The United States currently faces a host of critical foreign and defense policy challenges, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, instability in Pakistan and the reconstitution of an operational sanctuary for key elements of al Qaeda and the Taliban in parts of that country, Iran’s development of an indigenous uranium enrichment capability and perhaps a nuclear weapons program as well, a resurgent Russia that is increasingly authoritarian at home and assertive abroad, and China’s ongoing development and deployment of advanced military capabilities. In addition to managing these current conflicts and potential crises, the President and his advisors will also be responsible for decisions that will shape US defense strategy and force structure for years and possibly even decades to come. Because the dangers the United States now faces are so numerous and so demanding, one of the most critical tasks for the Obama administration will be to reassess and reshape America’s military alliances.
America’s Growing Need For Allies
For more than half a century alliances have proven to be a crucial and enduring source of advantage for the United States, particularly as it sought to implement its decades-long strategy of containment against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Nevertheless, within the United States the perceived need for allies has waxed and waned throughout the nation’s history. Most recently, with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States entered what some referred to as the “unipolar moment”: a period during which America’s economic and military power was unprecedented and its dominant position in the international system was essentially uncontested. One notable consequence of this situation was a decreased need for military alliances.
Throughout the 1990s, with no peer or near-peer competitor on the horizon to challenge American hegemony, the United States required alliances for its security far less than it did during the Cold War.
Today, however, there is a growing recognition that the existing and prospective threats confronting the United States, as well as the broader changes taking place in the security environment, necessitate a renewed emphasis on alliances.
Although the United States still remains the world’s preeminent global power, its advantage over potential rivals and competitors appears to be in the early stages of relative decline.