Pivotal States and U.S. Strategy

Robert Chase, Emily Hill, Paul Kennedy

From Foreign Affairs, January/February 1996

Article preview: first 500 of 5,811 words total.

Summary:  The United States is spreading its aid and efforts too thin in the developing world. It should focus on a small number of "pivotal states": countries whose fate determines the survival and success of the surrounding region and ultimately the stability of the international system. The list should include Mexico, Brazil, Algeria, Egypt, South Africa, Turkey, India, Pakistan, and Indonesia. A discriminating strategy for shoring up the developing world is a wise way to address traditional security threats and new transnational issues; it might be thought of as the new, improved domino theory. If effective, it could forestall the move in Congress to wipe out nearly all foreign aid.

Robert S. Chase is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at Yale University. Emily B. Hill is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Yale University. Paul Kennedy is Professor of History at Yale University.

THE NEW DOMINOES

Half a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, American policymakers and intellectuals are still seeking new principles on which to base national strategy. The current debate over the future of the international order--including predictions of the "end of history," a "clash of civilizations," a "coming anarchy," or a "borderless world"--has failed to generate agreement on what shape U.S. policy should take. However, a single overarching framework may be inappropriate for understanding today's disorderly and decentralized world. America's security no longer hangs on the success or failure of containing communism. The challenges are more diffuse and numerous. As a priority, the United States must manage its delicate relationships with Europe, Japan, Russia, and China, the other major players in world affairs. However, America's national interest also requires stability in important parts of the developing world. Despite congressional pressure to reduce or eliminate overseas assistance, it is vital that America focus its efforts on a small number of countries whose fate is uncertain and whose future will profoundly affect their surrounding regions. These are the pivotal states.

The idea of a pivotal state--a hot spot that could not only determine the fate of its region but also affect international stability--has a distinguished pedigree reaching back to the British geographer Sir Halford Mackinder in the 1900s and earlier. The classic example of a pivotal state throughout the nineteenth century was Turkey, the epicenter of the so-called Eastern Question; because of Turkey's strategic position, the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire posed a perennial problem for British and Russian policymakers.

Twentieth-century American policymakers employed their own version of a pivotal states theory. Statesmen from Eisenhower and Acheson to Nixon and Kissinger continually referred to a country succumbing to communism as a potential "rotten apple in a barrel" or a "falling domino." Although the domino theory was never sufficiently discriminative--it worsened America's strategic overextension--its core was about supporting pivotal states to prevent their fall to communism and the consequent fall of neighboring states.

Because the U.S. obsession with faltering dominoes led to questionable policies from Vietnam to El Salvador, the theory now has a bad reputation. But the idea itself--that of identifying specific countries as more important than others, for both regional stability and American interests--is sensible. The United States should adopt a discriminative policy toward the developing world, concentrating its energies on pivotal states rather than spreading its attention and resources over the globe.

Indeed, the domino theory may now fit U.S. strategic needs better than it did during the Cold War. The new dominoes, or pivotal states, no longer need assistance against an external threat from a hostile political system; rather, the danger is that they will fall prey to internal disorder. A decade ago, when the main threat to American interests in the developing world was the possibility that nations would align with the Soviets, the United States faced a clear-cut enemy. This enemy captured the American imagination in a way that impending disorder does not. Yet ...

End of preview: first 500 of 5,811 words total.