The Seven Great Powers Walter Russell Mead
Global Power Rankings for 2015
1) USA
The United States has been the most powerful country in the world for close to a century; not surprisingly, 2014 saw no change. If anything, despite renewed geopolitical challenges from countries like Russia and Iran, and the continuing economic development of China, America’s place at the top of the global pecking order seems more secure at the end of 2014 than at the beginning.
In 2014, American power grew despite some foreign policy errors. There is nothing unusual about that. The ultimate sources of American power – the economic dynamism of its culture, the pro-business tilt of its political system, its secure geographical location, its rich natural resource base and its profound constitutional stability – don’t depend on the whims of political leaders. Thankfully, the American system is often smarter and more capable than the people in office at any given time.
In 2014, America continued to power out of the recession faster than either Japan or the EU, while the fracking boom had a growing impact on the world’s economic and geopolitical balances. A newly assertive Japan and its growing relationship with India helped check China’s bid for regional supremacy, and falling oil prices in the last quarter of the year undermined the Iranian and Russian economies.
As is usually the case, America’s greatest foreign policy failures came in the Middle East. By tilting toward Iran even as the regional balance seemed to be shifting away from the Sunni Arab powers, the U.S. set off waves of hostility and apprehension among key regional allies. The explosive rise of ISIS, the end of the Morsi government in Egypt and the failure of U.S. efforts to broker a cease fire over the latest Gaza war thanks to Egyptian and Saudi resistance testified to a changing regional climate. Even so, nothing has yet challenged America’s role as the strongest and most effective outside power in this strategic region.
2) Germany
Not since the 1940s has Germany played such an important role in world politics. The rift between Russia and the West gave Germany the ability to determine the West’s response and gave it the decisive voice in the shaping of a new European security order. At the same time, Germany continued to benefit from its pivotal position within the European Union. It holds the balance between north and south and east and west in Europe, giving it a place in the European order that no other country can challenge.
That Germany has achieved this position without nuclear weapons, without spending much money on defense and without cripplingly large bailouts for its troubled European neighbors says much for the country’s ability to benefit from the logic of events and its geographic position. Nevertheless, many in Berlin find Germany’s new geopolitical prominence unwelcome. The responsibilities that accompany German power – to deal with the internal troubles of the EU and to handle the relationship with Putin – are hefty.
Wilhelmine Germany managed the tensions of its unique regional role as long as it was led by Otto von Bismarck, but even he blundered by annexing Alsace-Lorraine in 1871. In lesser hands, the German government was unable to execute the difficult balancing act to which Germany is condemned by geography. On the whole, German political leadership was exceptionally able from the foundation of the Bonn Republic through the fall of the Berlin Wall. After that, the record is mixed: Helmut Kohl’s disastrous mismanagement of the monetary consequences of German unification and the shift to the euro left his successors with an extremely difficult legacy, and Gerhard Schroeder, despite his successful domestic economic reforms, hardly covered himself with foreign policy glory on the way to his current job working for Vladimir Putin at Gazprom.
As she attempts to hold the European Union, the transatlantic alliance and the vision of a greater Europe (including Russia) together, Angela Merkel carries one of the most difficult portfolios of our time. Should she make substantial progress on the various items on her to-do list, she will be remembered as a great German chancellor, and Germany’s position at the center of the world system will become much more secure and, perhaps, less stressful. The odds are not necessarily in her favor; Germany’s choices are both consequential and difficult. That is what life in the big leagues is all about; it matters gravely when you get it wrong.
3) China
That China ranks third in the global power ranking while many Chinese nationalists passionately believe it ought to rank first is a source of much disquiet in Beijing, where the limits of China’s international position seem to be more fully understood than among the general public. Despite China’s immense accomplishments and extraordinary strengths, it punches and is likely for some time to punch well below its weight in international affairs.
