A "practical" strategy for America and our allies to counter the new Axis powers
"If the United States and its partners in Europe and Asia can weather the current crises, they will be better positioned to thrive during the rest of the 2020s than their principal adversaries."
This is my first edition of The Column, in which I try to reflect on my ‘daily’ read of the headlines and write about the most important topics facing American leadership. Reviewing a new essay by the scholar and diplomat Philip Zelikow was the perfect exercise for this first pass.
A long, wonky, historically-minded essay about the extraordinary geopolitical challenges facing the United States has been bubbling up in national security and foreign policy circles over the last few weeks. It’s the kind of piece that makes everyone stop to spend a few hours to read it and think about its implications.
The article, “Confronting Another Axis? History, Humility, and Wishful Thinking,” published in the Texas National Security Review, is by Philip Zelikow. You can read it here.
Zelikow is not a household name but as both an academic and a public servant, he is among the finest. A professor at Harvard and University of Virginia, he served in every administration as a diplomat or senior policy official from Reagan to Obama.
While he might be best known for leading the 9/11 Commission, he also was in charge of the Covid Crisis Group, a similar bi-partisan panel that studied the government’s response to the pandemic. He is now at Stanford’s right-of-center Hoover Institution and has been an informal advisor to the Biden administration. I am emphasizing his bi-partisan credentials on purpose.
The foundation of Zelikow’s essay is a helpful and concise analysis of two historical examples during which the United States confronted “a purposeful set of powerful adversaries in a rapidly changing and militarized period of history”: 1) the formation of the Axis powers’ alliance in the years leading up to World War II and; 2) the Soviet-Chinese pact that rapidly came together in the early decade-plus of the Cold War.
Zelikow says the challenge posed today by the new Axis powers - China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea - is the highest threat of global war we’ve faced since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The good news is that Zelikow is optimistic the United States and our allies in Europe and Asia can prevail over the medium and long term. The bad news is that the next few years will be very hard. We will face very difficult choices and the inevitable trade-offs to be made will be painful. Zelikow handicaps the “serious possibility” of a global conflict at 20-30 percent, a figure he argues may seem low but in reality is “not reassuring.”
But, as Zelikow says, “The task for this period of crisis is to weather it with America’s core strengths and advantages preserved, or even enhanced.”
I want to highlight what I think are the main take-aways from Zelikow’s article and then describe how Zelikow sees the way ahead.
1. The first take-away is that Zelikow assesses that the next two or three years will be the most dangerous and uncertain period for two reasons. First, unlike the formation of the Axis Powers’ alliance in the run up to 1941, today’s new Axis Powers, particularly Xi’s China and Putin’s Russia, are so much more aligned and coordinated. That’s not to say there aren’t gaps but relative to how the Germans, Italians, and Japanese ended up together, the new Axis powers have formed a clear anti-American pact that taps into deep historic and political legacies. Second, as Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has already demonstrated and the Chinese industrial and military buildup over the last decade plus has intimated, the new Axis powers feel the time to act on their opportunity to challenge the American-led global order is essentially now.
2. The second item I want to highlight is what Zelikow says is likely to be how China moves on Taiwan: not by a land invasion or an attack on US allies or military forces in the region. Rather by establishing “indirect control” around the island; essentially setting up its own borders and immigration control points, thereby forcing either Taiwan and/or the US to escalate the use of force. For more on the “indirect control” method, see here.
Zelikow says this is the easiest for China to execute, the hardest for the US to counter, and potentially lessens the chance for large-scale conflict. Using China’s perspective of history from the Korean and Vietnam wars, Zelikow says the Chinese approach to warfare is to conduct it in a very limited and constrained manner. Obviously nobody, including the Chinese, knows how such an action would play out. But the scenario Zelikow forecasts is one he argues many commentators are not actually considering.
3. The final take-away from Zelikow’s piece is how he describes America’s position, particularly with respect to China, in this “acute dilemma.” First, we don’t have the strategic initiative; we’re responding to events. Second, China and to a lesser extent Russia and Iran, believe they are deterring us from taking any preventative action. Third, China is forcing us to make the escalatory decisions as they, even in the last week, as they conducted their “Joint Sword” exercises around the island. Fourth, we are well behind China in terms of its military-industrial output and will not catch up in the 2-3 year danger-zone timeline — let alone the logistical challenges we’d face. Zelikow suggests the “indirect control” course of action is almost inevitable despite the likely economic fallout that China, the US, and the wider world will all suffer.
Zelikow goes back into history to help us think through this very hard problem. Writing in January 1941 to Joseph Grew, an old friend and ambassador to Japan, President Roosevelt said:
[T]he problems which we face are so vast and so interrelated that any attempt even to state them compels one to think in terms of five continents and seven seas. In conclusion, I must emphasize that, our problem being one of defense, we cannot lay down hard-and-fast plans. As each new development occurs we must, in the light of the circumstances then existing, decide when and where we can most effectively marshal and make use of our resources.
