Which side does time favor in a geopolitical conflict?

By Lee Jong-eun

In 1947, in the early days of the Cold War, U.S. diplomat George Kennan wrote a policy document proposing recommendations for a U.S. Cold War strategy. Kennan articulated that a long-term, patient "containment" against Soviet expansion would force the Soviet Union eventually to "break up" or "gradually mellow." Kennan's proposals became the basis for the U.S. containment strategy, and the eventual break-up of the USSR bolstered confidence in the West that "time is on our side."

The notion that "time is on our side" appears frequently in the West's political discourse. Multiple Western policymakers have formulated foreign policy strategies based on the prediction that the liberal world has a long-term advantage over non-liberal adversaries. The West's predictions often assume one of two geopolitical outcomes.

First, if the West engages non-liberal states with mutually beneficial arrangements, the latter would in time evolve and become more liberal. Alternatively, if a non-liberal state refuses engagement and attempts hostile, "rogue" behaviors, the West could counter with robust containment. In time, the rogue state would be crippled by the cost of its isolation and seek settlement or suffer regime change.

Northeast Asia's regional geopolitics have also been influenced by U.S. policymakers' future predictions. In the 1990s, the Clinton administration attempted to integrate China into the global economy, predicting that China would liberalize and become a responsible global stakeholder. The Clinton administration was also supportive of South Korea's Sunshine Policy to engage and transform North Korea.

The successive U.S. administrations, disappointed with the slow progress of China's liberalization, then shifted toward containing China's rise. The more confrontational strategy has been based on a prediction that China would be unable to sustain its growth, stagnating and declining eventually. Similarly, "strategic patience," "maximum pressure" later advocated by U.S. policymakers toward North Korea have predicted prolonged international isolation would pressure North Korea to either suspend its rogue behavior or suffer regime collapse.

The geopolitical actors engaged in rivalry against the West, however, also hold confidence in their advantages over time. In the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping invoked a proverb "tao guang yang hui" (hide strength, bide time) in patiently waiting for China's growth to catch up with the West.

China's current policymakers take the view that the U.S. is in irreversible decline in geopolitical influence, allowing for China to continue its steady challenges to U.S.-led international order. North Korea has also conveyed resolve to play the "long game" to endure U.S. "hostile policies" until the latter eventually grants the former's demands for regime security and recognition as a nuclear weapons state.

So, which side does the passage of time favor? The liberal West or its challengers? The end of the Cold War and the spread of globalization have often been cited as evidence of the durability of the West-led liberal order. In contrast, continuation of authoritarian states such as Russia and China, the Taliban's eventual victory in Afghanistan and growing political polarization within Western democracies have been cited as evidence of the West's declining capacity to integrate or contain revisionist geopolitical actors.

What past and current geopolitical conflicts have revealed is that both the West and its challengers have long-term vulnerabilities. The non-liberal regimes are vulnerable to institutional inefficiencies and domestic unrest over social and political demands. Yet, the Western democracies have also faced difficulties in sustaining long-term strategies toward their ideological rivals, whether it be engagement or containment.

To those who take a more philosophical outlook on history, the course of history might be seen as a trajectory favoring the side that is "virtuous," or "progressive." Predictably, Western liberals and their challengers have both espoused conviction that they are on the ascendant side of history. But from a more empirical outlook, geopolitical outcomes are shaped by individual policy choices and interactions of participating actors. A rising power might stop rising, and a declining power might make a comeback. A country with greater long-term vulnerabilities might still triumph, in large part due to policy blunders of its adversary.

As Sparta defeated more advanced Athens in ancient Greece, the Cold War's outcome might have been different had different Soviet and U.S. leaders made different policy decisions that instead exacerbated U.S. vulnerabilities over those of the Soviets. Subsequently, while it might be reasonable to predict that the West would eventually win a "new Cold War" against Russia and China, there is also realistic prospect that the latter could outmaneuver the West through mitigating their vulnerabilities and exploiting those of the West.

One benefit of geopolitical actors' optimism in their future is that it dissuades them from taking reckless actions in the present. As Kennan's prediction of the West's eventual triumph contributed to a more measured containment strategy, the current revisionist powers' predictions of their eventual triumph, accurate or not, might motivate them to avoid needless escalation of conflict with the West.

Perhaps, the outbreak of war in Ukraine, rather than over Taiwan, demonstrates that strategically more confident China is more likely to be prudent than less-confident Russia in geopolitical conflicts. Similarly, the West's faith in its long-term capacity to contain or integrate geopolitical adversaries might be integral to maintaining competitive coexistence with its rivals.

A prudent reminder, however, should be that in a geopolitical conflict, time does not irrevocably favor a particular side. Rather, the passage of time provides opportunities and challenges for each geopolitical actor to utilize its strengths, mitigate its vulnerabilities and exploit adversaries' vulnerabilities.

The actor that makes the better use of the opportunities given by time, then, is more likely to triumph in a geopolitical rivalry. In the past century, that actor was the U.S. and the West. In the current century, a new round of long-term geopolitical competition might be starting with an open-ended outcome.

Lee Jong-eun (jl4375a@student.american.edu), a Ph.D. candidate, is an adjunct faculty at the American University School of International Service. Prior to this, he has served as a Republic of Korea Air Force intelligence officer. His research specialties include U.S. foreign policy, South Korean politics and foreign policy, alliance management and East Asian regional security.