America's Struggle to Preserve Its Unipolarity

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

How America rejoiced at the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, and how troubled it now seems, now that the specter of a rival has appeared on the international stage.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the American president looked like a global emperor, giving and taking, distributing and gathering, offering and threatening, granting and withholding, uniting and dividing, cheering some on and repelling others, roaming the world however he pleased, without hesitation and without wariness of anyone.

America became the mistress of the world, taking upon itself the steering of the world’s course as it pleased, save for a few small pockets here and there that were later branded rogue states or the “axis of evil,” and in its quest for control it drew in rulers, academics, intellectuals, associations, organizations, and parties to serve as representatives of its political, intellectual, and cultural will, and it spread its think tanks and cultural centers across the whole world so as to be present in the daily life of peoples.

Overtaken by the arrogance of sin, it attacked Afghanistan, and followed this with the invasion of Iraq. America believed Afghanistan did not represent the true test that would prove its strength and military capability beyond challenge, so it inflated Iraq’s military capabilities in order to tell Europe, Japan, and China that whoever can handle Iraq can secure fuel for the world, and that thanks to America, the wheel of global production keeps turning.

It was not confronting the weak — it was delivering a message to the strong that there is no strong power but America.

The Syrian Scene

America was never much given to mere threats and warnings; it tended to issue ultimatums and then follow them with a punitive economic or military action, and its actions sometimes preceded its words.

It drew declared red lines before the world and the Syrian regime, stating that the use of chemical weapons would lead to a harsh, deterrent military action against the Syrian regime, and for this purpose it set up trained military units to seize control of the sites holding these weapons, deployed Patriot missiles, coordinated with Syria’s neighboring states, and continued to affirm its intentions.

America bound itself to what it considered a crossing of the red lines, committing to a military action against the Syrian regime should it use chemical weapons, and began its customary steps leading toward military action, summed up in the search for tangible evidence to condemn the regime, whipping up the media, rallying global support, seeking a UN resolution, and massing its military forces, particularly its naval forces.

The American president holds the authority to attack Syria without Congress’s permission, and he has done so many times before, in Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, but this time he pulled back and preferred to go to Congress to secure legislative cover — or to use it as a cloak to hide behind.

This itself points strongly to the fact that the American world leadership that emerged in 1990 and continued for two decades has begun to recede, and that it is no longer capable of doing what it once did.

Russia and China

America enjoyed a golden age at the United Nations, in the sense that it could obtain whatever UN resolutions it wanted, lending international legitimacy to its actions, and Russia, after the fall of the Soviet Union, was not yet qualified to mount a challenge, for economic, military, and societal reasons, while China was not capable of mounting a challenge because it could not protect that challenge militarily, or prevent America from acting against this or that party.

The Russian and Chinese challenge to America remained mild and gentle, expressed at times merely through abstention in Security Council votes.

Even though it never obtained a UN mandate to impose a no-fly zone over Iraq, America legislated the measure according to its own will, bypassing the very legitimacy it claims to defend, and began acting according to what it itself deemed legitimate, unchallenged by anyone.

In the Syrian case, China and Russia have challenged America by jointly using the veto three times, blocking UN resolutions calling for measures against the Syrian regime.

Russia has been active in supporting the Syrian regime against the wishes of the United States, has reinforced its naval presence at the port of Tartus, and has continued to supply the regime with weapons, including advanced surface-to-air missiles.

And as can be gleaned from various Syrian and Russian statements, Russia is providing financial and economic support to Syria to keep the regime capable of continuing.

This means that Russia in particular constitutes a clear challenge to the United States, and the Russians have not hesitated to level a number of mild and sharp criticisms at the American administration for what they call its policy of dodging the convening of a peace conference on Syria.

China, for its part, is fully aware of its economic momentum, and that it will become the world’s greatest economic power within the next few years.

Even though its military power has not yet developed to the point of mutual deterrence against America, it is aware that there is no path for the United States to ignore its economic interests for the sake of a Syrian opposition, some of whose members threaten the United States after the fall of the regime. China will soon become the primary economic axis around which the world’s economies revolve, and America has no interest in creating hostile conditions.

