Stewart Patrick
A major strategic challenge for
Over the next ten years and beyond,
U.S. President Barack Obama's approach to rising powers builds on that of
Obama has extended this "responsible stakeholder" principle to all rising nations, linking it to a broader agenda of global institutional reform. The
There is much to applaud here. Practically speaking, none of today's international problems can be resolved in a conference room with representatives from the West alone. Complex challenges -- from energy insecurity to financial instability, climate change, terrorism, and infectious diseases -- require input from established and emerging powers alike.
There is also a powerful geopolitical logic. Historically, power transitions have been fraught with danger. Status quo states resist accommodating new powers. By giving emerging nations a greater stake in today's order, the Obama administration is hoping to increase the legitimacy of existing arrangements and discourage assaults on prevailing liberal norms. At the policy's core sits
Yet
The world remains more Hobbesian than the
On balance, the diffusion of power is likely to exacerbate the strategic rivalry between the established and the emerging powers, and among the emerging powers themselves. The world's major nations, after all, are playing more than one game. They may cooperate on financial reform or antiterrorism but also may compete vigorously for market share, strategic resources, political influence, and military advantage. The question for
Consider U.S.-Chinese relations. The Obama administration seeks "strategic reassurance" about
Rivalry among the emerging powers may also complicate multilateral cooperation. This is most obvious between
Finally, even on those issues on which the basic interests of the established and the emerging powers align -- terrorism, climate change, nuclear proliferation, or global financial stability -- these states' priorities may differ. The issue of
The emerging non-Western powers do not share
Another important source of tension between the established and the rising powers concerns the limits of national sovereignty. Most of the emerging powers are skeptical of the belief, common in Western circles, that sovereignty is contingent and that international intervention is justified against states that commit mass atrocities, sponsor terrorism, or pursue weapons of mass destruction. This skepticism extends to democracies such as
Principled differences between the established and the emerging powers extend to other realms. Progress on preventing nuclear proliferation, including an agreement on the Additional Protocol to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, has been stymied by disputes over the relative responsibilities of the nuclear weapons states and the nonnuclear weapons states.
Similar disputes arise in economic relations. All of today's emerging players seek to have greater weight in global governance, but they do not necessarily seek more global governance. Their views on the
The Obama administration often insists that international rules, such as those regarding nonproliferation or trade, must be enforced. It assumes that the world's major players will naturally prioritize global security and economic and environmental challenges just as it does. But the emerging powers do not accept all the current international rules, and the
Rising powers are often inclined to enjoy the privileges of power without assuming its obligations. They prefer to free ride on the contributions of established nations. This instinct is reinforced by the anxiety that accepting international commitments could jeopardize their domestic development.
Emerging countries wrestle with conflicting identities. They seek a louder voice in global affairs, but as self-identified developing countries, they remain committed to alleviating poverty within their own borders. Thus, they resist global initiatives that would hamper their domestic growth.
This dual identity can sometimes allow rising powers to bridge North-South divides. But it can also leave them whipsawed between global ambitions and solidarity with other developing nations. Obama administration officials speak wryly of emerging powers cross-dressing as developed countries within the G-20 only to invoke long-standing developing-country grievances in other forums.
Some of the most prominent rising powers are ringleaders of developing-country blocs.
Internal political dynamics make integration efforts difficult. Leaders of both the established and the emerging powers must reconcile an increasingly complicated and intrusive multilateral agenda with political realities at home. These pressures are likely to constrain partnership between them.
Regime type, for example, is limiting U.S.-Chinese cooperation on cybersecurity.
And yet Obama's engagement strategy pragmatically recognizes that addressing global problems such as climate change, nuclear proliferation, and financial instability calls for meaningful cooperation, not only with democracies but also with nondemocracies. Global governance requires collaboration among the unlike-minded. But partnership among the like-minded cannot be assumed, either. Democracy is an unreliable predictor of allegiance to U.S. interests. Some of
The world today is not a blank slate, as it was after World War II, when, as the Obama administration frequently notes, a farsighted generation of U.S. leaders laid the foundations of a Western liberal international order. They left many institutional products -- international and regional, formal and informal, general purpose and issue specific. Absent a cataclysm such as a world war, reallocating influence within existing bodies will be an uphill struggle. The more important the institution, the more its powerful members will resist diluting their authority within it.
To be sure, the shock of the recent global economic downturn has driven some degree of change. The G-20 has become the principal forum for international economic coordination, the first major adaptation in multilateral cooperation to reflect dramatic shifts in global power. The G-20 created the Financial Stability Board in
In any event, even more ambitious efforts to bring rising powers into existing institutions will be limited by the prospect of tradeoffs between effectiveness and legitimacy. This concern is at the core of the debates over
Expanding existing forums can also harm consensus. This is most obvious in the shift from the G-8 -- still a cozy Western-dominated forum despite
But how should
There is no guarantee that the world's rising powers will become
There is, of course, no common worldview among today's emerging countries. But as U.S. power declines, the rising powers will seek to test, dilute, or revise existing institutions to suit their purposes.
During the Cold War,
\Yet as
In this complex international reality, fixed alliances and formal organizations may count for less than shifting coalitions of interest. Fortunately,
Meanwhile,
Reform of the increasingly outdated
Any adjustment to the
U.S. officials must make peace with incrementalism. They need to be flexible in accommodating the institutional aspirations of the emerging powers. Cooperation will arise through the gradual updating of existing multilateral architecture, ad hoc arrangements, and bargaining. Where possible,
In the end, the biggest obstacle to integrating rising powers into the world order may come from within
By the 1960s, as former U.S. Secretary of State
The U.S. public may be prepared to make this shift: a comprehensive digest of recent polling data compiled by the
STEWART PATRICK is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Program on International Institutions and Global Governance at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of The Best Laid Plans: The Origins of American Multilateralism and the Dawn of the Cold War.
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