In a Buckley Program firing line debate, Hal Brands and Michael Brenes discussed how the U.S. should—or can—have primacy on the global stage.
Joshua Blake
Staff Writer, The Buckley Beacon
Last Thursday afternoon, the William F. Buckley, Jr. Program held its first firing line debate of the semester on the topic, “Global Order Needs U.S. Power.” Hal Brands, who is Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, argued in the affirmative. His opponent in the negative, Michael Brenes, is Associate Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy and Lecturer in History at Yale University.
As Brands and Brenes meet for their debate, Americans are growing increasingly divided over U.S. intervention in foreign conflicts. In one YouGov poll conducted in June, only 16 percent of voters approved of President Donald Trump’s bombing of Iranian nuclear sites—and support for Israel, U.S.’s longtime military ally in the Middle East, appears to be souring among younger voters. Brands, a longtime proponent of more hawkish American foreign policy, prefaced his remarks at Thursday’s debate by reflecting on the latter half of the twentieth century, a time period he calls “pretty darn good” and attributes to greater global American dominance.
“By any meaningful comparison, the last eighty years, the period since 1945, has been the best eighty years in human history,” Brands told the audience of around 60 attendees. “A lot of factors have gone into human flourishing for the past eighty years, but U.S. power, U.S. strategy, has been at the center of it because the United States literally went out and tried to craft a global order that would bring these good results about.”
Brands emphasized several mechanisms of growing American power, one of which being international commerce—which has aided in the creation of military alliances.
“[The U.S.] led an international trading system that linked like-minded nations together, it created alliances and military strategies that were meant to deter aggression in key regions around the world, it prevented dangerous autocratic actors like the Soviet Union from reordering the system,” he added.
In February of 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an incursion that has since led to the deaths of over 13,300 civilians. Despite the U.S. appropriating nearly $200 billion for Ukrainian military defense, the war remains ongoing three years later. Brenes, who co-wrote The Rivalry Peril: How Great-Power Competition Threatens Peace and Weakens Democracy, rebutted Brands by pointing out that the U.S. primacy of the twentieth century is increasingly infeasible in a “multipolar” world.
“I don’t actually take issue with the central premise of the debate or prompt tonight that the United States can play an excellent role on the global stage,” Brenes said. “Primacy is impossible in a multipolar world. We’re moving toward a world where in the next twenty years, we’re going to see three main economic powers, that is the United States, India and China.”
Brenes emphasized that in addition to a lack of interest in global American dominance among Americans, other international actors are similarly disinterested in pledging their allegiance to a global superpower.
“Much of the world, particularly in the global south does not want to be subjected to U.S. supremacy and doesn’t want to choose, for that matter, between the United States and China,” he said. “The American people actually do not want a strategy of U.S. primacy, or a strategy premised on primacy. People don’t want power in these terms.”
Instead, Brenes argues, the U.S. should be “first among equals,” a system where the great powers in the world have equal influence on global affairs but one of them has an advantage—mainly economically—over the others.
“The United States can play a first among equals role in shaping the world order to the benefit of peace and prosperity. Hal and I are on the same page in terms of what we want to see around the world, which is democracy, human rights, the rule of law flourish, it’s just a question of how to achieve that,” Brenes said.
Brands responded by conceding that the same level of primacy that the U.S. would have had in the twentieth century is infeasible, while also arguing that it is unlikely China will overtake the U.S. economy in its size. “The U.S. is not going to have the same degree of primacy, hegemony, or advantage. The likely answer to the question of when China will surpass the U.S. in the worldwide economy is never,” Brands said.
Upon being asked to identify the greatest twenty-first-century threats facing the U.S., Brands and Brenes differed in their responses.
“You have increasingly powerful and increasingly energetic states that reject some or all of the system that has sort of provided a decent concept of order in the world,” Brands said. “ I’m talking about the Russias and Chinas and Irans and North Koreas of the world.”
Brenes pointed to climate change as the biggest global threat. “Climate change is going to affect us all in ways we haven’t yet seen materialize, and it’s already materializing, climate change is wreaking havoc faster than we expected. … It is an existential threat that affects all nations around the world; great powers, middle powers, small powers.”
In an interview with The Buckley Beacon, Brenes reflected on the importance of debating U.S.’s role globally, especially in light of its declining power. “The global order is changing,” Brenes told The Beacon. “This incoming change, and the potential the U.S has to influence it, are why these conversations about the future of U.S. foreign policy, where it stands in global order, are necessary. It’s a moment of great fluidity.”
On October 9, the Buckley Institute is set to host Boris Johnson, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, to reflect on the U.S. and U.K.’s alliance.