Revisionist states are redefining power allocation across the globe – the old system of international law and affairs will not continue to work
Gallo 18 Alex Gallo is the Executive Director of the Common Mission Project (CMP), a 501c3 non-profit that delivers the international Hacking for Defense® program, and a Senior Advisor with BMNT Inc., a defense innovation consultancy. He also serves as a Fellow with the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia School of Law and Fellow with the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. Additionally, Alex is an adjunct Assistant Professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. Prior to this role with CMP, Alex served as a Professional Staff Member with the House Armed Services Committee (HASC). His portfolio included U.S. policy in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific regions. Alex wrote authorities, conducted oversight, and advised the Chairman of the committee within his portfolio area of responsibility for five National Defense Authorization Acts (NDAAs). From 2008-2012, Alex served as an instructor in the Department of Social Sciences at West Point and the Deputy Director of the Combating Terrorism Center. Alex began his career as a U.S. Army officer. His operational deployments included a peacekeeping deployment in Kosovo and a combat tour in Iraq. Alex has also served as a non-resident Senior Associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC. His work has been featured in The Hill, Foreign Affairs, The Economist, Modern War Institute, and CTC Sentinel. Alex earned a B.S. from the United States Military Academy at West Point and a master’s degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School. Currently, Alex is a PhD candidate at Leiden University’s School of Governance and Global Affairs at The Hague, Netherlands. (“THE RISE OF THE REVISIONISTS: WHAT TO DO ABOUT RUSSIA, CHINA, NORTH KOREA, AND IRAN?”, Modern War Institute at West Point, 1-18-18, https://mwi.westpoint.edu/rise-revisionists-russia-china-north-korea-iran/, DOA: 7/6/24)//LFS – LMH
As a rejoinder to Mead’s Foreign Affairs piece, John Ikenberry argued that these actors are not “”—they are, at best, In any case, we are just now beginning to see the effects of this challenge.
For example, China is coercively presenting “new,” competing political and economic systems to actors in their region, saying, essentially, “embrace the Chinese way,” or else. Russia has been engaged in a similar effort for years, presenting a similar proposition to other states: “Do not turn towards Western institutions and systems,” or else. North Korea and Iran, for their part, have taken this regional, coercive approach to a whole new level—by holding population centers at risk through conventional weapon systems.
North Korea is doing this with a massive artillery capability, much of it near enough to the border with South Korea that the population in Seoul is well within range. The under the North Korean People’s Army Artillery Command could result in, 20,000 killed each day should war unfold on the Peninsula. No US military capability or system will be able to fundamentally change the reality of the potential death toll on the Korean Peninsula, at this point.
In the Middle East, Iran’s plays a similar role, holding at risk key facilities and population centers in the UAE and other Gulf Cooperation Council countries.
Again, the net effect in both cases is to establish a regional context that enhances their interests by operating below our threshold for response—thereby deterring the United States from taking decisive action and degrading our relative influence in the process.
So, what to do about all of this?
The United States should continue to build out our intelligence picture, regional missile defense, and our capabilities to hunt and destroy such conventional systems in these regions. But we should also contemplate new forms of deterrence against “below-threshold” approaches of such regional actors.
We can no longer exclusively rely on the retaliatory model of deterrence because the threat of retaliation does not sufficiently thwart any of these actors from probing the frontiers of Western “defenses” and influence (Russia in Crimea), reclaiming land to prevent freedom of navigation (China in the South China Sea), or holding population centers and other key facilities at risk (North Korea and Iran). These actions continue to fall below our threshold for response.
The result: revisionist states are fundamentally redefining regional power dynamics across the globe that may ultimately rewrite international rules and norms in their favor—de facto, de jure, and through pure force.
And so, as National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster to provocations and recent actions by the North Korean regime, perhaps we are beginning to see a shift towards engaging more decisively within the regional contexts, standing up for US interests, and punishing our adversaries rather than an exclusive focus on avoiding military confrontation. This approach is clearly risky, but so is what we have been doing.
Because if not—if that State Department briefer was right and it’s not like we’re going to go to war to confront our adversaries’ activities early and below our current thresholds for response—then we must either ready ourselves for the inevitable, more costly war in the future or be prepared to accept a new world order.