The most dangerous threat facing America in the future?

UPDATE: This post was made over a year ago, but the friend cited in the first line is Bobby, who is a grad student now and has his own blog. 

Ryan and I recently discussed this question with a friend who is writing an essay on the subject, and I found that (as is often the case) while it’s easy for me to dismiss the suggestions of others, I had considerable difficulty deciding on an answer of my own. Many will give simplistic, near-meaningless answers like “terrorism” or “radical Islam,” others will go to Ol’ Faithful, the near-peer competitor (usually in the guise of China), and I guess a guy like Kincaid would say “excessive multilateralism.” I have problems with all these answers, though I’ve listed these in descending order of legitimacy.

I had considered writing about this subject last week when I first addressed the question, but set it aside for other things. Then yesterday I picked up the October issue of GQ, which contains an interview with Colin Powell. When prompted about whether or not the world we live in is more dangerous than was that of another former Secretary of State, George Marshall, Powell responded with this:

What is the greatest threat facing us now? People will say it’s terrorism. But are there any terrorists in the world who can change the American way of life or our political system? No. Can they knock down a building? Yes. Can they kill somebody? Yes. But can they change us? No. Only we can change ourselves. So what is the great threat we are facing?

I would approach this differently, in almost Marshall-like terms. What are the greatest opportunities out there–ones that we can take advantage of? It should not be just about creating alliances to deal with a guy in a cave in Pakistan. It should be about how do we create institutions that keep the world moving down a path of wealth creation of increasing respect for human rights, creating democratic institutions, and increasing the efficiency and power of market economies? This is perhaps the most effective way to go after terrorists. 

And really, he’s nailed it. The answer I had given my essay-writing friend a week ago was very similar:

If you want to go with external threats, I would broaden “islamic radicalism” to “violent, rejectionist anti-globalist elements” (which include the Salafists). It’s increasingly an American national interest (always economic, increasingly security) to get people to buy into and maintain the global economic order, which underlies and sustains our prosperity.

The root of Salafism/bin Ladenism is a rejection of that system. (This is why I always contend that The Long War/GWOT is not a religious matter, but a socio-economic one — these guys are no different than anti-globalization protesters at the WTO conferences, except that they actually blow [stuff] up and kill people….) So really the threat is that people would start wholesale rejecting globalization because of the threat of terrorism, or because of radical populism/nationalism, etc.

Powell makes an interesting point when he talks about “creating alliances to deal with a guy in a cave…” Excessive focus on “coalitions of the willing” to address American foreign policy priorities has obscured the real reason that international collaboration is important: the biggest American foreign policy priority of all (or “national interest”) is the unimpeded spread of the American-led global economic system. What many Chicken Littles fail to consider is that while terrorists threaten American life and property, the much greater threat is that U.S. responses to terrorism could destabilize the vital international consensus that underpins our global leadership.

Realists have been speculating since 1991 that a balancing coalition would rise against the United States in the wake of the Soviet Union’s demise. This hasn’t happened, in large party because the rising tide of globalization has lifted (and continues to lift) nearly all boats. Those elements that reject this trend – Salafist terrorists, notably, but also nationalists and populists of many other stripes around the world, like the leaderships of Iran and Venezuela – are encouraged by the success of “the little guy” like al-Qaeda. But Russia and China haven’t used 9/11 as an excuse to balance against the U.S., or as a signal of American weakness (despite what Tony Corn says about the rise of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is about as potent as the Commonwealth of Independent States or ASEAN). Why not? Because their leaders recognize that 9/11 – however awful, unspeakable, and avoidable – was not an existential threat to this country, nor did it mark a time when others would be able to manageably pose such threats.

Am I MoveOn.org-ing you and saying that American unilateralism/imperialism/warmongering is the greatest threat to world peace and our national security that’s out there? No, not at all. What I am saying is that we are very much in control of the threats that face us, a sentiment that’s probably obvious in my writings about a potential conflict with China. The U.S. is still globally predominant, if not hegemonic. The status quo is still good for America, something that I think is lost in scaremongering about dirty bombs and fighting them over there so we don’t have to over here. The best way to truly threaten this predominance – and prosperity – is to take actions that encourage more parties to “opt out” of the framework that we’ve created and largely direct. This doesn’t just mean the small, violent, rejectionist elements, but also those already-invested parties who could decide that American leadership, mentorship, management, etc is no longer something they’re interested in. There will always be those who resent the Big Guy, but as noted, for the most part they’ve avoided direct obstructionism until now. We just have to make sure we don’t help give them any reasons to change their minds.