The issue of nuclear deterrence in the Korean peninsula is usually posed in terms of how reliably the United States and its key regional allies can deter an attack by North Korea. That has it exactly the wrong way around. The question is not whether the US can deter North Korea; that’s a triviality. The real question is whether North Korea can deter the United States.

As I’ve explained at length before, strategic nuclear deterrence is extraordinarily stable when both sides enjoy an assured second-strike capability, ie the ability to retaliate with a devastating counterblow after having absorbed a massive first-strike. Under highly asymmetric conditions, nuclear deterrence is much less stable. If the stronger party can expect a splendid first-strike to destroy the deterrent of the weaker party with certainty, it is hard to see how the latter can deter the former. Of course, certainty is unachievable in practice. The question is just how certain the stronger party has to be for deterrence to fail. Of all the asymmetric deterrence scenarios, the confrontation between the unipole and North Korea is arguably the most one-sided. If North Korea can deter the United States, then deterrence is unlikely to fail anywhere else as well.

So does the United States enjoy nuclear primacy over North Korea? Concretely, if President Trump demanded a military solution to the “problem”, will the generals be able to put forward a viable operational plan to disarm North Korea without exposing the United States and its allies to catastrophic risk? Can the US take out the entire North Korean arsenal in counterforce strike before they have a chance to retaliate?? As usual, the devil is in the details.

The United States would enjoy nuclear primacy over North Korea if it could be near-certain of destroying North Korea’s nuclear capabilities in a splendid first-strike, or if it could be near-certain that it will be able to intercept North Korean missiles before they stuck populous cities and strategic bases of the United States and its regional allies. So we need to evaluate the capabilities of the both the United States and North Korea. Moreover, in order to assess the likelihood of deterrence failure, we also need to assess the balance of resolve. Having a first-strike capability is one thing; having the willingness to carry out a splendid first-strike quite another—much more is involved than simply hard power capabilities.

According to US intelligence, North Korea has an arsenal of some 60 odd nuclear warheads. More importantly, in the assessment of the intelligence community, North Korea has achieved miniaturization, ie they have figured out how to make the warheads small enough to mount them on an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). The beleaguered state’s gains in missile knowhow have also crossed a critical threshold. In the assessment of analysts at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, the July 4 test launch suggested that the missile had a range of 10,000km, putting the US west coast and midwest within reach. On July 28, North Korea fired a second test missile in a near-vertical trajectory that reached an altitude of 3,500km before falling harmlessly in the Sea of Japan. Analysts reckon that even New York, Boston and DC are now within operational reach of North Korean missiles. It’s still not clear whether they have figured out how to ensure that the warhead doesn’t burn up upon reentry into the dense lower atmosphere. It shouldn’t take long for them to achieve that capability. In any case, US strategists must assume that the North Koreans have the capability to strike the most populous US cities and, a fortori, US military bases in the region and the cities of its regional allies.

Can the United States be near-certain that its theater and intercontinental missile defense systems will be able to intercept North Korean missiles? The short answer is no. Of the last 5 tests of the ICBM ballistic missile defense system, 3 have failed. Theater missile defense (TMD) may perform better under test conditions, but is likely to fare even worse under actual warfighting conditions because North Korea has many more short-range platforms to strike Japan and especially South Korea (where it can even use artillery to deliver nuclear payloads) and they can deploy many more decoys to distract the systems. North Korea also has electronic warfare capabilities that can potentially interfere with TMD systems.

On the other hand the United States has a formidable repertoire of counterforce capabilities. The United States can use low-orbit platforms like satellites, air-breathing unmanned platforms (ie surveillance drones), and manned fixed-wing aircraft to generate near-continuous targeting solutions. The US can utilize a full-spectrum of air-, land- and sea-based launch platforms to take out North Korean targets. Lieber and Press (2017) have shown that North Korea would find it hard to ensure the survivability of its nuclear deterrent against the United States since the US can substitute seamlessly between multiple platforms for cueing, targeting, and strike solutions (“fire-control solutions”). In other words, the United States enjoys nuclear primacy over North Korea in the sense that the US can carry out a splendid first-strike against the North Korean arsenal with near-certainty.

