WOTR Twofer
The Future of American Power: The Great Pull-Back? By Michael Noonan, War on the Rocks
… The United States today, unlike Great Britain in the last century, has no rising great power that shares common values and similar interests to which it can hand off a sizeable share of global security responsibilities, such as maintaining the global commons. India might become such a power one day. In the interim, however, we must operate under the fiscal constraints that we have while also operating as the great power that we are. This does not mean that we need to—a la GI Joe— “fight for freedom wherever there’s trouble,” but it does mean that we have to play the hands that we have been dealt better. We needn’t acquiesce to others’ misbehaviors in the name of “that’s how great powers act.” We are not going to go to war over Ukraine, for instance, but we can use the full range of instruments at our disposal to try to shape our preferred outcome there. China and Russia today are competitors. We should try to treat them as such, but that means that we need to compete and competitively engage them directly and indirectly across the diplomatic, informational, and economic spheres while maintaining our own suite of military capabilities.
No, America is Not in Retreat by Usha Sahay, War on the Rocks
… It’s certainly true that America is changing its role on the world stage. But that’s not the same as retreating from that stage altogether. In fact, the opposite is true: by many measures, the Obama administration has increased American engagement with the world. What has changed is not the amount of engagement, but its nature. Obama has sought to re-orient our foreign policy away from a military-first approach, and toward a more comprehensive approach that leans more on diplomatic and economic tools…