The Benefits of Multipolarity

Daniel Larison:

Christopher Layne reviewed John Lewis Gaddis’ George F. Kennan: An American Life for the new issue of The National Interest. The entire review is excellent, but I wanted to draw attention to Layne’s discussion of Kennan and multipolarity:

Here, Kennan understood that what international-relations scholars call polarity—the number of great powers in the international system—is a crucial factor for grand strategy. He realized that in the post–World War II bipolar system of two superpowers, there were no other independent poles of power to which the United States could devolve the responsibility for containing the Soviet Union, which meant that it would have to bear the lion’s share of the burden. Nor, in fact, did most policy makers in Washington wish it to be otherwise because they preferred a subordinate Western Europe to one that was a geopolitical equal of the United States. Simply put, most of them abhorred and opposed multipolarity. This, of course, is still U.S. policy even in today’s—rapidly waning—unipolar world.
Kennan was a rarity among U.S. policy makers and grand strategists during the last seventy years. He appreciated that multipolarity favored the United States because, in a world of several great powers, others could assume many of the strategic burdens that otherwise would weigh on the dominant power [bold mine-DL]. Although Kennan was unusual in seeing the advantages of restoring multipolarity, he was not alone. John Foster Dulles, President Eisenhower’s secretary of state, also championed a united Europe that no longer would need to rely on U.S. forces for its security. As Dulles said, “We want Europe to stand on its own two feet.” He added the United States provided Western Europe with perverse incentives to avoid the necessary steps to achieve political unity. The Marshall Plan and NATO, said Dulles, “were the two things which prevented a unity in Europe which in the long run may be more valuable” than continuing subservience to the United States.

In the absence of a threat that justifies bearing the lion’s share of the burden, Americans are often told that the U.S. must remain a global hegemon for the sake of the “global commons” and to facilitate international trade, but these are more excuses than reasons for why so many politicians and policymakers recoil from the idea of real multipolarity in the world. The emergence of multiple centers of power in the world can reduce the burdens that the U.S. bears mostly on its own right now, which will allow the U.S. to focus more of its attention and resources on specifically American interests. The maintenance of global hegemony is detrimental to the interests of the United States.

This seems blatantly obvious to me.  Why should the U.S. bear the burden of protecting shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean when Europe and India and China and Australia all are free riding?  Why should the U.S. bear the expense of defending western Europe?  Why should we spend so much money, blood and toil the Middle East when China and Europe use most of that oil?  Well actually, we are still too dependent on foreign (read Canadian, Mexican and Venezuelan oil), so oil price spikes still hurt us.  The fact of the matter is, with our continental isolation and our ICBMs, we could easily defend the United States while letting other developed nations defend themselves.  We can always come to the aid of our allies who are threatened by invasion, but we don't need to spend ourselves to oblivion trying to run the world.  It obviously doesn't benefit our manufacturing base by protecting trade routes around the world.