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Hegemony Good

Uniqueness

Lead Now

US has an unprecedented lead

Kagan, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, 1-11-12

(Robert, The New Republic, "Not Fade Away: The Myth of Decline," http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/99521/america-world-power-declinism?passthru=ZDkyNzQzZTk3YWY3YzE0OWM5MGRiZmIwNGQwNDBiZmI&utm_source=Editors+and+Bloggers&utm_campaign=cbaee91d9d-Edit_and_Blogs&utm_medium=email, accessed 7-6-12, CNM)

Less than a decade ago, most observers spoke not of America’s decline but of its enduring primacy. In 2002, the historian Paul Kennedy, who in the late 1980s had written a much-discussed book on “the rise and fall of the great powers,” America included, declared that never in history had there been such a great “disparity of power” as between the United States and the rest of the world. Ikenberry agreed that “no other great power” had held “such formidable advantages in military, economic, technological, cultural, or political capabilities.... The preeminence of American power” was “unprecedented.” In 2004, the pundit Fareed Zakaria described the United States as enjoying a “comprehensive uni-polarity” unlike anything seen since Rome. But a mere four years later Zakaria was writing about the “post-American world” and “the rise of the rest,” and Kennedy was discoursing again upon the inevitability of American decline. Did the fundamentals of America’s relative power shift so dramatically in just a few short years?

Lead Now – Military

Lead now – military

Kagan, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, 1-11-12

(Robert, The New Republic, "Not Fade Away: The Myth of Decline," http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/99521/america-world-power-declinism?page=0,1&passthru=ZDkyNzQzZTk3YWY3YzE0OWM5MGRiZmIwNGQwNDBiZmI&utm_source=Editors%20and%20Bloggers&utm_campaign=cbaee91d9d-Edit_and_Blogs&utm_medium=email, accessed 7-6-12, CNM)

Military capacity matters, too, as early nineteenth-century China learned and Chinese leaders know today. As Yan Xuetong recently noted, “military strength underpins hegemony.” Here the United States remains unmatched. It is far and away the most powerful nation the world has ever known, and there has been no decline in America’s relative military capacity—at least not yet. Americans currently spend less than $600 billion a year on defense, more than the rest of the other great powers combined. (This figure does not include the deployment in Iraq, which is ending, or the combat forces in Afghanistan, which are likely to diminish steadily over the next couple of years.) They do so, moreover, while consuming a little less than 4 percent of GDP annually—a higher percentage than the other great powers, but in historical terms lower than the 10 percent of GDP that the United States spent on defense in the mid-1950s and the 7 percent it spent in the late 1980s. The superior expenditures underestimate America’s actual superiority in military capability. American land and air forces are equipped with the most advanced weaponry, and are the most experienced in actual combat. They would defeat any competitor in a head-to-head battle. American naval power remains predominant in every region of the world.

By these military and economic measures, at least, the United States today is not remotely like Britain circa 1900, when that empire’s relative decline began to become apparent. It is more like Britain circa 1870, when the empire was at the height of its power. It is possible to imagine a time when this might no longer be the case, but that moment has not yet arrived.

AT – Challengers Now

Hegemony high – everyone is declining

Gvodsdev, National Interest former editor, 6-15-12

(Nikolas K. Gvosdev is the former editor of the National Interest and a frequent foreign policy commentator in both the print and broadcast media. He is currently on the faculty of the U.S. Naval War College. 6-15-12, World Politics Review, “The Realist Prism: In a G-Zero World, U.S. Should Go Minilateral,” http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/12061/the-realist-prism-in-a-g-zero-world-u-s-should-go-minilateral, accessed 7-8-12, CNM)

This is not to argue that the United States has entered into a period of irreversible decline. Indeed, the other major power centers that are often presented as future peer competitors are experiencing their own shocks, from the eurozone crisis to economic stagnation in Japan to the protests rocking Russia to the formidable challenges that Xi Jinping and the “fifth generation” of leadership in China will have to confront. As a result, the United States is benefiting from the perception that it, like the dollar, remains a “safe haven.” But though the U.S. is still a superpower, its current fiscal and economic problems leave it in no position to finance a new global system or impose common standards on the nations of the world, the way it did in the postwar period by rebuilding Western Europe and East Asia and creating the institutional foundations that paved the way for globalization.

No major rival now – but US must act to preserve its status

Beckley, Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, International Security Program Research Fellow, 12

(Michael, University of Virginia’s Miller Center’s fellow, International Security, Volume 36, Issue 3, “China’s Century? Why America’s Edge Will Endure,” http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CFEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mitpressjournals.org%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1162%2FISEC_a_00066&ei=zkvrT9T8E8q1rQHeorDwBQ&usg=AFQjCNGn9W7Ei82Wbsof4yj6KORthY-71g, pg.78, accessed 6-27-12, FFF)

Order and prosperity, however, are unnatural. They can never be presumed. When achieved, they are the result of determined action by powerful actors and, in particular, by the most powerful actor, which is, and will be for some time, the United States. Arms buildups, insecure sea-lanes, and closed markets are only the most obvious risks of U.S. retrenchment. Less obvious are transnational problems, such as global warming, water scarcity, and disease, which may fester without a leader to rally collective action.

Hegemony, of course, carries its own risks and costs. In particular, America’s global military presence might tempt policymakers to use force when they should choose diplomacy or inaction. If the United States abuses its power, however, it is not because it is too engaged with the world, but because its engagement lacks strategic vision. The solution is better strategy, not retrenchment.

The first step toward sound strategy is to recognize that the status quo for the United States is pretty good: it does not face a hegemonic rival, and the trends favor continued U.S. dominance. The overarching goal of American foreign policy should be to preserve this state of affairs. Declinists claim the United States should “adopt a neomercantilist international economic policy” and “disengage from current alliance commitments in East Asia and Europe.”161 But the fact that the United States rose relative to China while propping up the world economy and maintaining a hegemonic presence abroad casts doubt on the wisdom of such calls for radical policy change.

