{"id":39876,"date":"2018-06-12T06:00:59","date_gmt":"2018-06-11T20:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=39876"},"modified":"2018-06-11T20:03:01","modified_gmt":"2018-06-11T10:03:01","slug":"the-new-abnormal-of-international-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-new-abnormal-of-international-power\/","title":{"rendered":"The new abnormal of international power"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" class=\"size-full wp-image-39878 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/2328073107_6c896f7c53_z.jpg\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/2328073107_6c896f7c53_z.jpg 640w, https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/2328073107_6c896f7c53_z-205x154.jpg 205w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u2018When the balance of power changes, it is not the power we lose, but the balance.\u2019<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iiss.org\/-\/media\/documents\/events\/shangri-la%20dialogue\/sld%2018\/sld18%20prepared%20speeches\/florence%20parly.pdf?la=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Florence Parly<\/a>, French Minister for the Armed Forces, Singapore, 3 June 2018<\/p>\n<p>The power balance wobbles and lots of power is sloshing around.<\/p>\n<p>The new abnormal of international relations has stopped being that abnormal\u2014it\u2019s the strange form of the new normal.<\/p>\n<p>The old normal was pushed and pounded. The new abnormal has been stomping on it for quite a while. The new abnormal is settling in as the permanent reality.<\/p>\n<p>Lots of markers map this journey: the Iraq invasion (a US foreign policy disaster worse than Vietnam), the global financial crisis and the great recession, China overtaking\u00a0Japan on the economic league table, and now China ahead of the US on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/china-as-number-one-japan-as-normal\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">purchasing power parity<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Donald Trump is more symptom than cause. Ditto Brexit.<\/p>\n<p>The normal we\u2019ve lost lasted just two decades, from 1989 to 2008. The US unipolar moment dawned with the end of the Cold War. Happy days: the US decided the old rules didn\u2019t apply any more, in Iraq or the way US banks played the game. That version of normal smashed in 2008 when an already war-weary US suffered an economic nervous breakdown.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve had a decade of the new abnormal. Get used to it.<\/p>\n<p>The laments for the old normal are loud, only emphasising how much it has waned. Questions abound. Key among them: What does China want? What will the US do?<\/p>\n<p>Those questions are at the heart of two annual tomes that track the tone, temperature and trajectory of the Asia\u2013Pacific (aka Indo-Pacific):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iiss.org\/en\/publications\/strategic%20dossiers\/issues\/asia-pacific-regional-security-assessment-2018-8e17\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Asia\u2013Pacific Regional Security Assessment<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/sdsc.bellschool.anu.edu.au\/sites\/default\/files\/publications\/attachments\/2018-02\/cscap2018web.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Regional Security Outlook<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> from the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP).<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>See the strangeness of the times in the opening words of the first two chapters of the 2018 IISS study:<\/p>\n<p><em>Chapter 1: President Trump\u2019s first year in Asia<\/em>\u2014\u2018The first year of Donald Trump\u2019s presidency yielded significant changes in the underlying principles of the United States\u2019 engagement with the Asia\u2013Pacific region, as well as in the style and focus of American diplomacy.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>So, Trump changes principles, style and focus\u2014the abnormal normal, indeed.<\/p>\n<p><em>Chapter 2: China\u2019s regional leadership role\u2014<\/em>\u2018The Trump administration\u2019s lack of a coherent Asia strategy has generated fears that America is stepping away from the regional leadership role that it has played in this part of the world since the Second World War. These concerns have been compounded by China\u2019s apparent willingness to step in to fill the vacuum.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Ok, that\u2019s lack of coherent strategy, fears and vacuum.<\/p>\n<p>Now, over to the CSCAP picture that\u2019s printed from the same set of negatives. The ever-erudite Ron Huisken sets the scene, arguing that we\u2019re witnessing the end of widespread confidence in America\u2019s willingness to uphold the \u2018rules-based order\u2019. The \u2018established but besieged order\u2019 is slipping into a prolonged and dangerous transition to a contested order:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: normal !msorm;\">A major change in the distribution of hard power is well underway but for the indefinite future this \u2018new order\u2019 seems destined to have a collective leadership. No single state will have both the margin of hard power and the aura of legitimacy to either seize or to accept the mantle of sole leadership. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: normal !msorm;\">If this is the probable reality, it has yet to be accepted by the certain and probable members of that leadership collective. As the established order is perceived to be eroding, expectations of serious penalties for breakout behaviour weaken, leading to a gathering sense of disorder, chaos and danger.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The US can\u2019t overturn the new abnormal\u2014there\u2019s no going back to that previous normal, the two decades when America enjoyed being unipolar. Perhaps America doesn\u2019t have to. Ron Huisken poses the thought this way:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: normal !msorm;\">Can America regain its former pre-eminence? Hardly, but the smarter question might be whether it needs to do so? No other state can hope to achieve the quantitative and qualitative heights that the US attained over the decades following WW2. It is most unlikely that the US will shrink so it will remain as a huge state with immensely powerful armed forces, an array of allies and close friends, and a uniquely appealing set of governance and cultural attributes.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The old balance in the Asia\u2013Pacific\/Indo-Pacific has gone from wobbly to gyrating. That\u2019s the point that was so elegantly put by Florence Parly at the Shangri-La Dialogue, in the quote atop this column: \u2018When the balance of power changes, it is not the power we lose, but the balance.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Throughout this decade, the annual IISS defence summit in Singapore has discussed what we\u2019re losing\u2014the old normal, the old balance\u2014while debating how to order the new abnormal.<\/p>\n<p>This year, US Defense Secretary James Mattis gave a good speech promising both <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/china-truth-and-consequences\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">cooperation and competition with China<\/a>\u2014and predicting that China will suffer consequences if it ignores the international community.<\/p>\n<p>China again sent a relatively low-powered delegation and didn\u2019t bother to argue too hard\u2014grumbling acidly that Shangri-La is an Anglo-Saxon gang-bang in a Singapore setting.<\/p>\n<p>And there you have the strangeness of the times. The US thinks that agro is as likely as agreement. China\u2014simultaneously arrogant and insecure\u2014isn\u2019t always willing or able to argue its own case. Beijing wants the power but can\u2019t explain what it aims to do.<\/p>\n<p>The new abnormal is the new normal. That means less balance with the power and more uncertainty about where the power sits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018When the balance of power changes, it is not the power we lose, but the balance.\u2019 Florence Parly, French Minister for the Armed Forces, Singapore, 3 June 2018 The power balance wobbles and lots of &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":39878,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[56],"class_list":["post-39876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-indo-pacific"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The new abnormal of international power | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, 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