Squaring the Circle on Spheres of Influence: The Overlooked Benefits

Abstract

Whether spheres of influence stabilize or disrupt international security and how the United States should respond to efforts by other actors to establish spheres is at the forefront of contemporary grand strategy debates. For many in Washington, the answer is clear: spheres of influence are dangerous and destabilizing relics of centuries past which have no place in the modern world. In this rendering, spheres contradict American values, threaten to upend the liberal international order, promote great power competition, and ultimately destabilize international politics writ large. And at a time when many in Washington claim that Moscow and Beijing are crafting their own spheres in Eastern Europe and Asia, the policy implications of this position are clear: if a choice must be made between opposing or acknowledging these efforts, the United States must actively resist their creation. Nevertheless, both history and theory offer reasons to be skeptical of this widespread opprobrium. For one, the historical record for recognizing another great power’s sphere shows mixed results. With the benefit of hindsight, for example, we can see that attempts by Britain and the Soviet Union to satiate Hitler’s territorial ambitions by granting Germany a limited sphere of influence —first, the Sudetenland at the Munich Conference in 1938 and then Poland in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939—were strategic disasters. At other junctures, however, great powers struck deals regarding spheres of influence that stabilized interstate relations and, at times, helped protect smaller states from predation. Even a cursory glance at history reveals this