US Grand Strategy: The Ukraine War and the New World Order
The war is an inflection point and America must avoid a strong Russia-China Axis
This paper introduces Ad Astra’s American grand strategy for a multipolar world. The series contains 7 white papers: 2 global policies and 5 country-level strategies.
2. Global trading alliance network
3. China
4. Russia
5. Middle East
6. Mexico
7. India
The printing press was invented in the 15th century, for the first time allowing the widespread dissemination of information. Among the many effects of this was the shattering of the Church’s monopoly on information brought about by the Protestant Reformation. The world order was upended and Europe descended into the Thirty Year’s War, a conflict of all against all. That war was brought to an end in 1648 by the Peace of Westphalia, a paradigm-shifting world order that introduced the modern nation-state. In the late-20th century, the Internet was introduced, widely disseminating the entirety of human knowledge. Today, we’re living through the upending of the established world order. It is with that context that we turn to the War in Ukraine.
The War in Ukraine is an inflection point in world history that the US should use as an opportunity to reorient its foreign policy for a multipolar world. It should align its foreign policy goals with the domestic economic objective of exporting goods to the global middle class. It should also view the world and conduct policy with a realistic lens, rather than from a moralistic standpoint. It should instead exemplify morality as the city on the hill to emulate. The “US Grand Strategy” series of white papers will discuss the overall goal of US foreign affairs and then propose specific policies.
Goal of US foreign policy
Before creating a foreign policy, we must ask what is overall objective? Keeping Americans safe is a minimum baseline, which means preventing terrorism, state-sponsored attacks, and helping Americans abroad who are in trouble. The next level is to keep the average American prosperous. Here, foreign policy goals should align with the chief domestic goal: exporting goods to the global middle class. The world’s population is becoming wealthier and billions now comprise the global middle class. Providing them with goods made in America will create domestic jobs and economic prosperity.
Multipolarity and 21st century trends
The world is shifting from unipolarity with America as the sole superpower to multipolarity[i], accelerated by the War in Ukraine. Absolute US power is not declining but its relative power versus great power rivals like China and Russia is. Since 1991, China’s military spending has increased by 42x and Russia’s military spending has increased by 8x. Multipolarity is the most common historical arrangement of the international order and was prevalent amongst the European great powers before the two world wars of the 20th century. Likewise, the bipolar world between the US and Soviet Union during the Cold War was historically abnormal. In a multipolar order, no country is decisively all-powerful but one may still be strongest overall. For example, America may struggle to thwart China in its near-abroad (e.g. Taiwan) but may still be more powerful than China globally.
The unipolar rules-based international order created after WW2 and led by America is being replaced by something new that hasn’t taken shape yet. China and Russia want better seats at the table and the Global South is rising. The collapse of the prior international system resulted in WW1 and WW2. The job for America in the 2020s is to bring about a new multipolar equilibrium without a spasm of global war.
The most important trend of the 21st century is depopulation[ii]. For all of human history, and especially after the 18th century, the global population has increased. Industrialization has brought along lower birthrates and much of the developed world, notably Western Europe, China, and other advanced Asian countries, is forecast to shrink in the 21st century. America has a similarly low birthrate but immigration from Latin America will keep population growth positive. However, it’s unclear how high America’s foreign-born population, already at a historically high 15%[iii], can go before domestic democratic institutions place a brake on further migration.
A depopulating world faces two forces relevant to military force posture. First, less labor will hamper military recruitment. This will increase the prevalence of drones and other automation on the battlefield. Second, the ratio of workers to retirees will decrease, straining pension and welfare systems globally. In the US, rising Social Security and Medicare obligations will threaten military spending. Given these two forces and a “flatter”, multipolar world, the US military should shift its expensive, exquisite weapons system procurement (aircraft carriers, advanced fighters) to low-cost, high-tech arms for 21st-century opponents.
