The Foreign Service Journal, September 2021

80 SEPTEMBER 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL of his academic background in Russian history, Gates’ summary of events from the disintegration of the Soviet Union to the consolidation of President Vladimir Putin’s hold on power is a compact tour de force. He hedges somewhat in assessing whether U.S. policy toward Russia—from the accelerated push for NATO enlarge- ment to insufficiently robust or timely economic assistance—might have contributed to the fraught tensions in bilateral relations today, or whether these are the inevitable by-product of a Russia frustrated by its diminished geopolitical status and seeking to “assert its rightful role in the world on its own terms.” China’s fall from the grace of high expectations for democratic convergence to the cold-eyed realpolitik of the great power competition underway today has been even more dramatic, in Gates’ view. Here, while emphasizing the high stakes, he strikes a pragmatic, even tone: “China’s rise does not require America’s decline. Whether the United States descends depends far less on what hap- pens in Beijing than on what happens in Washington.” A Pitch for Realism More hopefully, he adds: “The most likely future is one of long-term competi- tion and rivalry, waged primarily through nonmilitary instruments of power.” And finally, and more critically: “As we look to the future, perhaps the most impor- tant nonmilitary instrument of power is a long-range strategy for waging this competition. The Chinese have one. The United States does not.” Beyond acknowledging that those exercising power (including U.S. presidents) often have less of it in fact than perceived, Gates sharply criticizes the excess of strategic ambition and the absence of strategic realism of U.S. political leaders, that is, their failure to link realistic ends with viable means. Fortunately, however, he mostly stops short of petulant “I told you so” finger- pointing or “it’s because they didn’t listen to me” fuming. This is because Gates, better than most observers, understands that some strategic problems have no solution—or at least no realistic solution—at all, and that just because the approach that was tried fails doesn’t mean another approach would have succeeded. In the opening segment of his chapter on Georgia, Libya, Syria and Ukraine, for example, Gates quotes a former Obama NSC official to the effect that, however dramatically different our respective approaches have been, intervening in and occupying Iraq, intervening in but not occupying Libya, and neither intervening in nor occupying Syria, were each decidedly similar in being “costly disasters.” All told, Gates’ book is an excellent primer for the reader interested in cur- rent geopolitical events, the student of international relations and the practitio- ner of national security strategy. It is a clear-eyed look at lessons learned, and a pragmatic appraisal of how the United States might choose to apply these lessons to improve its performance in “orchestrating the symphony of power” in pursuit of U.S. national interests in the future. n Alexis Ludwig is currently on the faculty of the National War College. From 2018 to 2020, he served as deputy permanent representative at the U.S. Mission to the Organization of American States. He joined the Foreign Service in 1994 and has spent most of his career in overseas missions in the Western Hemisphere and East Asia.