AT – China Threat Now

China is not a threat now – US still has hegemony

Beckley, Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, International Security Program, Research Fellow, 12

(Michael, University of Virginia’s Miller Center, fellow, “China’s Century? Why America’s Edge Will Endure”, International Security, Volume 36, Issue 3, Pg. 42-43, http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CFEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mitpressjournals.org%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1162%2FISEC_a_00066&ei=zkvrT9T8E8q1rQHeorDwBQ&usg=AFQjCNGn9W7Ei82Wbsof4yj6KORthY-71g, accessed 6-27-12, FFF)

Resolving the debate between these two perspectives is imperative for prudent policymaking. If proponents of the dominant, or “declinist,” perspective are correct, then the United States should contain China’s growth by “[adopting] a neomercantilist international economic policy” and subdue China’s ambitions by “disengag[ing] from current alliance commitments in East Asia.”4 If, however, the United States is not in decline, and if globalization and hegemony are the main reasons why, then the United States should do the opposite: it should contain China’s growth by maintaining a liberal international economic policy, and it should subdue China’s ambitions by sustaining a robust political and military presence in Asia.

With few exceptions, however, existing studies on the decline of the United States and the rise of China suffer from at least one of the following shortcomings. 5 First, most studies do not look at a comprehensive set of indicators. Instead they paint impressionistic pictures of the balance of power, presenting tidbits of information on a handful of metrics. In general, this approach biases results in favor of the declinist perspective because most standard indicators of national power—for example, gross domestic product (GDP), population, and energy consumption—conºate size with power and thereby overstate the capabilities of large but underdeveloped countries. For example, in a recent study Arvind Subramanian contends that “China’s dominance is a sure thing” based on “an index of dominance combining just three factors: a country’s GDP, its trade (measured as the sum of its exports and imports of goods), and the extent to which it is a net creditor to the world.”6 The United States and China, however, are each declining by some measures while rising in terms of others. To distinguish between ascendance and decline writ large, therefore, requires analyzing many indicators and determining how much each one matters in relation to others.

Second, many studies are static, presenting single-year snapshots of U.S. and Chinese power. This ºaw tends to bias results in favor of the alternative perspective because the United States retains a significant lead in most categories. The key question, however, is not whether the United States is more powerful than China at present, but whether it will remain so in the future. Without a dynamic analysis, it is impossible to answer this question.

AT – Hegemony Unsustainable/Cost

Claims that engagement is too expensive are flawed – they mis-estimate costs

Brooks, Dartmouth government professor, et al., 13

[Brooks, Stephen G., Ikenberry, G. John, Wohlforth, William C., STEPHEN G. BROOKS is Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. G. JOHN IKENBERRY is Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and Global Eminence Scholar at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. WILLIAM C. WOHLFORTH is Daniel Webster Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, Foreign Affairs, “Lean Forward”, Jan/Feb2013, Vol. 92, Issue 1, Academic Search Complete, accessed 7-2-13, AFB]

AN AFFORDABLE STRATEGY

Many advocates of retrenchment consider the United States' assertive global posture simply too expensive. The international relations scholar Christopher Layne, for example, has warned of the country's "ballooning budget deficits" and argued that "its strategic commitments exceed the resources available to support them." Calculating the savings of switching grand strategies, however, is not so simple, because it depends on the expenditures the current strategy demands and the amount required for its replacement--numbers that are hard to pin down.

If the United States revoked all its security guarantees, brought home all its troops, shrank every branch of the military, and slashed its nuclear arsenal, it would save around $900 billion over ten years, according to Benjamin Friedman and Justin Logan of the Cato Institute. But few advocates of retrenchment endorse such a radical reduction; instead, most call for "restraint," an "offshore balancing" strategy, or an "over the horizon" military posture. The savings these approaches would yield are less clear, since they depend on which security commitments Washington would abandon outright and how much it would cost to keep the remaining ones. If retrenchment simply meant shipping foreign-based U.S. forces back to the United States, then the savings would be modest at best, since the countries hosting U.S. forces usually cover a large portion of the basing costs. And if it meant maintaining a major expeditionary capacity, then any savings would again be small, since the Pentagon would still have to pay for the expensive weaponry and equipment required for projecting power abroad.

The other side of the cost equation, the price of continued engagement, is also in flux. Although the fat defense budgets of the past decade make an easy target for advocates of retrenchment, such high levels of spending aren't needed to maintain an engaged global posture. Spending skyrocketed after 9/11, but it has already begun to fall back to earth as the United States winds down its two costly wars and trims its base level of nonwar spending. As of the fall of 2012, the Defense Department was planning for cuts of just under $500 billion over the next five years, which it maintains will not compromise national security. These reductions would lower military spending to a little less than three percent of GDP by 2017, from its current level of 4.5 percent. The Pentagon could save even more with no ill effects by reforming its procurement practices and compensation policies.

Even without major budget cuts, however, the country can afford the costs of its ambitious grand strategy. The significant increases in military spending proposed by Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate, during the 2012 presidential campaign would still have kept military spending below its current share of GDP, since spending on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would still have gone down and Romney s proposed non- war spending levels would not have kept pace with economic growth. Small wonder, then, that the case for pulling back rests more on the nonmonetary costs that the current strategy supposedly incurs.

AT – Hegemony Unsustainable

Hegemony is sustainable – accommodation precedes containment and nuclear peace promotes one power

Monteiro, Yale Political Science Professor, 11

[Nuno P., April 25, 2011, “Balancing Act: Why Unipolarity May Be Durable,” http://irworkshop.sites.yale.edu/sites/default/files/Monteiro_IRW.pdf, p. 13-19, accessed 7/6/13, WD]

