AMU Homeland Security Intelligence Opinion

Commentary: The Paradox of American Global Power

American Global Power
By Dr. Terry Simmons

Contributor, In Homeland Security

As American military hegemony atrophies due to President Barack Obama’s application of a soft power demilitarization of American foreign policy, coupled with sequestration politics sustained through continued budget impasses between the Democratic and Republican parties, defense budgets of the various military services are losing their competitive edges with hostile global competitors.

In addition, political perceptions of diminishing American will and fiscal inability to sustain the global American post-Cold War Empire, have created an opportunity by the Russian Federation, The People’s Republic of China, and the BRIC countries, to seize the political initiative in international relations.

Current data support the proposition that the Russian Federation has reached nuclear strategic parity with the United States while China is currently surpassing the American gross domestic product.

As the perceptions grow concerning American retrenchment from global leadership, the unilateralism and previous status of the United States is rapidly becoming an international multilateralism that now diminishes long-term American dominance. As America stands down, others will stand up. Axiomatic is the political principle that all power vacuums will be filled.

Just a few short years ago, American military hegemony was a foregone conclusion. As sequestration in particular begins to actuate a force posture readiness toll on American strategic force architecture, the military establishment and the American Intelligence Community are increasingly alarmed at how quickly that traditional American dominance is dissipating.

Whereas there have been wars and rumors of war throughout history, those rumors now take on a new urgency as pointed up by the recent political machinations arising out of the Nemtsov assassination recently in Moscow.

With the subsequent highly visible absence of Putin from public view for 11 days from public appearances recently and his verified order of a strategic heightened alert status for the Russian Arctic Command and Northern Fleet out of Murmansk, the speculation has increased exponentially that he is preparing for war. Rumors of Russian and American alerts are now reaching the press and social media outlets.

As American-NATO readiness begins to actuate in Europe and potentially Ukraine and as Congress intensifies debate on an array of strategically important strategic issues, the operational tempo of both military deployments, both Russian and American, as well as the intensity and specificity of diplomatic discourse on a number of critical issues, is clearly identifiable to the careful observer.

The inter-relationship of important issues is also coming into focus: Iran and the nuclear agreement, the ongoing war against the Islamic State and Russian-American juxtaposition in Syria, the last of the Arab Spring states, as well as security alerts issued by the United States warning of terrorism possibilities in Venezuela and Saudi Arabia causing the American Embassy to be temporarily closed, the continued bombastic rhetoric out of North Korea, all create an increasingly alarmist international political environment.

If a time of calamity does indeed approach, is it business as usual in the international political community? Is it simply another chapter in tumultuous international relations, or is it unique in the following ways: The tectonic plates of the New World Order that followed the demise of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on December 25, 1991 under Mikhail Gorbachev, are definitely moving! There is a persistent and growing threat that the map of Europe is being redrawn. Obviously that is in motion in Crimea-Ukraine. China is challenging the American Lake concept in the South China Sea as she claims sovereignty in the Spratley Islands and pursues a serious blue water navy challenge of traditional American naval power supremacy in the greater Pacific.

At the urging of the United States in coordination with President Obama’s pivot strategy to the area, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is reorienting Japanese international force posture from the defensive to the offensive, possibly to include the staging of nuclear weapons in traditionally pacifist post-World War 2 Japan, igniting a new fierce competition among old geopolitical competitors Japan, China, Korea, the Philippines and others.

As the undeniable challenges to the post WWII and post Cold War geopolitical constructs advance and intensify, the potential for low-intensity warfare and regional conflicts grow. The evidence of jihadist audacity to establish a supreme caliphate by Islamic State erasing the Syria and Iraq borders is a prime example of this trend. On the jihadist side, it is easy to identify remnants of al-Qaida Central coalescing for a new push for a worldwide confederation of fundamentalist Sunni emirates centered on Sharia rule. Antithetically the Shia Islamic Republic of Iran maintains a traditional nation-state construct while challenging the expansionist Sunnis doctrine of Caliphate only delineations of power.

The paradox of American power lies in that no individual country or federation or fundamentalist jihadist caliphate appears ready to precipitate global nuclear war with the United States although the signs are increasingly visible that that is a consideration in some tactical application while not in the strategic realm; MAD lives on in the current strategic context. However, as in Vietnam, the Iraq wars, long term struggle in Afghanistan, and now the re-intensified struggle against revanchist Russian reclamation of post-Soviet space, U.S.-Allied deterrents still remain effective.

However, as the tidal wave of resistance to traditional American global dominance persists and grows, how will the United States accommodate those organic changes in a fashion that both guarantees American security and perpetuates the America’s image of exceptionalism and a beacon of freedom in a still troubled world?

Note: The opinions and comments stated in the preceding article, and views expressed by any contributor to In Homeland Security, do not represent the views of American Military University, American Public University System, its management or employees.

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