Theoretical basis for grand strategy
There are two, non-mutually exclusive, theories of grand strategy that should underpin US foreign policy in the 21st century: 1) Eurasia as the global pivot and 2) domination of the seas.
In the early-20th century, Sir Halford Mackinder introduced the "Heartland Theory" which stated that, “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World Island; who rules the World Island commands the world." In plain terms, he meant that any power who controls Eurasia (from Europe to Asia), controls enough resources to dominate the world. Since America is a North American power, US policy should prevent any one power, or alliance of powers, from consolidating Eurasia. This is not a new policy, as the US fought the Central Powers in WW1, the Nazis and Japan in WW2, and the Soviet Union in the Cold War, to prevent them from controlling Eurasia.
Alfred Thayer Mahan advocates for the importance of naval power in influencing the rise and dominance of nations. His seminal work, "The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783," published in 1890, laid out these ideas, arguing that the British Empire's dominance in the 18th century was largely due to its naval superiority. Control of the seas has only increased in importance since Mahan published his theory. Transporting goods over water is vastly cheaper than over land and global trade has significantly increased American living standards since WW2. Control of the seas by the US Navy after WW2 has enabled this trade and must be maintained. Not all have benefitted from global trade and these issues must be addressed but withdrawing from the seas would reduce American’s standard of living and make the world more dangerous to America.
Mahan’s sea dominance theory can and must be expanded to space in the 21st century. Far from science fiction, competition between great powers in space is already occurring and will accelerate in the coming decades. The US must commercially and militarily dominate space, which starts with developing a thriving domestic space industrial base.
A case for realism
There are two primary competing foreign policy ideologies: 1) liberal internationalism and 2) realism.
Since the end of the Cold War, liberal internationalism has dominated US foreign policy. Liberal internationalism prioritizes democracy and liberal values in foreign policy. In short, America’s foreign policy has held other nations to the liberal values it holds at home. In a unipolar world, there is significant margin between the superpower and all other nations, allowing the superpower to impose their will without constraint.
In a multipolar world, the margin between great powers is greatly reduced. Imposing a morality-based policy is resource-intensive, sometimes ruinously so. Realism in foreign policy means accepting the world as it is, not trying to impose how you think it should be. A realistic foreign policy might mean cooperating with leaders you don’t like or nations whose values conflict with your own. The US allying with Stalin’s Soviet Union in WW2 is an example of realism.
The city on a hill
The greatest advantage America has over its autocratic rivals is its free and open society. The natural human desire for freedom is incompatible with the autocratic systems of Russia and China in the long-term. This is especially true in an age of social media and smartphones, where one viral video can topple a government. Therefore, instead of exporting its values through its foreign policy and stoking anti-American nationalism abroad, America should exemplify them at home. The world’s opinion has turned negative towards America after the Global War on Terror and the 2008 global financial crisis. The US can begin to restore its global brand by role-modeling the values, including a more realist foreign policy, that once made America “the shining city on the hill”.
America risks violating Mackinder’s control of Eurasia rule by strengthening the Russia-China alliance through its response to the Ukraine War. By sanctioning Russia, America has pushed them further into China’s arms. The war has validated the world’s return to multipolarity, as Ukraine has struggled to resist Russia’s will in its near-abroad, despite substantial US aid. America should recognize this as an inflection point in world history and reorient Its foreign policy.
The following series of papers proposes a US grand strategy updated for the 2020s. The next paper proposes a global trade alliance system, which supports the overall US grand strategy. There are then five country or region-specific articles: China, Russia, the Middle East, Mexico, and India. All revolve around the US’s geopolitical competition with China.
2. Global trading alliance network
3. China
4. Russia
5. Middle East
6. Mexico
7. India
[i] https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/10/05/usa-china-multipolar-bipolar-unipolar/
[ii] https://www.aei.org/multimedia/the-de-population-bomb/
[iii] https://cis.org/Report/ForeignBorn-Population-Hits-Nearly-48-Million-September-2022