When the United States entered Afghanistan to avenge the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the country was unrivaled on the world stage. America was one decade removed from the collapse of the Soviet Union. There was not a viable strategic competitor in sight. American power was preeminent in virtually every region of the world.
Twenty years later, the strategic environment has changed considerably. China has emerged as a formidable competitor to the United States across the diplomatic, military, technological, and economic domains. In explaining America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, President Biden and his advisors argued that the United States must focus American power where it matters most to the security and prosperity of the American people. They have acknowledged, albeit implicitly, that the era of Pax Americana, or power superiority in every corner of the world, is over.
America is still the world’s only superpower — a country with global political and economic interests and the ability to project force in every region. Even with its rapid rise, China remains far from meeting this definition. The United States still maintains the world’s largest economy, most potent military, and most dynamic society. Nevertheless, America has been humbled by its limited ability to improve national conditions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere.
This lesson likely will push the United States into a transition phase in its foreign policy. Rather than pursue primacy everywhere at once, the United States likely will concentrate resources on dealing with the defining challenge to America’s leadership posed by China. Asia will become the epicenter of America’s strategic focus. To sustain its edge in its competition with China, Washington will place greater relative emphasis on rebuilding at home and working with partners to address global challenges. The American people likely will remain skeptical of the use of military force, particularly in instances when vital national interests are not at stake.
Unflinching realism about America’s limited ability to alter events inside other countries will coexist alongside lofty rhetoric about America’s support for human rights, rule of law, and democratic institutions. Calls for upholding universal values will animate America’s diplomacy in Latin America, where poor governance is viewed as an impetus for migration to the United States. American leaders will continue to hold up shared values as a source of trans-Atlantic cohesion. Although the Middle East will never be ignored or abandoned, it will garner a diminishing share of America’s strategic focus. Africa similarly will receive an underweighted level of American attention.
These shifts will free up American focus on the region that will matter most to America’s security and prosperity in the 21st century — Asia. The region accounts for nearly 60 percent of global economic growth, and US exports to Asia create more jobs than any other region of the world. It is home to five US treaty allies and critical security partners such as Taiwan. It also is home to potential threats from a nuclear North Korea and an ascendant China.
As the Singaporean scholar Bilahari Kausikan has observed, US-China competition in the 21st century likely will not resemble the contest for supremacy between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The Cold War competition pitted two separate systems with very few interconnections in a universalistic struggle for domination. By contrast, the United States and China are both deeply integrated with each other and within a single global economic system. They will compete to determine who will lead the existing system.
The contest for leadership in the 21st century will be informed by calculations of raw power. Washington and its partners will need to strengthen their military capabilities to sustain capacity to deter Beijing from pursuing political objectives through military means, nowhere more so than Taiwan. Addressing these challenges will be made more manageable by the fact that the United States and its key partners have capable governments and share common security objectives.
Ultimately, though, America’s standing in the coming decades may turn more on progress in labs than on battlefields. Given the scale of destruction that would result from conflict between two nuclear-armed powers, it defies imagination to expect that the United States or China could prevail over the other in a direct military conflict.
Performance will be the true source of prestige in the international system in the 21st century. Perceptions of national performance will be informed by which countries can best unlock the talents of their people, drive innovation, and deliver solutions to global challenges. Technology and talent will be barometers of national power.
The United States and Taiwan can and should support each other in these critical areas. Deepened educational exchanges, closer collaboration on technological innovation, cross-fertilization of investments in development of critical technologies, and intensified efforts to bolster supply chain security will pay strategic dividends. So, too, will joint efforts to accelerate green technology development and deployment. The United States and Taiwan also can work together to spread best practices for improving democratic resilience against external attempts to interfere in democratic governance.
This transition phase in American foreign policy presents fresh prospects for the United States and Taiwan to bolster mutually beneficial coordination. Both sides would be wise to seize such opportunities.
Ryan Hass is a senior fellow and the Chen-Fu and Cecilia Yen Koo Chair in Taiwan Studies at the Brookings Institution, where he also holds the Michael H. Armacost Chair in the Foreign Policy program.
You wish every Taiwanese spoke English like I do. I was not born an anglophone, yet I am paid to write and speak in English. It is my working language and my primary idiom in private. I am more than bilingual: I think in English; it is my language now. Can you guess how many native English speakers I had as teachers in my entire life? Zero. I only lived in an English-speaking country, Australia, in my 30s, and it was because I was already fluent that I was able to live and pursue a career. English became my main language during adulthood
The international women’s soccer match between Taiwan and New Zealand at the Kaohsiung Nanzih Football Stadium, scheduled for Tuesday last week, was canceled at the last minute amid safety concerns over poor field conditions raised by the visiting team. The Football Ferns, as New Zealand’s women’s soccer team are known, had arrived in Taiwan one week earlier to prepare and soon raised their concerns. Efforts were made to improve the field, but the replacement patches of grass could not grow fast enough. The Football Ferns canceled the closed-door training match and then days later, the main event against Team Taiwan. The safety
There are moments in history when America has turned its back on its principles and withdrawn from past commitments in service of higher goals. For example, US-Soviet Cold War competition compelled America to make a range of deals with unsavory and undemocratic figures across Latin America and Africa in service of geostrategic aims. The United States overlooked mass atrocities against the Bengali population in modern-day Bangladesh in the early 1970s in service of its tilt toward Pakistan, a relationship the Nixon administration deemed critical to its larger aims in developing relations with China. Then, of course, America switched diplomatic recognition
The National Immigration Agency on Tuesday said it had notified some naturalized citizens from China that they still had to renounce their People’s Republic of China (PRC) citizenship. They must provide proof that they have canceled their household registration in China within three months of the receipt of the notice. If they do not, the agency said it would cancel their household registration in Taiwan. Chinese are required to give up their PRC citizenship and household registration to become Republic of China (ROC) nationals, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. He was referring to Article 9-1 of the Act
RSS