that its biggest foreign-exchange bank, the Bank of China, would stop doing business with North Korea’s Foreign Trade Bank, which the U.S. has accused of facilitating transactions linked to weapons of mass destruction.42)
McCain’s frank talk is refreshing, but the Arizona senator is one of the few engaging in it. Far too few lawmakers on either side of the aisle are willing to put themselves on the line about the fundamental foreign-policy challenges facing the United States, though we desperately need American political leadership here—it makes a difference. During the height of the Chinese currency manipulation, for instance, Senator Sherrod Brown’s persistent criticism had a real impact; China has much modulated its practices in this regard. Likewise, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s defense of U.S. firms overseas—where, as she put it, they felt that the “deck was stacked against them”—has helped open markets for American companies.43
Leadership means not only speaking up, but also taking real action—and yes, taking action involves risk. But it also holds the promise of finding solutions. We don’t have the luxury of talking around these problems. America’s oft described “intervention fatigue” should not, and cannot, result in responsibility fatigue: the responsibility for our safety and prosperity and our obligation to the free world, which looks to us for leadership.
Millions look to us as custodians of their defense against aggression and intimidation. They also look to America to uphold the principles we share: democracy, human rights, transparent government, and the rule of law. In short, if we believe in protecting our principles and privileges as American citizens, we must start thinking and acting to address these challenges. If we also wish to maintain our role as champion of such principles around the world, we must conduct ourselves accordingly. That is what we had to do during the Cold War. In this new era, we must make ourselves literate in our new, uncomfortable burdens.
Americans must begin by acknowledging the realities. It took us too long to grasp the threat from militant Islam. When we finally did, we ignored the far more powerful adversaries waiting in the wings who were marshaling their strength and pretending to offer support while studying our weaknesses and exploiting our exhaustion. Russia and China emerged immeasurably stronger from America’s War on Terror. America, on the other hand, emerged deep in debt and uncertain of its calling.
America’s misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have created the impression of American weakness. Our Axis rivals drew predictable conclusions. They saw that the interventions resulted in years-long chaos and in vast, untenable expenditures. They witnessed the spectacle of the lone superpower bogged down by insurgents. And they recognized a chance to reassert themselves. In his book about the rise of China, The Contest for Supremacy, Princeton professor Aaron L. Friedberg describes the opportunity China saw in American duress: “In the words of a People’s Liberation Army–sponsored journal . . . ‘Simply put, the United States has begun to enter a period of relative decline.’ While the United States wallowed, other potential power centers would continue to grow and ‘of course, China first of all.’”44 The official Chinese Communist Party newspaper even gloated in a 2009 article: “U.S. strength is declining at a speed so fantastic that it is far beyond anticipation.”45
Why do we find ourselves so unprepared at this moment in history?
There is plenty of blame to go around in the post-Soviet history of American foreign policy. Both Republicans and Democrats in Washington have helped forge our current predicament. The West missed many chances to disarm the Russian Bear in the post–Cold War era and to force Russian concessions on other issues. The potential for chaos, as first the Soviet Empire collapsed and then Russia itself began to fray, was perhaps too daunting. Bill Clinton seldom criticized Moscow throughout the 1990s, at the time of Russia’s greatest post-Soviet weakness, to avoid exacerbating instability. George W. Bush was taken in by Putin’s charisma, infamously proclaiming that he had looked the Russian leader in the eyes and gotten “a sense of his soul.”46 Bush allowed himself to be lulled into a false security that Putin shared his democratic goals. But at least Bush understood that Putin had strategic objectives, even if he misjudged what they were. President Obama doesn’t seem to appreciate that Russian activities are part of broader geopolitical goals. He dismisses Putin’s tough-guy “shtick” and says that he acts like the “bored kid in the back of the classroom.”47 This is a terribly foolish, cynical way to talk and think.
Likewise, we abstained from any confrontation with China after the Tiananmen Square massacres. U.S. companies had too much invested in China’s stability. We told ourselves for years that economic prosperity in China would, sooner or later, lead to greater democratization.
A decade later, after 9/11, as we focused all our attention and national will on Islamist terrorists, Moscow rebuilt its challenge—aided by President George W. Bush’s overstretch into Iraq and Afghanistan and by our vital need to view Putin as an ally. Meanwhile, political negligence and economic dependence left us mostly passive in the face of mounting Chinese power. Finally, as President Obama struggles to nurse the U.S. economy back to health, he has shown almost no inclination to confront Russia or China. For two decades, it has been a sorry litany of missed chances, poor choices, and hubristic acts of weakness. As a result, we face a challenge more formidable than any since the height of Soviet Communism—certainly one that is more formidable, over the long term, than that presented by al-Qaeda. There is no scenario in which militant Islam can dominate the globe.
The Axis partners are capable of just that and have deployed their resources precisely to that end—even as they recognize the complexity of the world they live in and the limitations on their own efforts. Both Russia and China, of course, maintain relationships with the United States that are often cooperative in certain areas. Moscow and Washington have made substantial progress in trade and investment relations, which will be aided further by Russia’s joining the World Trade Organization. China and the United States are also economic partners; the Chinese have also taken part in joint military exercises with the United States to increase familiarity and lessen chances of conflict or misunderstanding in common international waters. Unlike the non-state actors of the Islamic world, Moscow and Beijing are in the business of survival. Martyrdom does not interest them. They don’t go about provoking manifestly stronger adversaries—and they recognize, for the time being, the United States’ clear, if dwindling, military edge. But they will exploit weakness whenever it serves their interests—politically, economically, militarily, and also by proxy, where their willingness to make mischief often has the bloodiest consequences.
Indeed, in some ways, it is the Axis’s behavior in the most dangerous, unstable regions of the world today—North Korea, Syria, Iran, and Latin America—that demonstrates the most about Russia and China’s intentions and long-range strategies. Let’s examine the Russian and Chinese facilitation of rogue regimes, which shows how their actions further a well-conceived strategy while American vacillation and inconsistency show our lack of anything like a big-picture plan.
Rogue Regimes: How the Axis Uses Proxies to Win
“I’ve been known to be an optimist, but here are the Russians sending [the Syrians] up-to-date missiles, continued flights of arms going into Syria. Putin keeps our secretary of state waiting for three hours. . . . It doesn’t lend itself to optimism, all it does is delay us considering doing what we really need to do. The reality is that Putin will only abandon Assad when he thinks that Assad is losing. Right now, at worst it’s a stalemate. In the view of some, he is succeeding.”
—JOHN McCAIN1
“China should be named and shamed for its role in enabling North Korea to remain
