In the decades since the end of the Cold War, the United States has stood mostly unmatched in its control of international politics. But as we head towards the middle of the 21st century, this unique position is increasingly being challenged by other rising powers throughout the world. Most Americans want their nation to conduct a foreign policy that is more responsive to domestic needs and one that is less likely to start costly, open-ended wars. In recent years, foreign policy analysts have had a difficult time trying to come up with a new American strategy (i.e. one that is neither a return to the old ways nor a complete withdrawal from the world). But the “openness strategy” proposed by Rebecca Lissner and Mira Rapp-Hooper in their book An Open World: How America Can Win The Contest For Twenty-First Century Order shows great promise. This week, we’ll examine the openness strategy and what that could mean for you.
What is (was) the Liberal International Order?
Bur first, let’s review what the prevailing foreign policy strategy has been for the last several decades. We’ve discussed the fundamentals of the Liberal International Order (LIO) before, but here is a quick refresher. This is the term for the international system created by the victorious nations of the Second World War. “Liberal” in this sense refers to free and open societies, which stands in opposition to the closed authoritarian systems that nations like fascist Italy and Nazi Germany tried to create. The LIO includes international organizations like the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization. All of these were designed to establish a global consensus of rules that nations should follow when interacting with other countries. These rules and norms include a prohibition on wars of territorial conquest, a preference for the free flow of goods and information, and unrestricted access to global waterways. In short, the goal of the LIO was to help create an open international system where no single nation could dictate regional or international commerce to its own benefit.
For many decades, the LIO helped create the global conditions for the dramatic revitalization of war-torn Europe, the economic and political development of nations throughout the world, and the lifting of billions of people out of poverty. But there have been significant shortcomings of this system as well. For one, unchecked free trade has substantially helped developing nations, but at the cost of some livelihoods here at home. In addition, the system has been dramatically undermined by failed attempts to force democracy on countries throughout the Middle East. And all throughout the last few decades, the LIO has allowed nations like China and Russia to abuse the open rules of the system to try to create an alternate version of international power in their own image. So with the Liberal International Order clearly outdated, what are nations like the United States to do? Retreating from the world isn’t an option anymore, so what alternate strategies are possible?
UN Security Council power favors the old reality, not the new one.
An Openness Strategy
America must have a grand strategy to help compete in an increasingly crowded international stage. One of the most promising solutions is that proposed by Rebecca Lissner and Mira Rapp-Hooper in their book An Open World: How America Can Win The Contest For Twenty-First Century Order. Their solution is to pivot America’s foreign policy focus away from the failed policies of complete global dominance and towards a more manageable goal of maintaining global openness. As the authors put it, “Openness seeks, first and foremost, to guarantee American security and prosperity by preventing rivals from establishing closed spheres of influence, characterized by hierarchical dominance of weaker states by mightier ones. Openness therefore requires the political independence of all states, free access to the global commons of sea and space, transparent and effective international institutions, extension of open governance to new domains like technology and climate, and support for existing democracies.” So what does that mean? It means that, rather than trying to maintain our status as the sole dominant power in the world (which is no longer feasible), America should instead focus on preserving the values of American power. Those values (usually) being things like the respect for national sovereignty, institutions of global cooperation like the United Nations, and the unrestricted flow of goods and information across the sea and through space.
But this theory does not necessarily mean that all nations should follow the American model. In their view, “An openness strategy rejects the notion that regional states should choose between the United States and China. It instead incentivizes them to ditch great-power dominance in favor of agency.” This means that America and its allies should work together to create an international atmosphere that allows nations to choose their own economic and political paths. China is increasingly looking to dominate the Asia-Pacific region and Russia is attempting to regain its former domination of Europe. An openness strategy would prevent those nations from using their power to close down sections of the world from economic competition. Basically, where nations like China are looking to shut out the rest of the world from free and open competition, an openness strategy would try to block those measures.
This is one such example of a nation attempting to close off access to regional markets.
What would openness look like?
