Foreign Policy article: Why are great power crises a good thing for America and the West?

American academic Hal Brands, professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, says that crises of the great powers are good for the United States and the West, and that the current tensions will spark interest and eliminate deadlocks, as the history of the Cold War has proven.

Brands begins his

in Foreign Policy welcoming readers in what he describes as an era of dangerous and persistent tension and recurrent and acute crises of the great powers, referring to the war in Ukraine, the crisis between China and the United States following the visit of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan and the nuclear crises with Iran and North Korea.

He said that crises and conflict between the United States and the former Soviet Union after World War II and before the onset of the Cold War can teach Americans a lot to deal with crises with great powers.

Washington and the then emerging Western world eventually weathered those crises with a combination of firmness and flexibility and used them as the catalyst for many of the "legendary measures" that ultimately won the Cold War.

Brands gave 4 reasons for saying that crises are good, which can be summarized as follows:

First: revealing the intentions of the opponent

Crises can reveal the intentions of an opponent.

The crises of 1946 and 1947 showed that the Soviet Union was not satisfied with the gains it made during World War II, but was seeking further expansion at the expense of the non-communist world.

He said Americans and the West are learning something similar in Ukraine today, which is that Russian President Vladimir Putin is an "unrepentant aggressor" rather than an ordinary statesman resentful of years of NATO expansion toward Russia.

Second, identifying weaknesses and providing opportunities

Crises can reveal weaknesses in the US military position and provide an opportunity to correct them.

The writer said that the United States and its allies should be glad to discover the shortcomings of their arsenals and the weakness of their defense industrial bases during the Ukraine war.

After just a few months of fighting, Western democracies face painful trade-offs between their ability to support Ukraine and their ability to keep their armies well supplied.

Third: Accelerate the formation of balanced alliances

Crises can accelerate the formation of balanced alliances.

The Ukraine war not only led to NATO expansion by breaking Swedish and Finnish hesitation toward the alliance, but it also fueled an emerging global alliance of democracies including countries such as Japan, South Korea and Australia.

Likewise, says the author, the Taiwan Strait crisis can accelerate the establishment of bilateral and multilateral arrangements aimed at appeasement in Beijing;

Such as deeper US military planning on Taiwan contingencies with Japan and Australia, realistic discussions of the role that India or Vietnam might play in a war for control of the Western Pacific, and the pre-mobilization of economic and technological sanctions that Washington and other advanced democracies might use in the event of Chinese "aggression."

Fourth: Crises shake deadlocks

Crises can shake stalemates.

The Marshall Plan or the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO) would not have been possible in normal times.

Since last February, the United States has moved more weapons and money into Ukraine than almost anyone thought possible, and it has done so with remarkable speed for anyone familiar with the very slow pace typical of the United States government.

The question now is whether Washington can use this and any future crisis to achieve something similar on the other side of the world.

Crises are opportunities to build political consensus and internal momentum

The writer goes on to say that crises are opportunities to build political consensus and momentum.

During the Cold War, early crises persuaded the American public to support expenditures and policies that would have been unimaginable had tensions not been so high.

Crises can shake democracies out of their complacency because they reveal more graphically the looming danger than can even the most eloquent speeches or hotly debated strategic documents.

Before concluding his article, the writer drew attention to what the expert American strategist in the Cold War, George Kennan, was referring to, as he said that "crises are almost inevitable. And when the great powers compete, there is no real security, and there is no alternative to unsafe living."

To conclude the article, the crises of the great powers will come again and again, whether the Americans are ready or not.

The question is whether Washington can safely bypass it and use it to its advantage.