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Perspectives
High Technology Military Dominance: The Opiate of Modern Empire By Brad Allenby
The general public perception that national power is predominantly a matter of military capability has long been recognized as oversimplistic and naïve. While different conditions will result in specific and somewhat unpredictable responses from the nation-states involved, it is nonetheless possible to identify five foundational sources of modern hegemonic power: economic, scientific and technological, military, institutional, and cultural. Economic power, for example, propelled Japan into the first rank of powers despite its relative military weakness, while institutional weaknesses in its political structure have contributed significantly to its drift over the past decade. The European Union retains its dominant international position despite a relatively unimpressive economy and military in part because its institutions reflect a resilient and open social-democratic political framework and its culture is widely admired. China’s rise reflects an economic boom, and those who predict its demise do so in large part because of perceived institutional weaknesses. Even in the case of past empires, flexible governance structures and the institutions that knit together distances were as important as sheer military power (Roman roads and administration, for example, did as much to support the Empire as the Legions).
In a world where the most advanced economies are characterized by increasing reliance on information networks, highly flexible economic and political institutions tending towards the flat and virtual rather than the hierarchical, and reduced dependence on direct control of resources, the key to obtaining and keeping hegemonic power increasingly is balanced among the five core constituents. This is arguably the key to the dominance of the United States, which until recently has been the one power that has appeared to be globally competent in all five categories: the largest single economy, a currently unmatched science and technology capability (and underlying academic infrastructure), a military that is far more advanced than any other in many ways, an institutional structure that is both relatively transparent and defined by law rather than relationship, and a cultural ascendancy that is reflected in the widespread idea of American exceptionalism, entrepreneurism, and corporate trademark dominance (especially in consumer culture: Coca-cola, McDonald’s, Disney). Although different commentators focus on different aspects of this hegemonic power structure – the French, for example, who do not fear the United States militarily because it is an ally, tend to emphasize American cultural domination, while the Chinese, who face projection of American power and particularly its blue water Navy as they look towards Taiwan, are much more concerned with its military aspect – it is the balance of high competence in all five dimensions that makes America truly formidable.
Moreover, the essence of American power is more subtle than just the components in themselves, as the Japanese, Chinese, and European Union experience reveals. It is not enough to develop a better, more aggressive economy, as Japan in some ways did; or to challenge American exceptionalism and cultural appeal, as Europe increasingly does. To truly challenge America over time, it is necessary for the rising power to become competent in all five dimensions. To complicate matters, all five dimensions are not independent of each other; rather, success in each requires synergism among all. A challenger, then, need not reflect the same balance nor certainly the same choices as characterize the United States, but it does need to be able to successfully compete with the US in all five dimensions – and to integrate them effectively so they are mutually supporting as well.
To take only one dimension, consider the daunting implications of trying to match the United States in science and technology (S&T). The American research and development budget, especially when contributions from private industry are included, dominates global R&D expenditures and ensures American supremacy in this critical area. But, worse yet from the perspective of those who would challenge America’s S&T capabilities, it is buttressed by institutional and cultural dimensions. The American higher educational system is not only the best in the world overall, but it draws intelligence from other societies around the world, much of which remains in the United States, either as intellectual property or as working, thinking, highly educated human beings. The American venture capital system, again the most highly developed in the world, supports this structure by ensuring that S&T advances are rapidly translated into entrepreneurial activity and thus economic power. The American culture, which tends to be technologically optimistic, underpins these systems (in contrast to, for example, the European Union which, through formulations such as the Precautionary Principle, expresses a greater skepticism of technology). A culture that seeks to match American supremacy in science and technology, therefore, cannot do so simply by increasing research spending, or trying to develop a few world-class technical institutes. It must create a network across its culture that understands excellence in this area as an emergent characteristic of excellence across all five dimensions – a much more difficult task.