Lieber and Press (2017)

Lieber and Press (2017)

But the problem is that the balance of resolve favors North Korea. No conceivable interest of the United States or its regional allies can be served by exposing themselves to North Korean nuclear strikes even an iota. Even though the US could take it out on demand, the very existence of the North Korean deterrent means that Japan and South Korea would resist a preemptive strike against North Korea. US assurances that the risk is small are quite unlikely to satisfy Seoul and Tokyo. Both allies would expect compelling reasons why they must run even a small risk of a nuclear attack.

Put another way, the United States is deterred because North Korea hasn’t raised the stakes enough to threaten a vital interest of South Korea and Japan. It is in the US interest to prevent a North Korean deterrent capable of striking US cities. But the US would find it impossible to convince Seoul and Tokyo that they need to run the risks necessary to achieve that goal. The United States cannot find a persuasive reason because there isn’t one. So much for nuclear primacy.

War-making capabilities of states are very hard to measure. Even sophisticated metrics of national material capabilities are wildly insufficient to predict the outcome of wars. Some states punch far above their weight, while others routinely underperform expectations based on national material capabilities.

Prussia and later Germany in the classical European balance of power, and Israel in the post-colonial Middle East are in the first category. Surrounded by hostile states and with neither the resources nor the manpower to win long, drawn-out wars of attrition, the militaries of both states cultivated an art of war that sought to front-load conflicts and seek the decisive victory. At the geostrategic level, both sought the patronage of wealthy maritime powers—Great Britain for Prussia and the United States for Israel—who bankrolled their arsenals and provided economic and diplomatic support. These comprehensive strategies for survival allowed these modern day Spartas to prevail against gangs of larger and more populous neighbors.

States that punch below their weight include Spain in the seventeenth century and Russia in the late nineteenth. Imperial Spain made it a habit of losing to ostensibly weaker powers after a much smaller English fleet sunk the Spanish Armada in 1588. In 1905, Russia lost the first great power war of the century to Japan, a state with a vastly smaller material endowment. In the present day, all concerned agree that, if it ever came to blows with Iran, Saudi Arabia would lose hands down, despite its almost 2-to-1 advantage in economic size.

Despite these anomalies, it is still largely true that states with greater war potential can expect to prevail against states that are relatively less well-endowed. By war potential, I mean the size and sophistication of the economy, size and skill-set of the population, and national endowments of arable land, iron ore, rubber, coal, oil and gas et cetera.

In the Second World War, once Hitler failed to capitalize on the July results of Operation Barbarossa and the US emerged as an ally of the Soviet Union, the outcome was overdetermined by the Allies’ crushing advantage in material capabilities. The United States and the Soviet Union could field many more rifles, tanks, field guns, warplanes and fighters than the Germans. On the Pacific front, Japan had no choice but to surrender, precisely because of its material inferiority. Similarly, in World War I, the Americans’ credible promise to land a million troops on the continent directly led to the November Crisis of 1918 and with it the capitulation of Germany. The Germans simply did not have the wherewithal to mount another Spring Offensive.

But let me not belabor the point. Material advantage matters. The question is how to measure it. Organski has argued that GDP is an excellent metric. The reason is that it captures a number of things that are relevant to the war-making capabilities of a state. Unless a state has well-functioning institutions, large material endowments, and a large, skilled populace, it is unlikely to have a very large economy. Obviously, this doesn’t work at every level. For instance, a middle power with a very large GDP due to a especially large endowment of crude oil is unlikely to be very powerful—think Saudi Arabia.

But GDP is unlikely to catapult a state to the top ranks of global power unless it is broadly representative of national capabilties. Indeed, there are no counter-examples to be found in the modern period. And because the global balance of power is a game played by only the chosen few, it doesn’t matter much if our metric doesn’t apply to every state. Moreover, it can be shown that more complicated metrics do not materially alter our findings.

Many metrics include standing armies and military spending. For instance, the COW Index is a simple average of normalized indices for GDP, military personnel and military spending. Such metrics are good for capturing the military balance in the short run but are at best irrelevant, and at worst misleading, for the medium and long run. If you live in a tough neighborhood, a powerful standing army is certainly a must. But if you are offshore or if you are ‘hiding your strength and biding your time,’ you can afford to keep your power latent and call it forth as needed.[1] For instance, in 1939, the United States had the smallest standing army among the major powers. Yet every great power statesmen was well aware that the US was the strongest power in the system and that its weight would decisively alter the course of the war. What truly matters for the balance of global power is war potential, not extant military power.

