Military Primacy Research Articles

Trump, Project 2025 and American Grand Strategy

Project 2025, the 900-page post-presidential-election playbook organised by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-based think tank, is mainly focused on controversial domestic-policy proposals. Substantial material on foreign and security policy amounting to a grand strategy has garnered less attention. In fact, these ideas represent an emerging strategic consensus. Many of Project 2025’s proposals, with notable exceptions such as ‘fair’ trade, resemble what the much-maligned ‘Blob’ advocates, and share characteristics with the populist agenda of some leading Democratic politicians. Regardless of who is the president, the United States could well pursue both military primacy and a populist economic agenda – to its likely frustration.

Time Is Short: Ukraine, Taiwan and the Echoes of 1941

There are parallels between the run-up to the United States’ entry into the Second World War in 1941 and the contemporary geopolitical environment. Authoritarian aggression has again produced war in Europe and threatens conflict in Asia. While new research on the path to war in December 1941 offers no neatly packaged lessons, it does present five enduring dilemmas. Firstly, it only takes one side to believe war is inevitable for it to materialise. Secondly, a combatant might regard a state’s characterisation of economic-defence aid to an adversary combatant as a measure short of war as a distinction without a difference. Thirdly, underlying but unrealised military primacy might encourage rather than deter war by making time a critical factor. Fourthly, domestic constraints can make it difficult for a government to make deterrence credible. Fifthly, and relatedly, a democratic leader cannot make durable policies that get too far ahead of public opinion.

Effective Grand Strategy of the 21st Century: An American Foreign Policy based on Values or Interests

Since the end of the Cold War, foreign policy analysts have debated about the most appropriate strategy that the United States should follow in terms of its foreign policy. Making clear the concept of effective strategy in foreign policy and international relations, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the concrete strategies that the United States must follow to be successful in its foreign policy, in the context of the new challenges that the international system is facing in the 21st century. More clearly, in this paper will be identified the character of the international policies that the USA should follow in the system of international relations, as well as the most appropriate means to realize them. The research questions that arise for this purpose are: Should the American foreign policy prioritize liberal values and principles or the American national interest? What role should the US play in providing global public goods? Is it necessary for the USA to invest in a restrictive foreign policy strategy, maintaining defiant military primacy in the context of the problems they are facing today? To answer the above question this study is based on secondary sources as bibliographical analysis, journal articles, as well as the most popular theories of international relations, making efforts to ensure objective and accurate information sources. Also, given that international relations forecasting is a really complex issue, the collection of concrete data and their interpretation based on a comparative approach, has served as an important instrument to make the theoretical framework as reliable as possible.

Re-emergence of Great Power Conflict and US Economic Statecraft

AbstractAfter almost two decades of dealing with asymmetric threats, America's strategic focus on technological superiority carefully honed during the Cold War, began to fracture, eroding its military and economic advantage. But China's recent emergence as a credible geopolitical rival has reinvigorated US efforts to sustain high-tech leadership as the basis of its military primacy. At the center of these efforts are the defense and defense-related agencies of the national security state (NSS) whose mission is to dominate the new technological frontiers of military power and achieve future competitive advantage. Alongside the quest for breakthroughs in foundational technologies, NSS agencies are seeking to correct long neglected deficiencies in advanced manufacturing, by rebuilding the industrial ecosystem's supply chains depleted after decades of offshoring. With this suite of initiatives, the US is following a course of action more consistent with the exercise of (economic) statecraft than industrial policy. However, unlike its authoritarian rival, the US faces the challenge of having to balance security imperatives with commercial interests and, not least, having to contend with a dysfunctional and maladapted presidency.

