The return of ‘sphere of influence politics’

Since the end of World War II, the main thrust of American foreign policy has been the creation and maintenance of a “rules-based international order,” which consisted of a worldwide web of organizations, alliances and other treaties, the formal mission of which was to establish a rational framework for communication  among countries. The deeper purpose of this world order was to check the advance of an ideologically-driven communist movement led by the Soviet Union and China. 

The extraordinary success of this enterprise culminated in the triumphant conclusion of the Cold War, largely derived from the immense military and economic power of the United States, which alone among major nations emerged from the war with its physical, financial and economic foundations intact, and even enhanced.

Over the past half-century, however, the American sponsored rules-based international order has fallen on hard times. Losing long, debilitating and ultimately unpopular wars — from Vietnam to Afghanistan — demolished the aura of American military invincibility and sapped the energy, resources, confidence and unity of the American people. Many of our allies, having regained vibrant economies and no longer alarmed by a virulent world communist movement, came to doubt the judgment of U.S. leaders and even question whether America — relatively diminished, both economically and militarily — is still the “indispensable nation.”  

America’s decline and fatigue, both real and perceived, has emboldened rogue states worldwide but most particularly the giant Eurasian authoritarians — China and Russia — who long have chafed under U.S. ascendency. These states essentially have rendered the rules-based international order dysfunctional by routinely violating any rule they don’t like and largely going unpunished for doing so, thereby draining the order of any serious credibility. 

As the America-led world order atrophies, we have begun to see the re-emergence of an older principle of international relations: “sphere of influence politics.”  Interestingly, this older conception found its most well-known modern manifestation via the Monroe Doctrine, which was proclaimed in 1823 by the U.S. president who gave it his name, and for 200 years it has been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy.  

Audacious in its scope, the Monroe Doctrine did not declare just a few neighboring countries as a zone of paramount American interest, but rather, the entire Western Hemisphere. Across two centuries — by diplomatic, economic or military means — we have rigorously enforced it, rarely against European powers but usually against independent nations south of our border. In the context of the Cold War, the Monroe Doctrine was expanded to justify intervention in any country deemed to be dangerously leftist or even communist; examples of this were the ouster of elected presidents Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala (1954) and Salvador Allende in Chile (1973).

In his 1987 book, “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers,” historian Paul Kennedy introduced the concept of “imperial overstretch,” in which he asserted that the United States was committed in too many places in the world but no longer had the military and economic resources to simultaneously meet the global obligations it had accepted. Thirty-five years later, the dilemmas Kennedy described have worsened substantially. Today, the United States must choose carefully where it can deploy limited resources and risk a military conflict that would be supported by the American people, and where allied soldiers would join us in harm’s way.

The other superpowers, China and Russia, face similar or even greater constraints and, accordingly, they tend to project military power — not globally like the United States but on a regional basis in areas they claim as their “spheres of influence” (e.g., Taiwan and Ukraine, respectively). 

The architects who created the NATO alliance three-quarters of a century ago — President Harry Truman, Secretary of Defense George Marshall and Secretary of State Dean Acheson — operated in a very different world on behalf of a much different America. They had at their disposal the most powerful economic and military engines the world had ever seen. Their modern counterparts — President Biden, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken — dwell in different circumstances but still have the burden of brokering reconciliation between the commitments of the past and the realities of the present.

William Moloney is a Fellow in Conservative Thought at Colorado Christian University’s   Centennial Institute who studied at Oxford and the University of London and received his doctorate from Harvard University. He is a former Colorado Commissioner of Education.