We are used to thinking in terms of polarity—the number of great powers in the system, i.e., the number of states that can that can put up a fight with the strongest state in the system. With some quibbling, most realists would accept the usual characterization of the post-Soviet world as unipolar, the Cold War era as bipolar, and the European-dominated era before the end of the Second World War as multipolar.

In what follows, I will contest this characterization. I will argue that the world since the close of the nineteenth century has been near-unipolar; that if one studies the distribution of global power with a finer tool than counting the number of states that can put up a fight with the top-ranked power, one can discern continuity and change to an extraordinary degree; and that the near-unipolar world is coming to an end.

By near-unipolar, I mean something weaker than the statement that there is only one great power in the system. More precisely, by near-unipolar I mean that there is one especially strong state in the system so that there is absolutely no doubt about the identity of the top-ranked power.[2] And that the gap between the strongest state and others is so great that no state can hope to prevail against it in a war or an extended rivalry. Importantly, unlike the definition of unipolarity, near-unipolarity does not require the absence of other great powers. Lesser great powers can and do exist in a near-unipolar world—they just have to worry a great deal about what the unipole has to say before they decide on any matter that has a bearing on the world situation. A near-unipolar world is a heliocentric system—the international system is centered on a single power.

The tool that I have in mind is the Ray-Singer Index.[3] It is effectively a normalized version of the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index that is used to measure concentration in a system (such as an industry or a balance of power system). The Herfindahl–Hirschman Index is the sum of squared percentage shares of the units in the system. The Ray-Singer Index normalizes it such that it takes a value between 0 and 1. It attains the value 0 if every unit has an equal share, and the value 1 if a single unit accounts for 100%. It has the property that any upward redistribution of shares from lower-ranked to higher-ranked units increases the value of the Index. And it depends continuously on the share of very unit and treats them symmetrically. Formally, it is given by

where N is the number of units in the system, which for us will be the number of major powers. The numerator corresponds to the observed deviation from equality and the denominator corresponds to the maximum possible standard deviation from equality.

For a system with just two units, a little bit of algebra shows that the Index equals the difference of the shares of the two units. That is, RSI = s – (1-s), where s is the share of the larger unit. Note also that, for two power systems, the Index is a linear function of the share of the larger state. Figure 1 shows a schematic typology for two-power systems.

Figure 1: Ray-Singer Indices for Two Power Systems.

Figure 2 shows the evolution of the Index during the Cold War. According to our typology, the Cold War-era was decisively near-unipolar: The Index averaged 44% during 1948-1989. Equivalently, the United States accounted for 72% of total great power GDP. The lowest value reached by the Index was 39%, equivalent to a US share of 69% of total great power GDP. We can see that the tide began to turn against the Soviet Union in the late-1970s. By 1989, the United States had reattained the primacy it lost in the mid-1950s.

Figure 2: Ray-Singer Index, US and USSR (1948-1989).

How does Schweller’s tripolar interwar system fare by our measure? Figure 3 shows a schematic typology for three power systems. We see that the index is not enough to identify the polarity. But if the broad contours are known, then the evolution of the system may be examined by charting the Index.

Figure 3: Ray-Singer Indices for Three Power Systems.

Figure 4 shows the evolution of the Index for Schweller’s three power system during the leadup to the Second World War. Where Schweller sees tripolarity, the Index shows unambiguous near-unipolarity.

Figure 4: Ray-Singer Index for the Interwar Three Power System.

Figure 5 shows the Index for world powers (US, UK, USSR, Germany, Japan and France) and Eurasian powers (UK, USSR, Germany, Japan and France) in 1928-1940. We see that Eurasia was by itself quite competitive. But the inclusion of the United States dramatically increases our measure of concentration for the world system as a whole. That is, during the 1930s, the world as a whole was considerably more concentrated than Eurasia. In other words, it was a near-unipolar world.

Figure 5: Ray-Singer Index for 1928-1940.

What about the classical world? Surely, the world was decidedly multipolar before World War I? Not quite. The Index reveals that the world was indeed very competitive in the 1870s. But starting in the 1880s, the United States reshaped the structure of the international system. Even as Europe remained decidely balanced, the world itself became more and more imbalanced. By 1910, global power potential was twice as concentrated at the world level as at the European level.[4] And the reason was clear: A continental-sized superstate of hitherto unimaginable power potential had suddenly arrived on the world stage. The world was already near-unipolar before the collective suicide of Europe began on the fields of Flanders.

Figure 6: Ray-Singer Index for 1870-1927.