There are three basic reasons for the shortfall. The first is China’s regional environment. Unlike the United States, surrounded by friendly states and wide oceans, or Germany (bordered by weak states), China is in a region of strong and in many cases growing and ambitious powers. While China sees itself as a world power, regional rivals like Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, Indonesia, Australia and Indonesia are intent on blocking its emergence as a regional hegemon and enjoy U.S. backing in this effort. As long as China is embroiled in controversy over its boundaries and as long as a network of neighboring states work to limit its influence, China simply cannot emerge as the global superpower it would like to become. Certainly Germany today enjoys more influence in its home region than China has in East Asia.
The second problem stems from the nature of China’s economic model and the facts of geography. As a manufacturing power, China depends on access to both raw materials and markets around the world. Critically, this includes a dependency on oil and gas from the Middle East. For the foreseeable future China is unable to protect the sea routes on which its economy depends; if it were to embark on building the kind of aggressive long range naval and aviation capacities necessary to control sea routes across the Pacific and Indian Oceans, it would strengthen the U.S./Asian coalition against it and provoke an arms race that even China’s mighty economy could not win. For the foreseeable future, China simply cannot guarantee the flow of necessary resources on which its economy depends; this reality limits the flexibility and freedom of Chinese policymakers.
Moreover, China’s very success as an exporting economy ties its fortunes to access to markets. If China could not sell to the Americas and to Europe, its factories could not pay their workers and its financial system would collapse. China’s strength and progress depends on the security of a world order largely designed by the United States, and there are no easy ways to get around the limits this places on China’s foreign policy choices.
The third problem is rooted in the nature of China’s extraordinary growth. China has grown so quickly and on such a vast scale that much of its social and economic infrastructure is under stress. The vast environmental cost of China’s grow-at-all-costs strategy is only one of the ways in which the consequences of quick success haunt China, Inc. The financial system has serious problems and has never been tested by a real downturn. The consequences of the one-child policy are now making themselves felt in ever less pleasant ways. The manufacture-for-export growth strategy can no longer serve as the basis for China’s development, but it is difficult to switch growth models — and it is far from clear exactly what comes next. These domestic constraints, and the political unrest that China’s leaders worry constantly about, also place limits on the country’s global freedom of action and reduce the size of China’s footprint in international politics.
The gap between the power that many Chinese think their country should have and the actual position of the country in world affairs is likely to remain a long term problem both for China’s leaders and their international partners. The drive within China for a more assertive national strategy is strong, and it is politically costly to resist it — but it is even costlier at this point for China to give in to nationalist demands that would wreck its relationships in the region and beyond.
4) Japan
Japan continues to be the most underrated country in conventional thinking. Economically stagnant, saddled with a U.S.-imposed pacifist constitution, falling under the shadow of a rising China and long accustomed to low key diplomacy, Japan is sometimes seen as an insignificant and fading power.
That perception is wrong; Japan remains a great power and thanks to a newly assertive and clever foreign policy, its weight in world affairs is actually growing. It has the world’s third largest economy, and while it just entered a recession, Japan’s level of technological sophistication and its global trade and production networks make it an extremely formidable force. In the 21st century, it will be technology rather than grunts on the ground that counts most in military competition; Japan’s ability to produce and deploy sophisticated military technology and to hold its own in the high tech arms competition of our time means that Japan has the potential to remain a major military power for a long time to come.
In 2014, Japan made strong moves to translate these advantages into geopolitical heft. It reinterpreted its understanding of its pacifist constitution to allow for “collective self-defense”–essentially rearmament plus closer relations with the militaries of friendly states. It (unsurprisingly) has a very technologically advanced military, and following an end to a decades old ban on arms exports it has begun to compete effectively in the global arms market, notably selling some sophisticated submarines to Australia.
Japan is moving to place itself at the center of set of regional defense relationships with countries like Vietnam, Australia and India that are similarly concerned with the rise of China. The prospects for a deeper relationship with India are especially bright; the economic complementarities and common geopolitical interests suggest that the Tokyo-Delhi relationship could be one of the fundamental realities shaping 21st century politics. Thanks in part to its ability to work with other powers in the region including India, in 2014 Japan stared China down; that is an accomplishment that lesser powers can only envy.
