Obama, the offshore balancer

In Principles of War, Carl von Clausewitz states as his second rule governing strategy that a concentration of power against the enemy force is crucial to victory, as well as a willingness to suffer setbacks in strategically secondary engagements. 

Many historical leaders have disregarded this principle and opted to commit important assets to sideshows of little strategic consequence. To the chagrin of Republicans, former US president George W Bush was one of them. 

Phillip II had his Netherlands, Napoleon had his Portugal, Winston Churchill had his Gallipoli and the 43rd administration had the "global war on terror". 

In this conflict, the elite of the US Army was bogged down in the Iraqi insurgency for the best part of a decade, with its intelligence distracted with such "vital" theatres as Afghanistan, Somalia or the Sahel. 

While the struggle against terrorism certainly merited attention from the US defense establishment after 9/11, Washington’s most important challenges were the rabidly anti-American stance of Iran or the growth in power of China. 

Even rogue states like North Korea or Venezuela were more strategically sensitive than the deserts where extremist rejects went to fight their jihad. Terrorists were at best a political nuisance - a threat which paled in comparison to Iran's destabilizing posture in the Middle East. The latter threatens America's, its allies' and the world's oil supplies and important commercial sea lanes. Equally economically and geopolitically disruptive would be any conflict involving China. 

Invading Iraq actually resulted in the strengthening of Iran's regional influence, and running two wars while in the middle of an economic crisis increased China's financial leverage over the United States. Destroying al-Qaeda might have been a tactical victory in the global political stage but it was a strategic defeat in what is ultimately a multipolar race for resources and influence. 

Devising strategy

Since the end of the Cold War, different schools of thought have debated what should be America's strategic doctrine in a post bipolar world order. The military seems to be divided between basing its doctrine on "Offshore Control" and on the "Air-Sea Battle" concept. 

The former seeks to emulate Britain's centuries old strategy of keeping the European continent divided by organizing coalitions against whatever hegemonic power is on the rise. The latter is a direct move away from counter-insurgency and counter-terrorist concerns and back to traditional conventional forces aimed at countering A2D2 (anti-access area-denial) doctrine, used by China. 

Offshore Control (OC) would base America's safety on a combination of its capabilities with those of its regional allies, wherever threats might emerge and seek only limited capabilities and operational resources from the three branches of the military. 

Air-Sea Battle (ASB) would demand that America matched the capabilities of its most direct rivals so as to be able to confront them and defeat them entirely. OC is more of a containment approach seeking limited results, the ASB approach seeks instead to clearly defeat the enemy which implicitly would require the decisive destruction of its command and control infrastructure.

Key decisions by the current administration however, have put America inexorably on the path to Offshore Balancing: 

Firstly the 'pivot to Asia'. Asia is the largest, richest, most populated continent on the planet. If there is one continent a maritime power should not be able to control, that is the biggest portion of the 'old world'. America's wounded pride in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan does not occur by chance. Rather, Korea's 'paper tiger' went to Asia to discover that deploying an army in the 'East' does not produce the same results as periodical interventionism in the western hemisphere or decisive participation in the European theatre. Thus the choice to focus on Asia is a long-term investment in limited capabilities. 

Secondly, some have said that Obama is a lawyer and will therefore always seek to cut a deal. Indecision or not, Obama "settled" on Syria, tried to settle on 'New Europe' and may yet come to settle on the Iranian nuclear programme. Whether a policy of compromise is the most sensible is yet to be determined. For the foreseeable future however, America will have no choice but to deal with an Asian continent, defined by the grand bargains struck by America's 44th President. 

Thirdly, the nomination of Chuck Hagel, a realist Republican, to succeed equally pragmatic Robert Gates and minister of defense, is a clear attempt to reform a bloated department. With the highest public debt in history, the US can simply no longer afford the luxury of fighting simultaneous wars and controlling all the oceans. 

In its heyday, under former minister of defense Donald Rumsfeld, spending went back to Cold War-era levels and the Pentagon's influence in decision-making was felt to such a great extent, that foreign policy was partly driven by the department's agenda. 

The campaigns throughout the Islamic world have nevertheless been the Pentagon's undoing in that they emptied the federal treasury. A bad move which left America ill prepared for the 2007/8 economic crisis. 

Offshore Control would thus replace old concepts like Air-Land Battle and Massive Retaliation which had been designed especially to deal with the USSR. They would also replace Counterinsurgency and Long War concepts specifically designed to handle terrorism and insurgency during the 2000s. 

Another liberal empire tipping the scale

On the foreign policy front, Offshore Control increasingly resembles Offshore Balancing. The latter doctrine was used by Britain to prevent the emergence of a single European continental hegemon and allied England with the enemies of the Habsburgs, then those of Napoleon and finally those of Hitler. 

The English coat of arms still bears the memory of the Hundred Years War with the French fleur-de-lys, symbolizing the English monarchs' claim to the French throne. Following the failure of the enterprise, the English learned that a war of conquest on the mainland was not a logistically sound endeavor - at least not while simultaneously securing control of the Isles and keeping a strong navy. Thus London has since turned to a strategy of balancing against the hegemon of the day. 