In the throes of the Belle Époque, Europeans marveled at the astounding scale of American wealth but were generally sanguine about the geopolitical threat from across the Atlantic. Once they had slaughtered each other’s young at sufficient scale, they finally awoke to the dawn of a new order—Adam Tooze shows how dramatically European attitudes changed in 1916.[5] Europe, for centuries the unabashed master of the planet, had finally been provincialized. Victor and vanquished alike marched to Washington to take orders. Henceforth, Washington would be calling the shots.

Examining the entire postwar period through this lens and considering a broader set of major powers—US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, India, China and Japan—we see that the US share of major power GDP tracked the Index closely until 1990. (See Figure 7.) Concurrently, the Index for the rest of the major powers was essentially flat until then—Eurasia was very competitive even as the world remained tightly centered. Then, in 1990, the Eurasian Index took off dramatically and kept climbing, taking over the World Index in 2006. After 125 years, Eurasia had finally become more concentrated than the world.

Figure 7: Ray-Singer Index for 1950-2008.

In order to see what’s going on after 1990, we decompose the Eurasian Index. Figure 8 displays three Ray-Singer Indices. The blue one is for the seven major powers (US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, India, China and Japan). The orange one excludes the US. And the yellow one excludes both the US and China.

Figure 8: Ray-Singer Indices for 1950-2008.

We’ve seen this film before. It’s the same pattern we saw a hundred years ago and for the same reason: The rise of a continental-sized superstate that dramatically changes the distribution of global power. But this time, instead of a multipolar world giving way to a near-unipolar one, a near-unipolar world is giving way to a bipolar one. Perhaps this essay should’ve been titled The Rise and Fall of the Near-Unipolar World.

——–

[1] The Chinese like to strategize with pithy slogans. As far as they can go, ‘hide your strength and bide your time’ was better than most.

[2] In multipolar systems on the other hand, there is often disagreement as to which power is the dominant one. This is because states differ along different capabilities. In the classical era (1871-1914), Britain was the dominant maritime power but Germany had the most powerful land army on the continent.

[3] Ray, James Lee, and J. David Singer. “Measuring the concentration of power in the international system.” Sociological Methods & Research 1.4 (1973): 403-437.

[4] Unfortunately, Russian GDP data is only available from 1948 onwards.

[5] Tooze, Adam. The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931. Penguin, 2014.

The Second World War—the hegemonic war that forged the international order that has endured for seventy years—was in reality two separate wars. The war in the Pacific had independent origins, which are much more difficult to pin down than the European war. In the present essay, we will examine the origins of the Pacific War. Why did Japan and the United States go to war? What led Japan to attack an adversary many times more powerful than itself?

The Pacific War was a side-show to the polar war in Europe. On the continent, Germany reinitiated a struggle that it had lost not twenty years before. But this time, Hitler held the reigns of German foreign policy. And he was playing for much higher stakes. Germany’s war aims were no longer confined to eliminating France and Russia as great powers and establishing German military supremacy on the continent. Hitler wanted to forge a continental superstate that would be competitive with the United States.* To achieve this goal, the Nazis set upon a genocidal project to clear a vast swarth of territory to the east to make way for German homesteaders.

As opposed to World War I, when Germany won in the east but lost in the west, in World War II, the campaign in the west reached a favourable decision fairly rapidly; allowing the real war to begin in the east. Hitler lost his nerve after the stunning success of the initial campaign. He underestimated the offensive capability of the Wehrmacht and directed it to secure the granary of Ukraine; instead of driving straight to Moscow, as the generals demanded and the men expected. When, after the conquest of Ukraine, Hitler ordered his armies back to Moscow, the cold November rain made the roads impassable to motorized traffic and grounded them to a halt.

After the November crisis, it became a war of attrition. From then on, the die was rigged in favour of Soviet Russia owing to its greater war potential. And once the United States became a Soviet ally, the Allies’ crushing advantage in industrial capability was bound to prove insurmountable. So the Second World War was, in fact, decided very early on.

In the Pacific, the air assault on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor was Japan’s desperate response to the American embargo that guaranteed to eliminate Japan as a great power.