Iran and Hezbollah

Israel’s experience with Hezbollah in 2006 was not a comfortable one, and it was forced to halt the war despite encouragement from some Arab parties to continue, and despite American support. Israel pressed Hezbollah with everything at its disposal, but was forced to accept a military fact on the ground and stopped the war to avoid mounting moral and material losses. Israel and America became certain that Hezbollah’s armament is not primitive, that its tactical military capabilities are precise and intelligent, and this fact still holds true today.

It appears that Hezbollah is capable of engaging Israel and America in a long, irregular war that Israel cannot sustain, in terms of internal morale.

Hezbollah’s steadfastness, and its ability to hit and destroy Israeli military targets, reflected part of Iran’s technical and military capability.

The question that has loomed on the horizon, without a full and satisfying answer, is: if Iran supplied a party not particularly large with these weapons, what is it hiding in its own military arsenal?

Iran has, over the past years, announced the development of military technical capabilities on several occasions, and it was well aware that the United States was tracking its various military capabilities, some of which appeared in Iranian maneuvers — but Iran, like other states, keeps its advanced military equipment veiled in secrecy, in order to surprise the enemy should war come.

America has continued to threaten Iran over the years, but American calculations have not pushed America into recklessness in confronting what could be an unknown, or near-unknown, quantity. What this means is that America has begun to feel certain restraints on its decisions regarding the Arab-Islamic region, because of Iran’s rising strength.

Bringing the Factors Together

The matter is rather like a mathematical equation, or at least a logical calculation built on information, and America must certainly be factoring in all the developments under way on the world stage and in the Arab-Islamic region.

It is certainly asking itself about the insistence of Iran, China, and Russia on mounting a challenge, particularly in the military field. America went through a golden period marked by the unimpeded reach of its will, with the world compliant — but now the situation is marked by Russian naval buildups in the Mediterranean, a Russian declaration that Syria possesses enough to defend itself, missiles aimed at Israel and American targets in the region, and fingers on triggers.

These factors, individually and together, constitute new challenges for the United States, and point to the fact that its unipolarity is crumbling, or is on its way to crumbling.

The current global scene is entirely different from what America wished to preserve, and it must adapt to a new situation in which it will no longer be the sole one giving the orders.

Striking Syrian Positions

The Syrian question now constitutes a test of global polarity: is America still the sole dominant power, or is the existing challenge real, with an echo on the ground?

The Arab-Islamic region may be on the threshold of a historic turning point, and so may the global stage: either America proves itself the sole champion, or Russia proves itself another pole, not merely a great power. Either Iran withdraws to lick its wounds, or it moves forward in search of more, with acknowledgment of its regional and international leadership.

In truth, America has three options before it:

• To refrain from striking Syria, thereby proving its own cowardice, implicitly acknowledging the deterrent strength of its enemies or rivals, and afterward accepting new partners in its decision-making. This applies to a scenario in which it accepts a deal under which a few missiles are fired at marginal Syrian areas in exchange for no response from the other side.

• To bomb Syrian positions, and be met with a forceful response from Syria and its allies, at which point America will find itself facing a choice: either accept the response, with all that implies of an acknowledgment of the adversary’s strength, or pursue the response further and enter a new war it does not want. In this case, America will have shrunk before the world.

• To bomb Syrian positions with no response from the other side, thereby cementing its continued reign as queen of this world.

The expectation is that America thinks with its muscles most of the time, not with its mind, and it makes many mistakes in times of peace as in times of war, and so it will flex its muscles at the last moment and fire its missiles.

Russia and Iran understand that failing to meet muscle with muscle will keep them confined to a limited stature that annoys their rivals without deterring them, and they understand that their global and regional standing will grow if they decide to confront.

Given that Russia knows what weapons Syria possesses, and speculates that Iran is filling its arsenal with lethal weapons, and given that America has no interest in becoming entangled in a long war that could drain its own morale and Israel’s along with it, the probability of Syria and its allies being encouraged to respond is very high.

America is moving toward directing missile strikes against Syria, and the other side is moving toward proving its own strong military presence. This, in itself, places the standing of the United States before a new era, marked by the loss of part of its global authority — an authority that will weaken considerably if America and Israel are struck by painful military blows.

In turn, Russia will rise with a new global policy, and Iran’s standing, at least on the regional stage, will rise alongside it. It appears that America must prepare itself to accept partners in shaping international decision-making.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “صراع أميركا لبقاء أحاديتها القطبية” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.