AN EPIC CONFRONTATION FOR THIS CENTURY
Part 3: How Pyrrhic Victories Narrow Down the Broad American Imperium
The global geopolitics of the 21st century is bound to be shaped by “The Epic Confrontation”, an Iran-USA conflict built up by centuries of history in each nation and their broader regions leading to a showdown.
“The International Community”
The last annexations by the USA were at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War in 1898. Thereafter even military victories could not secure American power projection without the construction of strong cooperative alliances. Did the element of cooperation make the alliances a fact or were they a veil for empire in all but name?
A traditional attribute of empire is the payment of tribute by subjects to the empire. The vast global American alliance system, of coerced or eager alike, the international community, backed the USA once upon a time with support of US wages through more markets, support of US corporate profits and support of the US dollar as a global reserve currency.
Support of wages and profits were expressed by support of US corporate privileges but starting from the 1970’s, outsourcing made foreign support of US corporations contradictory with regard to whether profits were supported (yes!) or wages were (not so much!). This in turn sapped the support of American patriots for the “international community”.
Support of US corporate privilege and the US dollar are given by foreign nations due both to eager cooperation and intense fear of powerful coercion.
The eager cooperation comes because the US Navy secures the sea-lanes connecting global trade. This connects nations to a world market that did not exist to nearly the same degree beforehand.
The intense fear of powerful coercion exists because of fear of the US Armed Forces, a fear whose maintenance is a driving factor of US grand strategy. In spite of numerous military engagements, the fear of outright military assault is actually secondary in importance. With US military predominance long established in the seas, foreign nations have long backed the US dollar. With the US dollar long backed, it has long been a strong global reserve currency. With the US dollar as a strong global reserve currency, even hostile nations pull their punches.
What Happens Under Biden?
While funds and guns for rebels and air/special forces for muscle will allow the Biden Administration to “balance” Iran for a little while, it will be indeed only for a little while. Fear of Iran and Iran’s confidence in its ability to provoke fear will overcome manipulators in the background who cannot credibly back their position with a threat of regime change. The US Navy’s global string of pearls will be cut in the coasts of the Mideast. As the precedent set by the US Armed Forces in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq showed, a crisis will bring the warring parties to a peace table, the US will secure a face-saving pretense to withdraw and then all the power will flow into the hands of the other side.
The EU
The EU was set up by the European powers with active US encouragement to be the Europe-branch of the international community. Its three main sources of revenue were the member states of France, Germany and the UK. The other member states followed their lead so that the EU would have money to distribute to them.
The UK was the center of fan Atlanticist faction that favored greater deference for the world-level of international community; its island position encouraged this. Likewise the position of France and Germany on the mainland led to a Continentalist position that sought to reserve more power at the EU level.
EU obstruction of US policy, a flex of muscle by the Continental faction, provoked a crisis for the Atlanticists—greater ties across the Atlantic could be irredeemably sabotaged! This led Atlanticist politicians to build movements for their nations to exit the EU. Her the appeal of the common citizen was pitched in an isolationist-style nationalism but as with Trump, isolationism meant different things in the seats of power compared to the perspectives of the common citizen. The movers and shakers desired very much to substitute dependence on Europe for dependence on the rest of the world as opposed to traditional autarky.
Reactions by US policymakers to these radical Atlanticists was mixed—generally the Trump-aligned welcomed pressure on the EU while the Trump-opposed lamented the exit of an Atlanticist influence on the halls of EU power. With the Trump-opposed on the ascendant, the newly-elected Biden Administration may attempt to mediate reconciliation of the EU and the UK.
China
The rapprochement between Mao and Nixon in February 1972 heralded deepening ties between China and the USA. Soon thereafter, the first stumbling block was the June 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests where the US elite signaled support for a Westernizing faction opposed to the CCP leadership. China-US ties continued to deepen but the CCP started to consider alternatives. Challenging US domination of the Pacific and promoting overland routes through Central and Southeast Asia along with reconciliation with Russia where key.