Japanese policymakers knew that an all-out war with the US was utterly hopeless. They reckoned that by a combination of deterrence and appeasement, the United States could be brought to a negotiated settlement that would largely leave Japan in control of its region. Specifically, the Japanese were unwilling to accept the US demand that it withdraw the Kwantung army from the mainland. They wanted to keep at least some of their conquests on the mainland that they had acquired through years of hard fighting. But why on earth did they attack Pearl Harbor? Did they not understand that attacking the US’ main operating base in the Pacific guaranteed that the US would demand unconditional surrender?? And why was the US so insistent on pushing Japan off the mainland in the first place??

The answers are fascinating. The Japanese war council did not, in fact, decide on attacking Pearl Harbor at all. Admiral Yamamoto made the decision at the very last minute and he did not even inform the Cabinet! The only way to keep the Japanese war machine supplied with oil and rubber after the US embargo was to conquer the Dutch East Indies. This was the main goal of the Japanese war strategy. But under the existing war plan, the Imperial Navy’s supply lines would remain exposed to a local counter-attack by US forces located in the western Pacific. Yamamoto gambled that disarming America’s principal naval base in the Pacific would persuade the US to come to terms, instead of galvanizing it to launch an all-out war. Documentary evidence from the United States suggests that FDR would’ve found it very hard to go to war in Asia without a Japanese military assault on US forces. Yamamoto’s reckless gamble effectively terminated Japan’s career as a great power.

And why did the United States embargo Japan? Again, it was not a decision made at the top. It was Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Dean Acheson who gave the go ahead when FDR was away. When the President found out, he was furious. But being a consummate realist, he figured that back-tracking would signal weakness and let it stand.

But why was the United States considering an embargo on Japan in the first place?

The short answer is that the US was implacably opposed to Japan’s conquest of China. The Japanese had acquired Formosa (Taiwan) in the First Sino-Japanese War (1895), Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War (1905), and annexed Korea outright (1910), instead of maintaining it as a protectorate. After World War I, Japan absorbed German territories in the region. Although the US did force Japan to give up a number of positions acquired from the Russians, US policy in Asia consisted of dogged insistence on the Open Door—that no foreign power acquire a preponderant position in China—and little else. In particular, the United States did not forcefully oppose the annexation of Korea that gave Japan a substantial bridgehead on the mainland.

Japan had also established a naval alliance with Britain (1902). At the Washington Naval Conference (1922), the Americans asked the British to dissolve their military alliance with the Japanese in favour of a trilateral naval treaty that pinned the ratio of capital ships at 3:5:5 for Japan, Britain and the US. The rationale offered was that while Japan was confined to the western Pacific, both Great Britain and the United States had to operate in two oceans. Britain and Japan agreed to the terms on offer because they could see that competing for naval primacy with the United States would lead inevitably to financial ruin. During the interwar period, the US had vastly greater economic and financial resources than any other great power.

It has been said that the roots of hot wars lie in cold wars. This is truly the case with the Pacific War. The cold war between the United States and Japan began with the Japanese conquest of Manchuria (1931). The Kwantung army set up the Manchukuo State on the mainland; a puppet state run by the Japanese behind a Manchu façade. The expansion of Japanese influence in China was seen as inconsistent with the Open Door policy in the United States. The British on the other hand, were keen to maintain their alliance with the Japanese. The US responded with the Stimson Doctrine: The United States would refuse to recognize territories forcibly acquired by the Japanese.

Japan also demanded naval parity with the Atlantic powers. But Japanese expansion on the Chinese mainland prompted the US to reject Japanese demands. Japanese-American relations became even more hostile after Japan walked out of the London Naval Conference (1936), loudly declaring its intention to pursue unbounded naval armament.

The original Japanese interest in Manchuria had been to secure the Southern Manchurian railroad. But the Kwantung army found itself countering Soviet influence in Mongolia and getting pulled into security vacuums in northern China. Sino-Japanese relations had been hostile at least since World War I, when Japan presented the Twenty-One Demands. With Japanese penetration of northern China, they were increasingly conflictual. Skirmishes between the Kwantung army and Chinese forces became increasingly frequent, culminating with the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937).

Japanese forces defeated the regular Chinese forces quickly and decisively. Conventional war with field armies came to an end with the Battle of Nanking in December, 1937. But instead of accepting their Japanese overlords, the Chinese began a guerrilla war under the leadership of Chang Kai-Shek. Japanese forces now faced an adversary that refused to stand and fight. The occupying forces were spread thin and found their lines of communication constantly exposed to ambushes by small raiding parties. Indeed, the Japanese occupation was confined to a few cities.