To see what this would look like, let’s check out some real world examples happening right now. For years, China has been building islands in the South China Sea in an attempt to gain complete control of that waterway. If China was able to complete this task, it could easily shut down sea travel in the entire region (which controls nearly one third of all global sea trade). With that control comes the ability to raise tariffs on sea trade, force foreign companies out of Asia, and blockade nations like Vietnam until they give China preferential treatment. China has also been hard at work creating what has been called the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). This massive development project is intended to create Chinese dominance of both land and sea routes throughout nearly all of Asia. One of the ways in which China has been using BRI to close off parts of the world is through predatory lending practices in central Asia and Africa. This is where China gives a generous loan to a developing country for the purpose of building infrastructure such as bridges or ports. Then, China uses extremely high interest rates to force the borrowing nation to default on the loan. Once that happens, China seizes the land and buildings for its own uses. This is known as debt-trap diplomacy and has allowed China to control dozens of ports in countries all over the world.
An openness strategy would seek to prevent China from closing off sea shipping lanes by continuing freedom of navigation maneuvers and rallying other nations to block China’s territorial claims at the United Nations. It would also place a much greater emphasis on working with non-democratic nations like Vietnam or the Philippines in achieving these goals. America’s previous foreign policy would often try to prioritize democracy promotion in these countries, but an openness strategy would place a much greater emphasis on ensuring that nations (whether democratic or not) allow for the unrestricted access to goods and information from other nations. For example, China has nearly perfected the creation of a closed internet service that is inaccessible to the rest of the world. An openness strategy would prevent the creation of a “splinternet” where different countries or regions have their own closed off internets that cannot be accessed by outsiders. Finally, an openness strategy works to ensure the political independence of all nations, so actions like Russia’s annexation of parts of Ukraine or China’s political pressure on Taiwan would not be tolerated.
The Nine Dash Line: How China seeks to control 1/3rd of all global shipping.
How would this benefit the average American?
Of all the foreign policy decisions that the United States could make, the selection of a grand strategy spanning decades is probably the most important and most impactful. But it’s also extremely vague and difficult to point to specifics. However, consider the political and economic implications if large sections of the global economy were completely cut off from Asia. If China were to close off the economies of nations like Vietnam, Malaysia, or the Philippines from global competition, that would have disastrous consequences for American companies and any American worker whose employment is impacted by Asian markets. Overall, the United States and its main trading partners would be placed in a tremendous disadvantage as much of the world’s economic power shifts away from American and Europe towards Asia.
There are disturbing security aspects here as well. If China is able to close off the region to economic competition, it would have the power to remove American military competition as well. The United States could then be almost entirely forced out of the Asia-Pacific region, leaving very little standing between Chinese dominated waters and the American homeland. Any sort of military attack is (probably) unlikely in this scenario, But China could also attempt to gain technology dominance and use information infrastructure like 5G to push for its interests anywhere in the world. These worst-case scenarios could be mitigated by focusing American foreign policy on preventing scenarios where nations like China or Russia have the ability to close down information streams or dominate other countries.
The Bottom Line
America desperately needs a new foreign policy strategy. Returning to the old system of total American dominance is not feasible, and retreating from the world completely is a recipe for disaster (see WWI and WWII). That being said, the openness strategy as proposed by Lissner and Rapp-Hooper provides a new foreign policy strategy that is much more realistic and ethical. It is realistic because it accepts that other nations (especially China) will rise to become at least as powerful as the United States in many ways. This is unavoidable short of catastrophic war. It compensates for this reality by instead looking to maintain the values of American power such as the respect for national sovereignty and unrestricted sea and space travel. Even if American power is less potent towards the end of the century, the legacy of American power can live on. The strategy is more ethical because it does not place an emphasis on forcing all nations to become democracies. We have seen how democracy promotion can lead to humanitarian disasters when regime change is imposed on other countries. This strategy recognizes that not all people in the world prefer American democracy. Overall, an openness strategy would be a cheaper, easier, and far more effective foreign policy than what America has tried before.