Understood from this systems perspective, it is tempting to err on the side of historical determinism and conclude that American hegemony is strong enough that it will dominate all others for the foreseeable future. This would be a mistake, and not just for the generic reasons that all determinisms are over-simplistic, and that history gives many examples of apparently dominant societies that, having outlived their optimistic and bold youth, have grown old and collapsed. It is perhaps true that an external frontal assault on American hegemony is unlikely to succeed, certainly in the short term. The European Union is increasingly favoring stability and order over messy and unpredictable technological evolution; Japan is too unidimensionally an economic power; and China is too early in its development along many of the relevant dimensions to be able to do so (as are India, Brazil, Russia and other potential challengers).
But it is equally true that critical weakness can emerge internally. Consider American post 9/11 behavior and the Iraq invasion for what it says not only about American sophistication in understanding the real sources of its power and authority, but also the self-inflicted damage that may result in the absence of such understanding.
Begin with the observation that America after World War II had a dominance that, although displayed in terms of the hard power supremacy of military and economic might, was primarily cultural: the United States attracted brains and capital, and, indeed, seemed to embody the mythic qualities of American exceptionalism because of its uniquely open, optimistic, entrepreneurial and mobile society. Depending on the language you want to use, it was the American brand – it was America as the “shining City on the Hill” – that knit together the dimensions of dominance. This was reflected in the numbers of students attracted to American universities, the number of non-native born entrepreneurs that created Silicon Valley and its Texas, Massachusetts and Oregon mimics, the success of American consumer goods and cultural exports (films, games, and the Marlboro Man), the continued attraction of the American experience for those prosecuted or discriminated against in other cultures. The real key to long-term American dominance, in other words, was mythic: mythic not in the sense of being imaginary, but in the sense of being a larger than life projection of American values and culture across the world.
In this light, post 9/11 American policy can be seen as powerfully undermining long-term American power. Obviously, individual policy decisions affect the strength of the integrated hegemonic structure: the economic fragility caused by the Administration’s tax cuts are an example. But these need not threaten long term power trajectories. The response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, however, is potentially far more problematic. In particular, three components of subsequent policy have seriously degraded American power, and all for the same reason: they elevate technological projection of physical power and traditional security considerations above projection of cultural power. America is building a Maginot Line, and a very expensive one, in a world of cultural blitzkrieg.
The first prong of Administration policy which is highly problematic is a domestic response which focuses on threat and fear rather than defiant openness. The serious curtailment of civil liberties and a personal sense of fear which has been cultivated by a series of policy initiatives (having colors to represent threat level assures that the public will remain fixated on the threat; coupling consumption with patriotism, while perhaps concordant with American proclivities, serves to integrate threat into core American activities) strike at the heart of the openness and optimism which have been among the most powerful components of American cultural power. While the American response may in part reflect the fact that Americans are unused to physical attack, it also reflects a shift from optimism to pessimism (from the world as America’s oyster or, more accurately, America’s market, to the rest of the world as Sartrean Other). The impacts of adopting this defensive posture are both practical – impediments to entry into the United States have significantly reduced the appeal of the U.S. for foreign students and scholars, for example – but, more importantly, mythic: the optimistic City on the Hill becomes just another gated community, another Fortress against the poor and alien. Creating a huge administrative bureaucracy that depends for its existence on continuing (and difficult to evaluate) threat ensures that this component of American policy will not be a temporary phenomenon, but rather a permanent degradation of American cultural power. Note that the importance of these policies is not in how the domestic audience responds; indeed, there is a robust debate internally on them. Rather, the importance is that it undermines the mythic component of American cultural dominance in cultures other than American. Nor is it necessary for the full deleterious impact that the United States actually sink below others in individual and creative freedom, only that American culture can be reduced by its critics to just another choice: no worse perhaps, but no better than, any other.
