American Primacy is a Lesser Evil

Since the U.S.-led war in Iraq, politicians and pundits alike have called increasingly for a return to a "balance of power" or "multipolar world."

At the G-8 summit in Evian, French President Jacques Chirac said, "I have no doubt whatsoever that the multipolar vision of the world that I have defended for some time is certainly supported by a large majority of countries throughout the world." Presidents Vladimir Putin and Hu Jintao spoke similarly in Moscow, declaring that "Russia and China stand for a multipolar, just and democratic world order."

But a return to multipolarity is as undesirable as it is impractical.

Take the question of practicality first. When asked in an interview with The Wall Street Journal about Jacques Chirac's multipolar vision, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice responded with her own question: "A multipolar world? What does that mean?"

Of course, Rice knows that a multipolar world means one in which at least a few states have roughly equal power - the very antithesis of today's America-dominated structure. But her real question was, what would a return to multipolarity look like? What are Chirac and others really proposing?

It's a reasonable question. Would Europe radically ramp up its defense spending? In 2002, the European Union spent about $145 billion on defense in aggregate. The Bush administration's latest budget requests about $400 billion. Even factoring in the impending accession of 10 new states to the EU, could Europe really bridge a $255 billion gap?

An alternative path to multipolarity would have the United States slash, say, $200 billion from its defense spending. This scenario strains common sense. Even if some hypothetical U.S president wanted to cut America's military budget in half, would Congress allow it? Would the American people support it? Why would the United States move toward military parity with countries that might not wish us well?

It isn't going to happen. But even if it could, a multipolar world would not be a better place. As Rice put it to a British think tank, "Multipolarity is a theory of rivalry. It led to the Great War."

Opponents of this reasoning have portrayed it as a kind of ruse designed to justify an American plan for world domination. One writer rejected Rice's analysis by claiming that it wasn't the balance of power itself that led to World War I, but rather Germany's attempt to overturn that balance.

By this logic, a balance of power remains stable unless some morally bankrupt state decides it wants to overturn it. But that's just the problem. Not only is the balance easily overturned, but both sides have an incentive to overturn it before the other side moves first.

When Germany invaded Belgium and then France in 1914, it probably thought it could win. When France, Britain and Russia fought back, they probably thought they could. Neither side was crazy for thinking so. What they got was a horrific war of attrition, paid for in millions of young men's lives.

Other critics of American primacy argue that conservatives above all should be suspicious of Washington's disproportionate concentration of power. They argue that such concentration violates a key conservative tenet that power must be dispersed.

The problem with this critique is that it projects the principles of a domestic constitutional structure onto the international system of states, which is fundamentally different because it lacks a commonly accepted sovereign.

There is a reason the Founding Fathers spoke only of a "decent respect for the opinions of mankind," and not for some system of devolving power to states that are weaker than America. To do so would reflect more an ideological fetish for egalitarianism than a belief in checks and balances.

At the same time, the Bush administration's defense of U.S. predominance doubtless rings hollow around the world. Shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, when President Bush told the world "I know how good we are," he failed to acknowledge that good intentions aren't enough for viewers of Al-Jazeera inundated with images of chaos wrought by American bombs.

And when British Prime Minister Tony Blair claimed recently that a European project to counterbalance America would be "dangerous and destabilizing," it didn't help that Blair himself has come to be associated with exaggerated intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.

Still, if unipolarity is an evil, it is a lesser evil. Lesser than the world wars of the 20th century, and lesser than the numerous regional conflicts - potentially nuclear - that would likely erupt absent the influence of American military force. American predominance will not last forever, but there is little reason to welcome its decline.