The Emergence of the Multi-Polar Authoritarian World

Historical perspective is in short supply today in official Washington. The prevailing foreign policy culture has our senior cabinet officers lurching from crisis to crisis, seemingly unguided by any firm strategic direction.

Even when a national strategy is articulated, as the Biden Administration finally did after more than three years in office, official actions belie the priorities laid out in the document. It seems that crisis management is much more fun than doing the hard work of long-range, strategic goal setting.

Congress is little better. The budgets that Congress passes are largely disconnected from what is happening around the world. And the routine fiscal irresponsibility now practiced by both political parties in the executive and legislative branches of government has yielded an unsustainable national debt. In 2024, interest payments on the debt are roughly equal to the entire Defense Department budget. Debt servicing at this level crowds out other worthy investments and makes the United States much weaker than it would be if our political class exercised even a modicum of fiscal discipline.

It is fitting, then, that this book takes a look backward at the factors and forces that created the world in which we now live. It provides a rear-view mirror image of how the multi-polar, authoritarian world came to be. It describes how the post-war Western system has become less credible and less important to the global south and to an aggressive collection of authoritarian regimes.

These countries – pariahs, emergent global south economies, and important regional powers – have created a shadow, parallel universe of economic, trade, and political institutions that is only vaguely appreciated by foreign policy elites in Washington.

This parallel order explains why Western economic sanctions do not have the ‘bite’ that they once did. It explains how Russia has been able to sell its oil and gas despite extreme measures to prevent such sales on the part of the West.

Our foreign policy elite grew up in a world characterized by two epoch-shaping events: the end of the Cold War and the 9/11 shock and  the resultant two decades of counter-terror war. It is no surprise that many of our officials are stuck in the mental amber of America’s unipolar moment and the tactical exigencies of the post-9/11 wars.

They are accustomed to a United States that is the unquestioned global leader, able to dictate its own terms to the world, and willing to back up those terms with extreme sanctions and awesome military force when required or desired.

Official Washington also underestimates the singular importance of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis on most of the world. Firstly, the world mostly blamed the United States for this economic catastrophe. Secondly, the crisis eroded global confidence in Western financial institutions and rules. Thirdly, it led many countries to lessen their exposure to U.S. markets and to establish new structures for managing economic activity that relied far less (or not at all) on Western institutions and rules. The global financial crisis had wide-ranging political and economic impacts that remain unknown to many in official Washington.

One sees evidence of this attitude play out in our relations with Russia. Moscow was deeply affected by the global financial crisis, and it was a turning point for the Putin regime. After the crisis, Putin spurned liberal economists in his government and turned to command-economy advocates and to China as a more relevant model for Russia. Combined with the eastward expansion of NATO, the financial crisis caused Putin to turn inward and refocus his geo-politics toward Russia’s near abroad, China, and the Middle East.

Similarly, Washington has struggled to cope with the aftermath of the October 2023 Hamas terror attacks inside Israel. In respect to the war in Gaza, American officials seem surprised that our close ally Israel views the conflict very differently than how it is seen in Foggy Bottom and in the Pentagon. Israel sees a regional war, fomented by Iran operating through its proxies. Iran and Israel agree on one thing about this war: It is a proxy war between the United States and Iran. Only in Washington does this obvious fact escape attention. The Biden White House’s desire to contain the conflict makes sense but one had better come to terms with the extent of the war one is trying to contain.

Further, the Israeli government appears reluctant to take operational military advice from a Pentagon that spent more than two decades flailing and failing strategically in Iraq and Afghanistan. Current Pentagon and National Security Council officials seem genuinely stunned by the Israeli attitude shunning advice from its number one military ally and benefactor.

Russia’s expansion of the war in Ukraine must be viewed as a strategic failure of deterrence on the part of the United States and the rest of NATO. Prior to February 2022, Washington’s interest in the war in Ukraine was episodic. After Russia’s major invasion, Washington awoke as from a deep slumber to discover a major war underway.

Explanations for President Putin’s expansion of the war in Ukraine abound but almost none point to any culpability on the part of NATO for its eastward expansion and its vague assurances to Ukraine about eventual membership. Russia has been clear for decades about its opposition to Ukrainian membership in NATO and the European Union.

This lack of introspection highlights another crucial feature of our current foreign policy culture, its blatantly uncritical nature. There is little or no self-examination of how events came to be or what role our policies may have played. What passes for critical thinking is really blame setting and the blame must always be assigned to and rest with the ‘other guy’. One sees this play out in the circular arguments of Washington officials on any given Sunday’s morning news programs.

This blindness extends to major historical shifts. Take the rise of China, for example. It should have been obvious since the 1990s that the PRC’s entry into the WTO had set off a massive shift in the global economy. In Washington, China’s rise was viewed as inevitable and as an unalloyed good, much like the expansion of NATO on the other side of the Eurasian continent. What could possibly go wrong in either case?

Belatedly, President Obama saw the shift and he argued for a ‘pivot to the Pacific’. He was correct to do so. More than a decade later, however, the ‘pivot’ looks more like a basketball ‘fake’ than a strategic shift. Congressional budgets have not permitted the Defense Department to realign allocations to the military services to support what is needed to prepare for conflict in the Pacific.

The Department of Defense itself has proven unable to establish a rigorous roles and missions review that would realign service budgets to posture for a war in Asia. As a general officer once told me, “The Pentagon is too busy playing kids’ soccer in the Middle East to deal effectively with China.”

Today, the Defense Department is overstretched and over committed and much of its budget is being invested in capabilities that will not help the United States win a war in the twenty-first century against a peer adversary. It is unfortunate and dangerous that the Biden-Harris Administration seems to believe its own rhetoric about the overwhelming superiority of the American military.

This is an irrational viewpoint that Biden and Harris share with Obama. Both Biden and Obama presided over a decline in Defense spending in real terms during their respective presidential tenures.

This overblown notion of military superiority has provided cover to cut the defense budget at a time when the world has become demonstrably more dangerous with the rise of aggressive, revanchist authoritarian regimes in China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

The State Department says the right things about the Indo-Pacific, but where does the secretary of state spend most of his time? In Europe and the Middle East. If you want to show me what is important to you, then show me how you spend your time and your money.

Clearly, the pivot to the Pacific is not really important, based on those measures. One could also mention the collapse of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which died ignominiously during the 2016 presidential election, thanks to both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

This book provides perspective on the issues I have highlighted and many more. It is a significant contribution to our understanding of how we came to live in a multi-polar, authoritarian world. I urge you to read it and ponder its many lessons.

Brian J. Morra has 40 years of experience in general management, strategic planning, and business development in the aerospace and defense industry and as a board member in biotechnology, aerospace, academia, and sports management.