such as in Asia in 1997-1998, Mexico in 1994, or the global financial and economic crisis that began in October 2008—the U.S. Treasury rather than the IMF takes the lead in setting out and implementing a plan to stabilize global financial markets. The United States has spent massive amounts on defense in part to prevent great power war. The United States, therefore, provides an indisputable collective good—a world, particularly compared to past eras, that is marked by order, stability, and predictability. A number of countries—in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia—continue to rely on the American security guarantee for their own security. Rather than devoting more resources to defense, they are able to finance generous social welfare programs. To maintain these commitments, the U nited S tates has accumulated staggering budget deficits and national debt . As the sole superpower, the United States bears an additional though different kind of weight. From the Israeli-Palestinian dispute to the India-Pakistan rivalry over Kashmir, the United States is expected to assert leadership to bring these disagreements to a peaceful resolution. The United States puts its reputation on the line, and as years and decades pass without lasting settlements, U.S. prestige and influence is further eroded. The only way to get other states to contribute more to the provision of public goods is if the U nited S tates dramatically decreases its share . At the same time, the U nited S tates would have to give other states an expanded role and greater responsibility given the proportionate increase in paying for public goods . This is a political decision for the United States—maintain predominant control over the provision of collective goods or reduce its burden but lose influence in how these public goods are used.

The idea of hegemony creates overextension and ultimately doesn’t workTed Carpenter April 2013, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor to The National Interest, is the author of nine books and more than 500 articles and policy studies, “Delusions of Indispensability” http://nationalinterest.org/print/article/delusions-indispensability-8145Only a handful of iconoclasts in the foreign-policy community—and even fewer mavericks in the political arena—dare to c hallenge the conventional wisdom. That is unfortunate, because the notion of the U nited States as the indispensable nation is not only dubious , but it also e ntrenches a counterproductive security strategy . It is a blueprint for strategic overextension and , ultimately, a failed paradigm . The term “leadership” itself is often a euphemism for those who see the United States as the indispensable nation. They usually mean America as the de facto global hegemon , and some are occasionally candid enough to use that word. Mitt Romney succinctly expressed the concept when he asserted that “America is not destined to be one of several equally balanced global powers.” Discussing the U.S. role in East Asia, American Enterprise Institute scholar Daniel Blumenthal warned of dire consequences if the United States no longer played “the role of benign hegemon in Asia.” Although some pundits and policy experts suggest that U.S. leaders should encourage other “cooperative” countries to have a greater voice and play a larger role in collaborative enterprises, even such proponents of multilateralism tend to become anxious if the United States is not clearly in charge on important matters. The neoconservative faction in the U.S. policy community does not even pretend to favor genuine multilateralism. Their preferred strategy is one in which the United States either acts unilaterally—often with a tinge of contempt for the views of other countries—or acts as the undisputed leader of a coalition, as during the Iraq War.

Hegemony isn’t necessary for global stability and creates pointless loss for the countryTed Carpenter April 2013, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor to The National Interest, is the author of nine books and more than 500 articles and policy studies, “Delusions of Indispensability” http://nationalinterest.org/print/article/delusions-indispensability-8145His comments illustrate a worrisome absence of selectivity regarding military interventions among members of the indispensable-nation faction. There is always an abundance of brutal crackdowns , bloody insurrections and nasty civil wars around the world. If a sense of moral indignation, instead of a calculating assessment of the national interest, governs U.S. foreign policy, the U nited S tates will become involved in even more murky conflicts in which few if any tangible American interests are at stake. That is a blueprint for endless entanglements , a needless expenditure of national blood and treasure, and bitter, debilitating divisions among the American people . A country that has already sacrificed roughly 6,500 American lives and nearly $1.5 trillion in just the past decade pursuing nation-building chimeras in Iraq and Afghanistan should not be looking to launch similar crusades elsewhere. Not only do disciples of the indispensable-nation doctrine seem to regard engagement as a binary light switch, they fail to distinguish between its various manifestations. The thesis that engagement can take different forms (diplomatic, military, economic and cultural) and that U.S. involvement in each form does not have to be at the same level of intensity is apparently a revolutionary notion bordering on apostasy. To those disciples, the security aspect dominates everything else. Mitt Romney warned that America must lead the world or the world will become a more dangerous place, “and liberty and prosperity would surely be among the first casualties.” Among the dangers Kagan projects is “an unraveling of the international economic order,” because, among other reasons, “trade routes and waterways ceased to be as secure, because the U.S. Navy was no longer able to defend them.” Proponents of an expansive U.S . posture repeatedly assert that a peaceful international system , which is the also the foundation of global prosperity, requires a hegemon . They most frequently cite Britain in the nineteenth century and the United States from the end of World War II to the present, although some even point to the Roman Empire as evidence for their thesis. In his book The Case for Goliath, Johns Hopkins University’s Michael Mandelbaum even asserts that the United States performs many of the benevolent stabilizing functions that a world government would perform. That, in his view, has been enormously beneficial both for the United States and for the world. Leaving aside the ultimate fate of the Roman Empire, or even the milder but still painful decline of Britain—which were in part consequences of the economic and security burdens those powers bore—the hegemonic model is hardly the only possible framework for a relatively stable and peaceful international system .

Heg ReselientLiterally NO threats to American hegemonySalvatore Babones, June 11th, 2015, an associate professor of sociology and social policy at the University of Sydney. He is a comparative sociologist who writes on comparative international development and on quantitative methods for the social sciences, “American Hegemony Is Here to Stay “,http://nationalinterest.org/feature/american-hegemony-here-stay-13089Ultimately, it is inevitable that in the long run American power will weaken and American hegemony over the rest of the world will fade. But how long is the long run? There are few factual indications that American decline has begun—or that it will begin anytime soon. Short-term fluctuations should not be extrapolated into long-term trends. Without a doubt, 1991 was a moment of supreme U.S. superiority. But so was 1946, after which came the Soviet bomb, Korea and Vietnam. American hegemony has waxed and waned over the last seventy years, but it has never been eclipsed. And it is unlikely that the eclipse is nigh. U.S. Hegemony is resilient; China is stallingRichard N. Haas November/December 2014, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, The Unraveling: How to respond to a Disordered World, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2014-10-20/unraveling

Traditional analytic approaches have little to offer in making sense of these seemingly contradictory trends. One conventional r oute , for example, would be to frame the international dynamic as one of rising and falling powers, pitting China’s advance against the United States’ decline . But this exaggerates the U nited S tates ’ weaknesses and underestimates China’s. For all its problems, the U nited S tates is well positioned to thrive in the twenty-first century, whereas China faces a multitude of challenges , including slowing growth, rampant corruption , an aging population, environmental degradation, and wary neighbors. And no other country is even close to having the necessary mix of capacity and commitment to be a challenger to the U nited S tates for global preeminence . ZERO THREATS to US HegSalvatore Babones, June 11th, 2015, an associate professor of sociology and social policy at the University of Sydney. He is a comparative sociologist who writes on comparative international development and on quantitative methods for the social sciences, “American Hegemony Is Here to Stay “,http://nationalinterest.org/feature/american-hegemony-here-stay-13089

No other country in the world possesses, has ever possessed, or is likely to possess in this century such a world- straddling vehicle for the enforcement of its will. More to the point, the U.S.-dominated system shows no signs of falling apart. Even the revelation that America and its English-speaking allies have been spying on the leaders of their NATO peers has not led to calls for the dissolution of NATO. The American system may not last forever, but its remaining life may be measured in centuries rather than decades. Cycles of hegemony turn very slowly because systems of hegemony are very robust. The American power network is much bigger, much stronger and much more resilient than the formal American state as such. A RECURRING meme is the idea that the whole world should be able to vote in U.S. presidential elections because the whole world has a stake in the outcome. This argument is not meant to be taken seriously. It is made to prove a point: that the U nited S tates is uniquely and pervasively important in the world . At least since the Suez crisis of 1956, it has been clear to everyone that the other countries of the world, whether alone or in concert, are unable to project power beyond their shores without American support. Mere American acquiescence is not enough. In global statecraft, the U nited S tates is the indispensable state . One widely held definition of a state is that a state is a body that successfully claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a territory. The German sociologist Max Weber first proposed this definition in 1919, in the chaotic aftermath of World War I. Interestingly, he included the qualifier “successfully” in his definition. To constitute a real state, a government cannot merely claim the sole right to use force; it must make this claim stick. It must be successful in convincing its people, civil-society groups and, most importantly, other states to accept its claim. In the twenty-first century, the U nited S tates effectively claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of force worldwide . Whether or not it makes this claim in so many words, it makes it through its policies and actions, and America’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force is generally accepted by most of the governments (if not the peoples) of the world. That is not to say that all American uses of force are accepted as legitimate, but that all uses of force that are accepted as legitimate are either American or actively supported by the United States. The world condemns Russian intervention in Ukraine but accepts Saudi intervention in Yemen, and of course it looks to the United States to solve conflicts in places like Libya, Syria and Iraq. The U nited S tates has not conquered the world, but most of the world’s governments (with the exceptions of countries such as Russia, Iran and China) and major intergovernmental organizations accept America’s lead . Very often they ask for it .

Multi-Lat BetterMulti-Lateralism better solves for terrorism, nuclear prolif, and human rights violations than Primacy doesChris Fettweis 2010, Associate Professor, Tulane University, Department of Political Science, 2012-present, “Threat and Anxiety in US Foreign Policy”p.61-62,http://web.b.ebscohost.com.turing.library.northwestern.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=b3304f16-980f-4384-9ec6-c359f80193c0%40sessionmgr111&vid=1&hid=115This is not to deny that Islamist terrorists pose a danger to the U nited S tates, or to suggest that policymakers are poised to ‘let down their guard’, as President Bush has worried. A rational U nited S tates, however, would interpret this issue for what it is: a law-enforcement challenge of the first order rather than an existential strategic threat . Fortunately, there is no meaningful dissension in the industrialised world about modern transnational problems such as terrorism, weapons proliferation, human trafficking, drug smuggling or piracy. Multilateral cooperation,

coordination and intelligence-sharing to address such issues are in the interest of every state and occur at high , if often under-reported, levels. Police action against terrorism is much less expensive than war, and is likely to be far more productive . Even terrorists equipped with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons would be incapable of causing damage so cataclysmic that it would prove fatal to modern states. T hough the prospect of terrorists obtaining and using such weapons is one of the most consistently terrifying scenarios of the new era , it is also highly unlikely and not nearly as dangerous as sometimes portrayed . As the well-funded, well-staffed Aum Shinrikyo cult found out in the 1990s, workable forms of weapons of mass destruction are hard to purchase, harder still to synthesise without state help, and challenging to use effectively. The Japanese group managed to kill a dozen people on the Tokyo subway system at rush hour. While tragic, the attack was hardly the stuff of apocalyptic nightmares. Super-weapons are simply not easy for even the most sophisticated non-state actors to use.31 If terrorists were able to overcome the substantial obstacles and use the most destructive weapons in a densely populated area, the outcome would of course be terrible for those unfortunate enough to be nearby. But we should not operate under the illusion that doomsday would arrive. Modern industrialised countries can cope with disasters , both natural and man-made. As unpleasant as such events would be, they do not represent existential threats.

Alt. Actors Solve Hegemony isn’t needed anymore; besides other actors like the EU can fill the voidTed Carpenter April 2013, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor to The National Interest, is the author of nine books and more than 500 articles and policy studies, “Delusions of Indispensability” http://nationalinterest.org/print/article/delusions-indispensability-8145

But even during the final decades of the Cold War , the U.S . security blanket unfortunately caused an excessive and unhealthy dependence on the part of democratic Europe . And with the demise of the Soviet Union, a policy based on U.S. dominance now reeks of obsolescence. Despite its recent financial struggles, the E uropean Union c ollectively has both a population and an economy larger than those of the U nited S tates. And Russia , if it poses a threat at all, is a far less serious menace than was the Soviet Union. Yet U.S. leaders act as though the EU nations are inherently incapable of manag ing Europe’s security affairs . And for their part, the European allies are content to continue free riding on Washington’s exertions, keeping their defense budgets at minimal levels and letting the U nited S tates take primary r esponsibility for security issues that affect Europe far more than America . Even a modest increase in defense spending by the principal European powers would enable the EU to handle any security problems that are likely to arise in the region. In that sense, Washington’s dominant role in dealing with the Balkan conflicts in the 1990s was not evidence of the continuing need for U.S. leadership , but rather underscored the negative consequences of having encouraged Europe’s security dependence on the U nited S tates for so many decades. The reality is that the threat environment in Europe is quite benign . There are few plausible security threats , and the ones that might arise are on the scale of the Balkan spats — problems that the European powers should be able to handle without undue exertion. Washington can safely off-load responsibility for European security and stability to the countries directly involved. The United States is most certainly not indispensable to the Continent’s security any longer.US Hegemony is not needed in East Asia; China and Japan proveTed Carpenter April 2013, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor to The National Interest, is the author of nine books and more than 500 articles and policy studies, “Delusions of Indispensability” http://nationalinterest.org/print/article/delusions-indispensability-8145Prospects in other regions are less definite, but there are still opportunities for Washington to reduce its military exposure and risks. The most important region to the United States, East Asia, presents a less encouraging picture than does Europe for off-loading security obligations, since there is no cohesive, multilateral organization comparable to the EU to undertake those responsibilities. Yet even in East Asia there are alternatives to U.S. hegemony , which has been in place since 1945. Washington’s dominance was born in an era in which there were no credible challengers. Although the USSR had some ambitions in the western Pacific, its primary goals were elsewhere, largely in Eastern Europe and the emerging states of the Third World. China after the Chinese Revolution in 1949 was belligerent, but also weak and poor. Japan, utterly defeated in World War II and worried about Soviet and Chinese intentions, was content to maintain a pacifist image and rely heavily on the United States for defense. The rest of the region consisted of new, weak states arising out of rapidly decaying European colonial empires. As in

Europe, the situation today is totally different. Japan has the world’s third-largest economy, China is an emerging great power , and East Asia has an assortment of other significant economic and political players. It will be increasingly difficult for the U nited S tates, a nation thousands of miles away, to dominate a region with an ever- expanding roster of major powers . Instead of frantically trying to prop up a slipping hegemony, U.S. policy makers must focus on helping to shape a new security environment . Among other steps, Washington should wean its principal allies in the region —especially Japan, South Korea and Australia—from their overreliance on U.S. defense guarantees . Not only should U.S. leaders make it clear that the United States intends to reduce its military presence, but they should emphasize that those allies now must take far greater responsibility for their own defense and the overall stability of the region. The most likely outcome of such a policy shift would be the emergence of an approximate balance of power in East Asi a . China would be the single strongest country, but if Japan, South Korea, and other actors such as Vietnam and Indonesia take the actions necessary to protect their own interests, Beijing will fall far short of having enough power to become the new hegemon. A balance-of-power system would be somewhat less stable than the current arrangement, but it would likely be sufficient to protect crucial American interests. And it may be Washington’s only realistic option over the medium and long term . Clinging to an increasingly unsustainable hegemony is not a realistic strategy.

