Is grand strategy possible, or as British historian Arnold Toynbee complained, is history “just one damn thing after another?”
It seems like only yesterday that the Biden administration had one articulated in the National Security Strategy unveiled in October 2022. Biden said the world is “at an inflection point in history,” and we are “in the midst of a strategic competition to shape the future of the international order.”
The National Security Strategy identifies Asia as the priority, explaining that China, “is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to advance that objective.”
And from chip wars to near U.S.-China military misses in the South China Sea, competition with China is not abating.
Current realities raise the question: How many wars can the U.S. fight at once? The Biden administration faces two open-ended wars in which the U.S. is deeply entangled, through military and economic aid to Ukraine and increased military aid to Israel on top of a mandated $3.8 billion in such aid annually. In both cases, there is a risk of escalation to direct combat, with Russia in Ukraine and with Iran in the Middle East.
Amid burgeoning great power competition and a fragmenting global order in both Ukraine and Israel, the respective outcomes will likely reshape regional stability in both Europe and the Middle East.
Yet U.S. indirect involvement in both wars limits American agency to influence outcomes. Moreover, aid to Ukraine, if not to Israel has become ensnared in domestic politics with a dysfunctional Congress. The White House says if a new tranche of aid is not approved by Congress, the U.S. will run out of money to support Ukraine.
Nonetheless, Washington appears unwilling to impose any conditions on Israel’s use of U.S. military aid, though Congress may do so. The Biden administration says it will back Ukraine “as long as it takes” and not press Kyiv to negotiate with Putin, though privately, the administration is reportedly asking Kyiv to consider negotiations with Moscow.
Resolutions to either conflict do not appear near the horizon. In Ukraine, a sustained war of attrition and a stalemate is the most probable scenario. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently conceded that Kyiv’s counteroffensive, “did not achieve the desired results.”
In the case of Israel, there is a paradox. Before Oct. 7, Middle East diplomacy — Israel building formal ties to Sunni Arab regimes — put the Palestinian issue on the back burner. After Hamas’s barbaric attack, it moved front and center.
President Biden calls for a two-state solution, though it has proved elusive for 50 years. While many agree that an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza may be the best solution, the deep-seated anger, rage and grief on both sides makes such a negotiated solution difficult to envision for the foreseeable future.
So, both the Ukraine and Israel-Palestinian conflicts are likely to fester, both have a risk of escalating and the U.S. entanglement in both conflicts is not lessening. Yet the rest of the world is not standing still.
In recent months, there has been a wave of small, some civil, wars across Africa, from Burkina Faso to Sudan, and in Europe in Nagorno-Karabakh and the Balkans just for starters. Wither U.S. strategy?
A major test of overstretch is likely to follow Taiwan’s presidential elections in January. William Lai of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party is leading in the polls, consistently around 36 percent (plus or minus 2.3 percent), while Hou Yu-ih of the opposition Kuomintang has 31 percent and a third opposition candidate, Ko Wen-je of the Taiwan People’s Party, has about 18 percent.
Lai, whom Beijing most fears, is most likely to win. While Lai says he would not challenge the status quo, China deeply distrusts and is suspicious of him. Beijing has been sending almost daily air and sea incursions in waters near Taiwan and warplanes across the median line separating mainland China from Taiwan, to intimidate Taipei.
Beijing is very likely to overreact and escalate its coercive efforts to pressure Taiwan, which could result in a confrontation with the U.S. in the South China Sea, where China is also using maritime forces to harass the Philippines.
President Biden seems unphased by the mounting crises and U.S. commitments. At an October campaign event, he repeated an oft-used phrase that the U.S. is “the essential nation.” He explained: “We’re the United States of America, for God’s sake. And there’s nothing — nothing beyond our capacity — nothing — I mean that — when we do it together.”
But a deeply polarized Congress, growing major power competition and troubling U.S. budget deficits illuminate real-world constraints and menacing risks. In one of his last interviews, the late Henry Kissinger highlighted the dangers:
“We are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to.”
In turbulent times of epochal change, stuff happens. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza are reminders of the military admonition that no plan ever survives its first encounter with the enemy.
A grand strategy may not be possible, but understanding the limits of power would help.
Robert A. Manning is a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center. He previously served as senior counselor to the undersecretary of State for global affairs, as a member of the U.S. secretary of state’s policy planning staff and on the National Intelligence Council Strategic Futures Group. Follow him on Twitter @Rmanning4.