What is, then, wrong with the argument that unipolarity is indeed durable? Why are primacists not right? If the impact of the nuclear revolution on the structure of international politics reduces the salience of survival concerns for major powers, then unipolarity should necessarily last. 44 This should settle the debate on unipolar durability in favor of primacist views. Not so fast. Survival is indeed the first goal of states and, therefore, nuclear weapons, by guaranteeing state survival, eliminate the need for major powers to balance against a unipole. But states do not care only about survival. Economic growth is also important for states, for at least two reasons. First, states care about economic growth as an end in itself. 45 One of the primary raisons d’être of the state is, after all, the well-being of its citizens, defined largely in terms of material wealth. Second, and more importantly for the purposes of this paper, states care about economic growth also for security reasons. If a major power is prevented from continuing to grow economically, then its future security may be imperiled. Nothing ensures that nuclear weapons will continue to guarantee survival indefinitely. A major technological breakthrough, such as comprehensive missile defense, might erode the deterring effect of a survivable nuclear arsenal. Major powers therefore have strong incentives not to fall behind in economic terms. But this pursuit of wealth is subordinated to survival concerns. In other words, I expect major powers to pursue wealth only once the goal of state survival is fully ensured and in ways that do not undermine it. To borrow a concept from John Rawls, this means that survival has ‘lexical priority’ over all other state aims, including wealth creation. 46 What does this mean for balancing and, consequently, for the durability of a unipolar world? In the previous section, I introduced a revised logic of balancing focused exclusively on the goal of state survival. It is now time to expand it to account for the secondary goal of economic growth. This means that (2’) must be revised to include not only threats to state survival but also to their economic growth. In the expanded logic, then, states will (3’) balance against concentrated power to the extent that it threatens both these goals. Consequently, states will now balance until they minimize (4’’) both threats to their survival and to their economic growth. The expanded logic goes like this (with italics indicating change from the revised version above): 1) States care first and foremost about their own survival and only pursue other goals, such as wealth, to the extent they do not threaten survival; 2’’) An unmatched concentration of power in one state may threaten the survival of others as well as their pursuit of economic growth; 3’) To the extent that it does, other states will balance against concentrated power; 4’’) Threats to survival and to economic growth may be minimized short of amassing as much or more power than any other state; 5’) Balancing efforts will therefore not necessarily lead to shifts in the systemic balance-of-power; 6’) As a result, unmatched concentrations of power in one state may be longlasting. The result (6’) is the same. But the conditions of possibility for an unmatched concentration of power in one state to be long-lasting have changed. Now, the durability of unipolarity depends, beyond major powers’ guaranteed survival, on a second factor: the presence of international conditions that make the continuation of their economic growth possible. The absence of such conditions, by endangering the long-term ability of the state to maintain its deterrent capability, ultimately places the survival of the state at risk. Therefore, major powers have a strong incentive to balance against a unipole that is -- purposely or not -- containing their economic growth. This extends the conditions of possibility of a durable unipolar world from the structural to the strategic level. In a nutshell, if a major power’s economic growth is constrained by the unipole’s strategy then that major power has incentives to continue to balance against the unipole beyond the point at which nuclear weapons ensure its immediate survival. In sum, a strategy of containment on the part of the unipole, by constraining the economic growth of major powers, will lead the latter to balance, converting their latent capabilities into military power. Containment, therefore, leads major powers to balance beyond the point at which their immediate survival is guaranteed, up to the point at which they effect a shift in the systemic balance of power, bringing about the end of unipolarity. A strategy of accommodation, on the contrary, allows major powers to continue their economic growth, thus guaranteeing that their immediate ability to secure their own survival will not be eroded over time. By doing so, accommodation takes away the incentives major powers might have to balance beyond the point at which their immediate survival is guaranteed. Consequently, a strategy of accommodation -- when implemented under conditions in which survival may be guaranteed even in the absence of a systemic balance of power -- makes unipolarity durable. V. EMPIRICAL IMPLICATIONS AND ILLUSTRATION This section extracts empirical implications from my theory and tests the argument against the evolving empirical record. My “qualified durability” argument yields two empirical implications for contemporary world politics. First, for as long as the United States pursues a strategy of economic accommodation, major powers, all of which today possess a survivable nuclear arsenal, should not pursue further balancing against the United States. Second, in case the United States shifts towards a strategy of containment, major powers should initiate a balancing effort, increasing the rate at which they convert their latent power into military capabilities and pooling those capabilities together through the formation of alliances, eventually shifting the systemic balance of power and putting an end to unipolarity.

Unipolarity is sustainable – military and nuclear deterrence ensure it and no impact to economic challengers

Monteiro, Yale Political Science Professor, 11

[Nuno P., April 25, 2011, “Balancing Act: Why Unipolarity May Be Durable,” http://irworkshop.sites.yale.edu/sites/default/files/Monteiro_IRW.pdf, p. 24-25, accessed 7/6/13, WD]

Debate on unipolar durability has generated great controversy, placing it at the center of scholarship on unipolarity. This prominent place stems from two factors driving scholarly concerns. First, having failed to predict the end of the Cold War -- arguably the most momentous transformation of the international system since the emergence of IR as a scientific discipline in the post-WWII years -- IR scholars are determined to “get it right” next time. 69 Second, systemic theory has always placed a great emphasis on balance-of-power mechanisms, creating an expectation that unipolarity (a systemic imbalance of power) would last only briefly until other great powers (re)emerged. Accordingly, a durable unipolar system poses a serious theoretical challenge, emphasizing the importance of the durability question. 70 In response to this challenge, two views have emerged. Declinists predict the inevitable, nay, impending end of our unipolar world. Primacists argue that, on the contrary, US-led unipolarity is here to stay. In this paper, I make three central claims. First, I argue that neither declinists nor primacists -- both of which focus on latent, economic power -- are looking at the right variable to predict the durability of a unipolar world. Unipolarity is a description of the balance of military, not economic power. For as long as the US military remains unchallenged, the world will remain unipolar regardless of the relative size of the US economy. Second, I argue that the distribution of military power is independent from the distribution of economic power. In other words, balancing will only result in a change in the systemic balance of power when the latter is required to guarantee state survival. That is the case in a conventional world. But in a nuclear world, possession of a small but robust nuclear arsenal virtually guarantees survival. Therefore, rising economic powers may, in a nuclear world, achieve the primary goal of balancing short of effecting a systemic balance of power. This means that, in a nuclear world, unipolarity is in principle durable. Third, I argue that whether rising economic powers in a nuclear world will continue to balance past the point at which their survival is ensured by a robust nuclear deterrent depends on the strategy of the unipole towards their economic growth. If the unipole accommodates their economic growth, rising powers have no incentive to continue balancing past that point, making unipolarity durable. If, however, the unipole takes actions that contain their economic growth, then rising powers have an incentive to continue balancing, ultimately leading to the end of a unipolar world. My theory thus draws attention to the logical separation between theories of balancing and balance-of-power theories. The goals of balancing may successfully be achieved without any transformations in the systemic balance of power. Such is the case in a nuclear unipolar world. While states will balance against a unipolar power regardless of its strategy by acquiring survivable nuclear arsenals, the fact that they can guarantee their survival by doing so frees them from the need to pursue a shift in the systemic balance of power in order to guarantee this aim. This argument has important policy implications. First of all, it gives the unipole significant agency in determining the durability of a unipolar world. Rather than being at the mercy of differential rates of economic growth, a unipole in a nuclear world is fully in control of whether its military power preponderance lasts. Its policies vis-à-vis major powers’ economic growth thus acquire a central place in the toolkit with which it manages the systemic balance of military power. Second, my argument suggests that unipolarity presents particular incentives for nuclear proliferation. But, as Robert Jervis has noted, the spread of nuclear weapons -- the nuclear revolution -- brings with it a decreased salience for the systemic balance of power. For a nuclear power, the systemic balance of power no longer necessarily determines its chances of survival. On the transformational character of proliferation in a unipolar world, Jervis writes: This raises the question of what would remain of a unipolar system in a proliferated world. The American ability to coerce others would decrease but so would its need to defend friendly powers that would now have their own deterrents. The world would still be unipolar by most measures and considerations, but many countries would be able to protect themselves, perhaps even against the superpower. How they would use this increased security is far from clear, however. They might intensify conflict with neighbors because they no longer fear all-out war, or, on the contrary, they might be willing to engage in greater co-operation because the risks of becoming dependent on others would be reduced. In any event, the polarity of the system may become less important. Unipolarity -- at least under current circumstances -- may then have within it the seeds if not of its own destruction, then at least of its modification, and the resulting world would pose interesting challenges to both scholars and national leaders. 71 More broadly, my theory highlights what is perhaps the key dilemma faced by a unipolar power. It may attempt to contain the economic growth of other states, thus remaining the most powerful state in terms of latent power, but triggering a balancing effort that may ultimately undermine its preeminence in military power. Or it may accommodate other states’ economic growth, thus avoiding a military challenge and maintaining its preeminence in military power, but eventually losing its place as the most powerful economy in the system. In other words, military unipolarity is durable only at the expense of economic hegemony.