Anti-Americanism Inevitable Hegemony fails – Anti-Americanism inevitableRichard Maher 10, Ph.D. candidate in the Political Science department at Brown University, 12/10/10, “The Paradox of American Unipolarity: Why the United States May Be Better Off in a Post-Unipolar World,” Orbis, Volume 55, Issue 1, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0030438710000633Creation of Feelings of Enmity and Anti-Americanism. It is not necessary that everyone admire the United States or accept its ideals, values, and goals. Indeed, such dramatic imbalances of power that characterize world politics today almost always produce in others feelings of mistrust, resentment, and outright hostility . At the same time, it is easier for the United States to realize its own goals and values when these are shared by others, and are viewed as legitimate and in the common interest. As a result of both its vast power but also some of the decisions it has made, particularly over the past eight years, feelings of resentment and hostility toward the U nited S tates have grown, and perceptions of the legitimacy of its role and place in the world have correspondingly declined . Multiple factors give rise to anti-American sentiment, and anti-Americanism takes different shapes and forms.17 It emerges partly as a response to the vast disparity in power the U nited S tates enjoys over other states . Taking satisfaction in the missteps and indiscretions of the imposing Gulliver is a natural reaction. In societies that globalization (which in many parts of the world is interpreted as equivalent to Americanization) has largely passed over, resentment and alienation are felt when comparing one's own impoverished, ill-governed, unstable society with the wealth, stability, and influence enjoyed by the U nited S tates .18 Anti-Americanism also emerges as a consequence of specific American actions and certain values and principles to which the United States ascribes . Opinion polls showed that a dramatic rise in anti-American sentiment followed the perceived unilateral decision to invade Iraq (under pretences that failed to convince much of the rest of the world) and to depose Saddam Hussein and his government and replace it with a government much more friendly to the United States. To many, this appeared as an arrogant and completely unilateral decision by a single state to decide for itself when— and under what conditions—military force could be used. A number of other policy decisions by not just the George W. Bush but also the Clinton and Obama administrations have provoked feelings of anti-American sentiment. However, it seemed that a large portion of the world had a particular animus for George W. Bush and a number of policy decisions of his administration, from voiding the U.S. signature on the International Criminal Court (ICC), resisting a global climate change treaty, detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, and what many viewed as a simplistic worldview that declared a “war” on terrorism and the division of the world between good and evil. With populations around the world mobilized and politicized to a degree never before seen—let alone barely contemplated—such feelings of anti-American sentiment makes it more difficult for the U nited S tates to convince other governments that the U.S.’ own preferences and priorities are legitimate and worthy of emulation.

Sustainability---Yes Budget/Fiscal

The U.S can sustain the budgetary cost of deep engagement – deficit decreasing now – other strategies are less strategicStephen G. Brooks, G. John Ikenberry and William C. Wohlforth 12, Brooks is an Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth, B.A. University of California at Santa Cruz, M.A. Yale University, M. Phil. Yale University, Ph.D. Yale University, expert in international relations theory and international security and globalization, Ikenberry is a Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, Co-Director of Princeton’s Center for International Security Studies, Global Eminence scholar, served as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on U.S.-European relations, Wohlforth is a Professor of Government at Dartmouth and a Daniel Webster Professor, teaches and conducts research on international relations, with an emphasis on international security and foreign policy, expert in US foreign policy, has a degree in international relations from Beloit College, worked as legislative aid in U.S House of Representatives and attended Yale, earning in MA in international relations and a PhD in Political Science, Winter 2012/13, “Don’t Come Home, America, The Case against Retrenchment,” http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00107

Speaking for many retrenchment advocates, Christopher Layne maintains that¶ “the nation’s ballooning budget deficits are going to make it increasingly difficult to sustain [the United States’] level of military commitments .... [I]ts¶ strategic commitments exceed the resources available to support them.”16 The¶ budgetary cost of deep engagement is the difference between the expenditures¶ the strategy demands and the amount required for its replacement. The problem¶ is that there are no consensus estimates for either number. This challenge¶ is particularly acute concerning the cost of the grand strategy that would replace¶ retrenchment. Critics of deep engagement develop strong general arguments¶ about the costs and risks of

maintaining alliance commitments, but they¶ typically leave unclear exactly what to do about them. Should all alliances and¶ security commitments be summarily abrogated? If so, the savings would be¶ significant. CATO Institute analysts Benjamin Friedman and Justin Logan estimate¶ that this alternative—revoking all U.S. security guarantees and alliances,¶ bringing all overseas deployed troops home, reconfiguring the navy to “surge¶ to fight rare wars rather than patrol the world in the name of stability,” decommissioning¶ large numbers of personnel in all branches, slashing the nuclear¶ deterrent force, and dramatically scaling back weapons procurement—would¶ save some $900 billion over ten years.17¶ Few advocates of retrenchment are so specific, and fewer still unambiguously¶ endorse the idea of reverting to the pre–World War II strategy of an “insular,¶ maritime power” with limited reach beyond the Western Hemisphere. A decision to abandon allies and partners, close bases, shed personnel on a large¶ scale, and trim major defense infrastructure would be exceedingly hard to reverse ,¶ dramatically raising the costs should the United States

ever decide that¶ an overseas intervention were necessary. Few retrenchment advocates appear¶ sufficiently confident that no such overseas interventions will ever be necessary¶ to recommend such a course.18 Instead, their criticisms of deep engagement are usually accompanied by calls for “ restraint,” “offshore balancing,” or “over the horizon” strategies rather than a wholesale abandonment of all major U.S. commitments. These strategies vary along two dimensions: force structure¶ (decommissioning vs. redeployment home; downsizing vs. shifting from¶ Army/Marines to Navy; eliminating the U.S. overseas military footprint¶ everywhere or just in selected regions, etc.); and security commitments¶ (whether to maintain commitments but defend them from offshore; cut some¶ commitments but not all; or cut all commitments).19¶ The budgetary savings that such strategies would yield are unclear . They¶ depend on which security commitments are to be abandoned outright and¶ over what period of time, how U.S. allies would respond, and how much it¶ would cost to make the remaining commitments credible from an over-the horizon¶ stance. If the alternative strategy requires keeping a similarly sized force in the United States, then the expected savings are modest given that host governments generally cover many infrastructure costs of U.S. forces and bases. And if it requires the maintenance of major expeditionary capacity,¶ again, the savings, if any, might

be modest owing to the need for continued or¶ even enhanced investment in the kinds of weapons platforms that now eat up¶ so much of the defense budget.20 Until retrenchment advocates provide more specifics, the most that can be said is that their alternatives might promise some savings, though considerably less than full strategic disengagement . ¶ The other term in the cost equation—the budgetary

demands of deep¶ engagement—is also a moving target. Retrenchment advocates tend to write as¶ if post–September 11 levels of defense spending are necessary to maintain the deep engagement strategy, but it is already clear that this is not the case. After¶ the September 11 attacks, defense spending increased dramatically, owing in¶ large part to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, not all of the increased¶ defense spending since September 11 resulted from the costly occupations¶ in Iraq and Afghanistan; a significant portion of the increase was caused¶ by an augmented effort to field and use military tools in the wider war on terrorism.¶ Both of these drivers of increased spending during the past decade have already begun to be reversed, as the United States winds down the two costly wars and begins to trim nonwar “base” spending. As of the fall of 2012, the Defense Department based planning on cuts of just under $500 billion over the next five years, maintaining that these reductions would not compromise the national security strategy . A

report published by the Center for a New¶ American Security agreed that “America’s global engagement strategy as it is currently articulated” can be sustained with national defense cuts in the $500 billion to $550 billion range. 21 As figure 1 shows, these cuts are expected¶ to bring defense expenditures as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) below¶ 3 percent by 2017, even though spending in real terms will be roughly¶ $100 billion higher than the late 1990s.22 Importantly, these figures may not represent¶ the floor for spending to sustain the strategy over the long term: according¶ to many experts, rebalancing security efforts from military to civilian tools¶ and much-discussed reforms to the way the Pentagon does business—including procurement practices and compensation policies—potentially could save significant¶ additional sums.23¶ Two points about budget costs emerge. First, the United States can sustain ¶ the budgetary cost of deep engagement , even if a future administration should decide to

increase funding substantially. Even the largest defense increase seriously discussed in the 2012 presidential campaign would not bring military spending as a share of GDP back to its 2011 level. Given the vast gap in military capabilities between the United States and China, the absence of real counterbalancing (discussed below), and the fact that deep engagement has made U.S. allies of most of the world’s most advanced and capable military powers, China’s economic rise will not demand a dramatic increase in U.S. military efforts anytime soon.24 To be sure, the politics of the defense budget¶ may well become contentious in a tough fiscal climate.25 However, that prospect¶ hardly means that deep engagement cannot be sustained. Rather, it underlines the increased importance of the grand strategy debate this article seeks to advance.¶ Second, the budgetary cost of the types of offshore balancing or over-thehorizon¶ stances most often suggested by retrenchment advocates remains¶

unclear, but it is certainly more than “coming home” via full strategic disengagement¶ and, at least for some versions, may be either

roughly the same or¶ not dramatically lower than current forecasts of deep engagement’s price tag.¶ This may explain why the budgetary cost does not figure more prominently in¶ the case for retrenchment. Arguably the most influential scholarly article on retrenchment¶ yet written, Eugene Gholz, Daryl Press and Harvey Sapolsky’s¶ “Come Home, America,” was published in 1997—just as U.S. defense spending¶ was approaching a fifty-year low as a percentage of GDP at 3 percent.26 Deep engagement’s other costs (as well as its alleged lack of benefits) are¶ clearly the centerpieces of the case for retrenchment.

AT: Balancing Deep engagement runs no risk of generating hard or soft balancing – securing allies reduces incentives to increase military capabilities and there is no evidence to support balancing claimsStephen G. Brooks, G. John Ikenberry and William C. Wohlforth 12, Brooks is an Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth, B.A. University of California at Santa Cruz, M.A. Yale University, M. Phil. Yale University, Ph.D. Yale University, expert in international relations theory and international security and globalization, Ikenberry is a Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, Co-Director of Princeton’s Center for International Security Studies, Global Eminence scholar, served as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on U.S.-European relations, Wohlforth is a Professor of Government at Dartmouth and a Daniel Webster Professor, teaches and conducts research on international relations, with an emphasis on international security and foreign policy, expert in US foreign policy, has a degree in international relations from Beloit College, worked as legislative aid in U.S House of Representatives and attended Yale, earning in MA in international relations and a PhD in Political Science, Winter 2012/13, “Don’t Come Home, America, The Case against Retrenchment,” http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00107

Balancing: Some advocates of retrenchment suggest that deep engagement¶ in the security affairs of the world’s key regions “prompts other states to balance¶ against U.S. power however they can.”29 Such counterbalancing could¶ take the form of alliance formation (institutionalized interstate security cooperation¶ against the United States that would not occur if America retrenched),¶ “internal balancing” (the conversion of latent capacity into military power that¶ would not occur if the United States retrenched), or “soft balancing” (the use¶ of institutions and other nonmilitary means to hamstring U.S. policy that¶ would not occur if the United States retrenched).¶ It is now generally understood that the current grand strategy of deep engagement runs no risk of generating “hard” counterbalancing. When properly¶ specified, realist balance of power theory does not predict counterhegemonic¶ balancing against the United States: the conditions that sparked internal and¶ external

counterbalancing against past leading states—notably the existence of¶ contiguous peer rival great powers—do not apply.30 Moreover, recent

scholarship strongly supports the proposition that the deep engagement strategy—¶ and the maintenance of the formidable military power that underwrites¶ it—slows rather than hastens the speed at which capabilities might diffuse to a more balanced distribution. As we argue below, securing partners and allies in¶ key regions reduces their incentives to generate military capabilities . 31 Less often noted is that these same security guarantees provide leverage to prevent ¶ U.S. allies—which comprise the majority of the most modern and effective militaries in the world—from transferring military technologies and production¶ techniques to potential rivals . The U.S. dominance of the high-end defense ¶

industry also allows Washington to trade access to its defense market for compliance on key security issues, such as technology transfers to potential geopolitical opponents.32 The embargo on military sales to China—in place since 1989—is a case in point. More generally, recent years have witnessed an outpouring of scholarship directly refuting the proposition forwarded by many retrenchment proponents that U.S. military preeminence sparks a diffusion of military power. On the contrary, there are many settings in which the first mover’s military innovations are unlikely to be adopted successfully by potential rivals.33 Path dependence, scale economies, learning effects regarding production techniques, and barriers to entry in the production of high-end military power make the maintenance of unmatched capabilities far easier than many retrenchment advocates suggest—particularly in today’s environment in which modern weaponry is so much more complex both to produce and to use than in past eras.34 A United States less committed to global leadership with a