Pacifiying a hostile land that was vastly larger and much more populous than their own was a near-impossibility. But Japanese industry needed access to China’s resources and markets during a world depression. And the Imperial Japanese Army had its own rapidly expanding demand for matériel in light of the worsening world situation. Besides, the army had gained the upper hand in Japanese high politics by prevailing on the mainland and it was not about to jeopardize its position by acknowledging defeat in the China war.

The United States was, of course, implacably opposed to Japanese domination of China. US policymakers quickly came around to arming Chang Kai-Shek. The war in China became a proxy war pitting Japan against the United States, the Soviet Union, and ultimately, Great Britain. The Soviets had already been fighting a proxy war against the Japanese in Mongolia.

The British, on their part, finally faced up to the incompatibility of their alliance strategy. While they were still hoping to entice Japan away from Germany—the two had become treaty allies in 1936—winning the friendship of the United States was a greater strategic priority in light developments on the continent. And getting British cooperation was absolutely essential to US strategy. The overland route through Xinjiang was completely unviable and the Japanese blockade of the Chinese coast made it impossible to supply the war effort from the sea. The only way to get arms to Chang Kai-Shek was through British-held Burma.

There was nothing inevitable about the Pacific War. The Japanese could’ve not attacked Pearl Harbor and instead run the risk of a military response by US forces in the region. Isolationist sentiment in the United States would likely have prevented FDR from attacking Japan. Earlier on, Japan could’ve come to some sort of accomodation with the United States; for instance, by guaranteeing US access to the Chinese market. Japan would also have been better off abandoning its effort to subdue China once it became clear that it did not have sufficient mass to pacify the land. In that scenario, it would’ve held on to most of its gains and avoided the Second World War altogether.

In the United States, Acheson could’ve obeyed the President’s orders. More generally, Japanese regional primacy was not necessarily inconsistent with US interests. Since national power is barely augmented by colonial posessions (which is why Germany was always stronger than the colonial powers), Japan would’ve remained vastly weaker than the United States. The US could always go to war against Japan in the future, were it ever to threaten a truly vital US interest. Indeed, allowing Japan to dominate the region would’ve thwarted the reemergence of China. Perhaps the United States will pay the price for its misjudgement in the twenty-first century.

———

* “Whatever comforting, domesticated fantasies their followers may have projected onto them, the leaders of Fascist Italy, National Socialist Germany, Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union all saw themselves as radical insurgents against an oppressive and powerful world order. For all the braggadocio of the 1930s their basic view of the Western Powers was not that they were weak, but that they were lazy and hypocritical. Behind a veneer of morality and panglossian optimism the Western Powers disguised the massive force that had crushed Imperial Germany and that threatened to enshrine a permanent status quo. To forestall that oppressive vision of an end of history would require an unprecedented effort. It would be accompanied by terrible risks. This was the terrifying lesson that the insurgents derived from the story of world politics between 1916 and 1931.” Adam Tooze. The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order 1916-1931.

The Policy Tensor has at times been a harsh critic of the Obama White House’s foreign policy. While this page supported Obama’s decision to withdraw American army divisions from Iraq, it was not a fan of the President’s policy with respect to either Assad or ISIS.

Iraq: A

The worst foreign policy mistake of this administration was to outsource the arming of the Syrian rebellion to the oil monarchies; with predictable results. The window of opportunity, before the jihadists crushed the moderate rebels, was missed with nonsensical talk of rebalancing to Asia. Eventually, of course, this meant that the White House would come around to covertly backing Assad. To the President’s credit, the policy reversal was effected with quiet dignity.

Syria: C

Obama’s military strategy to defeat ISIS is not going to work. And containment of a Salafist-Jihadist state in the heart of the Middle East is unlikely to satisfy the American foreign policy establishment’s quest for security. What this means is that Obama has effectively kicked the can down to the next President.

ISIS: B

US intelligence convinced pro-Western oligarchs to move against a Ukrainian government dominated by pro-Russian oligarchs. As Russia predictably moved to secure its near abroad, the Obama White House created a lot of brouhaha even as it was clear that the United States did not have significant interests at stake in Ukraine to counter a Russian military intervention. Had Russia been the US’ principal adversary, American meddling in Ukraine would have been understandable. But Russia was a potential ally against China. American shenanigans pushed Russia prematurely into Chinese arms. It was self-goal.