Poland in a time of geopolitical flux

ABSTRACT President Donald Trump has provoked U.S. allies into reevaluating their own national strategies and position within the international order that the United States purportedly fashioned and has sustained since 1945. This essay looks at Poland. Like other treaty allies such as Germany and Japan, Poland has maintained – even deepened – its security relationship with the United States in order to manage Trump. What distinguishes Poland, however, is that it more explicitly supports the military basis upon which U.S. global leadership rests. Because the United States is offshore, its preponderance helps Poland balance against Russia and head off potential security dilemmas within Europe. This essay contextualises the Polish-American relationship and explores how the United States has played in Poland's national security strategy. As Poland values the military primacy associated with the United States being a unipolar power, it is increasingly confronting geopolitical challenges for which U.S. support can only provide partial solutions.

Strategic repositioning of the United States in the 21st century: Is there a ‘Trump doctrine’ on the horizon?

The core interests, strategic guidelines of the United States and the priorities of the American president are also elaborated and expressed in the key documents of National Security and Defence Strategy, which are accurately scrutinized and analysed both by the allied and rival, challenging powers of the United States. Following the rather passive and restrained interest assertion of the Obama administration’s foreign and se-curity policies, the incumbent Trump presidency tends to show more power, resoluteness as well as quite unpredictable measures and controversial strategic framework in the ev-er-changing arena of international affairs. Many analysts claim that the new American administration tends to focus primarily on preserving the relative American economic and absolute military primacy, and the global status quo without any clear future vision or strategic set of objectives that would be desirable from a super-power. A question quite frequently emerges whether a Trump-doctrine is due to get into shape or it is rather total-ly out of scope for the time being?

Between punishment and denial: Uncertainty, flexibility, and U.S. military strategy toward China

ABSTRACT Most debates on U.S. military strategy in the Western Pacific revolve around the question of how to deter China. Advocates of deterrence by punishment believe that the Chinese threat is serious but not critical, because the United States can leverage its global military-technological advantages to preserve a position of regional military primacy. Those in favor of deterrence by denial point to China’s potential and “home advantages,” and argue that the United States should settle for more modest objectives such as preventing Chinese regional military dominance. I argue that the high level of uncertainty around Chinese capabilities and the evolving Sino-American regional military balance have led the United States to adopt a flexible strategy, and embrace distinct–even contradictory–operational concepts to deter Beijing: The United States itself mostly focuses primarily on deterrence by punishment, while actively encouraging and enabling its regional allies to develop deterrence by denial.

The Southern African unipolarity

ABSTRACTDespite the tectonic changes that have taken place in Southern Africa since the demise of apartheid, South Africa is still widely considered a hegemonic regional power by scholars, practitioners and pundits. This article challenges this interpretation, asserting that both Pretoria’s foreign policy and that of its neighbours fit the concept of regional unipolarity with more precision. Since the early 1990s, South Africa has pursued leadership within binding regional institutions and invested resources in order to reinforce the sovereignty of second-tier states such as Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, which have in turn disputed its diplomatic and military primacy, achieving impressive results. This behaviour is characteristic of unipoles rather than hegemons. In this article I revisit the evolution of South African relations with its more proximate neighbours in a transition from hegemony (1961–1990) to unipolarity. I start by defining both concepts and clarifying the behaviours that regional powers and small states are expected to have under hegemonic and unipolar settings. Then, I examine inter-state relations in the region, showing that the concept of unipolarity best describes power distribution and best predicts foreign policy in Southern Africa since the 1990s. Finally, I show that this exercise in concept rectification illuminates comparisons with other regional unipoles, and provides a useful framework to forecast the consequences of an eventual Southern African bipolarity, if Angola continues to catch up.

Avoiding a Strategy of Bluff: The Crisis of American Military Primacy

If strategy is the calculated relation of means to ends, then today America is careening toward strategic insolvency. Following the Cold War, the United States possessed unrivaled military primacy, both globally and in all the world’s key strategic theaters. Yet today, Washington faces military challenges that are both more severe and more numerous than at any time in decades, precisely as its own defense cutbacks have significantly reduced U.S. military capabilities. The United States confronts challenges from revisionist great powers such as China and Russia, aggressive rogue states such as Iran and North Korea, and international terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. At the same time, constant-dollar defense spending fell from $768 billion in 2010 to $595 billion in 2015, the fastest drawdown - in percentage terms - since the Korean War. The result has been a creeping crisis of American military primacy, as the margin of superiority to which the United States has become accustomed has diminished, and a growing gap between U.S. commitments and capabilities has emerged. Closing that gap will require a significant, sustained defense buildup in the years to come.