less dominant military posture would have far less capacity to control the diffusion of military power. Concerning balance of threat theory, its author, Stephen Walt, concludes that because of the numerous systemic factors that mitigate other powers’ perceptions of U.S. threats to their security, the United States would have to “have the same expansionist ambitions [as] Napoleonic France, Wilhelmine and Nazi¶ Germany, or the Soviet Union” to spark a hard balancing coalition.35 Expanding¶ the theoretical lens to encompass domestic and international institutions¶ only strengthens the case. Deep engagement allows the U nited S tates to institutionalize its alliances and wrap its hegemonic rule in a rules-based order . ¶ The result is to make the U.S. alliance system—especially among its core¶ liberal members—far more robust and harder to challenge

than if the United¶ States were to disengage.36¶ Needless to say, the evidence is perfectly consistent with this near consensus¶ regarding the nature of

balancing in today’s system. The United States has¶ pursued a grand strategy of deep engagement in a unipolar setting for twenty years . For at least a portion of his eight-year administration, George W. Bush¶ followed a more “unilateral” foreign policy that many scholars (critics and defenders¶ of deep engagement alike) saw as being far more threatening to other¶ states.37 Yet multiple, comprehensive analyses find no evidence of external or internal balancing by major powers. 38¶ Because it is a slippery concept that is difficult to distinguish from standard¶ diplomatic bargaining and

competition, soft balancing is harder to evaluate.39 Case studies of headline episodes widely seen as soft balancing fail to find much evidence that balancing dynamics were really in play.40 Michael Beckley’s¶ efforts to evaluate quantitative indicators (voting patterns at the United¶ Nations, arms sales to U.S. adversaries, and foreign public opinion) also show¶ no consistent trend other than evidence of political resistance to the U.S. invasion¶ of Iraq in 2003.41 For the purposes of assessing U.S. grand strategy, however,¶ the most important point about soft balancing is that it is defined in a way guaranteed to miss the real question : Does the current grand strategy give¶ the United States or its potential adversaries more soft

balancing–style leverage?¶ Almost all definitions of soft balancing are about actions below the significance of hard balancing that other states can take to constrain the United States. They focus on the use of international institutions and coordinated action to restrain the United States, in part by denying it legitimacy.42 Yet, precisely¶ the same tools are available to the U nited S tates: it too can use international institutions and undertake coordinated actions to constrain other powers. In this sense, the United States is “soft balancing” other states all the time.43¶ For example, in 2011 Washington coordinated action with a number of¶ Southeast Asian states to oppose Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea by¶ highlighting established international law and norms to deny China’s claim legitimacy.¶ This fits all definitions of soft balancing—except that it is directed¶ against China. It takes only a moment’s thought to see that this sort of action¶ goes on constantly—sometimes explicitly, often implicitly. The United States is clearly the world’s number one “soft balancer.” Moreover, the institutions, norms, rules, and standards of legitimacy that it uses to constrain others are largely of its own creation.44 As noted above, a core proposition of the deep engagement strategy is that sustaining a global presence enables systematic use of soft balancing–style tools to restrain and shape others’ behavior. To be sure,¶ other

powers sometimes use the same tools, but to define soft balancing as action that can be taken only against the United States misses the forest for a few trees.

AT: Imperial OverstretchLeadership doesn’t impose growth sapping – empirical evidence shows a positive relationship between military spending and growthStephen G. Brooks, G. John Ikenberry and William C. Wohlforth 12, Brooks is an Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth, B.A. University of California at Santa Cruz, M.A. Yale University, M. Phil. Yale University, Ph.D. Yale University, expert in international relations theory and international security and globalization, Ikenberry is a Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, Co-Director of Princeton’s Center for International Security Studies, Global Eminence scholar, served as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on U.S.-European relations, Wohlforth is a Professor of Government at Dartmouth and a Daniel Webster Professor, teaches and conducts research on international relations, with an emphasis on international security and foreign policy, expert in US foreign policy, has a degree in international relations from Beloit College, worked as legislative aid in U.S House of Representatives and attended Yale, earning in MA in international relations and a PhD in Political Science, Winter 2012/13, “Don’t Come Home, America, The Case against Retrenchment,” http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00107

The problem with the claim that pursuing leadership imposes growth sapping ¶ opportunity costs is that subsequent research has found virtually no evidence for it . Research in economics has yielded no consensus theory or accepted ¶

empirical finding to support the assumption that reduced U.S. military ¶ spending would improve the country’s economic growth. As one review¶ summed it up, the “literature in economics has not found military expenditure to be a significant determinant of growth.”51 This finding is robust to all three¶ major growth models in economics, a huge array of identification strategies,¶ various country groupings (e.g., developed vs. developing), and

concerning¶ the United States itself. Indeed, when considered in the aggregate, the most ¶ common finding is a positive relationship between military spending and growth . 52 In a departure from the broader research in economics, political scientists¶ Karen Rasler and William Thompson conducted a study tailored to the specific claims about the costs of hegemonic grand strategie s. Their findings¶ “do not support the argument that consumption-driven investment tradeoffs are critical to an understanding of the relative decline of system leaders .”53 Obviously,¶ there are some limits to this overall claim: if the United States were a¶ dramatic outlier among the advanced economies, spending Soviet Union–type levels on defense (20 to 25 percent) over decades, this would surely

complicate¶ its growth trajectory and relative competitiveness. But even when fully engaged in the Afghan war and with many of the expensive militarized responses to the September 11 attacks still in place , the U nited S tates is not spending a historically high proportion of its GDP on the military ( 4.5 percent in 2012 ) either in absolute terms or in relation to its primary economic¶

AT: Kennedy, Gilpin and Calleo:Two possible tag options:

- Kennedy, Gilpin and Calleo’s arguments are not relevant to current debates – none of them establish a connection between hegemony and decline- Declining economic growth and costs of military power aren’t caused by hegemony and leading states can use their position to slow declineStephen G. Brooks, G. John Ikenberry and William C. Wohlforth 12, Brooks is an Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth, B.A. University of California at Santa Cruz, M.A. Yale University, M. Phil. Yale University, Ph.D. Yale University, expert in international relations theory and international security and globalization, Ikenberry is a Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, Co-Director of Princeton’s Center for International Security Studies, Global Eminence scholar, served as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on U.S.-European relations, Wohlforth is a Professor of Government at Dartmouth and a Daniel Webster Professor, teaches and conducts research on international relations, with an emphasis on international security and foreign policy, expert in US foreign policy, has a degree in international relations from Beloit College, worked as legislative aid in U.S House of Representatives and attended Yale, earning in MA in international relations and a PhD in Political Science, Winter 2012/13, “Don’t Come Home, America, The Case against Retrenchment,” http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00107

Hegemonic decline and imperial overstretch: Some retrenchment advocates argue that, as a strategy of systemic leadership, deep engagement implicates¶ the works of scholars such as Robert Gilpin, Paul Kennedy, and David¶ Calleo concerning the connection between hegemony and U.S. decline.45 If¶ we follow Gilpin and define hegemony as “the leadership of one state (the hegemon)¶ over other states in the system,” then the contemporary United States¶ qualities, and it is fair to describe deep engagement as a hegemonic grand strategy.46¶ The argument is that monetary and human resources devoted to deep¶ engagement are unavailable for other, possibly more productive purposes—¶ infrastructure, education, civilian research and development, innovation, and¶ so on—that would enhance U.S. competitiveness. The forward-leaning grand¶ strategy, meanwhile, creates incentives for allies to free ride. With lower military¶ expenditures, the argument goes, they are able to grow faster than they¶ otherwise would, and do so at the United States’ expense. As a result, deep engagement¶ will fall prey to the same fate as past hegemonic grand strategies: it¶ will tend to be self-defeating over time, ultimately causing other states to increase capabilities faster—and the hegemon to decline faster relative to those other states—than would be the case if the hegemon retrenched. In this vein, Layne argues that “the United States now is facing the dilemmas that Gilpin and the other declinists warned about.”47 Layne’s observation may be true, but it does not mean that the U nited States’ deep engagement grand strategy is the problem or that major retrenchment is the solution . Newer scholarship has transformed 1980s vintage conventional wisdom about hegemonic decline and imperial overstretch. The key is that the canonical works (and many of today’s retrenchment advocates) fail to distinguish between causes of decline that are exogenous to hegemony and the international system and those that are causally connected to being the hegemon or pursuing leadership.¶ Mechanisms of decline that directly stem from being the hegemon or pursuing leadership have rarely been identified , and those that have are weakly grounded in logic and poorly supported by evidence . A new wave of scholarship¶ has emerged over the last two decades showing that, if anything, leading states can use their position to slow decline and mitigate its effects . Most of the causes of decline featured in the 1980s texts have nothing to do with the United States’ current situation. Kennedy ’s Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, for example, did indeed document repeated overextension of great powers—but in every case the key mechanism causing overstretch was counterbalancing by other major powers. Given that the counterbalancing constraint ¶ does not apply to the United S t ates under unipolarity, Kennedy’s¶ evidence is not probative for the current debate. Gilpin’s War and Change in¶ World Politics presented a theory of decline that has implications for hegemony,¶ but did not establish a causal connection between the pursuit of hegemony and decline. Gilpin identifies a tendency “for the economic costs of maintaining¶ the status quo to rise faster than the economic capacity to support the¶ status quo.”48 He explains this by reference to a set of processes, most of which are entirely exogenous to the international system : declining rates of economic growth (essentially, the neoclassical growth model developed by Robert Solow); the rising costs of military power; the tendency of private and public consumption to grow; the tendency for economic activity to shift to services; and the corrupting influence of affluence. These can be expected to bedevil any¶ rich state regardless of its position in the international system. They all affect a¶ state’s ability to sustain hegemony, but none is caused by being a hegemon or pursuing policies of leadership . Indeed, they would presumably all conspire to¶ hinder any state on the same growth path as the hegemonic leader from mounting a challenge. The main link between hegemonic grand strategy and decline that figures in Gilpin, as well as in the works of Calleo and Kennedy, is diversion of resources away from productive investment toward system maintenance and protection.49 Simply paying the costs of protecting clients and maintaining the¶ system—military expenditures, subsidies to allies, and so on—exacerbates¶ the larger, growth-sapping trend toward consumption and away from investment. This amounts to a claim that the opportunity cost of its grand strategy¶ will cause a hegemon’s rate of growth to slow more markedly than a non-hegemonic¶ state as it proceeds along Solow’s path from poor and rapidly growing¶ to rich and slowly growing. Conversely, other states whose security and prosperity¶ are underwritten by the hegemon will be spared these opportunity costs¶ and will perform relatively better. Always present in realist arguments for strategic¶ retrenchment, this proposition began to figure even more prominently as¶ U.S. defense expenditures began to climb after 2001.50¶competitors.

There is no empirical evidence linking the 2008 financial collapse to the grand strategy – the U.S derives positive economic benefits from its international roleStephen G. Brooks, G. John Ikenberry and William C. Wohlforth 12, Brooks is an Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth, B.A. University of California at Santa Cruz, M.A. Yale University, M. Phil. Yale University, Ph.D. Yale University, expert in international relations theory and international security and globalization, Ikenberry is a Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, Co-Director of Princeton’s Center for International Security Studies, Global Eminence scholar, served as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on U.S.-European relations, Wohlforth is a Professor of Government at Dartmouth and a Daniel Webster Professor, teaches and conducts research on international relations, with an emphasis on international security and foreign policy, expert in US foreign policy, has a degree in international relations from Beloit College, worked as legislative aid in U.S House of Representatives and attended Yale, earning in MA in international relations and a PhD in Political Science, Winter 2012/13, “Don’t Come Home, America, The Case against Retrenchment,” http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00107

The flip side of this finding is that the economic performance of U.S. allies is unrelated to any security subsidy they receive from Washington. The contention that low er military expenditures facilitated the economic rise of Japan, West Germany, and other U.S. allies seemed plausible when Gilpin, Calleo, and Kennedy were publishing their signature books in the 1980s. Their relative position vis-à-vis the United States essentially stopped improving subsequently, however,¶ as their per capita

wealth approached U.S. levels—just as standard¶ growth models would expect. Over the past twenty years, the United States’¶ total and per capita GDP relative to key European allies and Japan has either held steady or improved despite a growing gap in respective military efforts.¶ In sum, there is scant theoretical or empirical reason to link rates of growth to either the distribution of power or the specific policies the United States pursues to sustain its leadership. As Thompson notes, it is unclear “why uneven growth should be viewed as a function of unbalanced power. ” 54 No scholarly theory or empirical findings clearly link the 2007 –09 financial collapse , great recession, and consequent ballooning of the U.S. budget deficit to the international system (at least, as scholars of international security construe it). Nor does any established research finding show a connection between any U.S. security commitment and the causes of the economic downturn . Nor is there reason to expect

that resources freed up from global commitments would necessarily be diverted to uses more advantageous for long-term U.S. growth. The downturn might affect the United States’ willingness to sustain defense spending at 3 to 4 percent of GDP and may even prompt Washington to reevaluate some

of its security commitments, but that does not mean that defense spending or security commitments or any other policy associated with U.S. hegemony caused the downturn in the first place. Thus, even if U.S. allies are free riding , it will not likely affect U.S. long-term ¶ economic performance and so will not conspire to make the pursuit of leadership self-defeating. On the contrary, other states’ reliance on U.S. security guarantees means that they fail to invest in significant military modernization,¶ which simply serves to entrench U.S. military dominance. Moreover, as we¶ note in a later section, the United

States derives positive economic benefits from its global security role.¶ Retrenchment advocates’ focus on allied free riding faces an even bigger¶ challenge, however. It is far from clear that lower allied military expenditures¶ actually constitute free riding. For allied security behavior to be considered¶ free riding, U.S. security guarantees must be a collective good. Collective¶ goods have two key properties: non-excludability and non-rivalry (i.e., the consumption¶ of the good by one does not reduce its consumption by others). As¶ recent scholarship stresses, U.S. security guarantees violate these two assumptions.55¶ The consumption of U.S. security guarantees by some states (e.g.,¶ NATO) arguably can reduce the security of others (e.g., Russia). In addition,¶ Washington can exclude any state it wants, which means that its bargaining leverage is greater than the theory implies. Indeed, Beckley argues that foreign¶ aid and peacekeeping more closely resemble true public goods, and there the¶

United States is the free rider, contributing far less than its allies.56 Once it is¶ clear that the proper theory is not collective goods but bargaining, the possibility emerges that allied undersupply of conventional military capabilities and oversupply of foreign aid and post-conflict peacekeeping are part of a complex hegemonic bargain. The question—which we address later in this article—is¶ whether this bargain is favorable to U.S. national interests.

