Multipolarity fosters a balance of power, which prevents unilateral overreach and interventionist failures associated with US heg.

One lesson of the Cold War is that survival is a mutual interest. Yet many see Chinese and Russian ambitions as unrelenting and inflexible. As such, there can be no accommodation, no modern Westphalian or Concert-of-Vienna-type order, no balance of power arrangements. Echoing Biden’s binary absolutism, other proponents of perpetual primacy like Hal Brands argue that sustained U.S. hegemony remains the most sensible US grand strategy. The assumption here is that U.S. power has not relatively declined — as the NSS also assumes, it is forever 1991. If that were the case, we might agree with this conventional wisdom. But it is not, and we cannot.

When he designed the containment strategy to fight the Cold War, George Kennan understood that the United States did not have the appetite for a war with the Soviet Union. President Harry S. Truman and other leaders who experienced firsthand the unpredictability and failures of both world wars had a sense of U.S. limits, particularly after Moscow acquired nuclear weapons. Even while Russia’s future looks grim and some believe that China has reached a stagnating peak, resurgent optimism for liberal hegemony with no limits seems oblivious to both domestic and global realities.

Multipolarity is inherently more complex and less stable than hegemonic or binary world orders. Nevertheless, history suggests it can work, especially when there are few viable alternatives. Why not the example of Britain’s victory over Napoleonic France? By creating a balance of power among allies — and even with its opponent, France — Britain ushered in the 19th century Long Peace with a Concert of Europe. As we learned from near catastrophes during the Cold War, coexistence in the nuclear era is more complicated. But the logic of nuclear deterrence persists. Confronted with the risk of mutual assured destruction, even the most powerful nations must reach some accommodations.

“Only American power can keep the natural forces of history at bay,” is Kagan’s punchline. Such DC conventional wisdom notwithstanding, nostalgia is not a strategy. In terms of economics, technology, and nuclear weapons, today’s world is multipolar. The United States is well positioned to adapt its leadership to this burgeoning reality if it understands the limits of power, employs strategic empathy to grasp others’ interests, and creates allied coalitions with whom to share the burden and counter the excesses of Beijing and Moscow. At the same time, Washington should cooperate with China and Russia on shared global interests and seek an inclusive balance based on “must haves” rather than inflexible aspirations.