STRATEGIC

10 Strategic Choices for a Turbulent World: In Pursuit of Security and Opportunity
While Americans will likely continue to view their nation as
an exceptional force for good in the world, we can expect the United
States to find its preferences challenged by increasingly strong rivals.
Defending the liberal order does not mean that the United States will
be able to advance its values everywhere at all times. Yet we assume that
it must continue to work with its liberal democratic allies to advance
humanitarian goals, human rights, and individual dignity wherever
it can; no other nation will. In the aftermath of the “Arab Winter,” it
may choose not to push for transitions to democracy in the most troubled
areas of the world, where the precursors of civil society are lacking.
It may opt not to put troops on the ground to live up to the new
international norm of the “responsibility to protect” (R2P, discussed in
Chapter Two). Yet, especially in turbulent times, the United States can
increase its efforts to support and strengthen the other 126 established
and emerging democracies. It is on their success that the liberal international
order ultimately depends. 19
Third, it is safe to assume that uncertainty will continue, and
perhaps even intensify; it is a constant in human affairs. This does not
mean that the world is “falling apart,” as some fear; but for Americans
who have lived through sunnier times, it is turbulent, disorienting, and
unsettling. As former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft put it,
“This world is not as dangerous as that during the Cold War, but it is
much more complicated.” 20
In such a complex and dynamic environment, strategic surprises
may or may not occur more frequently than in decades past—this
is unknowable. But we can safely assume that surprises will happen.
Futurists Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall define strategic surprises as
“events that, if they occur, would make a big difference to the future,
19 Ted Piccone argues that the success of Brazil, South Africa, India, Turkey, and Indonesia
may determine the trajectory of the liberal order. To this, however, might be added
several of the increasingly fragile democracies of Eastern Europe, as well as the Western
European nations in political turmoil as a result of the migration crisis. Ted Piccone, Five
Rising Democracies and the Fate of the Liberal Democratic Order, Washington, D.C.: Brookings
Institution Press, 2016.
20 As quoted in David Rothkopf, National Insecurity: American Leadership in an Age of Fear,
New York: Public Affairs, 2014, p. 350.