If US retreats, China will reshape global norms

Everywhere one looks these days, it seems global norms are und-er assault. From South China Sea to Eastern Europe, longstanding international rules of the road — concepts such as non-aggression, freedom of navigation and self-determination — are being flagrantly flouted or subtly ero- ded. Ideas, like democracy and respect for human rights, that seemed to have become incontestably dominant are facing renewed threats.
Americans and people around the globe are getting a harsh reminder of a truth that is too easily forgotten — that the whole idea of global norms is an illusion.
This is overstating matters, but only a little bit. We tend to think of norms as guidelines or standards of behaviour that are accepted by all the members of a given community. We thus tend to think that ideas like respect for human rights and democracy have become so influential because their logic is so compelling.
This notion is pleasing, as Robert Kagan has written, because it implies that the “right” ideas can triumph by dint of their own moral and intellectual superiority, and because it appeals to the Enlightenment principles at the heart of the American project. It is also basically wrong.
What we think of as “global” norms have traditionally been little more than the values and preferences of the leading country or countries in the international system. Norms become dominant mostly because they are propagated by dominant powers.
Think about historical examples. The international norm against slavery did not emerge over the course of 19th century solely because slavery was morally wrong — although slavery was undoubtedly a moral obscenity. That norm emerged because world’s most powerful cou-ntry, Great Britain, undertook a concerted campaign over a period of decades to suppress the slave trade.
The reason that wars of aggression and undisguised national aggrandisement ha-ve been comparatively rare over past 70 years is that American superpower, in cooperation with its allies, has believed that such bellicosity threatens to tear the fabric of global peace, and has been willing to shed blood to reverse it when it occurs.
Likewise, freedom of navigation is not universally appealing to all countries — in the waters of Western Pacific, Chinese are working very hard to undermine that principle each and every day. It has retained its persuasive power because it has been enforced by the US Navy.
We like to think we live in a world that would be unrecognisable to those who lived in earlier, less enlightened times — a world in which the rules are the result of moral and intellectual progress of humanity. In reality, we live in a world that would be quite recognisable to those who lived in previous eras, one in which the rules reflect the power and commitment of the rulers.
This is not the same thing as saying that world is just as brutal, violent and chaotic as it was in earlier epochs. The last 70 years have indeed been an era in which peace has proliferated, more tolerant and inclusive modes of governance have flourished, and the strong have increasingly been restrained from simply doing what they will to the weak. The point, however, is that this has occurred largely because the US and its allies have believed it is in their interests to fashion a particular set of rules that has supported this progress. And as any parent can tell you, the moment the rules cease to be enforced, they start to lose their power.
This point is critical to understanding the trajectory of international affairs today. But the idea that post-American world will still be a wor-ld rooted in American norms represents a dubious gamble of epic proportions. It is far more likely that a different leading power, particularly a non-democratic power, wou-ld promote a different set of norms more to its liking.
This is precisely what is starting to happen. Sensing that US power and resolve are in decline, China and Russia are working assiduously to undermine rules that have so long constra-ined their power, and to establish a new set of rules — the absolute sovereignty and legitimacy of authoritarian regimes, the right of great powers to dominate their peripheries — that would make for a very different world. And if these countries are already waging this campaign now, just imagine how much more assertive and successful they might be if the US were to cede them the geopolitical field.
This is why so many countries around the world are so anxiously watching direction of US policy under Trump — because they understand that guiding principles of the international system will be up for grabs if he indulges his desire for retrenchment and abandons America’s leadership role.
This may all seem very depressing, because it means that there will never come a moment at which the US and its allies can pull back from the world without seeing the norms they have fought to establish crumble. But far better to learn this lesson from history than to re-learn it through our own mistakes.

— Bloomberg

Hal Brands is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is the Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. His newest book is “American Grand Strategy in the Age of Trump.”