By 2012, the US policy towards China was at a crossroads. US corporate outsourcing to China profited US corporations and enhanced a world market that backed the value of the US dollar as a global reserve currency. This contradiction in US interests was addressed by the maintenance of US-China ties at an economic and personal level while becoming more confrontational with China at a political and military level. Trump, by contrast, applied his signature “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”
A Biden Administration can be expected to be a continuation of the Obama Administration in policy and personnel regarding China as in other matters. Here changes at Biden’s end could provoke changes at China’s end. While confrontations in Korea, the South China Sea and Taiwan have a rather large element of bluff by both China and the US, overland routes could change the balance of power. Burma, Central Asia, Iran and Pakistan draw closer to China, giving it a way around a Pacific blockade by the US Navy.
The Final Push for “Yankee, go home!”
Germany’s Continentalist alignment and dependence on Russian petroleum products push the EU to sabotage US efforts to bluff Russia into compliance with the international community. A Biden Administration could push the EU and the UK to reconcile in the EU’s favor. A Brexit that’s a joke could demoralize radical Atlanticists from carrying out the exit of more nations form the EU. The EU would have to weigh its options carefully.
Here the ability of Iran to force the US out o of its region entirely and the ability of China to ignore the US presence in its region in all ways that matter are key to EU policymaking. Will EU desires to make Brexit a joke bring both the EU and UK quickly back into the international community? Or will the clock be drawn out allowing a balance of power to affect ongoing negotiations?
Elsewhere, occasional direct military occupations and far more frequent exploitation of the global market’s subjugation to the international community make the USA very influential in the politics of Latin America and Caribbean. A division of the international community between Eurasia and Africa on one hand the USA on the other could combine with enhanced American reluctance to establish military occupations along with global and public knowledge of this to push back US influence over Latin America and the Caribbean to such a low level, that such has not been seen since the US victory in the Spanish–American War in 1898.
From US Sovereign Territory to the Broader Imperium and Back
What makes what I described a distinct possibility? The United States Armed Forces military tradition goes from the time of accumulation of “sovereign territory”—lands annexed outright—to the time of the “Broader Imperium”, the accumulated land under the hegemony but not sovereignty of the United States Government. The successes in the accumulation of sovereign territory and later failures in projecting power into the Broader Imperium are due to the features of the relevant Powers of Scale. This sets the stage for the decisive conflict that decides whether the United States Government can continue to project power into the Broader Imperium, as before.
In the 21st century, this is an Iran-US conflict, a particular Epic Confrontation that will probably lead to rapid decline in the United States Government’s hegemony over the Broader Imperium. The reason why decline is quite probable is because the Descending Ladder of Defeat, the structural process whereby power is greatly limited as any great effort could escalate the war to the point of a Pyrrhic Victory, at best.
A Pyrrhic Victory, as is explained by Wikipedia, is as follows: Pyrrhic victory is named after King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose army suffered irreplaceable casualties in defeating the Romans at the Battle of Heraclea in 280 BC and the Battle of Asculum in 279 BC, during the Pyrrhic War. After the latter battle, the Greco-Roman historian Plutarch in his work Life of Pyrrhus relates in a report by Dionysius:
The armies separated; and, it is said, Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that one other such victory would utterly undo him. For he had lost a great part of the forces he brought with him, and almost all his particular friends and principal commanders; there were no others there to make recruits, and he found the confederates in Italy backward. On the other hand, as from a fountain continually flowing out of the city, the Roman camp was quickly and plentifully filled up with fresh men, not at all abating in courage for the loss they sustained, but even from their very anger gaining new force and resolution to go on with the war.
The structural process by which fear of Pyrrhic Victory drives the United States Government, in its command of the Armed Forces, down the Descending Ladder of Defeat is, as follows:
Nuclear warfare forms the absolute upper bounds to which war can escalate, upper bounds that must not be reached lest any victory be Pyrrhic.
Since war cannot be escalated beyond a certain point, the war is instead lost rather than a victory achieved at the unacceptable cost of a Pyrrhic victory.
The escalation of the current war, within this process, to the level that was reached during the last war, also a lost war, is also accounted by the political echelon as equivalent to a Pyrrhic victory, never mind the nuclear warfare that remains defined as a Pyrrhic victory on a more consistent basis.