If we define a “great power” as a nation with a capacity and record of projecting military force globally, there are today just three of those, and it is increasingly evident that two of them—China and Russia—are in ever closer alignment, with a common purpose of overthrowing the global ascendency of the United States. Sadly, American mishandling of its relations with Russia has made this outcome much more likely.
Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. presidents have sought to maintain a tolerable albeit hardly cordial relationship with Russia. In this century both Bush (“I looked in Putin’s eyes and saw his soul”) and Obama (“Tell Vladimir I’ll have more flexibility after the election”) sought to maintain respectful relations with the Russian President while avoiding needless provocations that might cause Putin to conclude that his country’s strategic and economic interests were better served in the East than in the West.
This approach, however, ended abruptly when Russia suddenly became a centerpiece of savage U.S. partisan politics beginning with the 2016 presidential election and continuing throughout the Trump administration. Resultingly Russia was permanently assigned the role of the “main enemy” of American liberty, and every U.S. politician was compelled to demonstrate that they would be ‘tougher on Russia” than their opponents.
China for some years saw Russian-American tensions as a golden opportunity to advance their own anti-U.S. agenda by entering an ever-closer relationship with their fellow authoritarian in Moscow via such means as huge energy deals, coordinated strategy in all international organizations, and increasingly frequent joint military exercises across the world.
While the Russia-China axis strengthened over time, America’s principal alliance system—NATO—became increasingly weaker. In a March 2021 survey that included the leading NATO member states, the European Council on Foreign Relations found that by large majorities the peoples of these countries believed that the U.S. political system was “broken,” that China would soon supplant America as the world’s most powerful nation, and most alarmingly that their countries should remain neutral in any conflict between the U.S. and China or Russia.
Needless to say, the leaders of these countries would never say such impolitic things in public, but in a crisis, it is inconceivable that they would defy the very people who elect them. It is thus apparent that with the end of the Cold War, the NATO alliance lost its main reason for existing, and has since, over the last thirty years, more and more lost its focus, coherence, and eventually its willingness to risk actual military combat with a hostile superpower.
What this means is that the Western democracies have become a very loosely bonded confederation that is “all talk and no action,” much as described by Walter Russell Mead in a recent Wall Street Journal column- “Democracies Lecture, Adversaries Run Free” (6/15/21).
“The harsh reality,” Mead asserts, “is that the U.S. and its allies are losing ground to their adversaries, and the balance of power is moving sharply against us.” Declaring that the West has forgotten what it means to win, while becoming quite good at losing, he cites a litany of defeats ranging from the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, to China’s crackdowns on Tibet, Hong Kong, and Xinjiang, and Russia’s invasion of Georgia and Ukraine—all of which occurred without any serious Allied response.
“Autocracy is on the march at the fastest rate since the 1930s,” Mead concludes, “and unless Mr. Biden starts scoring some concrete wins, our adversaries’ progress will accelerate.”
To gain some historical perspective on our current dilemmas, it is perhaps useful to recall an earlier time—the late 1960s—when as now the country was being torn apart by a long losing foreign war (Vietnam), domestic political polarization, racial strife, assassinations, and a bitterly divisive presidential election.
At a critical inflection point in this earlier time of troubles, President Richard Nixon addressed the country, decrying our then-raging fratricidal battles and warning that if “the United States of America acts like a pitiful helpless giant, then the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.”
Today we are passing through what in an even earlier time of peril (the eve of World War II) Winston Churchill called “the Gathering Storm.”
With the advantage of hindsight, we can look back and see how well or ill free peoples met the challenges of their time. Churchill’s Britain and Nixon’s America rose to their moment, resolutely if imperfectly, in the one case by allying with Russia against Germany, in the other by playing China against Russia.
But the future is hidden from us—and while we can know how high are the stakes, we cannot assess the degree of will and fortitude that we shall bring to the challenges history now presses upon us.
Bill Moloney is a Fellow in Conservative Thought at Colorado Christian University’s Centennial Institute who studied at Oxford and the University of London and received his doctorate from Harvard University. He is a former Colorado Commissioner of Education.