Today, in an ironically fortunate way, we have the same problem with our new Axis adversaries: “one of defense.” As a result, Zelikow recommends that the US should “develop more practical plans than seem evident now, with some potentially painful tradeoffs.” More specifically, Zelikow recommends the US “prioritize action in the theaters and on the problems where its interests, allied readiness, and capabilities are at their height”:
Europe: the main effort
The theater where the combination of our interests, allied readiness, and capabilities are strongest right now is in Europe. In partnership with our European allies, we must continue to aid Ukraine and then invest in a modern-day Marshall Plan that utilizes frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s recovery and reconstruction. Putin will continue to send his forces into the meat-grinder but given the fortified NATO alliance, the growing political will in Europe to fund defense budgets, and the tenacity and courage of Ukrainian people, the war in Ukraine should remain our main effort. As Zelikow argues, we must “double-down” in Europe. Indeed, as The Economist reported this weekend:
Good news, at last, from Ukraine. The approval in April of the Biden administration’s $61bn military-support package, after six months of Congressional delay, is having an impact. In particular, the arrival of ATACMS ballistic missiles, with a range of 300km, means that Ukraine can now hit any target in Russian-occupied Crimea, with deadly effect…. In the past week, the Russian offensive in the north-east against Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, also appears to have lost momentum.
Pacific: economic deterrence
There is no doubt our interests in the Pacific theater are significant, our alliances are strong, and our capabilities are formidable. But as Zelikow and other analysts have detailed, in the event of any Chinese action against Taiwan and despite our “wishful thinking” that we can prevent it, “Chinese missiles will keep the cavalry from riding to the rescue.” While the conventional view is that deterrence relies on American military might, economic deterrence might the most “practical” lever policy-makers can pull given the military imbalance we face in East Asia.
What is economic deterrence? These are the “visual preparations” of America battening down the financial hatches. In the event of any limited action with China, economic catastrophe is likely: commercial and currency transactions would halt, including interest payments on American assets held by the Chinese government and Chinese investors; assets on both sides would be seized; and severe supply chain and trade shocks would ensue. In January, a Bloomberg analysis predicted a 10% decline in global GDP if the conflict escalated to war.
As Zelikow details: “Since some of the contingencies are out of American control, the president and his chief advisers at least need to map out these risks and visibly prepare to manage them. The United States should visibly plan whether and how it and its allies might weather the extreme economic contingencies that would necessarily accompany the outbreak of even a limited war…. Such visible preparations will acquire a momentum of their own. If these plans become viable, they may even become plausible substitutes for the most vulnerable military moves.”
In another report, Zelikow and Robert Blackwill, detailed the economic deterrence strategy:
These effects would be so great that it is not credible to threaten them as sanctions. We are not proposing a strategy of coercive diplomacy. This is a strategy to spell out how world politics and the world economy are likely to fracture after such a terrible break.
I also think it would be worthwhile to consider the lessons learned from the Covid economic shock and supply chain breakdowns — particularly new strategies like strategic and near shoring — and think about how those might guide us if we enter into an economic tailspin.
Middle East: reevaluate our posture
Lastly, Zelikow argues that the United States needs “to deeply reexamine its strategy and strategic posture toward the whole Middle East region.” The post-9/11 wars and the crisis in Gaza affirm the need to consider how we “most effectively marshal and make use of our resources.” President Biden’s speech on Friday was a good example of the strategic choice Zelikow is describes: “Indefinite war in pursuit of an unidentified notion of ‘total victory’… will only bog down Israel in Gaza, draining the economic, military,… and human resources, and furthering Israel’s isolation in the world.”
Iran remains our primary adversary in the region and Zelikow is clear that there should be proper planning for any future confrontation. However, I think the strike on the Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani in 2020 and America’s role in knocking Iranian missiles out of the sky over Israeli airspace back in April were clear demonstrations of our military capabilities. After two decades of war, we unfortunately know the region all too well. The Chinese and Russians will still try to help Iran but, as we recently learned from a Washington Post reporter, US special operations forces are without peer.
So it seems like we need to hunker down over the next couple of years, be practical, set some low expectations, and expect some unexpected twists and turns. I thought this was a great line from Zelikow:
Humility is applauded in principle. It is hard to practice it. It is not hard just because of arrogance or complacency. It is so hard because people are drowning in information and commentary. It is really hard, cognitively and institutionally hard, to hold open a doorway to the emptiness of what we don’t know and adapt to changing circumstances.
But the good news is, if we can hold on, “the broader fundamentals for the United States and the free world are promising. They are especially promising in comparison with the courses that America’s adversaries are charting.”
Let’s not forget that — especially as we recognize the 80th anniversary of D-Day this week and the honor the heroes that helped build the free world we love so much today.