The Crisis of American Military Primacy and the Search for Strategic Solvency

ABSTRACT: The authors discuss the erosion of US military primacy and the corresponding dangers for American grand strategy and international security. They analyze three options for restoring strategic solvency and recommend a significant expansion of US defense resources to capabilities back into alignment with US global commitments. America is hurtling toward strategic insolvency. (1) For two decades after the Cold War, Washington enjoyed essentially uncontested military dominance and a historically favorable global environment--all at a comparatively low military and financial price. Now, however, America confronts military and geopolitical challenges more numerous and severe than at any time in at least a quarter century--precisely as disinvestment in defense has left US military resources far scarcer than before. The result is a creeping crisis of American military primacy, as Washington's margin of superiority is diminished, and the gap between US commitments and capabilities grows. Superpowers don't bluff, went a common Obama-era refrain--but today, America is being left with a strategy of bluff as its preeminence wanes and its military means come out of alignment with its geopolitical ends. Foreign policy, Walter Lippmann wrote, entails bringing into with a comfortable surplus of power in reserve, the nation's commitments and the nation's power. If a statesman fails to preserve strategic solvency, if fails to bring his ends and means into balance, Lippmann added, he will follow a course that leads to disaster. (2) America's current state of strategic insolvency is indeed fraught with peril. It will undermine US alliances by raising doubts about the credibility of American guarantees. It will weaken deterrence by tempting adversaries to think aggression may be successful or go unopposed. Should conflict actually erupt in key areas, the United States may be unable to uphold existing commitments or only be able to do so at prohibitive cost. Finally, as the shadows cast by US military power grow shorter, American diplomacy is likely to become less availing, and the global system less responsive, to US influence. The US military remains far superior to any single competitor, but its power is becoming dangerously insufficient for the grand strategy and international order it supports. Great powers facing strategic insolvency have three basic options. First, they can decrease commitments thereby restoring equilibrium with diminished resources. Second, they can live with greater risk by gambling that their enemies will not test vulnerable commitments or by employing riskier approaches--such as nuclear escalation--to sustain commitments on the cheap. Third, they can expand capabilities, thereby restoring strategic solvency. Today, this approach would probably require a concerted, long-term defense buildup comparable to the efforts of Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan near the end of the Cold War. (3) Much contemporary commentary favors the first option--reducing commitments--and denounces the third as financially ruinous and perhaps impossible. (4) Yet significantly expanding American capabilities would not be nearly as economically onerous as it may seem. Compared to the alternatives, in fact, this approach represents the best option for sustaining American primacy and preventing a slide into strategic bankruptcy which will eventually be punished. I Since the Cold War, America has been committed to maintaining overwhelming military primacy. The idea, as George W. Bush declared, that America must possess strengths beyond challenge has been featured in every major US strategy document and reflected in concrete terms. (5) Since the early 1990s, for example, the United States has accounted for 35-45 percent of world defense spending and maintained peerless global power-projection capabilities. (6) Perhaps more important, US primacy was unrivaled in key strategic regions such as Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East. …

Parameters – Full Issue – Winter 2016

Special Commentary: The Army's Identity Crisis by Gates Brown. Toward Strategic Solvency Ensuring Effective Military Voice, by William E. Rapp. The Crisis of American Military Primacy and the Search for Strategic Solvency, by Hal Brands and Eric Edelman. Are Our Strategic Models Flawed? Faith in War: The American Roots of Global Conflict by Gregory A. Daddis. Solving America's Gray-Zone Puzzle, by Isaiah Wilson III and Scott Smitson. Strategic Uncertainty, the Third Offset, and US Grand Strategy by Ionut C. Popescu. Ends + Ways + Means = (Bad) Strategy, by Jeffrey W. Meiser. Regional Issues in Asia: Turning It Up to Eleven: Belligerent Rhetoric in North Korea's Propaganda, by Mason Richey. Foreign Military Education as PLA Soft Power, by John S. Van Oudenaren and Benjamin E. Fisher

