I was listening to a podcast in which Professor John Mearsheimer, a political scientist and prolific public speaker, explained why the world needs to be multi-polar to function peacefully. It might be bipolar, like some people I know, or multi-polar altogether.
Must be bi-polar at all times. . .
According to him, a Unipolar world order leads to situations where the only power gets a little too jealous of its position and turns to offensive means of deterrence to maintain the status quo. According to Mearsheimer, the USA currently finds itself in that situation, which goes a long way to explain why we have around 775 military bases in 80 countries with a total of more than 225,000 personnel based outside the country.
All that to keep us safe? Safe from what, or who exactly?
Mushrooms anyone?
During the Cold War decades, between 1945 and 1991, there was very little chance of a hot war developing, as both powers more or less kept doing their own thing and the defensive deterrence in the form of nuclear stockpiles was enough to keep things peaceful. In fact, there were all sorts of cooperative efforts as well as trade that benefited both powers and the rest of the world. Liberal capitalism was doing a good job of increasing the GDP of most countries as well as the welfare of its people. Labor in this country might quarrel with me on that.
The Soviets then gave up the ‘fight’ and decided to join capitalism, and the USA, getting a little greedy, felt the need to pressure the Russians by expanding NATO into the former WarschauPact countries. Now that Finland and Sweden have signed up to join the NATO forces, Putin is frantically looking for and getting support from all over the place.
Cartoon from 1900 – Russian bear being rejected by China while the world is looking on and wondering how they can get a piece of the action. See the little guy on the fence? He is on the fence no longer, and things are a little different now.
Now we are faced with the Russians fighting back and at the same time seeking to get very friendly with China, Iran, North Korea, and the other BRICS countries (Brazil, India, South Africa, Egypt, Saudia, Ethiopia, etc). All this is likely to urge the US to increase its offensive deterrence, particularly vis-a-vis the Chinese, who form a formidable economic, if not a military threat. In case of a conventional war, we would beat the crap out of China, and they might in desperation reach for the red button and wipe us all off the face of the earth.
That brings me back to Mearsheimer’s argument that the world would be more peaceful with two or three powers rattling their sabers in defensive, instead of offensive deterrence.
That’s what nuclear weapons are for, defensive deterrence, and I have been thinking about getting a couple of those to deter my neighbors from getting ideas after Trump takes office. Entirely defensive, of course. Once I have them I wouldn’t think of actually using them, as it will suffice to make them believe I’m dangerous.