The second is the Administration’s unilateralism and ill-disguised contempt for those who do not agree with its positions, combined with its evasion of moral responsibility. In the past, America has gained significant cultural power because it has not sought to impose its values; rather, it has simply displayed them and their attractiveness has drawn admiration, and immigration, from around the world. True cultural power is attractive, rather than imposed. The Administration’s approach, however, has resulted in America being widely perceived as arrogant, biased, and hypocritical, rather than powerful and appealing. Thus, for example, when Turkey and its public clearly wanted nothing to do with the Iraq war, perhaps not believing that the evidence of weapons of mass destruction was entirely conclusive, that nation was put under severe pressure by the Americans, leading many to conclude that America believed that democracy was a good idea so long as whatever came out of it was what the American Administration wanted. Similarly, widespread patterns of prisoner abuse were explained as mistakes of junior enlisted personnel, with no senior commander, and certainly not the Commander in Chief or the Secretary of Defense, taking responsibility. Regardless of the realpolitik rationale for torture, direct or through proxy, in a difficult period where information was clearly too scant for comfort, the policy and its clear tension with stated American beliefs reduces American exceptionalism to mere opportunism justified by hypocrisy backed by technologically enabled military power.
Finally, of course, there is Iraq, which instantiates the Administration belief that military-technological power is the main component of modern hegemonic power (indeed, that is perhaps one reason those that crafted the policy so badly underestimated the Iraqi response to invasion and occupation; they were attuned to military, but not to cultural, phenomena). While various glosses have been put on that activity over time as initial justifications have proven inaccurate, the initial response of both the military and the Administration (“Mission Accomplished”) clearly illustrate a mindset focused on the ability of our technologically preeminent military to overcome less advanced forces. Iraq has failed because the political operatives managing the conflict have failed to understand that the sorts of wars America fights these days are cultural conflicts, not military conflicts (the parallels to VietNam in this regard are apparent), and that technological supremacy in the battlefield is almost besides the point. Unlike the constant resource conflicts in Africa, for example, recent American conflicts are not for conquest of territory or establishment of colonies, but to achieve ideological aims and defeat disfavored elites. And such aims necessarily involve sophistication in cultural matters.
Indeed, especially to those who lack experience with the limits of military power, military prowess, embodied in incredibly potent technological capabilities, acts like a drug, leading to dysfunctionally oversimplistic policy choices. Just as countries rich in oil or other resources tend to squander their opportunities, especially in the absence of strong governance, countries rich in military-technological power may be seduced by it into misperceiving their true sources of power. Such seduction may be even more magnetic for a technologically optimistic nation which may be culturally inclined to seek technological solutions for all challenges. This does not mean that military action is never necessary, especially for a nation that has become a de facto enforcer of last resort (e.g., Bosnia). The military attack on Afghanistan, for example, was arguably justified because Afghanistan was a failed state creating an infrastructure for terrorists who had already struck the United States and, more subtly, because some sort of visceral response after 9/11 was probably a political necessity. Indeed, the use of military force in Afghanistan was broadly accepted internationally; it did not create anything like the destructive impact on the American myth that the bungled adventure in Iraq continues to generate.
The United States retains its global hegemony for the time being. But American leaders across the board have failed to realize that the wellspring of that hegemony is cultural, the mythic. How mythic dominance may be defined, built, and strengthened is an interesting question, not yet fully answered – yet the United States clearly accomplished it for at last the last half of the twentieth century. What is interesting is that the United States had global dominance, a strong position against the fundamentalist Islamists, and blew it – because leaders failed to understand that the strength of the American position derived from cultural authority, not from military-technological supremacy. As a result of this serious miscalculation, it is highly likely that Iraq and the context of 9/11 responses that surrounded it, unless quickly reversed, will be seen as a critical point in the decline of American power precisely because it produced a sense of technologically enabled military success. For, ironically, it is that “success” that has proven catastrophic for the American brand, the real American boots on the ground. What saves the world from American hegemony is that its leaders, in failing to avoid the temptation of military adventurism, and in so fatally undermine the American culture’s most powerful claim: that it is the last best hope of humanity, the shining City on the Hill.
Brad Allenby is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the College of Law at Arizona State University.
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