Smart Geopolitics, Dangerous Ideas: Energy security, Ideology, and the Challenges of American Policy in the Persian Gulf

Both as a superpower and as the West's leading security provider, the US has seen its commitment to the stability of the Gulf region and the preservation of access to its oil supplies increase. US Persian Gulf policy, however, has been shaped not only by pure geopolitical considerations, but also by ideological factors concerning America's status and role in international relations. Until recently, US policy toward the Persian Gulf was distorted by the appeal of America's unchallenged military primacy. Confronted with the contradictions and dilemmas of promoting ideals and protecting the national interest, US policy-makers demonstrated a remarkable penchant for instituting policies that overestimated the potential of America's military power as a tool for creating new political realities and favorable outcomes in the region. Such an approach has proved to be extremely costly and frustrating, while the time seems ripe to explore new strategies. The US should not strive to reshape or control the geopolitics of the Gulf, as both these approaches are unfeasible. The idea of disengagement from the region, moreover, appears delusional even when the implications of the unconventional energy revolution are held into account. Rather, America and its allies should focus their engagement on protecting their interests without becoming part of the region’s sources of instability.

Correspondence: The Profitability of Primacy

Correspondence: The Profitability of Primacy

Is US Primacy Durable in an Asian Century?

Two issues are addressed. Is a shift from U.S. primacy to a multipolar global power structure likely? If so, is it likely to be peaceful or conflictual? Discontinuities could disrupt linear trends but by 2050, China, the US, the European Union, and India are likely to be the four largest economies. Asian integration will reinforce Asia's increasing global economic share, suggesting the prospect of an Asian century from the mid-21st century, ending U.S. economic primacy. U.S. military primacy is massive and more durable than U.S. economic primacy, but the power conferred by it is limited in scope. A peaceful power shift is most likely because of four mutually reinforcing factors. Firstly, nuclear deterrence makes the consequences of major power conflict catastrophic, so political solutions are the only viable modes of dispute resolution. Secondly, complex interdependence based on economic integration confers major benefits from peaceful commerce. Thirdly, norms and practices in East Asia over three decades of peace are reinforced by East Asian Summits and other forums for peaceful dispute resolution, confidence building, and security cooperation. Fourthly, human agency is inherently unpredictable, but a gradual power shift need not involve existential conflict over vital Chinese, EU, Indian or U.S. interests.

Military Primacy Doesn't Pay (Nearly As Much As You Think)

Acommon argument among scholars and policymakers is that America's military preeminence and deep international engagement yield significant economic benefits to the United States and the rest of the world. Ostensibly, military primacy, beyond reducing security tensions, also encourages economic returns through a variety of loosely articulated causal mechanisms. A deeper analytical look reveals the causal pathways through which military primacy is most likely to yield economic returns: geoeconomic favoritism, whereby the military hegemon attracts private capital in return for providing the greatest security and safety to investors; direct geopolitical favoritism, according to which sovereign states, in return for living under the security umbrella of the military superpower, voluntarily transfer resources to help subsidize the costs of hegemony; and the public goods benefits that flow from hegemonic stability. A closer investigation of these causal mechanisms reveals little evidence that military primacy attracts private capital. The evidence for geopolitical favoritism seems more robust during periods of bipolarity than unipolarity. The evidence for public goods benefits is strongest, but military predominance plays only a supporting role in that logic. While further research is needed, the aggregate evidence suggests that the economic benefits of military hegemony have been exaggerated in policy circles. These findings have significant implications for theoretical debates about the fungibility of military power and should be considered when assessing U.S. fiscal options and grand strategy for the next decade.

