{"id":27300,"date":"2016-06-28T06:00:56","date_gmt":"2016-06-27T20:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=27300"},"modified":"2016-06-27T11:26:21","modified_gmt":"2016-06-27T01:26:21","slug":"offshore-balancing-us-retreat-strategic-disorder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/offshore-balancing-us-retreat-strategic-disorder\/","title":{"rendered":"Offshore balancing, US retreat and strategic disorder"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Image<\/p>\n

John Mearsheimer\u2019s and Stephen Walt\u2019s recent <\/span>Foreign Affairs<\/span><\/i> article<\/span><\/a> advocating a return to offshore balancing is certainly generating a debate amongst the doyens of US foreign policy. <\/span>Tom Switzer, for example, clearly<\/span> likes<\/span><\/a> their arguments. Dan Drezner<\/span> doesn\u2019t<\/span><\/a>. So perhaps I ought to begin by outlining my own position. I accept the starting point for the Mearsheimer\/Walt argument: the strategic mainstream is starting to fracture as America reprioritises its domestic agenda. But I don\u2019t accept that offshore balancing\u2014a strategy under which the US stays \u2018offshore\u2019 from Eurasia for as long as possible and, even when it comes onshore, makes its allies carry as much of the weight as possible\u2014would lead to favourable outcomes for either the world or America.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the Mearsheimer\/Walt argument that \u2018by husbanding US strength, an offshore-balancing strategy would preserve US primacy well into the future\u2019, I don\u2019t see how international observers would perceive offshore balancing as anything other than US retreat. And those perceptions would, in turn, fundamentally weaken the credibility of US security assurances to allies and partners. Critics would paint it as the waning of the <\/span>Pax Americana<\/span><\/i>, and not entirely without reason.<\/span><\/p>\n

US relative strategic weight has been slipping for years, as other great powers have risen. Logic suggests a unipolar system will likely end with the unipolar power impoverished, exhausted, embittered, and resentful of its partners\u2019 unwillingness to carry more of the burden. Well, most days it looks like we\u2019re there. Structurally, the world is sliding from unipolarity to multipolarity, and as it does, the story of US commitment to its forward-exposed allies is becoming ever more difficult to tell. So the reflexive interpretation of a US move towards offshore balancing wouldn\u2019t be one of continued US primacy, sustained far into the future, but of its passing: of a deep-level shift in the global strategic order which would make US allies far more reliant on policies of national self-reliance and\/or regional partnership.<\/span><\/p>\n

And that brings us to the second problem with a US move towards offshore balancing: it focuses more upon the benefits to the US from forward disengagement than it does on what comes after. Offshore balancing focuses upon two specific objectives\u2014a US secure in its own hemisphere, and facing no rival hegemon in Eurasia. Those objectives suggest little or no role for the US as an order-builder, meaning that\u2014by comparison with today\u2019s world\u2014the strategy would essentially drive a substantial reordering along the Eurasian rimlands, with no guarantee that local powers could build a stable peaceful order to replace the one that exists now.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mearsheimer and Walt accept that Asia\u2019s a special case: that China\u2019s rise makes it likely to seek hegemony in the region and that relying on local powers to contain it\u2014the ideal solution\u2014\u2018might not work\u2019. But I think it\u2019s a generous interpretation of their argument to see them as supporters of the rebalance. True, the US footprint in Asia would be heavier than elsewhere, but that\u2019s because they favour ending the US\u2019s military presence in Europe and moving most of its forces \u2018back over the horizon\u2019 in the Gulf. I suspect that even in Asia, where regional security structures are weak beyond the US hub-and-spokes model, the push towards strategic<\/span> \u2018gamechangers\u2019<\/span><\/a> would quicken abruptly. US allies would begin to re-consider options they had previously set aside to make themselves look spiky and indigestible. There are nearly 40 recipients of US extended nuclear assurances worldwide, for example. They wouldn\u2019t all proliferate\u2014but six to ten might.<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, offshore balancing itself turns upon a set of assumptions. One is that Western maritime pre-eminence can be sustained. Perhaps it can. But technology\u2019s a fickle beast. Breakthroughs which make surface fleets more vulnerable and the undersea environment more transparent would be bad news for offshore balancing. For the US, projecting power back to Eurasia when it needed to do so might be harder than it is now.<\/span><\/p>\n

And even if Western maritime pre-eminence can be sustained, offshore balancing assumes that the US can deal itself back into the game at a time of its own choosing. While offshore balancing explicitly recognises the strategic importance of not allowing the emergence of a hostile hegemon on the Eurasian land-mass, it assumes that US pre-eminence there can be re-established as a matter of course. Since World War 2, the dominant view has been that a US presence along the Eurasian rimlands was a pre-requisite for such a strategy. The NATO REFORGER exercises, for example, worked on the assumption that it was easier to reinforce something ashore there than it was to build from zero in a crisis. Offshore balancing strategies throw away that advantage.<\/span><\/p>\n

A return to offshore balancing would suggest a US looking backward\u2014a US that wanted to return to the role it played in the world in the 19th and first half of the 20th century. Yes, that was a time when US power was near its peak, though<\/span> perhaps not because of the specific strategic policy<\/span><\/a>. But it wasn\u2019t an especially peaceful time for the international order. World War 2 was well under way before America became involved. If we\u2019re going back to an era when Washington\u2019s more inclined to sit on its hands, we\u2019re all\u2014the US included\u2014going to be living in a more fraught strategic world.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Mearsheimer\u2019s and Stephen Walt\u2019s recent Foreign Affairs article advocating a return to offshore balancing is certainly generating a debate amongst the doyens of US foreign policy. Tom Switzer, for example, clearly likes their arguments. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":27301,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[378,21,31],"class_list":["post-27300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-rebalance","tag-strategy-2","tag-united-states"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOffshore balancing, US retreat and strategic disorder | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/offshore-balancing-us-retreat-strategic-disorder\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Offshore balancing, US retreat and strategic disorder | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"John Mearsheimer\u2019s and Stephen Walt\u2019s recent Foreign Affairs article advocating a return to offshore balancing is certainly generating a debate amongst the doyens of US foreign policy. 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