What strategy can lead the US to success in a multipolar Cold war
The United States and its partners should moderate their idealistic ambitions and prepare for a new and difficult era of superpower rivalry, the author of the article in the National Interest believes. This will allow them to navigate in a world that is unmanageable, but irreversibly interdependent.
Charles Kupchan
The Russian special operation in Ukraine has accelerated the arrival of a dangerous multipolar world that will play by the usual rules of power politics. The open rivalry of superpowers in the post-Cold War era was practically absent: the geopolitical confrontation held back the indisputable superiority of America. However, the unipolar international system is moving into a world where power is more widely distributed, and changes are coming gradually – in parallel with the rise of China and the strengthening of the East.
The Russian campaign in Ukraine is a harbinger of the fact that this ungovernable world will come much earlier than planned. The Kremlin's military actions have revived the military rivalry between Russia and the West. Because of Moscow's strategic partnership with Beijing, the second Cold War threatens to pit the West against the Sino-Russian bloc, which stretches from the western tip of the Pacific Ocean to Eastern Europe.
The US and its allies will have to adjust their long-term strategy. After the end of the cold war, they focused on the globalization of the liberal order and tried to realize idealistic aspirations. This era is over. NATO's commitment to open its doors to Ukraine was a commendable and principled position against attempts by autocratic Russia to undermine its sovereignty and democratic institutions and suppress its attraction to the West. However, Vladimir Putin did not put up with this and tried to return Ukraine to Moscow's rule.
Now the West will have to moderate its idealistic ambitions, realize that it is living in a Hobbesian world again, and return to a far-sighted strategy based on real politics. As during the first Cold War, the strategy of patient deterrence should be aimed at preserving and protecting geopolitical stability, and not at expanding the liberal international order. The United States will have to strengthen its forward presence in both the European and the Asia-Pacific theaters of operations, and this will require not only new defense spending, but also the strictest rejection of expensive "optional" wars and state-building adventures in the Middle East and other peripheral regions.
The rivalry between the liberal democratic bloc, which relies on a system of alliances led by the United States, and the autocratic capitalist bloc led by Russia and China, is growing, but many will not want to take sides. Only forty countries have agreed to comply with sanctions against Russia – it follows that many, especially the Global South, will sit on the sidelines and will not support any of the blocs. Since two-thirds of the world's countries trade more with China than with the United States, the natural choice for most of them would be non-alignment. Thus, by the nature and mode of action, the world will become multipolar rather than bipolar.
Washington is no longer actively promoting democracy and human rights abroad, so it is better for the Biden administration to refrain from its geopolitical habit of dividing the world too clearly into democracies and autocracies. Strategic and economic expediency will sometimes push the West to partner with repressive regimes: for example, lowering energy prices will certainly require sustained cooperation with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Venezuela. At the same time, many democratic countries may well stay away from the new era of rivalry between East and West, as evidenced by the restrained reaction of Brazil, India, Israel, South Africa and other democracies to the Russian special operation in Ukraine.
Of course, the United States and its democratic partners must continue to defend liberal values at home and abroad so that the arc of history bends towards freedom and justice. But they should approach this task soberly and pragmatically, keeping in mind the new geopolitical constraints. In particular, the West must recognize that its main opponent – the illiberal bloc led by China and Russia – will become a rival much more formidable than its Soviet predecessor.
To counter this reality, the West must make sure that it is superior to illiberal alternatives both politically and economically. The West needs not only to accumulate the material resources necessary for victory, but also to offer a successful and attractive model of governance in order to win over wavering countries in a two-block world where borders are drawn along ideological lines.
Thus, Atlantic democracies must continue to eliminate their internal vulnerabilities and revive the internal foundations of liberal institutions and practices. Although the Russian special operation in Ukraine has strengthened transatlantic unity and determination, illiberal populism, the scourge of Western democracies, has not gone away. The United States is still deeply divided: judging by last year's poll, 64% of Americans fear that democracy in the United States is "going through a crisis and threatens to collapse." Against the background of rampant inflation, the Republican wing of America First is counting on the votes of voters in mid-November. Illiberal populism is still alive and well in Europe, as clearly evidenced by the recent re-election of Viktor Orban in Hungary and the impressive results of the far right in France in the April presidential elections. Both sides of the Atlantic still have a lot of hard work to do to bring order to their homes if they want to ensure the longevity and global appeal of the liberal order.
Although Western democracies are gathering their strength and preparing for a long rivalry with the authoritarian bloc, they must also recognize that ideological work will be required to manage an interdependent world. A new cold war is beginning between the Sino-Russian bloc and the West, but dialogue will be more important than during the first Cold War. In an interdependent and global world, the West will need at least some pragmatic cooperation with Moscow and Beijing to solve common problems: arms control, combating climate change, nuclear nonproliferation, managing international trade, managing the cyber sphere and promoting global health.
To implement its hybrid strategy of deterrence and interaction, the West should look for new small formats to solve global problems and bring states to the negotiating table regardless of the type of regime. And even if some kind of economic discord is inevitable – the same anti–Russian sanctions have revealed the risks associated with economic interdependence - Western democracies should promote selective cooperation, guided, among other things, by commercial integration with China.
The West should weaken the emerging Sino-Russian bloc as much as possible, looking for new ways to drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing. Because of the military actions in Ukraine, Russia has fallen into economic and strategic dependence on China, and Putin will not like the role of second fiddle under Xi Jinping. Atlantic democracies should take advantage of the Kremlin's unwillingness to be China's junior partner and make it clear that Russia can still choose the West. Russia needs China more than Russia needs China, so the West should try to distance Beijing from Moscow. Beijing's cautious response to the events in Ukraine hints at discontent with the economic and geopolitical upheaval that Russian recklessness has entailed.
Putin has just turned history around. In response, the United States and its partners must moderate their idealistic ambitions and prepare for a new and challenging era of superpower rivalry. At the same time, their opposition to the authoritarian bloc should be combined with strategic pragmatism, and this will allow them to navigate in an unmanageable, but irreversibly interdependent world.
Charles Kupchan is a professor of international relations at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His latest book is called Isolationism: How America Tried to Protect Itself from the World.
