Does Retrenchment Cause Power Vacuums?

• In Event: Declining Powers and International Conflict

Abstract

Fears of creating power vacuums by retrenching from commitments abroad have a long tradition in U.S. foreign policy circles. Today, they have taken center stage once again as policymakers face the difficult question of whether the United States should maintain its current position in the Middle East or withdraw from the region to free up resources needed both at home and to address security threats in other parts of the globe. Especially following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, some have fervently warned against a retrenchment from the region because this would open a power vacuum to be exploited by U.S. adversaries. In this piece, I argue that the relationship between retrenchment and power vacuums is not as straightforward as commonly believed. Two conceptual issues are at fault. First, policy debates on “power vacuums” and their allegedly pernicious consequences employ a misguided understanding of what exactly power vacuums are and thus misinterpret their causes. Second, considerable conceptual ambiguities persist regarding the question of what exactly “retrenchment” entails, and I show that only some of its variants produce the conditions which lead to the emergence of power vacuums. It follows that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, states can engage in some forms of retrenchment without creating power vacuums. This finding has important implications for the current debate on U.S. grand strategy and the question of whether – and if so, how – the United States should retrench from some of its global commitments to face the threat of a rising China.

Author

• Moritz S. Graefrath, European University Institute