PODER MILITAR, CRISE FINANCEIRA E O PANORAMA DE SEGURANÇA INTERNACIONAL DO SÉCULO 21

This article searches for a preliminary, but structured, assessment of the international security landscape of the 21st century. It focuses on the predictions of offensive realism (Mearsheimer 2001), which are contrasted with conceptual propositions about international standards of unipolarity (Wohlforth 1999; Diniz 2006) and data indexes on the international production of wealth, its allocations in means of military power and the appreciation of alterations in this correlation because of the 2008 Financial Crisis. The article points out that trends of power distributions do not widely favor Russia and China. However, because of the greater Chinese resilience to the crisis, the accumulated value of their military investments overcome all its neighbors and its large demand for natural resources in other countries or areas in dispute have led the organization of major systemic constraints when compared to the Russian case. The paper also shows that these dynamics of regional power do not allow reconsidering the U.S. military primacy. Finally, the article presents some final considerations of methodological and conceptual slant in order to advance on the research in international security.

‘Diversity. America. Leadership. Good over evil.’ Hollywood multiculturalism and American imperialism in Independence Day and Three Kings1

ABSTRACT In the 1990s and 2000s a highly selective idea of multiculturalism became central to the imagining of American national identity in Hollywood cinema, one that was closely related to the political discourses of the nation surrounding the presidential election campaigns. Davies's focus here is on two significant films, Independence Day and Three Kings, which, despite their very different genres, registers and politics, typify the 1990s Hollywood trajectory of articulating what has been called ‘vulgar multiculturalism’ to exceptionalist and even, arguably, imperialist US nationalism. At the centre of both films is a quartet of male figures configured according to quite specific ideas about ethnic and racial difference: for example, in Independence Day Jewishness is associated with intelligence, blackness with verbal ‘smarts’ and physical strength. Through this composite but selective image the United States is portrayed as a site of ethnic and racial diversity, whose unique ability to cohere the qualities conferred by difference enables and legitimates its global military primacy. The latent meanings of Independence Day have been interpolated differently into American political discourse by President Bill Clinton, Senator Bob Dole and President George W. Bush. While Clinton responded explicitly to the film's evocation of a Eurocentric Second World War ideology, the film subsequently provided Bush with a more powerful, globalized legitimation for US power. If Independence Day utilized a highly selective version of multiculturalism in the service of American imperialism, Three Kings offers itself by contrast as an embedded critique of the aims and conduct of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Yet this critique is itself shaped by the contours of an exceptionalist discourse of the American national project, one in which, again, images of racial and ethnic difference play a crucial role. Three Kings decries the economic motivation of a war fought solely to protect oil supplies, while making a strong plea that military intervention should have included helping Iraqi rebels overthrow Saddam Hussein. This plea is made most powerfully in a crucial ‘recognition scene’ in which the central GI protagonists come to realize that Iraqi refugees, whom they have been taught to view as Other, share values and aspirations that are strongly coded as American. As such, Three Kings anticipates the Bush White House's rhetorical manoeuvre whereby the ‘war on terror’ is rendered as the bringing of liberation to oppressed peoples, but the film is also readable as portraying humanistic, cross-national obligations. These ideological tensions are unpacked by reference to a structured discussion of the film that took place in 2003 between students at universities in the United States, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Davies finally argues that the film ultimately contests the rhetoric of imperialism, and seeks instead to open up a space in which the desire to escape from oppression is not immediately coded as a wish to become American.

Spain and the United States: Military primacy

Democratization, modernization and consolidation as a medium‐to‐large sized European power are the three strategic objectives that have guided Spain's internal and external policies since Franco's death. In the process, US‐Spanish relations, the main pillar of Spain's foreign policy for nearly half a century, have been transformed. The EU partners have come to overshadow the USA in Spain's political, economic, financial and commercial external relations. Yet, in the military and cultural spheres, although deeply affected by Spain's integration into NATO and the globalization process that permeates everything, the US remains the main partner of Spain. From the Spanish government's perspective, it is a very unequal partnership requiring urgent change.