Throughout the Cold War, the US worked to contain the USSR's influence in Asia but the anti-Marxist cordon sanitaire was not an optimal concept. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) were meant to keep Moscow isolated in Eurasia but the loss of Iran and the neutrality of India - who cooperated with the Soviet Union against China - always made containment a flawed concept. 

In order to replace it, Henry Kissinger planned to drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow so as to avoid the need to continue to finance half of Asia. Indeed, co-opting a barbarian tribe and having it fight by proxy the other hordes, emptied the need to sustain a big wall. This was accomplished with the rekindling of relations between Americans and Chinese in the 1970s. 

Today, with the Cold War behind us, a number of conflicts have re-emerged in which the US has found itself involuntarily involved:

• China and Japan appear to be stirring up old memories and regional influence games. Japanese think-tanks have been holding meetings with Vietnamese counterparts and Japanese normalization may bring with regular military sales to other Asian states. Washington may be interested in preserving its alliance with Japan but unlikely so for the sake of symbolic deserted islands.
• The US also faces a dilemma in the recurring tensions between India and Pakistan. India may be a democracy but Pakistan is the regime to rely on in matters of counter-terrorism. Diplomatically it was Pakistan which aided the US-China thaw and India has always cozied up to Russia's interests in Asia.
• Iran was an extremely useful ally in South Asia until the fall of the shah but has been a nightmare since. Because of its sheer size, Tehran has to be taken seriously but it is the Arab monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that keep the flow of oil stable and cooperate on fighting terrorism. Arab-Iranian tensions are a thorny dilemma.
• Because of its regional importance and control of the Suez canal, Egypt was always favored as a partner. The situation changed briefly when the US realized Israel could punch above its size and had to be assuaged rather than ignored. Today Washington gets the best of both worlds by keeping both countries as close partners. Nevertheless, ties with Israel have moved beyond geopolitical convenience and Egypt's fate is now uncertain until the dust of the Arab Spring settles.
• Tensions in the eastern Mediterranean inexorably involve Turkey, and another dilemma. Turkey is the natural regional hegemon and President Obama has sought to maintain a close dialogue with the AKP government in Ankara. But the 'Orthosphere' (Christian Orthodox) of Greece, Cyprus and Armenia are very much turkophobic and their lobbies wield more influence in Congress. As with Israel-Egypt, the US has been left with an impossible choice.
• Finally, there is Russia and its more important problem to date, anti-Russian sentiment in the Russian empire's former satrapies. The Baltic republics, Poland, Georgia and half of Ukraine clearly have a problem with Russia; will the US allow them to use NATO to solve it?

The Obama administration has so far tried to avoid making any long-term decisions on any of the aforementioned tensions. It limited the sale of arms to Taiwan but sought to deepen them with Vietnam: Containment this is not. It pushed for democracy in Islamabad but competed to sell military and nuclear technology to New Delhi. 

It sought equidistance from the GCC's intervention in Bahrain and Yemen, failed to support its military allies in Egypt and is working to reopen ties with Tehran but at the same time arms the GCC with high-tech military systems. The US "will always defend Israel" but criticizes the fall of a Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo. 

America allows NATO ally Turkey to kowtow to US protege Israel and to get closer to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, but the US also has its energy giants help Israel's and Cyprus's contentious offshore drilling. Offers Moscow a reset but confronts it several other instances. 

It may be clever diplomacy to "play both sides" but eventually, when tensions rise high enough, the White House may be confronted with a choice of "either or". In a policy of pure equilibrium, regional hegemons with the strategic upper hand such as China, India, Iran, Turkey or Russia would be countered by America and its respective balancing proxies Japan, Pakistan, the GCC, the Orthosphere and the Russophobes. 

This is at least what an Offshore Balancing/Control policy would look like. To the dismay of many, this balance of power in Asia will also mean preferential and continued supply of advanced weaponry to countries such as Pakistan and the GCC, as well as tensions with some of Asia's premier powers. The silver lining may be the preservation of the status quo, and with it - stability. 

Is Barack Obama a visionary? Perhaps not; he is however a cautious manager whose policies are eerily similar to those of many of his predecessors such as George H. W. Bush or Nixon. If Asia's rimland is this century's North European Plain, Obama may be on the right track to preserve America as the arbiter of this new order. 

At the end of the Hollywood production Charlie Wilson's War, a curious folktale is invoked about a Zen master and a little boy. The little boy goes through different moments of fortune and adversity in life with people around envying or pitying him accordingly. The Zen master though simply comments "we'll see". In the long term, the master is perceived to possess great wisdom because he recurrently chooses to not jump on every reactive bandwagon, and instead remain cautious. 

Obama is a Zen master himself. While it is true that he has no particular plan for the geopolitical and geostrategic future of the US, his determination to simply manage and react to events is purposelessly driving America to a very clear strategic paradigm: that of "Offshore Balancing". The question now is who will be America's Belgium - and will Washington emulate Britain in paying the ultimate price for defending it? 

Miguel Nunes Silva

Source: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-01-041113.html