Ukraine: C

The problem with US’ Afghan strategy is that a US withdrawal is inconsistent with a commitment to prevent a resurgence of the Taliban: The United States must either reach an accommodation with the Taliban or commit to propping up an anti-Taliban regime on a semi-permanent basis. However, the solution to the Afghan conundrum is not to be found in Kabul but in Islamabad. For unless the United States can prevail on the ISI to stop patronizing the Taliban, it would be constantly swimming against the current in its efforts to prop up an anti-Taliban regime in Kabul.

To be fair, given the dangers of instability in a nuclear-armed Pakistan, the United States cannot afford a breakdown of intelligence and military ties to the Pakistani deep state that would follow from a more aggressive policy against Islamabad that an anti-Taliban solution demands. Still, Obama could have done far more to put pressure on the duplicitous ISI generals; especially after it became clear that they had been sheltering bin Laden.

Af-Pak: B

Moving southeast on the subcontinent, President Obama failed to capitalize on the Bush opening to India. If the United States is serious about signing up Asia’s second rising giant for a balancing alliance against China, it must do more to shore up India’s military power which is falling sharply behind its far more powerful neighbour. Specifically, the United States should be easing India’s access to advanced weapons systems.

Advanced weapons production is dominated by prime contracting firms (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, General Dynamics, DynCorp, BAE Systems et cetera) who remain largely in thrall of US market power. The United States uses access to its market as leverage to finely regulate other countries’ access to the advanced weapons technologies embedded in these prime contracting firms. There have been no moves in the direction of easing India’s access to advanced weapons systems. And relations between the world’s largest and the world’s oldest democracy remain cool.

India: B

To the east, the US opening to Myanmar was prompted by growing Chinese influence in the hitherto pariah state run by a brutal military junta. The trigger was the proposed $20 billion railway link connecting China’s Yunnan province to Myanmar which would’ve allowed China to circumvent the US’ stranglehold on the Strait of Malacca and gain access to the Bay of Bengal. The opening to Myanmar had the intended effect: In July 2014, the junta torpedoed the proposed rail connection. Myanmar’s nascent civilian democracy remains a façade behind which the military junta continues to rule. But the failed state is now securely in America’s geopolitical orbit.

Myanmar: A

Further east, Obama’s pivot to Asia has to be judged a dud. The problem is the following: While countries in the region are worried sick about China’s growing military capabilities and are keen to see the United States lean forward, it does not make much sense for the United States to forward-deploy military assets in the region. This is because China’s increasingly sophisticated reconnaissance-strike complex allows it to hold any and all US surface assets in the Western Pacific at risk in the event of a military confrontation.

The correct force-posture for the United States is therefore to forward-deploy only a fraction of its strength, holding the rest in reserve outside the range of Chinese cruise missiles. This, of course, doesn’t make for good optics. US allies on the Pacific rim continue to fret about US abandonment. Japan, the only state in the region that can stand up to China on its own, is trying hard to shore up its military capabilities.

The whole fan-fare surrounding the rebalancing was unnecessary and counter-productive. Instead of making a big fuss about rebalancing and pivots, the United States ought to have worked to quietly reassure regional allies and deter China from premature adventures.

Pivot to Asia: B-

The Obama White House trumpeted the Trans-Pacific Partnership as a key component of the pivot to Asia. While benefiting American holders of capital, the TPP will yield meagre geopolitical gains in terms of balancing China. Still, the TPP creates diplomatic momentum behind a unified stand against Chinese revisionism.

TPP: A

US opposition to China’s international development bank, the AIIB, must be judged an outright debacle. It made the US look petty and made a mockery of US claims that it wants China to emerge as a responsible stakeholder in the international order. Worse still, as US’ closest allies, including Britain, Germany, France, and Italy, joined the club, it made the United States look isolated and ineffective.

AIIB: C

Across the Pacific, Obama’s opening to Cuba was welcome and long-overdue. For more than a half century, the United States followed a policy of unabashed economic warfare against Cuba. The harsh and vindictive policy of containment was meant to make an example of Cuba: This is what will happen to those who challenge the dominant state of the Western Hemisphere. It did not, of course, prevent the rise of confrontation states in Latin America. To the contrary, it may have exacerbated opposition to the United States and strengthened the hands of those advocating resistance to US domination.

In contemplating the policy reversal, the Obama White House would not have been wrong to imagine pockets of determined opposition, especially from Congressional foreign policy hawks. In the final analysis, they turned out to be minor and easily overcome; laying bare the thin basis on which the policy of containment had rested. Still, it took courage to challenge the policy of every president since JFK.