Nuclear deterrence ensures that unipolarity is durable

Monteiro, Yale Political Science Professor, 11

[Nuno P., April 25, 2011, “Balancing Act: Why Unipolarity May Be Durable,” http://irworkshop.sites.yale.edu/sites/default/files/Monteiro_IRW.pdf, p. 8-10, accessed 7/6/13, WD]

To begin with proposition (2): an unmatched concentration of power in one state only threatens the survival of other states under certain conditions, which are underspecified in balance-of-power theory. Unmatched power threatens the survival of less powerful states only if survival depends on a balance of power. This is the case in a conventional world. 21 In order to deter an attack launched by a competitor, a state needs to possess matching conventional power. Conventional inferiority vis-à-vis another state leads to military vulnerability and the inability to deter the adversary, ultimately undermining the goal of state survival. But this is not the case in a nuclear world. Deterrence between nuclear powers -- those with survivable nuclear arsenals -- is based on each state being unable to avoid suffering horrendous cost at the hands of the other in the case of an all-out conflict. Since this ability does not depend on a balance of conventional power, a nuclear power may deter any state -- even states significantly more powerful in conventional terms -- from threatening its survival. This conditioning of proposition (2) does not impact (3), the claim that states will balance against concentrated power in order to improve their odds of survival. At least some states will balance against more powerful states even in a nuclear world. Minor powers, particularly those not aligned with the unipole, will try to develop a nuclear capability and ascend to the ranks of major powers, those states that possess the capability to deter any state, including one possessing unmatched conventional power. But the caveat to proposition (2) I introduced above does condition whether proposition (3) will indeed lead to (4). In other words, the caveat that a nuclear power is able to deter any state despite being conventionally inferior requires us to revise the view that states are able to guarantee their survival, and therefore stop their balancing efforts, only once they have amassed as much power as any other state. In a conventional world, that is in fact true. In the absence of nuclear weapons, states, in order to guarantee their survival, will have to balance against more powerful states until they have matched or even surpassed the latter’s military capabilities. Only at this point would threats to their survival be minimized, as postulated by (4). In a nuclear world, however, the foremost goal of balancing (to guarantee survival) can be achieved short of amassing as much power as any potential competitor, thus violating proposition (4). States that acquire a nuclear arsenal have virtually guaranteed their survival even though they may possess negligible relative conventional capability. Therefore, in a nuclear world, proposition (4) must acquire a conditional character, becoming “threats to survival may be minimized short of amassing as much or more power than any other state.” The reason for this is well-developed in the literature. Basically, there is no defense against nuclear weapons. Their offensive advantage, being insurmountable, places an emphasis on deterrence -- the avoidance of conflict because victory is impossible, or meaningless. They therefore end up, in a counterintuitive way, providing an overwhelming advantage to the defense. As Campbell Craig writes, “[n]uclear weapons create stability primarily because they give a decisive advantage to a nation defending itself over a nation wanting to attack.” 22 John Mearsheimer puts it with characteristic succinctness: “no state is likely to attack the homeland or vital interests of a nuclear-armed state for fear that such a move might trigger a horrific nuclear response.” 23 This realization that, in a nuclear world, threats to a state’s survival can be minimized short of amassing as much power as any other state in the system in turn requires us to revise proposition (5), decoupling balancing efforts from any necessary shift in the systemic balance-of-power. As a result, proposition (6) must now accommodate the possibility that unmatched concentrations of power in one state may last for long. In other words, unipolarity may be durable.

Hegemony is sustainable- its collapse would lead to transition wars and it solves for relations with other countries

Thayer, Missouri State University Department of Defense and Strategic Studies professor, 6

[Bradley A., December 2006, The National Interest, “In Defense of Primacy,” lexis, accessed 7-9-13, MSG]

A grand strategy based on American primacy means ensuring the United States stays the world's number one power--the diplomatic, economic and military leader. Those arguing against primacy claim that the United States should retrench, either because the United States lacks the power to maintain its primacy and should withdraw from its global commitments, or because the maintenance of primacy will lead the United States into the trap of "imperial overstretch." In the previous issue of The National Interest, Christopher Layne warned of these dangers of primacy and called for retrenchment.1

Those arguing for a grand strategy of retrenchment are a diverse lot. They include isolationists, who want no foreign military commitments; selective engagers, who want U.S. military commitments to centers of economic might; and offshore balancers, who want a modified form of selective engagement that would have the United States abandon its landpower presence abroad in favor of relying on airpower and seapower to defend its interests.