AT: Empirics US hegemony is unique from past eras – empirics irrelevant Michael Beckley 12, research fellow in the International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 2012, “China’s Century?,” International Security, Vol. 36, http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/Chinas_Century.pdf At its core, the debate about U.S. decline is a debate about the relevance of history. Declinists contend that history tends to repeat itself and that the history of world politics can be characterized as a “succession of hegemonies ,”8 as the recurrent “rise and fall of the great powers,”9 as an “observable pattern of great power emergence,”10 or as a series of “long cycles.”11 The Habsburg, French, and British Empires were defeated and surpassed by rising challengers. It is therefore natural for America’s “unipolar moment” to be similarly consigned to the ash-heap of history .12 Several established academic theories underpin this cyclical view of history. First, declinists fuse hegemonic stability theory with traditional balance of power theory.13 In this view, the United States, like Great Britain in the nineteenth century, supplies the world with public goods. Weaker

states not only free-ride on these services, but also engage in sabotage, erecting diplomatic and economic obstacles to U.S. initiatives and forming anti-American alliances.14 As a result, others rise while the United States suffers from “imperial overstretch.”15 Second is the theory of convergence and its claim that, in an open global economy, poor countries tend to grow faster than rich countries.16 China, like Germany, Japan, and South Korea before it, can reap the “advantages of backwardness,” adopting modern technologies and methods while skipping the long, arduous process of inventing them.17 Meanwhile U.S. investment in foreign countries “tends to abort the reinvigoration of the American domestic economy and its technical infrastructure.”18 Globalization thus stimulates growth abroad while undercutting it at home, diffusing not just technology but also technological and military capabilities. By contrast, the basic argument of the alternative perspective is that the laws of history do not apply to contemporary world politics. The U nited S tates is not like Britain; rather, its “combination of quantitative and qualitative material advantages is unprecedented, and it translates into a unique geopolitical position.”19 Moreover, China is not like past rising challengers ; “its emergence is occurring in the context of a transformation in the manner in which production is organized, a shift that makes China’s rise categorically different from that of predecessors such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea.”20 In sum, the declinist perspective emphasizes how U.S. hegemony and the current global economy resemble those of past eras, whereas the alternative perspective emphasizes how they are unique. I elaborate these two focal points of debate below.

AT: China Rise The rise of China does not lead to the decline of US hegemony Michael Beckley 12, research fellow in the International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 2012, “China’s Century?,” International Security, Vol. 36, http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/Chinas_Century.pdf According to the Global Language Monitor, which tracks the top 50,000 media sources throughout the world, the “rise of China” has been the most read-about news story of the twenty-first century, surpassing the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Iraq War, the election of Barack Obama, and the British royal wedding.1 One reason for the story’s popularity, presumably, is that the rise of China entails the decline of the U nited S tates . While China’s economy grows at 9 percent annually, the United States reels from economic recession, costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and massive budget deficits. This divergence in fortunes has produced two pieces of conventional wisdom in U.S. and Chinese foreign policy debates.2 First, the United States is in decline relative to China. Second, much of this decline is the result of globalization —the integration of national economies and resultant diffusion of technology from developed to developing countries— and the hegemonic burdens the U nited S tates bears to sustain globalization . An alternative, though less prevalent, perspective rejects both of these assumptions .3 In this view, U.S. power is durable, and globalization and America’s hegemonic role are the main reasons why. The U nited S tates derives competitive advantages from its preponderant position, and globalization allows it to exploit these advantages, attracting economic activity and manipulating the international system to its benefit. Resolving the debate between these two perspectives is imperative for prudent policymaking. If proponents of the dominant, or “declinist,” perspective are correct, then the United States should contain China’s growth by “[adopting] a neomercantilist international economic policy” and subdue China’s ambitions by “disengag[ing] from current alliance commitments in East Asia.”4 If, however, the United States is not in decline, and if globalization and hegemony are the main reasons why, then the United States should do the opposite: it should contain China’s growth by maintaining a liberal international economic policy, and it should subdue China’s ambitions by sustaining a robust political and military presence in Asia. With few exceptions, however, existing studies on the decline of the United States and the rise of China suffer from at least one of the following shortcomings.5 First, most studies do not look at a comprehensive set of indicators. Instead they paint impressionistic pictures of the balance of power, presenting tidbits of information on a handful of metrics. In general, this approach biases results in favor of the declinist perspective because most standard indicators of national power—for example, gross domestic product (GDP), population, and energy consumption—conflate size with power and thereby overstate the capabilities of large but underdeveloped countries. For example, in a recent study Arvind Subramanian contends that “China’s dominance is a sure thing” based on “an index of dominance combining just three factors: a country’s GDP, its trade (measured as the sum of its exports and imports of goods), and the extent to which it is a net creditor to the world.”6 The United States and China, however, are each declining by some measures while rising in terms of others. To distinguish between ascendance and decline writ large, therefore, requires analyzing many indicators and determining how much each one matters in relation to others. Second, many studies are static, presenting single-year snapshots of U.S. and Chinese power. This flaw tends to bias results in favor of the alternative perspective because the United States retains a significant lead in most categories. The key question, however, is not whether the United States is more powerful than China at present, but whether it will remain so in the future. Without a dynamic analysis, it is impossible to answer this question. This study addresses these shortcomings by comparing the United States and China across a large set of economic, technological, and military indicators over the past twenty years. The results are mixed, but the bulk of the evidence supports the alternative perspective . Over the last two decades, globalization and U.S. hegemonic burdens have expanded significantly, yet the U nited S tates has not

declined; in fact it is now wealthier, more innovative, and more militarily powerful compared to China than it was in 1991. China has narrowed the gap in terms of GDP and now exports a greater volume of high-technology products and employs more scientists than any country in the world. However, GDP correlates poorly with national power ; more than 90 percent of China’s high-tech exports are produced by foreign firms and consist of low-tech components; and China’s quantitative advantage in scientists has not yet translated into qualitative advantages in innovation. The U nited S tates suffers from a huge debt problem that its political system appears ill-suited to solve. China, however, faces its own fiscal mess , which may be more intractable than America’s. The widespread misperception that China is catching up to the U nited S tates stems from a number of analytical flaws , the most common of which is the tendency to draw conclusions about the U.S.-China power balance from data that compare China only to its former self. For example, many studies note that the growth rates of China’s per capita income, value added in high-technology industries, and military spending exceed those of the United States and then conclude that China is catching up. This focus on growth rates, however, obscures China’s decline relative to the United States in all of these categories. China’s growth rates are high because its starting point was low. China is rising, but it is not catching up.7

China falls behind in innovation Michael Beckley 12, research fellow in the International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 2012, “China’s Century?,” International Security, Vol. 36, http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/Chinas_Century.pdfDeclinists claim the United States produces too few scientists and engineers (and too many lawyers and bankers) while China engages in “human-resource leapfrogging, in which large populous developing countries employ enough scientists and engineers to compete with the advanced countries in the hightech vanguard sectors.”107 Some analysts compare China with nineteenth-century Germany, which surged ahead of Britain by training massive numbers of scientists and engineers.108 For example, by 1900, German chemical firms typically employed fifty to seventy researchers, allowing them to conduct R&D while expecting to discard 90 percent of the results.109 Today, China seems poised for scientific dominance, employing more scientists and engineers than any other country and tripling its share of world scientific articles over the last ten years (from 2 percent to 6 percent). Over the same time period, the United States’ share declined from 34 percent to 28 percent.110 There are, however, reasons to question comparisons between imperial Germany and contemporary China. For starters, official Chinese statistics overstate the volume of China’s scientific resources. Half of China’s “engineers” are auto mechanics or graduates of two-year vocational programs (zhuanke).111 In addition, data on China’s R&D spending are inflated because they are based on the real purchasing power of the Chinese yuan even though most research equipment is purchased on international markets.112 Nevertheless, the United States increased its lead in terms of R&D spending over the last twenty years (see figure 4), and still accounts for 50 percent of the world’s most highly cited scientific articles.113 Over the next few decades, Chinese scientific research will increase significantly. In fact, it is the law: the Chinese government has decreed that, by 2020, R&D expenditures will constitute 2.5 percent of GDP and China will rank among the top five countries in terms of scientific article output.114 Topdown decrees and resource infusions, however, will not necessarily turn China into an innovation powerhouse.115 After all, imperial Germany coupled size with sophistication, producing not only many scientists but also world-class research. Evidence to date suggests China tends to prioritize the former at the expense of the latter. The rush to increase the quantity of Chinese scientists, for example, has reduced the quality of their education , as evidenced by sharp declines in teacher- student and funding-per-student ratios.116 Moreover, China’s determination to boost its article output has fostered “a Wild West climate where top researchers, under intense pressure to produce, are tempted to fake results or copy the works of others.”117 Chinese scientists are “preoccupied with quick outcomes and immediate returns,” and as a result, “quantitative gains in Chinese research productivity have not always been matched by qualitative gains.”118 According to a former Chinese biochemist turned whistle blower, “Misconduct is so widespread among Chinese academics that they have almost become used to it.”119 Indeed, a significant portion of new R&D spending has simply disappeared because China’s Ministry of Science and Technology lacks the capacity to monitor the flood of new research grants.120 According to the most comprehensive study on Chinese scientific research, the result of all these deficiencies is that “much of the work coming out of Chinese laboratories and research institutes still tends to be not yet close to the cutting edge or to be derivative of what has been done elsewhere, with minor new contributions.”121 In the late 1800s, German universities ranked among the best in the world and attracted talent from abroad.122 China, by contrast, currently suffers from a massive brain-drain problem. The number of Chinese students enrolled in universities in the United States increased by an average of 9 percent annually between 1996 and 2011 and 20 percent annually between 2007 and 2011.123 Declinists assume these students return to China after graduating and therefore “threaten U.S. technological leadership.”124 But 90 percent of the Chinese students who received a science or engineering Ph.D. from an American university between 1987 and 2007 joined the American workforce, and these students were typically China’s best and brightest.125 China’s government recently announced its intention to develop a set of world-class universities to attract young talent from around the world.126 At present, however, the U nited St ates still dominates higher education . A study by the London-based Times Higher Educational Supplement says the United States is home to fifteen of the top twenty universities in the world.127 According to a study by China’s Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, the United States has seventeen of the top twenty. Among the top 100 universities in the world, the United States has either thirty-three or fifty-four depending on which survey is consulted; China has two or zero.128 It is far from clear, therefore, that China is catching up to the United States in terms of basic scientific research. More important, such a trend would not necessarily affect the balance of power. After all, what ultimately matters is not scientific superiority but technological superiority—the ability to produce and use commercially viable and militarily relevant innovations.129 In the nineteenth century, German scientists excelled at turning scientific breakthroughs into practical products, developing major innovations in the chemical, electrical, and industrial dye industries that formed what many scholars now refer to as the “second industrial revolution.”130 Today, scientific

superiority is not necessary for technological superiority because published articles circulate globally—they sit in searchable databases and can be obtained by anyone with access to a major library—and it is insufficient because most scientific breakthroughs are useless in isolation from lower-level innovations and infrastructure.131 Thus, the ability to produce scientific breakthroughs may be less important than the ability to capitalize on them.132 On first glance, China’s emergence as the world’s leading exporter of hightechnology products suggests it has capitalized on its scientific investments and become an “advanced-technology superstate,”133 perhaps even “the world’s leading technology-based economy.”134 On closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that China’s high-technology exports are “not very Chinese, and not very high-tech”—more than 90 percent are produced by foreign firms and consist of imported components that are merely assembled in China, a practice known as “export processing.”135 These percentages have increased over time, a trend that suggests Chinese firms are falling further behind foreign competitors. Moreover, approximately 50 percent of China’s total exports are produced by foreign enterprises (see figure 5). By comparison, foreign enterprises produced less than 25 percent of Taiwan and South Korea’s manufactured exports in the 1970s.136 Chinese technological stagnation is also evident in sales and patent statistics . From 1991 to 2008, Chinese firms’ sales of new products as a share of total sales revenues remained flat at 15 percent.137 In the United States, by contrast, new products account for 35 to 40 percent of sales revenue.138 The Chinese government grants the majority of its invention patents to foreign firms even though Chinese firms are five times more numerous.139 This result is all the more startling because many foreign firms do not seek Chinese patents. Instead they seek “triadic patents,” which are simultaneously recognized by the patent offices of the three largest markets for high-technology products (the United States, Europe, and Japan), and are thus the most secure and most difficult to obtain. Figure 6 shows that the U.S. lead in triadic patents has increased over the last twenty years. Chinese firms , moreover, do not seem to be taking genuine steps to improve their technological abilities. For the past twenty years, Chinese firms’ total spending on R&D as a percentage of sales revenue has remained at levels seven times below the average for American firms.140 Between 1995 and 2008, the share of Chinese enterprises engaged in scientific or technological activities declined from 59 percent to 37 percent, and the share of Chinese firms with an R&D department declined from 60 percent to 24 percent.141 When Chinese firms import technology, they spend a fraction of the total cost on absorbing the technology. This fraction increased recently from 4 percent to 25 percent, but it remains far lower than the 200 to 300 percent spent by Korean and Japanese firms when they were trying to catch up to the West in the 1970s.142 Technological leaders sometimes rest on their laurels and abandon innovative efforts in favor of “finding new markets for old products.”143 The U nited S tates, however, looks set to excel in emerging high-technology industries . It has more nanotechnology centers than the next three nations combined (Germany, the United Kingdom, and China) and accounts for 43 percent of the world’s nanotechnology patent applications (see figure 7).144 In biotechnology, the United States accounts for 41.5 percent of patent applications (China accounts for 1.6 percent) and 76 percent of global revenues.145 The United States accounts for 20 to 25 percent of all patent applications for renewable energy, air pollution, water pollution, and waste management technologies; China accounts for 1 to 4 percent of the patent applications in these areas (see figure 8).146 Since 1991, the United States has increased its lead in patent applications over China in all of these industries. Finally, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has identified ten “knowledge- and technology-intensive industries” that are capable of “altering lifestyles and the way business is conducted across a wide range of sectors.”147 The U.S. lead, in terms of value added, in knowledge- and technology-intensive manufacturing industries dipped during the 2001 recession but quickly recovered and has increased overall since 1996. Over the same time period, the United States steadily increased its lead in knowledge and technology-intensive services (see figures 9 and 10). In sum, a comparison of U.S. and Chinese innovation systems over the past twenty years provides strong evidence against declinism and in favor of the alternative perspective that China continues to lag behind the Un ited S tates. China has increased its investments in basic science, but these efforts have yet to significantly enhance its innovative capabilities . Data on Chinese hightechnology exports show that Chinese firms have increased their participation in high-technology industries. Data on commercial R&D, patents, and profits, however, suggest Chinese firms engage primarily in low-end activities, such as manufacturing and component supply. By contrast, U.S. firms seem to focus on activities in which profits and proprietary knowledge are highest, such as product design, development, and branding. This division of labor has remained stable over the last two decades; if anything, it has become more pronounced.

