Robert Kagan wrote an interesting evaluation of the Obama Administration’s foreign policy one year on. His central premise is that although the Obama Administration won’t admit it, they are re-orienting American foreign policy away from the preservation of American primacy in favor of managing America’s relative decline. He hesitates, however, to call the Obama Administration’s worldview “realism” because it rests on a fundamentally idealistic assumption:
The Obama administration’s core assumption, oft-repeated by the president and his advisers, is that the great powers today share common interests. Relations among them need “no longer be seen as a zero sum game,” Obama has argued. The Obama Doctrine is about “win-win” and “getting to ‘yes.’” The new “mission” of the United States, according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is to be the great convener of nations, gathering the powers to further common interests and seek common solutions to the world’s problems.
While Kagan’s article is thought-provoking, it leaves two important issues unaddressed.
First, can the U.S. actually maintain primacy over the long run in spite of the demographic, economic, and/or military prowess of rising powers like China? The National Intelligence Council isn’t so sure. It is somewhat disingenuous to suggest that we should try to freeze the international order as it is today without evaluating whether or not this is actually possible or at least addressing the risks that such a policy might pose.
Second, is Obama’s assumption regarding shared interests and the end of zero sum games really that far off the mark? In short, yes and no.
Scholar Robert Gilpin provides some answers in his classic work War and Change in World Politics. Gilpin distinguishes between two types of interests which are subject to absolute and mixed-motive games, respectively. Absolute interests (e.g. preservation of territory, cyber dominance, military superiority in outer space) are zero sum and Obama is wrong to suggest that we don’t have some absolute interests that simply aren’t shared with any other power.
It is equally important, however to recognize that shared interests are prevalent in international relations. In most cases interests are neither symmetrical nor diametrically-opposed but rather an intractable mix of common and conflicting interests. When this happens, we have what Gilpin would calll “mixed-motive relations.” Mixed-motive relations reflect a combination of “mutual dependence and conflict, of partnership and competition.” In stark contrast to the zero-sum construct, mixed-motive games involve two mutually-dependent centers of consciousness and require some degree of tacit or direct communication to arrive at optimal outcomes. Clearly, Kagan is wrong to discount the prevalence and importance of shared interests.
It would be more insightful to ask where the U.S. should defend its primacy and where it should be prepared to cede some autonomy to rising powers. A more nuanced view of the world reveals that there are some power domains where we can accommodate the needs and interests of other powers without diminishing our own in absolute terms. There are, however, others where we should make a stand. The trick is knowing the difference.