But retrenchment, in any of its guises, must be avoided. If the United States adopted such a strategy, it would be a profound strategic mistake that would lead to far greater instability and war in the world, imperil American security and deny the United States and its allies the benefits of primacy.

There are two critical issues in any discussion of America's grand strategy: Can America remain the dominant state? Should it strive to do this? America can remain dominant due to its prodigious military, economic and soft power capabilities. The totality of that equation of power answers the first issue. The United States has overwhelming military capabilities and wealth in comparison to other states or likely potential alliances. Barring some disaster or tremendous folly, that will remain the case for the foreseeable future. With few exceptions, even those who advocate retrenchment acknowledge this.

So the debate revolves around the desirability of maintaining American primacy. Proponents of retrenchment focus a great deal on the costs of U.S. action--but they fail to realize what is good about American primacy. The price and risks of primacy are reported in newspapers every day; the benefits that stem from it are not.

A GRAND strategy of ensuring American primacy takes as its starting point the protection of the U.S. homeland and American global interests. These interests include ensuring that critical resources like oil flow around the world, that the global trade and monetary regimes flourish and that Washington's worldwide network of allies is reassured and protected. Allies are a great asset to the United States, in part because they shoulder some of its burdens. Thus, it is no surprise to see NATO in Afghanistan or the Australians in East Timor.

In contrast, a strategy based on retrenchment will not be able to achieve these fundamental objectives of the United States. Indeed, retrenchment will make the United States less secure than the present grand strategy of primacy. This is because threats will exist no matter what role America chooses to play in international politics. Washington cannot call a "time out", and it cannot hide from threats. Whether they are terrorists, rogue states or rising powers, history shows that threats must be confronted. Simply by declaring that the United States is "going home", thus abandoning its commitments or making unconvincing half-pledges to defend its interests and allies, does not mean that others will respect American wishes to retreat. To make such a declaration implies weakness and emboldens aggression. In the anarchic world of the animal kingdom, predators prefer to eat the weak rather than confront the strong. The same is true of the anarchic world of international politics. If there is no diplomatic solution to the threats that confront the United States, then the conventional and strategic military power of the United States is what protects the country from such threats.

And when enemies must be confronted, a strategy based on primacy focuses on engaging enemies overseas, away from American soil. Indeed, a key tenet of the Bush Doctrine is to attack terrorists far from America's shores and not to wait while they use bases in other countries to plan and train for attacks against the United States itself. This requires a physical, on-the-ground presence that cannot be achieved by offshore balancing.

Indeed, as Barry Posen has noted, U.S. primacy is secured because America, at present, commands the "global commons"--the oceans, the world's airspace and outer space--allowing the United States to project its power far from its borders, while denying those common avenues to its enemies. As a consequence, the costs of power projection for the United States and its allies are reduced, and the robustness of the United States' conventional and strategic deterrent capabilities is increased.2 This is not an advantage that should be relinquished lightly.

A remarkable fact about international politics today--in a world where American primacy is clearly and unambiguously on display--is that countries want to align themselves with the United States. Of course, this is not out of any sense of altruism, in most cases, but because doing so allows them to use the power of the United States for their own purposes--their own protection, or to gain greater influence.

Of 192 countries, 84 are allied with America--their security is tied to the United States through treaties and other informal arrangements--and they include almost all of the major economic and military powers. That is a ratio of almost 17 to one (85 to five), and a big change from the Cold War when the ratio was about 1.8 to one of states aligned with the United States versus the Soviet Union. Never before in its history has this country, or any country, had so many allies.

U.S. primacy--and the bandwagoning effect--has also given us extensive influence in international politics, allowing the United States to shape the behavior of states and international institutions. Such influence comes in many forms, one of which is America's ability to create coalitions of like-minded states to free Kosovo, stabilize Afghanistan, invade Iraq or to stop proliferation through the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). Doing so allows the United States to operate with allies outside of the UN, where it can be stymied by opponents. American-led wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq stand in contrast to the UN's inability to save the people of Darfur or even to conduct any military campaign to realize the goals of its charter. The quiet effectiveness of the PSI in dismantling Libya's WMD programs and unraveling the A. Q. Khan proliferation network are in sharp relief to the typically toothless attempts by the UN to halt proliferation.

You can count with one hand countries opposed to the United States. They are the "Gang of Five": China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela. Of course, countries like India, for example, do not agree with all policy choices made by the United States, such as toward Iran, but New Delhi is friendly to Washington. Only the "Gang of Five" may be expected to consistently resist the agenda and actions of the United States.

China is clearly the most important of these states because it is a rising great power. But even Beijing is intimidated by the United States and refrains from openly challenging U.S. power. China proclaims that it will, if necessary, resort to other mechanisms of challenging the United States, including asymmetric strategies such as targeting communication and intelligence satellites upon which the United States depends. But China may not be confident those strategies would work, and so it is likely to refrain from testing the United States directly for the foreseeable future because China's power benefits, as we shall see, from the international order U.S. primacy creates.

The other states are far weaker than China. For three of the "Gang of Five" cases--Venezuela, Iran, Cuba--it is an anti-U.S. regime that is the source of the problem; the country itself is not intrinsically anti-American. Indeed, a change of regime in Caracas, Tehran or Havana could very well reorient relations.

THROUGHOUT HISTORY, peace and stability have been great benefits of an era where there was a dominant power--Rome, Britain or the United States today. Scholars and statesmen have long recognized the irenic effect of power on the anarchic world of international politics.

Everything we think of when we consider the current international order--free trade, a robust monetary regime, increasing respect for human rights, growing democratization--is directly linked to U.S. power. Retrenchment proponents seem to think that the current system can be maintained without the current amount of U.S. power behind it. In that they are dead wrong and need to be reminded of one of history's most significant lessons: Appalling things happen when international orders collapse. The Dark Ages followed Rome's collapse. Hitler succeeded the order established at Versailles. Without U.S. power, the liberal order created by the United States will end just as assuredly. As country and western great Ral Donner sang: "You don't know what you've got (until you lose it)."