China’s economy declining now Michael Beckley 12, research fellow in the International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 2012, “China’s Century?,” International Security, Vol. 36, http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/Chinas_Century.pdfAt first glance, China’s fiscal future appears much brighter than the United States’. The Chinese economy grew 8 percent annually throughout the global financial crisis, and its reported debt-to-GDP ratio is only 19 percent.91 China’s true level of public debt, however, is likely much higher than reported because a great deal of state spending is funneled through investment entities connected to local governments. Estimates that take this spending into account put China’s debt-to-GDP ratio between 75 and 150 percent.92 The Chinese government projects annual growth rates of 7 percent between now and 2030. Some prominent investors and economists, however, believe Chinese growth will plunge to 2 to 5 percent within the next decade following the collapse of a “debt-fueled bubble.”93 These predictions are speculative and may turn out to be overly pessimistic.94 What is more certain, however, is that several factors that allowed for rapid Chinese growth (e.g., a surplus of cheap labor and capital, expanding export markets abroad, and sufficient water supplies) are disappearing.95 Chief among these factors is China’s “demographic dividend.”96 In the 1950s and 1960s, the Chinese government encouraged Chinese women to bear multiple children to boost the working-age population. In the 1970s, however, the Chinese government reversed course and instituted the one-child policy. As a result, China will soon confront the most severe aging process in human history. Within twenty years, China will have 300 million pensioners, causing the ratio of workers per retiree to plummet from 8 to 1 today to 2 to 1 by 2040.97 The fiscal cost of this swing in dependency ratios may exceed 80 to 100 percent of China’s GDP.98 The United States, by contrast, “can be said to be a young and even a developing country.”99 Its working age population will grow by 17 percent over the next forty years while that of all the other major powers (except India) will decline (see figure 2).100 Moreover, its pension system is better funded, its public welfare commitments more modest, and its citizens more productive (in terms of hours worked and years employed) than any other major power.101 “Global aging,”

Mark Haas writes, “is therefore not only likely to extend U.S. hegemony . . . but deepen it as... other states are likely to fall even farther behind.”102 Declinists claim that a rising GDP helps China attract foreign investment and compel foreign firms to transfer advanced technology to Chinese enterprises.103 The fundamental assumption behind this claim is that a nation’s GDP reflects the size of its domestic market. Market size, however, is a measure of consumption whereas GDP is a measure of production. China’s citizens produce many goods, but they consume relatively few. The Chinese market is much larger than it used to be, but it has shrunk relative to the U.S. market over the last two decades: China now imports less compared to the United States than it did in 1991.104 More important, China’s bargaining power vis-à-vis foreign firms seems to be waning.105 Wholly foreign-owned enterprises now account for 70 percent of foreign direct investment (FDI) flowing into China, whereas joint ventures between foreign and Chinese firms have steadily declined (see figure 3). Such rampant foreign ownership never occurred in past cases of successful technological development (Japan and Korea grew with almost zero FDI or foreign ownership) and with good reason: wholly foreign-owned enterprises, unlike joint ventures, are generally under no obligation to transfer technology to local partners and may crowd domestic firms out of the market.106 In sum, the United States is now wealthier compared to China than it was in 1991. This prediction runs counter to declinism and provides suggestive support for the alternative perspective. The trends discussed above may change, and historians may one day look back on the recent financial crisis as the beginning of a massive transfer of wealth and power from the United States to China. Such an outcome will depend on, among other things, the relative rates of innovation in each country.China can’t compete with US in terms of military capabilities – experts prove Michael Beckley 12, research fellow in the International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 2012, “China’s Century?,” International Security, Vol. 36, http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/Chinas_Century.pdfChina’s military budget doubled from 1989 to 1994, and doubled again from 1994 to 1999, and again from 2005 to 2009. Over the last ten years, however, it has declined relative to that of the U nited S tates (see figure 11). The U.S. defense budget exceeds half a trillion dollars (eight times greater than China’s and rising) even when supplemental funding for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is excluded. U.S. leaders will reduce the defense budget in the coming years to help address the fiscal deficits, but it is unlikely that such cuts will significantly narrow the spending gap between the United States and China.148 One can argue that it is unfair to compare defense budgets because America’s military resources are dispersed across the globe while China’s are concentrated in Asia.149 China, however, does not devote all, and perhaps not even a majority, of its military resources to contingencies involving the United States. China shares sea or land borders with nineteen countries, five of which fought wars against China within the last century; its northern and western borders are porous and populated by disaffected minority groups; and its government faces a constant threat of domestic rebellion. As a result, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) devotes substantial resources to internal security and requires 300,000 troops just to police China’s borders.150 More important, the gap in defense spending likely understates the true military gap because U.S. economic superiority literally gives the U nited S tates “more bang for the buck ”—each dollar it spends on the military produces more force than each dollar China spends. In a separate study, I found that developing countries systematically fail at warfare, regardless of the size of their defense budgets, because they lack the economic capacity to maintain, modernize, and integrate individual technologies into cohesive military systems.151 Multivariate regressions suggest that military effectiveness is determined by a country’s level of economic development, as measured by per capita income, even after controlling for numerous material, social, and political factors. As noted earlier, China’s per capita income has declined relative to that of the United States. China’s defense industry has also fallen further behind: in 2008, the U.S. share of the world conventional arms market surged to 68 percent while China’s share dropped below 1.5 percent (see figure 12). If history is any guide, this growing economic gap is also a growing military gap. The PLA may look increasingly respectable on paper, but its performance in battle against the United States would not necessarily be much better than that of, say, Iraq circa 1991. Indeed, an independent task force of more than thirty experts recently found “no evidence to support the notion that China will become a peer military competitor of the U nited S tates. . . . The military balance today and for the foreseeable future strongly favors the U nited S tates and its allies .”152 None of this should be cause for chest-thumping. China can “pose problems without catching up,” compensating for its technological and organizational inferiority by utilizing asymmetric strategies, local knowledge, and a greater willingness to bear costs.153 In particular, some experts believe China’s “antiaccess/area-denial” capabilities are outpacing U.S. efforts to counter them.154 There are reasons to doubt this claim—the Pentagon is developing sophisticated countermeasures, and Chinese writings may purposefully exaggerate PLA capabilities.155 There is also reason to doubt the strategic importance of China’s capabilities because the United States may be able to launch effective attacks from positions beyond the reach of Chinese missiles and submarines.156 It is certainly true, however, that the U.S. military has vulnerabilities, especially in littorals and low altitudes close to enemy territory. This has always been the case, however. From 1961 to 1968, North Vietnamese and Vietcong units brought down 1,700 U.S. helicopters and aircraft with simple antiaircraft artillery and no early warning radar.157 Sixty years ago, China projected a huge army into Korea and killed tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers. Yes, weak adversaries can impose significant costs, but evidence of American vulnerability is not the same as evidence of American decline.

Sustainability---No Decline Inevitable

Decline in US hegemony inevitable – US should look towards post-unipolar world Richard Maher 10, Ph.D. candidate in the Political Science department at Brown University, 12/10/10, “The Paradox of American Unipolarity: Why the United States May Be Better Off in a Post-Unipolar World,” Orbis, Volume 55, Issue 1, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0030438710000633The decline in the United States’ relative position is in part a consequence of the burdens and susceptibilities produced by unipolarity. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the U.S. position both internationally and domestically may actually be strengthened once this period of unipolarity has passed. Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, world politics has been unipolar, defined by American preponderance in each of the core components of state power—military,

economic, and technological. Such an imbalanced distribution of power in favor of a single country is unprecedented in the modern state system. This material advantage does not automatically translate into America's preferred political and diplomatic outcomes, however. Other states , if now only at the margins, are challenging U.S. power and authority. Additionally,

on a range of issues, the U nited S tates is finding it increasingly difficult to realize its goals and ambitions . The even bigger

challenge for policymakers in Washington is how to respond to signs that America's unquestioned preeminence in international politics is waning. This decline in the United States’ relative position is in part a consequence of the burdens and susceptibilities produced by unipolarity. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the U.S. position both internationally and domestically may actually be strengthened once this period of unipolarity has passed. On pure material terms, the gap between the United States and the rest of the world is indeed vast. The U.S. economy, with a GDP of over $14 trillion, is nearly three times the size of China's, now the world's second-largest national economy. The United States today accounts for approximately 25 percent of global economic output, a figure that has held relatively stable despite steadily increasing economic growth in China, India, Brazil, and other countries. Among the group of six or seven great powers, this figure approaches 50 percent. When one takes discretionary spending into account, the United States today spends more on its military than the rest of the world combined. This imbalance is even further magnified by the fact that five of the next seven biggest spenders are close U.S. allies. China, the country often seen as America's next great geopolitical rival, has a defense budget that is one-seventh of what the United States spends on its military. There is also a vast gap in terms of the reach and sophistication of advanced weapons systems. By some measures, the United States spends more on research and development for its military than the rest of the world combined. What is remarkable is that the United States can do all of this without completely breaking the bank. The United States today devotes approximately 4 percent of GDP to defense. As a percentage of GDP, the United States today spends far less on its military than it did during the Cold War, when defense spending hovered around 10 percent of gross economic output. As one would expect, the United States today enjoys unquestioned preeminence in the military realm. No other state comes close to having the capability to project military power like the United States.1 And yet, despite this material preeminence, the U nited S tates sees its political and strategic influence diminishing around the world . It is involved in two costly and destructive wars, in Iraq

and Afghanistan, where success has been elusive and the end remains out of sight. China has adopted a new assertiveness recently, on everything

from U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, currency convertibility, and America's growing debt (which China largely finances). Pakistan, one of America's closest strategic

allies, is facing the threat of social and political collapse. Russia is using its vast energy resources to reassert its dominance in what it views as its historical sphere of influence. Negotiations with North Korea and Iran have gone nowhere in dismantling their nuclear programs. Brazil's growing economic and political influence offer another option for partnership and investment for countries in the Western Hemisphere. And relations with Japan, following the election that brought the opposition Democratic Party into power, are at their frostiest in decades. To many observers, it seems that America's vast power is not translating into America's preferred outcomes. As the United States has come to learn, raw power does not automatically translate into the realization of one's preferences, nor is it necessarily easy to maintain one's predominant position in world politics. There are many costs that come with predominance – material, political, and reputational. Vast imbalances of power create apprehension and anxiety in others, in one's friends just as much as in one's rivals. In this view, it is not

necessarily American predominance that produces unease but rather American predominance. Predominance also makes one a tempting target, and a scapegoat for other countries ’ own problems and unrealized ambitions . Many a Third World autocrat has blamed his country's economic

and social woes on an ostensible U.S. conspiracy to keep the country fractured, underdeveloped, and subservient to America's own interests. Predominant power likewise breeds envy, resentment, and alienation. How is it possible for one country to be so rich and powerful when so many others are

weak, divided, and poor? Legitimacy—the perception that one's role and purpose is acceptable and one's power is used justly—is indispensable for maintaining power and influence in world politics. As we witness the emergence (or re-emergence) of great powers in other parts of the world,

we realize that American predominance cannot last forever. It is inevitable that the distribution of power and influence will become more balanced in the future, and that the U nited S tates will necessarily see its relative power decline . While the U nited S tates naturally should avoid hastening the end of this current period of American predominance, it should not look upon the next period of global politics and international history with dread or foreboding . It certainly should not seek to maintain its predominance at any cost, devoting unlimited ambition, resources, and prestige to the cause. In fact, contrary to what many have argued about the importance of maintaining its predominance, America's position in the world—both at home and internationally—could very well be strengthened once its era of preeminence is over. It is, therefore, necessary for the U nited S tates to start thinking about how best to position itself in the “post- unipolar” world.

