In some sense, Tim Walz’s career in the National Guard is a metaphor for the recent history of American military power writ large. He spent 24 years preparing for battle…and then retired when the call came. But not only did he shy away from the conflict, he spent the next twenty years beating his chest about his experience in battle—experience that he never had and no longer had the competence to pursue.
Since the end of World War II, America’s status as the global hegemon was defined by one rule: the United States could assert its geopolitical will largely without resorting to direct military operations, relying instead upon rhetorical and economic force to maintain the world order that we created. Some readers will recoil at this claim. No military conflicts? What about Korea? Vietnam? Iraq?
With the twentieth century now deep in the rearview mirror, it’s clear that those conflicts were exceptions to the rule. That none of those nations posed a compelling military threat to the United States is telling. With the possible exception of the brief Gulf War, the other wars were proxy battles against much larger nations and ideologies that, left unchecked, might have posed a future threat to American global sovereignty. In short, the preemptive wars from the 1950s through the 1990s were isolated interruptions of the relative peace that America guaranteed across much of the globe.
It was evident that something had changed by 9/11 (or because of it) when the now-too-familiar phrase “forever wars” entered our vocabulary. In other words, the state of continuous military activity that we see today began in the twenty-first century. First, Afghanistan, then Iraq (again). As those conflicts raged on, Obama prosecuted scattershot interventions across the Middle East and South Asia: Libya, Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, and more. When the smoke of the War on Terror finally cleared, we moved on to proxy wars against Russia and Iran by vastly expanding our support for the armies of Ukraine and Israel. What changed? How did active American military engagement move from the pre-9/11 exception to today’s uncontestable rule?
Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with former Blackwater CEO Erik Princehints at the answer. Their conversation noted a number of recent attacks on American sovereignty, planned and executed by geopolitical rivals. Specifically, Prince noted China’s sophisticated efforts to flood the United States with fentanyl, smuggled in over our undefended southern border with the assistance of the Mexican cartels. Another example that Prince cited was what he claims are confirmed sonic/microwave attacks against U.S. personnel at foreign and domestic consulates and embassies. These attacks seem to leave severe neurological damage on the individuals they target, causing a constellation of symptoms increasingly referred to as Havana Syndrome.
A baffled Carlson asks why our government has allowed these aggressions to pass with impunity. Prince reminds him that the Biden administration has steadfastly rejected that China’s direct role in the fentanyl crisis is intentionaland that the federal government has yet to acknowledge Havana Syndrome is the result of deliberate attacks. Carlson repeats his question: Why the inaction?
Because, Prince answers, any meaningful response would involve the forceful imposition of consequences, and…well…Prince doesn’t really finish his statement. But his implication seems to be that the United States is no longer able to impose the forms of rhetorical and economic force that were the primary means of enforcing American hegemony in the later 20th century. China, after all, is not a nation that America would risk a military conflict with over the fentanyl crisis. And the United States no longer has the military or the economy to be able to impose rhetorical or financial penalties. A similar situation exists in relation to Russia, whom Prince sees as the likely culprit for the attacks that apparently cause Havana Syndrome.
Astute readers will immediately grasp the implications of this situation for American foreign policy. But perhaps a personal anecdote will further clarify them. On rare occasions when my brother or I had done something particularly bad as children, my mom would spank us with a small wooden spoon. Nothing serious, it just stung for a few minutes, but I was afraid of that spoon, and a simple warning was enough to make me change my behavior to avoid it.
One day, at about 11 years old, I did something (I don’t remember what) that prompted my mother to get out the spoon. It had been a while since I had seen it last, and I had grown since then. As she approached, I casually grabbed it from her hand, easily broke it in half, handed it back to her, and left the house for a few hours. When I returned, I don’t remember either of us talking about it. There wasn’t much to talk about: while the natural power imbalance between a mother and her son would endure for a few more years, it had shifted in a fundamental way that took old deterrents and punitive measures off the table. You can’t repair a broken wooden spoon.
Prince’s implication seems to be that America’s spoon is broken. The forever wars that began in the 21st century were no coincidence. They began when American power had diminished to such a point that softer means of asserting our geopolitical will were newly impractical in some parts of the globe. China, Russia, and Iran aren’t intimidated by the mere threat of the spoon anymore.
Without coercive means of soft power based on rhetoric, diplomacy, and economics, the United States is left with only one option: the immediate and direct application of the spoon. But even that doesn’t seem to strike fear into the hearts of America’s enemies the way it did in the twentieth century. After all, we chased Afghanistan and Iraq around the house for 20 years trying to lay spoons on their behinds. In both cases, the spoons were broken. And if little tykes like them can fend us off, China and Russia are probably confident about their chances. America has been sending Ukraine a nearly unlimited supply of spoons since the Russian invasion. The result? Three years of the American media repeating the line that Russia was only weeks away from a humiliating defeat, while Ukrainian casualties mount.
In short, American rhetoric and sanctions aren’t backed by enough real power to deter Russia from using neurological weapons against our citizens abroad. American threats and economic penalties aren’t enough to stop China from sending Mexico the materials to produce enough fentanyl to kill every single American citizen many times over. Deprived of forms of soft power that a true global hegemon can apply at will, the United States is left with only one meaningful way to punish and deter these assaults: direct military action.
But if the United States possessed the military power to attain a decisive victory against China or Russia (or Afghanistan or Iraq, for that matter), then the softer means of imposing our geopolitical will would still be effective. The fact that (by and large) we haven’t attempted to use them indicates that the nation’s enemies are no longer convinced that they would lose to the United States in a hot war. America’s leaders probably aren’t convinced either. And this exposes the hardest truth of all: our own uncertainty finally rules out direct military operations, which was the sole remaining means of enforcing our will abroad. We can’t risk it: If we attempt to give our greatest foes a small, retaliatory spanking and they break our spoon… well, any remaining claim to global hegemony would be negated. And the end of that illusion would bring consequences that must be avoided at all costs.
In short, American power is clearly in decline. The degree to which it has declined remains a matter of debate. But if America was still the undisputed global hegemon, our enemies wouldn’t risk attacking us with fentanyl or microwaves. They would know that our government would punish such transgressions visibly and decisively. But we find ourselves at a point where the attacks happen, and the punishments don’t. That’s a sure sign that the forms of soft power that undergird the American order are no longer viable—and that our government knows it. At this point, the best we can do is to protect what remains of the dwindling perception of our global sovereignty.
Whether our status as hegemon can be reclaimed or reasserted is uncertain. Only one thing is for sure: four years of Kamala Harris would likely accelerate the crumbling of the global order that America created after winning the last World War.