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/01/04/the-seven-great-powers/
Global Power Rankings for 2015
The United States has been the most powerful country in the world for close to a century; not surprisingly, 2014 saw no change. If anything, despite renewed geopolitical challenges from countries like Russia and Iran, and the continuing economic development of China, America’s place at the top of the global pecking order seems more secure at the end of 2014 than at the beginning.
In 2014, American power grew despite some foreign policy errors. There is nothing unusual about that. The ultimate sources of American power – the economic dynamism of its culture, the pro-business tilt of its political system, its secure geographical location, its rich natural resource base and its profound constitutional stability – don’t depend on the whims of political leaders. Thankfully, the American system is often smarter and more capable than the people in office at any given time.
In 2014, America continued to power out of the recession faster than either Japan or the EU, while the fracking boom had a growing impact on the world’s economic and geopolitical balances. A newly assertive Japan and its growing relationship with India helped check China’s bid for regional supremacy, and falling oil prices in the last quarter of the year undermined the Iranian and Russian economies.
As is usually the case, America’s greatest foreign policy failures came in the Middle East. By tilting toward Iran even as the regional balance seemed to be shifting away from the Sunni Arab powers, the U.S. set off waves of hostility and apprehension among key regional allies. The explosive rise of ISIS, the end of the Morsi government in Egypt and the failure of U.S. efforts to broker a cease fire over the latest Gaza war thanks to Egyptian and Saudi resistance testified to a changing regional climate. Even so, nothing has yet challenged America’s role as the strongest and most effective outside power in this strategic region.
Not since the 1940s has Germany played such an important role in world politics. The rift between Russia and the West gave Germany the ability to determine the West’s response and gave it the decisive voice in the shaping of a new European security order. At the same time, Germany continued to benefit from its pivotal position within the European Union. It holds the balance between north and south and east and west in Europe, giving it a place in the European order that no other country can challenge.
That Germany has achieved this position without nuclear weapons, without spending much money on defense and without cripplingly large bailouts for its troubled European neighbors says much for the country’s ability to benefit from the logic of events and its geographic position. Nevertheless, many in Berlin find Germany’s new geopolitical prominence unwelcome. The responsibilities that accompany German power – to deal with the internal troubles of the EU and to handle the relationship with Putin – are hefty.
Wilhelmine Germany managed the tensions of its unique regional role as long as it was led by Otto von Bismarck, but even he blundered by annexing Alsace-Lorraine in 1871. In lesser hands, the German government was unable to execute the difficult balancing act to which Germany is condemned by geography. On the whole, German political leadership was exceptionally able from the foundation of the Bonn Republic through the fall of the Berlin Wall. After that, the record is mixed: Helmut Kohl’s disastrous mismanagement of the monetary consequences of German unification and the shift to the euro left his successors with an extremely difficult legacy, and Gerhard Schroeder, despite his successful domestic economic reforms, hardly covered himself with foreign policy glory on the way to his current job working for Vladimir Putin at Gazprom.
As she attempts to hold the European Union, the transatlantic alliance and the vision of a greater Europe (including Russia) together, Angela Merkel carries one of the most difficult portfolios of our time. Should she make substantial progress on the various items on her to-do list, she will be remembered as a great German chancellor, and Germany’s position at the center of the world system will become much more secure and, perhaps, less stressful. The odds are not necessarily in her favor; Germany’s choices are both consequential and difficult. That is what life in the big leagues is all about; it matters gravely when you get it wrong.
3) ChinaThat China ranks third in the global power ranking while many Chinese nationalists passionately believe it ought to rank first is a source of much disquiet in Beijing, where the limits of China’s international position seem to be more fully understood than among the general public. Despite China’s immense accomplishments and extraordinary strengths, it punches and is likely for some time to punch well below its weight in international affairs.