Unipolarity is deteriorating – reversion to multipolarity inevitableRichard Maher 10, Ph.D. candidate in the Political Science department at Brown University, 12/10/10, “The Paradox of American Unipolarity: Why the United States May Be Better Off in a Post-Unipolar World,” Orbis, Volume 55, Issue 1, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0030438710000633Unipolarity and primacy are two ways to describe U.S. power in contemporary world politics.2 Unipolarity and primacy are alike, and not necessarily mutually exclusive, but they remain conceptually distinct and describe different features or elements of power. What is distinctive about this era of international politics is that the United States is finding it increasingly difficult to translate its enormous advantages in the first realm of power—material power—into the second kind of power—the ability to shape events and to realize its preferred outcomes. Unipolarity: Materialist Conception of Power. Unipolarity refers to the material distribution of power—economic, military, geographic, technological—in the international system. The international system has historically been characterized by multipolarity (three or more great powers), as in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the first half of the twentieth century, or by bipolarity (two great powers), as in the Cold War. A unipolar system is one in which one state possesses capabilities that far exceed those of any other state. The post-Cold War world has been unipolar. As one world leader put it, in today's unipolar world there is “One single center of power . One single center of force. One single center of decision making. This is the world of one master, one sovereign.” 3Polarity is rarely unambiguous, however, and there have been differences among international relations scholars over how to characterize world politics in the post-Cold War era, and over how long this period of world politics will last. Samuel Huntington characterized post-Cold War world politics not as strictly unipolar but as “uni-multipolar.” There was one state whose power far exceeded all the rest—the United States—but there were a number of secondary powers—China, Russia, Germany, India—that possessed considerable resources and influence, real or potential. 4 Others have acknowledged the fact of unipolarity, but have asserted this is but a momentary aberration. World politics does not like imbalances of power, and other states will take measures—either individually or in combination with others—to balance U.S. power. Soon world politics will revert to the historically more common form of bipolarity or even multipolarity . 5 Others look at the impressive economic growth rates in China, India, and elsewhere and see a world in which power will be distributed around the world more evenly in coming decades. 6 When thinking about power in this sense, as the sum total of a state's material resources, the U nited S tates continues to be in a class by itself. This position is deteriorating , however, both in absolute and relative terms.American primacy is weakening now Richard Maher 10, Ph.D. candidate in the Political Science department at Brown University, 12/10/10, “The Paradox of American Unipolarity: Why the United States May Be Better Off in a Post-Unipolar World,” Orbis, Volume 55, Issue 1, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0030438710000633Primacy: The Ability to Influence Outcomes. The other way to think about power is the ability to realize one's own preferences or preferred outcomes, or the ability to influence other actors—usually other states but not always—to do what you want them to do. When we

think of power this way, we realize that the United States’ vast resources alone often are not sufficient to realize its preferred ends. There is no perfect correlation between the resources at one's command and the ability to realize preferred outcomes. Perhaps no other period of world politics in recent memory represents this discrepancy more acutely than today. U.S. capabilities dwarf those of any other state. Politically, diplomatically, and economically the United States remains in a preeminent position. While it hardly gets everything it wants, no other country can match U.S. influence in these realms. At the same time, from Iran, to North Korea, Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan, not to mention Russia and China, the U nited S tates is seemingly not getting its way on issues central to its interests. More states are unafraid to challenge the U nited S tates (if only at the margins), ignore its blandishments, or seek to decrease their reliance or dependence on American security guarantees . Power and Purpose in the American Era. Though the United States has seen itself as different from great powers of previous eras (and of the Soviet Union during the Cold War), the pursuit and consolidation of power has been central to its role in the world since at least the end of World War II. Ever since the United States emerged from that conflict as an undisputed superpower, it has sought to maintain its preeminent position in world politics. In 1947, the State Department's Policy Planning Staff argued that, “To seek less than preponderant power would be to opt for defeat. Preponderant power must be the object of U.S. policy.” 7 The 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS) vowed to dissuade any future military competition from one of the great powers. 8 Remaining the sole superpower was central to how the United States defined its interests and even how it saw itself and its role in the world. One way to think about the past 100 years of world politics and international history is about America's ascent. As a country it has never before had to contemplate, let alone plan for, its relative decline. Simply having great power says nothing about how a state will actually use that power. Preeminence is underdetermined: it is consistent with a number of contrasting foreign policy strategies and orientations. A state could decide to take advantage of the wide disparity in power to reshape the world in its own image, seeking to transform the internal characteristics of states and societies. It could seek to spread its values and ideology, and pursue its own narrow interests at every opportunity. Or the state could turn inward, eschew ing a global role and protecting itself from the corrupting influences of the outside world. What actually determines how even a preeminent state relates to the outside world—with

what purpose it will use its power—is the interaction between material preponderance, its domestic political system and ideology, and how political elites interpret constraints and opportunities at both the domestic and global levels.9 If the preeminent state happens to be a democracy, where changes in political leadership are regular features of domestic politics, and where special interests play a role in shaping foreign policy, oscillation between these two extremes may be common. Such oscillation—between inward-looking and outward-looking orientations—has defined America's post-Cold War strategy. In the 1990s, for example, the United States largely eschewed the opportunity to use military force, and when it did it was reluctantly. When the United States committed its military overseas it was just as likely for humanitarian reasons as it was for strategic ones. The first President Bush drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, but did so with a huge international coalition (which included many Arab states) and with explicit authority from the United Nations Security Council. Bill Clinton used military force to stop ethnic fighting and brutality in both Bosnia and Kosovo, but both campaigns were conducted after an exhaustive effort at finding a diplomatic settlement had failed and at 15,000 feet. For domestic political reasons, a ground invasion of Serbia involving U.S. troops was not a viable option.10 Not until the presidency of George W. Bush, and the shock and trauma of 9/11, did the United States use its preeminent position in world politics to try to fundamentally change the basic rules of international politics and to reshape entire states and societies. The strategic doctrine that emerged after 9/11 included preemptive—and even preventive—war to protect the United States and its allies, a determination to devote an enormous amount of resources and the sacrifice of military personnel, and a willingness to risk its prestige and legitimacy with unilateral action.11 Now , in addition to two costly, inconclusive wars,

the U nited S tates faces the worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression and an unemployment rate not seen in this country since the early 19 80s . Likewise, the U nited S tates faces allies who are unwilling to contribute more troops or money

to the war in Afghanistan, and has exhibited a seeming inability to get its way on everything from the North Korean and Iranian nuclear issues , Chinese currency convertibility, and support from Russia and China to impose harsher sanctions on Iran . Never in the past several decades has America's position seemed so uncertain . The comparison to Oscar

Wilde's Dorian Gray is unmistakable: on defense, the U nited S tates will continue to outspend and outpace any potential challenger. Foreign governments will continue to finance U.S. debt at very low interest rates. At global forums, such as the G-20, other countries will look to the United States for direction and leadership. The dollar will continue to be the world's main reserve currency, if for no other reason than there is no plausible alternative. At the same time, power and influence are being redistributed to other parts of the world. The U nited S tates is in no threat of suddenly finding itself a second-tier power, but the time when there will be two, three, or even four centers of power is rapidly approaching . US hegemony is flawed – decline inevitable Richard Maher 10, Ph.D. candidate in the Political Science department at Brown University, 12/10/10, “The Paradox of American Unipolarity: Why the United States May Be Better Off in a Post-Unipolar World,” Orbis, Volume 55, Issue 1, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0030438710000633To say that the end of unquestioned preeminence may be good for the United States is counterintuitive. Power matters in international politics, and preeminence has produced a number of benefits for the United States (and its allies): security, especially from attack by other states, and the absence of power competition more generally; relative order and stability, particularly the decreasing frequency of inter-state war; prosperity and unparalleled wealth creation, and greater freedom of action and influence over events.12Preeminence, by definition, entails few constraints to the projection of power and influence abroad. By virtue of its position, other countries naturally look to the United States for leadership, on everything from Middle East peace to climate change. All other things being equal, preeminence clearly is preferable to a position of subservience, lack of agency, and weakness. At the same time, preeminence creates burdens and facilitates imprudent behavior. Indeed, because of America's unique political ideology , which sees its own domestic values and ideals as universal,

and the relative openness of the foreign policymaking process, the U nited S tates is particularly susceptible to both the temptations and burdens of preponderance. For decades, perhaps since its very founding, the U nited S tates has viewed what is good for itself as good for the world. During its period of preeminence, the United States has both tried to maintain its position at the top and to transform world politics in fundamental ways, combining elements of realpolitik and liberal universalism (democratic government, free trade, basic human rights). At times, these desires have conflicted with each other but they also capture the enduring tensions of America's role in the world. The absence of constraints and America's overestimation of its own ability to shape outcomes has served to weaken its overall position. And because foreign policy is not the reserved and exclusive domain of the president—who presumably calculates strategy

according to the pursuit of the state's enduring national interests—the policymaking process is open to special interests and outside influences and, thus, susceptible to the cultivation of misperceptions, miscalculations, and misunderstandings . Five features in particular, each a consequence of how America has used its power in the unipolar era, have worked to diminish America's long-term material and strategic position.

Hegemony inevitably leads to overextension – two reasons Richard Maher 10, Ph.D. candidate in the Political Science department at Brown University, 12/10/10, “The Paradox of American Unipolarity: Why the United States May Be Better Off in a Post-Unipolar World,” Orbis, Volume 55, Issue 1, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0030438710000633Overextension. During its period of preeminence, the U nited S tates has found it difficult to stand aloof from threats (real or imagined) to its security, interests, and values. Most states are concerned with what happens in their immediate neighborhoods. The U nited S tates has interests that span virtually the entire globe , from its own Western Hemisphere, to Europe, the Middle East, Persian Gulf, South Asia, and East Asia. As its preeminence enters its third decade, the United States continues to define its interests in increasingly expansive terms . This has been facilitated by the massive forward presence of the American military , even when excluding the tens of thousands of troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. military has permanent bases in over 30 countries and maintains a troop presence in dozens more. 13 There are two logics that lead a preeminent state to overextend, and these logics of overextension lead to goals and policies that exceed even the considerable capabilities of a superpower. First, by definition, preeminent states face few external constraints. Unlike in bipolar or multipolar systems, there are no other states that can serve to reliably check or counterbalance the power and influence of a single hegemon. This gives preeminent states a staggering freedom of action and provides a tempting opportunity to shape world politics in fundamental ways. Rather than pursuing its own narrow interests, preeminence provides an opportunity to mix ideology, values, and normative beliefs with foreign policy. The U nited S tates has been susceptible to this temptation , going to great lengths to slay dragons abroad, and even to remake whole societies in its own (liberal democratic) image.14 The costs and risks of taking such bold action or pursuing transformative foreign policies often seem manageable or even remote. We know from both theory and history that external powers can impose important checks on calculated risk-taking and serve as a moderating influence. The bipolar system of the Cold War forced policymakers in both the United States and the Soviet Union to exercise extreme caution and prudence. One wrong move could have led to a crisis that quickly spiraled out of policymakers’ control. Second, preeminent states have a strong incentive to seek to maintain their preeminence in the international system . Being number one has clear strategic, political, and psychological benefits. Preeminent states may, therefore, overestimate the intensity and immediacy of threats, or to fundamentally redefine what constitutes an acceptable level of threat to live with . To protect itself from

emerging or even future threats, preeminent states may be more likely to take unilateral action, particularly compared to when power is distributed more evenly in the international system. Preeminence has not only made it possible for the U nited S tates to overestimate its power, but also to overestimate the degree to which other states and societies see American power as legitimate and even as worthy of emulation . There is almost a belief in historical determinism, or the feeling that one was destined to stand atop world politics as a colossus, and this preeminence gives one a special prerogative for one's role and purpose in world politics. The security doctrine that the George W. Bush administration adopted took an aggressive approach to maintaining American preeminence and eliminating threats to American security, including waging preventive war. The invasion of Iraq, based on claims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and had ties to al Qaeda, both of which turned out to be false, produced huge costs for the U nited S tates —in political, material, and human terms. After seven years of war, tens of thousands of American military personnel remain in Iraq. Estimates of its long-term cost are in the trillions of dollars. 15 At the same time, the United States has fought a parallel conflict in Afghanistan. While the Obama administration looks to dramatically reduce the American military presence in Iraq, President Obama has committed tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

Hegemony fails – over-commitment to global issues leads to ambiguity over priorities Richard Maher 10, Ph.D. candidate in the Political Science department at Brown University, 12/10/10, “The Paradox of American Unipolarity: Why the United States May Be Better Off in a Post-Unipolar World,” Orbis, Volume 55, Issue 1, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0030438710000633Distraction. Preeminent states have a tendency to seek to shape world politics in fundamental ways , which can lead to conflicting priorities and unnecessary diversions. As resources, attention, and prestige are devoted to one issue or set of issues, others are necessarily disregarded or given reduced importance. There are always trade-offs and opportunity costs in international politics, even for a state as powerful as the United States. Most states are required to define their priorities in highly specific terms. Because the preeminent state has such a large stake in world politics, it feels the need to be vigilant against any changes that could impact its short-, medium-, or long-term interests . The result is taking on commitments on an expansive number of issues all over the globe . The United States has been very active in its ambition to shape the post-Cold War world. It has expanded NATO to Russia's doorstep; waged war in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan; sought to export its own democratic principles and institutions around the world; assembled an international coalition against transnational terrorism; imposed sanctions on North Korea and Iran for their nuclear programs; undertaken “nation building” in Iraq and Afghanistan; announced plans for a missile defense system to be stationed in Poland and the Czech Republic; and, with the United Kingdom, led the response to the recent global financial and economic crisis. By being so involved in so many parts of the world, there often emerges ambiguity over priorities. The U nited S tates defines its interests and obligations in global terms, and defending all of them simultaneously is beyond the pale even for a superpower like the U nited S tates . Issues that may have received benign neglect during the Cold War, for example, when U.S. attention and resources were almost exclusively devoted to its strategic competition with the Soviet Union, are now viewed as central to U.S. interests.