Cuba: A+

The real game changer, of course, is Obama’s opening to Iran. The Policy Tensor has advocated a realignment in the gulf for years. Iran is the natural regional hegemon of the gulf. It is considerably easier to secure US interests in the gulf in partnership with the strongest regional power than in opposition to it. The only reason for a world power to confront a pivotal state in a strategically-important region is if there is an insurmountable conflict of interest. American and Iranian interests have become increasingly congruent in the past decade; setting the state for a strategic realignment. The election of a moderate government in the Islamic Republic provided an unprecedented opportunity for a reset; an opportunity that was not wasted by a far-seeing President.

The nuclear accord is nothing short of a diplomatic work of art. It makes it extremely difficult for Iran to obtain a nuclear deterrent by cheating. More importantly, the safeguards are stringent enough to push the deal through Congress. But the importance of the deal has almost nothing to do with nuclear weapons.

The only thing Iran would buy with a nuclear deterrent is insurance against a US invasion aimed at regime change. The Saudis would immediately obtain a deterrent of their own from Pakistan; thus neutralizing whatever strategic advantage the Iranians imagine they would obtain in the regional balance. On the other hand, an Iranian breakout would almost certainly reinforce Iran’s pariah status and guarantee relentless confrontation with the unipole. Iran could very well find itself even more diplomatically isolated and economically strangulated that is has been in the recent past; thus likely slipping further in the regional balance.

The nuclear deal allows Iran to reemerge on the international arena. It can now look forward to a lifting of international sanctions that would bring prosperity to the country and strengthen its position in the regional balance. Iran’s oil capacity is likely to expand significantly in the coming years as Western oil firms bring in capital and technology. This cannot fail to undermine the Saudis’ dominant position in OPEC. Indeed, unless the Saudis and the Iranians can learn to cooperate again, OPEC itself is likely to become defunct for all practical purposes. Since a thaw in the gulf is such a distant prospect in the medium term, the price of crude is likely to be depressed for the foreseeable future.

Unlike the oil monarchies, Iran is not just a petro-state. While its GDP is only 70% of Belgium’s, the Iranian economy is quite diversified. While foreign firms may be surprised to find slim pickings and tough competition from domestic firms, Iran is likely to be one of the fastest growing countries in the world for the next few years. Rouzbeh Pirouz, a CEO of an Iranian investment firm, makes the acute observation that Khamenei is trying to engineer a Deng Xiaoping moment, not a Gorbachev one. That is, Khamenei reckons that an economic opening can be accomplished and growth secured without undermining the stability of the theocracy.

The United States can now more easily establish a working partnership with Iran to secure common interests. The Americans are unlikely to abandon the Saudis in favour of an alliance with Iran. However, the thaw with Iran frees the United States from a total reliance on the House of Saud. In particular, the United States will now have wiggle room to press the Al Saud to reign in salafist influence in the region and around the world. And the expansion of both American and Iranian capacity will bring to an end the Saudis’ extraordinary influence in the global oil market; and with it the period in which Saudi Arabia punched above its weight. The Al Saud are likely to reconcile themselves to their diminished regional status eventually, perhaps leading to another period of moderation in the gulf. We are, of course, far from that scenario and the path ahead may be quite turbulent. Much will depend on whether the oil monarchies can see off the challenge posed by the Islamic State.

The Obama-Kerry achievement may not be as strategically-significant as that of the Nixon-Kissinger duo. But it goes a long way towards securing US interests in the Middle East.

Iran: A+

If we use Columbia University’s GPA calculator (which both the President and the Policy Tensor attended), the President scores a shocking 3.19; a GPA that is sure to make any Columbia graduate wince. To be fair, some foreign policy issues are much more important than others while the algorithm gives equal importance to all grades. Bringing in Myanmar was a canny move. The openings to Cuba and Iran were nothing short of historic. The latter is likely to prove of enduring strategic value. 

Two the biggest foreign policy mistakes (Syria, ISIS) were mistakes of omission, not debacles arising from hubris (See under Bush). The third, pushing Russia prematurely into Chinese arms, showed a gross misreading of the strategic landscape. It is unlikely that Russia would ever again be interested in a balancing alliance against China. As for the other successes and failures pertaining to the task of balancing China (TPP, AIIB, Pivot), these are strategically insignificant and mostly of optical value.