There are three basic reasons for the shortfall. The first is China’s regional environment. Unlike the United States, surrounded by friendly states and wide oceans, or Germany (bordered by weak states), China is in a region of strong and in many cases growing and ambitious powers. While China sees itself as a world power, regional rivals like Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, Indonesia, Australia and Indonesia are intent on blocking its emergence as a regional hegemon and enjoy U.S. backing in this effort. As long as China is embroiled in controversy over its boundaries and as long as a network of neighboring states work to limit its influence, China simply cannot emerge as the global superpower it would like to become. Certainly Germany today enjoys more influence in its home region than China has in East Asia.
The second problem stems from the nature of China’s economic model and the facts of geography. As a manufacturing power, China depends on access to both raw materials and markets around the world. Critically, this includes a dependency on oil and gas from the Middle East. For the foreseeable future China is unable to protect the sea routes on which its economy depends; if it were to embark on building the kind of aggressive long range naval and aviation capacities necessary to control sea routes across the Pacific and Indian Oceans, it would strengthen the U.S./Asian coalition against it and provoke an arms race that even China’s mighty economy could not win. For the foreseeable future, China simply cannot guarantee the flow of necessary resources on which its economy depends; this reality limits the flexibility and freedom of Chinese policymakers.
Moreover, China’s very success as an exporting economy ties its fortunes to access to markets. If China could not sell to the Americas and to Europe, its factories could not pay their workers and its financial system would collapse. China’s strength and progress depends on the security of a world order largely designed by the United States, and there are no easy ways to get around the limits this places on China’s foreign policy choices.
The third problem is rooted in the nature of China’s extraordinary growth. China has grown so quickly and on such a vast scale that much of its social and economic infrastructure is under stress. The vast environmental cost of China’s grow-at-all-costs strategy is only one of the ways in which the consequences of quick success haunt China, Inc. The financial system has serious problems and has never been tested by a real downturn. The consequences of the one-child policy are now making themselves felt in ever less pleasant ways. The manufacture-for-export growth strategy can no longer serve as the basis for China’s development, but it is difficult to switch growth models — and it is far from clear exactly what comes next. These domestic constraints, and the political unrest that China’s leaders worry constantly about, also place limits on the country’s global freedom of action and reduce the size of China’s footprint in international politics.
The gap between the power that many Chinese think their country should have and the actual position of the country in world affairs is likely to remain a long term problem both for China’s leaders and their international partners. The drive within China for a more assertive national strategy is strong, and it is politically costly to resist it — but it is even costlier at this point for China to give in to nationalist demands that would wreck its relationships in the region and beyond.
Japan continues to be the most underrated country in conventional thinking. Economically stagnant, saddled with a U.S.-imposed pacifist constitution, falling under the shadow of a rising China and long accustomed to low key diplomacy, Japan is sometimes seen as an insignificant and fading power.
That perception is wrong; Japan remains a great power and thanks to a newly assertive and clever foreign policy, its weight in world affairs is actually growing. It has the world’s third largest economy, and while it just entered a recession, Japan’s level of technological sophistication and its global trade and production networks make it an extremely formidable force. In the 21st century, it will be technology rather than grunts on the ground that counts most in military competition; Japan’s ability to produce and deploy sophisticated military technology and to hold its own in the high tech arms competition of our time means that Japan has the potential to remain a major military power for a long time to come.
In 2014, Japan made strong moves to translate these advantages into geopolitical heft. It reinterpreted its understanding of its pacifist constitution to allow for “collective self-defense”–essentially rearmament plus closer relations with the militaries of friendly states. It (unsurprisingly) has a very technologically advanced military, and following an end to a decades old ban on arms exports it has begun to compete effectively in the global arms market, notably selling some sophisticated submarines to Australia.
Japan is moving to place itself at the center of set of regional defense relationships with countries like Vietnam, Australia and India that are similarly concerned with the rise of China. The prospects for a deeper relationship with India are especially bright; the economic complementarities and common geopolitical interests suggest that the Tokyo-Delhi relationship could be one of the fundamental realities shaping 21st century politics. Thanks in part to its ability to work with other powers in the region including India, in 2014 Japan stared China down; that is an accomplishment that lesser powers can only envy.
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/01/04/the-seven-great-powers/