Consequently, it is important to note what those good things are. In addition to ensuring the security of the United States and its allies, American primacy within the international system causes many positive outcomes for Washington and the world. The first has been a more peaceful world. During the Cold War, U.S. leadership reduced friction among many states that were historical antagonists, most notably France and West Germany. Today, American primacy helps keep a number of complicated relationships aligned--between Greece and Turkey, Israel and Egypt, South Korea and Japan, India and Pakistan, Indonesia and Australia. This is not to say it fulfills Woodrow Wilson's vision of ending all war. Wars still occur where Washington's interests are not seriously threatened, such as in Darfur, but a Pax Americana does reduce war's likelihood, particularly war's worst form: great power wars.

Second, American power gives the United States the ability to spread democracy and other elements of its ideology of liberalism. Doing so is a source of much good for the countries concerned as well as the United States because, as John Owen noted on these pages in the Spring 2006 issue, liberal democracies are more likely to align with the United States and be sympathetic to the American worldview.3 So, spreading democracy helps maintain U.S. primacy. In addition, once states are governed democratically, the likelihood of any type of conflict is significantly reduced. This is not because democracies do not have clashing interests. Indeed they do. Rather, it is because they are more open, more transparent and more likely to want to resolve things amicably in concurrence with U.S. leadership. And so, in general, democratic states are good for their citizens as well as for advancing the interests of the United States.

Critics have faulted the Bush Administration for attempting to spread democracy in the Middle East, labeling such an effort a modern form of tilting at windmills. It is the obligation of Bush's critics to explain why democracy is good enough for Western states but not for the rest, and, one gathers from the argument, should not even be attempted.

Of course, whether democracy in the Middle East will have a peaceful or stabilizing influence on America's interests in the short run is open to question. Perhaps democratic Arab states would be more opposed to Israel, but nonetheless, their people would be better off. The United States has brought democracy to Afghanistan, where 8.5 million Afghans, 40 percent of them women, voted in a critical October 2004 election, even though remnant Taliban forces threatened them. The first free elections were held in Iraq in January 2005. It was the military power of the United States that put Iraq on the path to democracy. Washington fostered democratic governments in Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Caucasus. Now even the Middle East is increasingly democratic. They may not yet look like Western-style democracies, but democratic progress has been made in Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, the Palestinian Authority and Egypt. By all accounts, the march of democracy has been impressive.

Third, along with the growth in the number of democratic states around the world has been the growth of the global economy. With its allies, the United States has labored to create an economically liberal worldwide network characterized by free trade and commerce, respect for international property rights, and mobility of capital and labor markets. The economic stability and prosperity that stems from this economic order is a global public good from which all states benefit, particularly the poorest states in the Third World. The United States created this network not out of altruism but for the benefit and the economic well-being of America. This economic order forces American industries to be competitive, maximizes efficiencies and growth, and benefits defense as well because the size of the economy makes the defense burden manageable. Economic spin-offs foster the development of military technology, helping to ensure military prowess.

Perhaps the greatest testament to the benefits of the economic network comes from Deepak Lal, a former Indian foreign service diplomat and researcher at the World Bank, who started his career confident in the socialist ideology of post-independence India. Abandoning the positions of his youth, Lal now recognizes that the only way to bring relief to desperately poor countries of the Third World is through the adoption of free market economic policies and globalization, which are facilitated through American primacy.4 As a witness to the failed alternative economic systems, Lal is one of the strongest academic proponents of American primacy due to the economic prosperity it provides.

Fourth and finally, the United States, in seeking primacy, has been willing to use its power not only to advance its interests but to promote the welfare of people all over the globe. The United States is the earth's leading source of positive externalities for the world. The U.S. military has participated in over fifty operations since the end of the Cold War--and most of those missions have been humanitarian in nature. Indeed, the U.S. military is the earth's "911 force"--it serves, de facto, as the world's police, the global paramedic and the planet's fire department. Whenever there is a natural disaster, earthquake, flood, drought, volcanic eruption, typhoon or tsunami, the United States assists the countries in need. On the day after Christmas in 2004, a tremendous earthquake and tsunami occurred in the Indian Ocean near Sumatra, killing some 300,000 people. The United States was the first to respond with aid. Washington followed up with a large contribution of aid and deployed the U.S. military to South and Southeast Asia for many months to help with the aftermath of the disaster. About 20,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines responded by providing water, food, medical aid, disease treatment and prevention as well as forensic assistance to help identify the bodies of those killed. Only the U.S. military could have accomplished this Herculean effort. No other force possesses the communications capabilities or global logistical reach of the U.S. military. In fact, UN peacekeeping operations depend on the United States to supply UN forces.

American generosity has done more to help the United States fight the War on Terror than almost any other measure. Before the tsunami, 80 percent of Indonesian public opinion was opposed to the United States; after it, 80 percent had a favorable opinion of America. Two years after the disaster, and in poll after poll, Indonesians still have overwhelmingly positive views of the United States. In October 2005, an enormous earthquake struck Kashmir, killing about 74,000 people and leaving three million homeless. The U.S. military responded immediately, diverting helicopters fighting the War on Terror in nearby Afghanistan to bring relief as soon as possible. To help those in need, the United States also provided financial aid to Pakistan; and, as one might expect from those witnessing the munificence of the United States, it left a lasting impression about America. For the first time since 9/11, polls of Pakistani opinion have found that more people are favorable toward the United States than unfavorable, while support for Al-Qaeda dropped to its lowest level. Whether in Indonesia or Kashmir, the money was well-spent because it helped people in the wake of disasters, but it also had a real impact on the War on Terror. When people in the Muslim world witness the U.S. military conducting a humanitarian mission, there is a clearly positive impact on Muslim opinion of the United States. As the War on Terror is a war of ideas and opinion as much as military action, for the United States humanitarian missions are the equivalent of a blitzkrieg.

