Hegemony Good Index

Hegemony Deters War

Robert Kagan, Senior Associate at Carnegie, FDCH, September 30, 1999

There have in recent weeks and months been numerous after-action reports on how the war in Kosovo was conducted. There has been much discussion of whether the air campaign was successful, whether it was waged correctly from the beginning, and whether planning for a ground war was the decisive factor in Milosevic's eventual capitulation. But there has been almost no discussion of whether the war itself could have been avoided or whether the objectives could have been achieved with less force and, above all, without the frightful toll in human life that occurred when Serbia launched its offensive against the Kosovo Albanian population. I want to congratulate this committee for focusing today on this latter question. Much attention is paid to how we wage war. Far too little attention is paid to the question of how to deter it. There is perhaps no more important topic for the American foreign policy community, for the Congress and for future administrations. And let us be clear. The question is not merely how to prevent humanitarian disasters like those which occurred in Kosovo, in Rwanda a few years ago, and in East Timor most recently. As was true in the case of Kosovo, there often more than humanitarian issues at stake in such crises. In the future, too, interests and morality will often intersect, and the United States and its allies will have to act both to save innocent victims from slaughter and to defend vital interests in important regions of the world. The main task of the United States in the coming decades is going to be to deter conflict, and the requirements of deterrence are pretty much the same regardless of whether the goal is the prevention of a humanitarian catastrophe or the defense of vital national interests. In recent years we have focused on deterring conflict in the Balkans. Over the next decade, I predict we will be increasingly consumed with deterring conflict across the Taiwan Strait, on the Korean peninsula, in South Asia, and in the Persian Gulf, areas of unmistakably vital strategic significance to the United States.
Hegemony solves great power war – no scenario for conflict

Michael Mandelbaum, Director of the American Foreign Policy program at the Johns Hopkins University. Foreign Policy. Washington: Jan/Feb 2006. , Iss. 152; pg. 50, 7 pgs. “David’s Friend Goliath.”

For instance, U.S. military power helps to keep order in the world. The American military presence in Europe and East Asia, which now includes approximately 185,000 personnel, reassures the governments of these regions that their neighbors cannot threaten them, helping to allay suspicions, forestall arms races, and make the chances of armed conflict remote. U.S. forces in Europe, for instance, reassure Western Europeans that they do not have to increase their own troop strength to protect themselves against the possibility of a resurgent Russia, while at the same time reassuring Russia that its great adversary of the last century, Germany, will not adopt aggressive policies. Similarly, the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, which protects Japan, simultaneously reassures Japan’s neighbors that it will remain peaceful. This reassurance is vital yet invisible, and it is all but taken for granted.
Historically, primacy solves global power conflict – the soviets just backed down

Keir Lieber, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, and Daryl Press, Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, July/August 2007, “Superiority Complex,” The Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200707/china-nukes