US economic decline inevitable Michael Beckley 12, research fellow in the International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 2012, “China’s Century?,” International Security, Vol. 36, http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/Chinas_Century.pdfOn the other hand, the U nited S tates has accumulated great wealth in part by borrowing from abroad at an unprecedented rate. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the United States’ public debt will remain greater than 60 percent of GDP through 2020.89 In the coming years, U.S. policymakers will be forced to either decrease public spending or allow interest costs on the national debt to rise ruinously. Either option will retard economic growth. Managing such high levels of debt will be especially difficult if the dollar loses its position as the international reserve currency , an outcome that some experts think is likely .90

Retrenchment Bad

Retrenchment BadRetrenchment presents much greater risks and costs than the current strategy – advocates of retrenchment overestimate benefitsStephen G. Brooks, G. John Ikenberry and William C. Wohlforth 12, Brooks is an Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth, B.A. University of California at Santa Cruz, M.A. Yale University, M. Phil. Yale University, Ph.D. Yale University, expert in international relations theory and international security and globalization, Ikenberry is a Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, Co-Director of Princeton’s Center for International Security Studies, Global Eminence scholar, served as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on U.S.-European relations, Wohlforth is a Professor of Government at Dartmouth and a Daniel Webster Professor, teaches and conducts research on international relations, with an emphasis on international security and foreign policy, expert in US foreign policy, has a degree in international relations from Beloit College, worked as legislative aid in U.S House of Representatives and attended Yale, earning in MA in international relations and a PhD in Political Science, Winter 2012/13, “Don’t Come Home, America, The Case against Retrenchment,” http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00107

In this article, we assess the case for retrenchment on its own terms. We¶ argue that advocates of retrenchment radically overestimate the costs of the current grand strategy and underestimate its benefits . The United States’¶ globe-girdling grand strategy is the devil we know, and retrenchment advocates¶ effectively identify some of its risks and costs. A world with a disengaged United States is the devil we don’t know , and we provide strong reasons why it would present much greater risks and costs. Retrenchment would in essence¶ entail a massive experiment: How would the world work without an engaged, liberal leading power? International relations scholarship cannot provide a certain answer. What we can say is that the balance of what scholars know¶ about international politics suggests that sustaining the core commitments of the current grand strategy is a wholly reasonable approach to pursuing narrow U.S. national interests in security , prosperity, and the preservation of domestic liberty. At the same time, scholars and policymakers need to know a lot¶ more to make rational grand strategic choices. For that research to begin, however,¶ there needs to be two sides to the scholarly debate on U.S. grand strategy.¶ We begin by describing the core elements of the current grand strategy,¶ which are often mischaracterized by proponents of retrenchment . In subsequent¶ sections, we assess the strategy’s costs, its narrow security benefits,¶ and its wider nonsecurity benefits. We conclude with the implications of our¶ analysis for policy and international relations theory.

Retrenchment Good Key to Overall Power

Retrenchment doesn’t cause conflict and states who retrench regain their position as a great power Paul K. MacDonald and Joseph M. Parent 11, MacDonald is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Wellesley college, his primary area of research being international relations, with a focus on American foreign policy, Joseph Parent is an associate professor at Miami University, attended the University of Chicago, got a PhD at Columbia, whose research focuses on how shifts in power affect conflict, international relations and American foreign policy, Spring 2011, “Graceful Decline? The Surprising Success of Great Power Retrenchment,” http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/ISEC_a_00034-MacDonald_proof2.pdf

In this article, we question the logic and evidence of the retrenchment pessimists.¶ To date there has been neither a comprehensive study of great power¶ retrenchment nor a study that lays out the case for retrenchment as a practical¶ or probable policy. This article fills these gaps by systematically examining the¶ relationship between acute relative decline and the responses of great powers.¶ We examine eighteen cases of acute relative decline since 1870 and advance¶ three main arguments.¶ First, we challenge the retrenchment pessimists’ claim that domestic or international constraints inhibit the ability of declining great powers to retrench.¶ In fact, when states fall in the hierarchy of great powers, peaceful retrenchment is the most common response , even over short time spans. Based on the empirical record , we find that great powers retrenched in no less than eleven and no¶ more than fifteen of the eighteen cases, a range of 61–83 percent. When international conditions demand it, states renounce risky ties, increase reliance on allies or adversaries, draw down their military obligations, and impose adjustments on domestic populations.¶ Second, we find that the magnitude of relative decline helps explain the extent of great power retrenchment. Following the dictates of neorealist theory,¶ great powers retrench for the same reason they expand: the rigors of great¶ power politics compel them to do so.12 Retrenchment is by no means easy, but¶ necessity is the mother of invention, and declining great powers face powerful incentives to contract their interests in a

prompt and proportionate manner.¶ Knowing only a state’s rate of relative economic decline explains its corresponding¶ degree of retrenchment in as much as 61 percent of the cases we¶ examined.¶ Third, we argue that the rate of decline helps explain what forms great¶ power retrenchment will take. How fast great powers fall contributes to¶ whether these retrenching states will internally reform, seek new allies or rely¶ more heavily on old ones, and make diplomatic overtures to enemies. Further,¶ our analysis suggests that great powers facing acute decline are less likely to initiate or escalate militarized interstate disputes. Faced with diminishing¶ resources, great powers moderate their foreign policy ambitions and offer concessions in areas of lesser strategic value . Contrary to the pessimistic conclusions¶ of critics, retrenchment neither requires aggression nor invites predation.¶ Great powers are able to rebalance their commitments through compromise ,¶ rather than conflict. In these ways, states respond to penury the same way they do to plenty: they seek to adopt policies that maximize security given available means. Far from being a hazardous policy, retrenchment can be successful.¶ States that retrench often regain their position in the hierarchy of great powers .¶ Of the fifteen great powers that adopted retrenchment in response to acute relative¶ decline, 40 percent managed to recover their ordinal rank. In contrast, none of the declining powers that failed to retrench recovered their relative position.Declining great powers refrain from military lash-out while still deterring potential challengersPaul K. MacDonald and Joseph M. Parent 11, MacDonald is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Wellesley college, his primary area of research being international relations, with a focus on American foreign policy, Joseph Parent is an associate professor at Miami University, attended the University of Chicago, got a PhD at Columbia, whose research focuses on how shifts in power affect conflict, international relations and American foreign policy, Spring 2011, “Graceful Decline? The Surprising Success of Great Power Retrenchment,” http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/ISEC_a_00034-MacDonald_proof2.pdf

A closer examination of the data, however, reveals an intriguing pattern: whereas great powers facing small or medium declines are no more likely to seek new alliance partners, those facing large declines appear to aggressively do so. This is consistent with neorealist claims that states prefer internal to external balancing. Great powers facing large declines in relative power sign an average 3.6 new agreements, nearly three times the great power average. This¶ pattern suggests that desperation encourages states to give up their traditional¶ preference for self-help, but only when facing extreme external pressures. It also highlights a tool that declining great powers often use to try to limit the impact of rapid declines. The interlocking alliance agreements embodied in institutions¶ such as the British Commonwealth or the Commonwealth of Independent¶ States can be seen as an effort by declining great powers to reinforce¶ dependent relationships with former colonial possessions.66¶ With regard to militarized disputes, declining great powers demonstrate more caution and restraint in the use of force : they were involved in an average of 1.7 fewer militarized disputes in the five years following ordinal change compared with other great powers over similar periods.67 Declining great powers also initiated fewer militarized disputes, and their disputes tended to escalate to lower levels of hostility than the baseline category (see figure 2).68¶ These findings suggest the need for a fundamental revision to the pessimist’s argument regarding the war proneness of declining powers.69 Far from being more likely to lash out aggressively, declining states refrain from initiating and escalating military disputes . Nor do declining great powers appear more vulnerable to external predation than other great powers. This may be because external¶ predators have great difficulty assessing the vulnerability of potential¶ victims, or because retrenchment allows vulnerable powers to effectively recover from decline and still deter potential challengers. Moreover, the rate of relative decline is associated with different levels of hostility across militarized disputes. In particular, great powers experiencing medium or small declines are much less likely to escalate their disputes to high levels of hostility. In the five years following an ordinal transition, states facing small declines experience levels of hostility in their militarized disputes that are two and a half times less than the average great power. These findings suggest that diplomatic moderation and compromise can be a particularly attractive strategy for managing moderate declines . Far from encouraging further¶ predation, compromise appears to be a crucial component of retreating to a more defensible—and credible—set of commitments.¶ In sum, a neorealist approach captures much of the variation in forms of retrenchment.¶ Great powers facing acute decline tend to slow or shrink the growth in their military forces and to avoid using force in their disputes with rival states. The depth of relative decline is also associated with variation¶ across military spending, militarized disputes, and alliances. Every retrenching¶ great power shrinks the size of its military, yet those facing larger declines¶ reduce military outlays more aggressively. Similarly, great powers suffering¶ large declines rely much more heavily on alliance partners when implementing¶ a policy of retrenchment than those grappling with moderate or minor¶ downturns.

Withdrawal is not a show of weakness but rather shows superiority and increases strength – empirical examples – their ev overstates the likeliness of war and loss in capability Paul K. MacDonald and Joseph M. Parent 11, MacDonald is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Wellesley college, his primary area of research being international relations, with a focus on American foreign policy, Joseph Parent is an associate professor at Miami University, attended the University of Chicago, got a PhD at Columbia, whose research focuses on how shifts in power affect

conflict, international relations and American foreign policy, Spring 2011, “Graceful Decline? The Surprising Success of Great Power Retrenchment,” http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/ISEC_a_00034-MacDonald_proof2.pdf

These arguments have a number of limitations. First, opponents of retrenchment exaggerate the importance of credibility in the defense of commitments. Just because a state has signaled a willingness to retreat from one commitment does not mean it will retreat from others. Studies of reputation, for example, have demonstrated a tenuous link between past behavior and current reputation.22 The capacity to defend a commitment is as important as credibility in determining the strength of a commitment. Quantitative studies have likewise found a mixed link between previous concessions and deterrence failure.23 The balance of power between the challenger and the defender , in contrast, is often decisive . For instance, after a series of crises over Berlin and Cuba, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan observed to his cabinet, “ The fact that the Soviet Government had agreed to withdraw their missiles and their aircraft from Cuba was not evidence of weakness but of realism . . . . But Berlin was an entirely different question; not only was it of vital importance to the Soviet Government but the Russians had overwhelming conventional superiority in the area .” 24 This finding supports the basic insight of retrenchment: by concentrating scarce resources, a policy of retrenchment exchanges a diffuse reputation for toughness for a concentrated capability at key points of challenge. Second, pessimists overstate the extent to which a policy of retrenchment can damage a great power’s capabilities or prestige . Gilpin, in particular, assumes that a great power’s commitments are on equal footing and interdependent. In practice, however, great powers make commitments of varying degrees that are functionally independent of one another. Concession in one area need not be seen as influencing a commitment in another area.25 Far from being perceived as interdependent, great power commitments are often seen as being rivalrous, so that abandoning commitments in one area may actually bolster the strength of a commitment in another area. During the Korean War, for instance, President Harry Truman’s administration explicitly backed away from total victory on the peninsula to strengthen deterrence in Europe.26 Retreat in an area of lesser importance freed up resources and signaled a strong commitment to an area of greater significance . Third, critics do not just oversell the hazards of retrenchment; they downplay the dangers of preventive war.27 Both Gilpin and Copeland praise the ability of preventive war to arrest great power decline by defusing the threat posed to a hegemonic power by an isolated challenger. Such reasoning disregards the warning of Otto von Bismarck and others that preventive war is “suicide from fear of death.”28 In practice, great powers operate in a much more constrained and complex security environment in which they face multiple threats on several fronts. Powers pursuing preventive war are shouldering grave risks: preventive war may require resources that are unavailable or allies that are difficult to recruit, and defeat in preventive war opens floodgates to exploitation on multiple fronts. Even a successful war, if sufficiently costly, can weaken a great power to the point of vulnerability.29 For most great powers, the potential loss of security in the future as a result of relative decline rarely justifies inviting the hazards of war in the present .

Risk of war and great power war from withdrawal is extremely low – retrenching states often regain their prior position – prefer our evidence that uses specific studies and empirical examplesPaul K. MacDonald and Joseph M. Parent 11, MacDonald is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Wellesley college, his primary area of research being international relations, with a focus on American foreign policy, Joseph Parent is an associate professor at Miami University, attended the University of Chicago, got a PhD at Columbia, whose research focuses on how shifts in power affect conflict, international relations and American foreign policy, Spring 2011, “Graceful Decline? The Surprising Success of Great Power Retrenchment,” http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/ISEC_a_00034-MacDonald_proof2.pdf

Based on our universe of cases, the predictions of retrenchment pessimists receive little support . In contrast to arguments that retrenchment is rare, we find that great powers facing acute relative decline adopted retrenchment in at least¶ eleven and at most fifteen of the eighteen cases, a range of 61–83 percent. By¶ any accounting, a majority of the countries in these cases retrenched shortly after their ordinal transition. Nor does the evidence support the view that domestic interests constrain retrenchment. Every one of the great powers in our sample that chose to retrench did so within five years of the ordinal transition. This suggests timely responses to external constraints rather than domestic ¶ intransigence. Moreover, there does not appear to be a strong connection between regime¶ type and retrenchment. Democracies account for about two-thirds of the great¶ powers in our study, and are slightly more likely to face acute relative declines,¶ accounting for thirteen of our eighteen cases, or 72 percent. Of the twelve democracies,¶ seven retrenched, two did not, and three are debatable, yielding parameters¶ from 58 to 83 percent. There are only three cases of autocracy, which¶ makes comparison among groups difficult, but of these, two retrenched and¶ one case is arguable, producing a range of 67–100 percent.59 In short, evidence at the coarse-grained level tentatively supports the neorealist approach outlined above: during acute relative decline, a significant majority of great¶ powers of differing regime types elected to retrench.¶ Wars , preventive or otherwise, do not appear to be a common fate for declining states, and recovery of lost rank was fairly frequent. Declining great powers found themselves embroiled in an interstate war in only four of the eighteen cases , and in only one of these cases—1935 United Kingdom—did the declining power go to war with the power that had just surpassed it in ordinal ¶ rank.60 In addition, in six of fifteen cases, declining great powers that adopted a policy of retrenchment managed to rebound , eventually recovering¶ their ordinal rank from the state that surpassed them. These findings suggest¶ that retrenching states rarely courted disaster and occasionally regained their prior position. Further, even if retrenchment was not successful, this does not

prove that a preferable policy existed.61 In many cases of decline, there are few¶ restorative solutions available; politics is often a game of unpalatable alternatives.¶ Short of a miracle, it is hard to say what great powers such as Britain,¶ France, or the Soviet Union could have done to stay aloft, even with the benefit¶ of hindsight.