Hegemony is sustainable – the US still remains the top world hegemon

Kagan, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund, 6

(Robert, January 15, The Washington Post, “Still the Colossus”, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/13/AR2006011301696.html, accessed 7/6/13, CBC)
The much-anticipated global effort to balance against American hegemony -- which the realists have been anticipating for more than 15 years now -- has simply not occurred. On the contrary, in Europe the idea has all but vanished. European Union defense budgets continue their steady decline, and even the project of creating a common foreign and defense policy has slowed if not stalled. Both trends are primarily the result of internal European politics. But if they really feared American power, Europeans would be taking more urgent steps to strengthen the European Union's hand to check it.

Nor are Europeans refusing to cooperate, even with an administration they allegedly despise. Western Europe will not be a strategic partner as it was during the Cold War, because Western Europeans no longer feel threatened and therefore do not seek American protection. Nevertheless, the current trend is toward closer cooperation. Germany's new government, while still dissenting from U.S. policy in Iraq, is working hard and ostentatiously to improve relations. It is bending over backward to show support for the mission in Afghanistan, most notably by continuing to supply a small but, in German terms, meaningful number of troops. It even trumpets its willingness to train Iraqi soldiers. Chancellor Angela Merkel promises to work closely with Washington on the question of the China arms embargo, indicating agreement with the American view that China is a potential strategic concern. For Eastern and Central Europe, the growing threat is Russia, not America, and the big question remains what it was in the 1990s: Who will be invited to join NATO?

In East Asia, meanwhile, U.S. relations with Japan grow ever closer as the Japanese become increasingly concerned about China and a nuclear-armed North Korea. China's (and Malaysia's) attempt to exclude Australia from a prominent regional role at the recent East Asian summit has reinforced Sydney's desire for closer ties. Only in South Korea does hostility to the United States remain high. This is mostly the product of the new democracy's understandable historical resentments and desire for greater independence. But even so, when I attended a conference in Seoul recently, the question posed to my panel by the South Korean organizers was: "How will the United States solve the problem of North Korea's nuclear weapons?"

The truth is, America retains enormous advantages in the international arena. Its liberal, democratic ideology remains appealing in a world that is more democratic than ever. Its potent economy remains the driving wheel of the international economy. Compared with these powerful forces, the unpopularity of recent actions will prove ephemeral, just as it did after the nadir of American Cold War popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

There are also structural reasons why American indispensability can survive even the unpopularity of recent years. The political scientist William Wohlforth argued a decade ago that the American unipolar era is durable not because of any love for the United States but because of the basic structure of the international system. The problem for any nation attempting to balance American power, even in that power's own region, is that long before it becomes strong enough to balance the United States, it may frighten its neighbors into balancing against it. Europe would be the exception to this rule were it increasing its power, but it is not. Both Russia and China face this problem as they attempt to exert greater influence even in their traditional spheres of influence.

It remains the case, too, that in many crises and potential crises around the world, local actors and traditional allies still look primarily to Washington for solutions, not to Beijing, Moscow or even Brussels. The United States is the key player in the Taiwan Strait. It would be the chief intermediary between India and Pakistan in any crisis. As for Iran, everyone on both sides of the Atlantic knows that, for all the efforts of British, French and German negotiators, any diplomatic or military resolution will ultimately depend on Washington.

Even in the Middle East, where hostility to the United States is highest, American influence remains remarkably high. Most still regard the United States as the indispensable player in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Bush administration's push for democracy, though erratic and inconsistent, has unmistakably affected the course of events in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon -- never mind Iraq. Contrary to predictions at the time of the Iraq war, Arab hostility has not made it impossible for both leaders and their political opponents to cooperate with the United States.

This does not mean the United States has not suffered a relative decline in that intangible but important commodity: legitimacy. A combination of shifting geopolitical realities, difficult circumstances and some inept policy has certainly damaged America's standing in the world. Yet, despite everything, the American position in the world has not deteriorated as much as people think. America still "stands alone as the world's indispensable nation," as Clinton so humbly put it in 1997. It can resume an effective leadership role in the world in fairly short order, even during the present administration and certainly after the 2008 election, regardless of which party wins. That is a good thing, because given the growing dangers in the world, the intelligent and effective exercise of America's benevolent global hegemony is as important as ever.

AT – Empire Decline

Heg does not cause US decline – empirics and actual military cost low

Brooks, Dartmouth government professor, et al., 13

Another argument for retrenchment holds that the United States will fall prey to the same fate as past hegemons and accelerate its own decline. In order to keep its ambitious strategy in place, the logic goes, the country will have to divert resources away from more productive purposes--infrastructure, education, scientific research, and so on--that are necessary to keep its economy competitive. Allies, meanwhile, can get away with lower military expenditures and grow faster than they otherwise would.

The historical evidence for this phenomenon is thin; for the most part, past superpowers lost their leadership not because they pursued hegemony but because other major powers balanced against them--a prospect that is not in the cards today. (If anything, leading states can use their position to stave off their decline.) A bigger problem with the warnings against "imperial overstretch" is that there is no reason to believe that the pursuit of global leadership saps economic growth. Instead, most studies by economists find no clear relationship between military expenditures and economic decline.

To be sure, if the United States were a dramatic outlier and spent around A quarter of its GDP on defense, as the Soviet Union did in its last decades, its growth and competitiveness would suffer. But in 2012, even as it fought a war in Afghanistan and conducted counterterrorism operations around the globe, Washington spent just 4.5 percent of GDP on defense--a relatively small fraction, historically speaking. (From 1950 to 1990, that figure averaged 7.6 percent.) Recent economic difficulties might prompt Washington to reevaluate its defense budgets and international commitments, but that does not mean that those policies caused the downturn. And any money freed up from dropping global commitments would not necessarily be spent in ways that would help the U.S. economy.

Likewise, U.S. allies' economic growth rates have nothing to do with any security subsidies they receive from Washington. The contention that lower military expenditures facilitated the rise of Japan, West Germany, and other countries dependent on U.S. defense guarantees may have seemed plausible during the last bout of declinist anxiety, in the 1980s. But these states eventually stopped climbing up the global economic ranks as their per capita wealth approached U.S. levels--just as standard models of economic growth would predict. Over the past 20 years, the United States has maintained its lead in per capita GDP over its European allies and Japan, even as those countries' defense efforts have fallen further behind. Their failure to modernize their militaries has only served to entrench the United States' dominance.