Retrenchment increases alliances and avoids military disputes for fear of wasting resourcesPaul K. MacDonald and Joseph M. Parent 11, MacDonald is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Wellesley college, his primary area of research being international relations, with a focus on American foreign policy, Joseph Parent is an associate professor at Miami University, attended the University of Chicago, got a PhD at Columbia, whose research focuses on how shifts in power affect conflict, international relations and American foreign policy, Spring 2011, “Graceful Decline? The Surprising Success of Great Power Retrenchment,” http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/ISEC_a_00034-MacDonald_proof2.pdf

Second, to assess diplomatic responses, we examine the number of new alliance¶ agreements signed by a great power in the five years following its decline¶ in ordinal ranking.54 Defensive alliances are a sound indicator of burden shifting¶ and lessened commitments, but only if carefully measured. By obligating a¶ great power to defend its partner, an alliance agreement could represent expansion , rather than contraction , of foreign policy commitments . Even defensive¶ alliances can be used to free capabilities for expansion in other areas , a policy that is not commensurate with a grand strategy of retrenchment. This is also true to a lesser extent for nonaggression pacts and neutrality agreements. Therefore, we couple our overview of alignments with a qualitative assessment¶ of the nature of the agreements and other changes in a declining state’s¶ alliance portfolio. We contend that diplomatic overtures should be proportionate¶ to the rate of decline. In other words, the faster states fall, the more frantically they search for friends.¶ Third, we examine the behavior of declining great powers in militarized disputes, examining whether declining great powers are more likely to find themselves in militarized disputes in the five years following a shift in ordinal rankings.55 We combine this analysis with a qualitative assessment of the goals and strategies employed by declining great powers during these disputes to¶ develop a general sense of the ways in which declining states use force to assist¶ (or inhibit) retrenchment. In direct opposition to Copeland, we expect states facing acute relative decline to avoid initiating and escalating militarized disputes , which threaten to waste precious resources, except to defend¶ areas of core concern.

Key to U.S.-China Stability Hegemonic decline avoids conflict and great power war through deterrence - other powers have no incentive or capability to challenge the US – continuance of hegemony hurts multilateralism and risks credibility Paul K. MacDonald and Joseph M. Parent 11, MacDonald is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Wellesley college, his primary area of research being international relations, with a focus on American foreign policy, Joseph Parent is an associate professor at Miami University, attended the University of Chicago, got a PhD at Columbia, whose research focuses on how shifts in power affect conflict, international relations and American foreign policy, Spring 2011, “Graceful Decline? The Surprising Success of Great Power Retrenchment,” http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/ISEC_a_00034-MacDonald_proof2.pdf

Our findings are directly relevant to what appears to be an impending great power transition between China and the United States. Estimates of economic performance vary, but most observers expect Chinese GDP to surpass U.S. GDP sometime in the next decade or two.91 This prospect has generated considerable concern. Many scholars foresee major conflict during a Sino-U.S. ordinal transition. Echoing Gilpin and Copeland, John Mearsheimer sees the crux of the issue as irreconcilable goals : China wants to be America’s superior and the United States wants no peer competitors. In his words, “[N]o amount of goodwill can ameliorate the intense security competition that sets in when an aspiring hegemon appears in Eurasia.”92 Contrary to these predictions, our analysis suggests some grounds for optimism. Based on the historical track record of great powers facing acute relative decline, the U nited States should be able to retrench in the coming decades . In the next few years, the United States is ripe to overhaul its military, shift burdens to its allies, and work to decrease costly international commitments. It is likely to initiate and become embroiled in fewer militarized disputes than the average great power and to settle these disputes more amicably . Some might view this prospect with apprehension, fear ing the steady erosion of U.S. credibility. Yet our analysis suggests that retrenchment need not signal weakness. Holding on to exposed and expensive commitments simply for the sake of one’s reputation is a greater geopolitical gamble than withdrawing to cheaper, more defensible frontiers. Some observers might dispute our conclusions, arguing tha t hegemonic transitions are more conflict prone than other moments of acute relative decline. We counter that there are deductive and empirical reasons to doubt this argument. Theoretically, hegemonic powers should actually find it easier to manage acute relative decline . Fallen hegemons still have formidable capability, which threatens grave harm to any state that tries to cross them . Further, they are no longer the top target for balancing coalitions, and recovering hegemons may be influential because they can play a pivotal role in alliance formation. In addition, hegemonic powers, almost by definition, possess more extensive overseas commitments; they should be able to more readily identify and eliminate extraneous burdens without exposing

vulnerabilities or exciting domestic populations. We believe the empirical record supports these conclusions. In particular, periods of hegemonic transition do not appear more conflict prone than those of acute decline . The last reversal at the pinnacle of power was the AngloAmerican transition , which took place around 1872 and was resolved without armed confrontation. The tenor of that transition may have been influenced by a number of factors: both states were democratic maritime empires, the United States was slowly emerging from the Civil War, and Great Britain could likely coast on a large lead in domestic capital stock. Although China and the United States differ in regime type, similar factors may work to cushion the impending Sino- American transition . Both are large, relatively secure continental great powers, a fact that mitigates potential geopolitical competition .93 China faces a variety of domestic political challenges , including strains among rival regions, which may complicate its ability to sustain its economic performance or engage in foreign policy adventurism.94 Most important, the United States is not in free fall. Extrapolating the data into the future, we anticipate the United States will experience a “moderate” decline, losing from 2 to 4 percent of its share of great power GDP in the five years after being surpassed by China sometime in the next decade or two.95 Given the relatively gradual rate of U.S. decline relative to China, the incentives for either side to run risks by courting conflict are minimal. The United States would still possess upwards of a third of the share of great power GDP, and would have little to gain from provoking a crisis over a peripheral issue . Conversely, China has few incentives to exploit U.S. weakness . 96 Given the importance of the U.S. market to the Chinese economy , in addition to the critical role played by the dollar as a global reserve currency, it is unclear how Beijing could hope to consolidate or expand its increasingly advantageous position through direct confrontation . In short, the United States should be able to reduce its foreign policy commitments in East Asia in the coming decades without inviting Chinese expansionism . Indeed, there is evidence that a policy of retrenchment could reap potential benefits. The drawdown and repositioning of U.S. troops in South Korea, for example, rather than fostering instability, has resulted in an improvement in the occasionally strained relationship between Washington and Seoul.97 U.S. moderation on Taiwan, rather than encouraging hard-liners in Beijing, resulted in an improvement in cross-strait relations and reassured U.S. allies that Washington would not inadvertently drag them into a Sino-U.S. conflict.98 Moreover, Washington’s support for the development of multilateral security institutions , rather than harming bilateral alliances, could work to enhance U.S. prestige while embedding China within a more transparent regional order .99 A policy of gradual retrenchment need not undermine the credibility of U.S. alliance commitments or unleash destabilizing regional security dilemmas. Indeed, even if Beijing harbored revisionist intent, it is unclear that China will have the force projection capabilities necessary to take and hold additional territory .100 By incrementally shifting burdens to regional allies and multilateral institutions, the United States can strengthen the cred ibility of its core commitments while accommodating the interests of a rising China . Not least among the benefits of retrenchment is that it helps alleviate an unsustainable financial position . Immense forward deployments will only exacerbate U.S. grand strategic problems and risk unnecessary clashes.101

AT: KaganKagan never provides any evidence to support his claims and tends to overstate arguments while cherry-picking examplesRobert O. Keohane 12, Professor of International Affairs at Princeton University, author of the influential book After Hegemony, expert in the theory of neoliberal institutionalism in international relations, former professor at Harvard and Duke, July/August 2012, “Hegemony and After: Knowns and Unknowns in the Debate Over Decline,” https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/review-essay/hegemony-and-afterGeneral readers might not realize how conventional this interpretation of world politics is, since Kagan strikes a pose of embattled iconoclasm, ignoring most of the major authors who developed the case -- such as E. H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau, and Kenneth Waltz -- and claiming to refute other scholars with whom he supposedly disagrees, such as G. John Ikenberry and Joseph Nye. ¶ Unfortunately, Kagan's method of disagreement is unconvincing . When he raises an opposing claim, he almost never provides data or even systematic evidence ; instead, he relies on a counterassertion with a few carefully selected examples. More annoying, he typically overstates the argument in question, stripping it of its original nuance, before claiming to refute it . ¶ One of his favorite rhetorical tactics is to assert that his opponents think some trend is "inevitable" or "irreversible" -- the dominance of the American-led liberal order, the rise of democracy, the end of major war. Another is to suggest that his targets believe in "multipolar harmony." But two of the most basic propositions of contemporary international relations, certainly accepted by all the writers he dismisses, are that world politics is a realm of inherent uncertainty and that it is characterized by a natural absence of harmony. Since practically everybody knows that nothing in world politics is inevitable and harmony is virtually nonexistent, attributing the opposite beliefs to one's opponents assures one of victory in a mock combat. ¶

AT: Lieber

Multiple flaws in Lieber’s and most present-oriented policy argumentsRobert O. Keohane 12, Professor of International Affairs at Princeton University, author of the influential book After Hegemony, expert in the theory of neoliberal institutionalism in international relations, former professor at Harvard and Duke, July/August 2012, “Hegemony and After: Knowns and Unknowns in the Debate Over Decline,” https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/review-essay/hegemony-and-afterLieber's book largely agrees with Kagan's, arguing that "the maintenance of [the United States'] leading [international] role matters greatly. The alternative would . . . be a more disorderly and dangerous world." Power and Willpower in the American Future documents the many erroneous statements about American decline by commentators such as the historian Paul Kennedy (who argued in 1987 that the United States suffered from "imperial overstretch") and even Henry Kissinger (who wrote in 1961 that "the United States cannot afford another decline like that which has characterized the past decade and a half"). Lieber provides useful data on the relative economic production of major countries and gives both his predecessors and his intellectual opponents due credit for their contributions.¶ In the end, however, the flaws in Lieber's arguments are similar to those in Kagan's. He, too, dismisses multilateralism as generally ineffective, emphasizing its failures while paying less attention to its successes, whether in peacekeeping, trade, or nonproliferation. He slights NATO's operations in Kosovo in 1999 and Libya in 2011, for example, arguing that the former exhibited "military and tactical limitations" and pointing out that "stronger and more decisive initial attacks" might have brought quicker success in the latter. Even if valid, surely these critiques are relatively minor compared to the results achieved, with high international legitimacy, in both cases. But Lieber has difficulty admitting that such episodes should be counted as evidence for multilateralism rather than against it. ¶ In a previous book, Lieber offered a robust defense of and rationale for the foreign policy approach of the George W. Bush administration, including making a case for preventive war. One might have hoped that in this successor volume he would have revisited such issues and subjected the practical track record of unbridled unilateralism to the same sort of withering scrutiny he gives to multilateralism, but such self-reflection is not to be found here. (Nor is it present in Kagan's book, for that matter, where it would have been equally welcome.) Apart from questions of originality and the specifics of the declinist debate, the central problem with books of present-oriented foreign policy commentary such as these lies in their failure to distinguish between what is known and what is unknowable. By conflating the two, they end up misleading readers rather than educating them. It might be useful, therefore, to indicate half a dozen things relevant to the future of the U.S. global role that can now be said with confidence.

AT: Domestic Constraint Arguments3 major flaws with domestic constraint argumentsPaul K. MacDonald and Joseph M. Parent 11, MacDonald is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Wellesley college, his primary area of research being international relations, with a focus on American foreign policy, Joseph Parent is an associate professor at Miami University, attended the University of Chicago, got a PhD at Columbia, whose research focuses on how shifts in power affect conflict, international relations and American foreign policy, Spring 2011, “Graceful Decline? The Surprising Success of Great Power Retrenchment,” http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/ISEC_a_00034-MacDonald_proof2.pdf

Although useful in many contexts, domestic constraint arguments suffer from several problems. First, domestic political theories assume that interest groups predominantly push for more expansive overseas commitments. Yet domestic interest groups possess much more complicated and nuanced preferences than is commonly assumed . For example, many domestic interest¶ groups oppose overseas commitments, favoring expenditure on domestic programs¶ rather than adventures abroad.¶ Second, groups favoring assertive foreign policies do not speak with one voice or assign equal priority to all interests. Different interest groups will place different weight on particular regions , economic sectors, or types of international challenges. 34 The heterogeneity of domestic interests is critical because¶ it opens up space for politicians to outmaneuver domestic groups and¶ force trade-offs on unwilling lobbies. Third, domestic political theories are unclear about when domestic interests are able to hijack the policymaking process . Some studies emphasize problems¶ with democratic states, which provide interest groups easier access to the¶ policymaking process. In his classic study, however, Stephen Krasner finds¶ that “again and again there are serious discrepancies between the aims of central decision-makers and those of private corporations” in which “the state has¶ generally prevailed.”35 Others argue that it is not regime type that is crucial,¶ but the institutional structure of a country. Spruyt emphasizes the importance¶ of institutional veto points, which are present in both democratic and autocratic¶ systems.36 Although the inclusion of veto points allows a more nuanced¶

understanding of domestic constraints, it suffers from the same problem of¶ specifying which veto points are most significant and when they will prove¶ decisive.¶ Fourth, domestic political theories tend to downplay or ignore the ability of international context to inform domestic politics. Yet policymakers do not operate in a vacuum; elites react to changes in the international system.37 Policymakers¶ at the helm of rising powers can afford to indulge the

interests of¶ domestic lobbies with minimal consequences. Elites in rising powers have few¶ incentives to resolve trade-offs among competing interests or veto new and¶ unnecessary foreign adventures. In contrast, there are significant pressures on policymakers in declining great powers to put aside their parochial interests.¶ They sit atop wasting assets, and a local defeat may easily turn into a general¶ rout. It is precisely in periods of acute relative decline that one should expect¶ partisan rancor and sectoral rivalry to recede.