AT – Multipolar Transition

There is no risk of a transition to a multipolar world – countries are not capable nor willing to balance against the US

Kagan, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund, 7

(Robert, July 17, Stanford University Hoover Foundation, “End of Dreams, Return of History,” http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/6136, Policy Review, Volume: 144, accessed 7/6/13, CBC)
These American traditions, together with historical events beyond Americans’ control, have catapulted the United States to a position of pre-eminence in the world. Since the end of the Cold War and the emergence of this “unipolar” world, there has been much anticipation of the end of unipolarity and the rise of a multipolar world in which the United States is no longer the predominant power. Not only realist theorists but others both inside and outside the United States have long argued the theoretical and practical unsustainability, not to mention undesirability, of a world with only one superpower. Mainstream realist theory has assumed that other powers must inevitably band together to balance against the superpower. Others expected the post-Cold War era to be characterized by the primacy of geoeconomics over geopolitics and foresaw a multipolar world with the economic giants of Europe, India, Japan, and China rivaling the United States. Finally, in the wake of the Iraq War and with hostility to the United States, as measured in public opinion polls, apparently at an all-time high, there has been a widespread assumption that the American position in the world must finally be eroding.

Yet American predominance in the main categories of power persists as a key feature of the international system. The enormous and productive American economy remains at the center of the international economic system. American democratic principles are shared by over a hundred nations. The American military is not only the largest but the only one capable of projecting force into distant theaters. Chinese strategists, who spend a great deal of time thinking about these things, see the world not as multipolar but as characterized by “one superpower, many great powers,” and this configuration seems likely to persist into the future absent either a catastrophic blow to American power or a decision by the United States to diminish its power and international influence voluntarily. 11

Sino-Russian hostility to American predominance has not yet produced a concerted effort at balancing.

The anticipated global balancing has for the most part not occurred. Russia and China certainly share a common and openly expressed goal of checking American hegemony. They have created at least one institution, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, aimed at resisting American influence in Central Asia, and China is the only power in the world, other than the United States, engaged in a long-term military buildup. But Sino-Russian hostility to American predominance has not yet produced a concerted and cooperative effort at balancing. China ’s buildup is driven at least as much by its own long-term ambitions as by a desire to balance the United States. Russia has been using its vast reserves of oil and natural gas as a lever to compensate for the lack of military power, but it either cannot or does not want to increase its military capability sufficiently to begin counterbalancing the United States. Overall, Russian military power remains in decline. In addition, the two powers do not trust one another. They are traditional rivals, and the rise of China inspires at least as much nervousness in Russia as it does in the United States. At the moment, moreover, China is less abrasively confrontational with the United States. Its dependence on the American market and foreign investment and its perception that the United States remains a potentially formidable adversary mitigate against an openly confrontational approach.

In any case, China and Russia cannot balance the United States without at least some help from Europe, Japan, India, or at least some of the other advanced, democratic nations. But those powerful players are not joining the effort. Europe has rejected the option of making itself a counterweight to American power. This is true even among the older members of the European Union, where neither France, Germany, Italy, nor Spain proposes such counterbalancing, despite a public opinion hostile to the Bush administration. Now that the eu has expanded to include the nations of Central and Eastern Europe, who fear threats from the east, not from the west, the prospect of a unified Europe counterbalancing the United States is practically nil. As for Japan and India, the clear trend in recent years has been toward closer strategic cooperation with the United States.

Unipolarity is durable and promotes peace

Wohlforth, Georgetown University Professor of International Relations, 92

(William, 3-10-92, The MIT Press Journals, “The Stability of a Unipolar World,” http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/wohlforthvol24no1.pdf, pages 7-9, accessed 7/6/13, CBC)
In this article, I advance three propositions that undermine the emerging conventional wisdom that the distribution of power is unstable and conºict prone. First, the system is unambiguously unipolar. The United States enjoys a much larger margin of superiority over the next most powerful state or, indeed, all other great powers combined than any leading state in the last two centuries. Moreover, the United States is the ªrst leading state in modern international history with decisive preponderance in all the underlying components of power: economic, military, technological, and geopolitical.10 To describe this unprecedented quantitative and qualitative concentration of power as an evanescent “moment” is profoundly mistaken.

Second, the current unipolarity is prone to peace.The raw power advantage of the United States means that an important source of conºict in previous systems is absent: hegemonic rivalry over leadership of the international system. No other major power is in a position to follow any policy that depends for its success on prevailing against the United States in a war or an extended rivalry. None is likely to take any step that might invite the focused enmity of the United States. At the same time, unipolarity minimizes security competition among the other great powers. As the system leader, the United States has The Stability of a Unipolar World 7the means and motive to maintain key security institutions in order to ease local security conºicts and limit expensive competition among the other major powers. For their part, the second-tier states face incentives to bandwagon with the unipolar power as long as the expected costs of balancing remain prohibitive.

Third, the current unipolarity is not only peaceful but durable.11 It is already a decade old, and if Washington plays its cards right, it may last as long as bipolarity. For many decades, no state is likely to be in a position to take on the United States in any of the underlying elements of power. And, as an offshore power separated by two oceans from all other major states, the United

States can retain its advantages without risking a counterbalance. The current candidates for polar status (Japan, China, Germany, and Russia) are not so lucky. Efforts on their part to increase their power or ally with other dissatisªed states are likely to spark local counterbalances well before they can create a global equipoise to U.S. power.

The scholarly conventional wisdom holds that unipolarity is dynamically unstable and that any slight overstep by Washington will spark a dangerous backlash.12 I ªnd the opposite to be true: unipolarity is durable and peaceful, and the chief threat is U.S. failure to do enough.13 Possessing an undisputed preponderance of power, the United States is freer than most states to disregard the international system and its incentives. But because the system is built around U.S. power, it creates demands for American engagement. The more efªciently Washington responds to these incentives and provides order, the more long-lived and peaceful the system. To be sure, policy choices are likely to affect the differential growth of power only at the margins. But given that International Security 24:1 8unipolarity is safer and cheaper than bipolarity or multipolarity, it pays to invest in its prolongation. In short, the intellectual thrust (if not the details) of the Pentagon’s 1992 draft defense guidance plan was right.

The unipolar concentration of resources is symmetrical in the US, meaning that the United State’s heg is sustainable

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