It follows that—in addition to cultivating the various novel dimensions of power (technology, communications, information, as well as trade and finance)—American foreign policy must remain concerned with the geopolitical dimension and must employ its influence in Eurasia in a manner that creates a stable continental equilibrium, with the United States as the political arbiter.
By the outbreak of World War I, America's growing economic might already accounted for about 33 percent of global GNP, which displaced Great Britain as the world's leading industrial power.
World War I provided the first occasion for the massive projection of American military force into Europe.
Instead, Germany's defeat was sealed largely by the two extra-European victors, the United States and the Soviet Union, which became the successors to Europe's unfulfilled quest for global supremacy.
The Sino-Soviet bloc dominated most of Eurasia but did not control its peripheries. North America succeeded in entrenching itself on both the extreme western and extreme eastern shores of the great Eurasian continent.
For the Central Europeans, Russian domination meant isolation from what the Central Europeans considered their philosophical and cultural home: Western Europe and its Christian religious traditions.
The collapse of its rival left the United States in a unique position. It became simultaneously the first and the only truly global power.
Mongol imperial power was largely based on military domination.
In fact, the Mongol rulers proved quite susceptible to gradual assimilation by the often culturally more advanced peoples they had conquered.
Not only does the United States control all of the world's oceans and seas, but it has developed an assertive military capability for amphibious shore control that enables it to project its power inland in politically significant ways.
The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America's engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
The Atlantic alliance, epitomized institutionally by NATO, links the most productive and influential states of Europe to America, making the United States a key participant even in intra-European affairs.
In addition, one must consider as part of the American system the global web of specialized organizations, especially the "international" financial institutions.
Unlike earlier empires, this vast and complex global system is not a hierarchical pyramid.
FOR AMERICA, THE CHIEF geopolitical prize is Eurasia.
Eurasia is also the location of most of the world's politically assertive and dynamic states.
For most of the history of international affairs, territorial control was the focus of political conflict.
Nation-states continue to be the basic units of the world system.
Increasingly, the ruling national elites have come to recognize that factors other than territory are more crucial in determining the international status of a state or the degree of its international influence.
Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;
Geopolitics has moved from the regional to the global dimension, with preponderance over the entire Eurasian continent serving as the central basis for global primacy.
At this stage, suffice it to say that in the western extremity of Eurasia the key and dynamic geostrategic players are France and Germany.
In contrast, Great Britain is not a geostrategic player.
Great Britain, to be sure, still remains important to America.
Similarly, it hardly needs arguing that China is a major player.
Japan is clearly a major power in world affairs, and the American-Japanese alliance has often—and correctly—been defined as America's most important bilateral relationship.
In contrast, India is in the process of establishing itself as a regional power and views itself as potentially a major global player as well. It also sees itself as a rival to China.
Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.
Ukraine's loss of independence would have immediate consequences for Central Europe, transforming Poland into the geopolitical pivot on the eastern frontier of a united Europe.
Despite its limited size and small population, Azerbaijan, with its vast energy resources, is also geopolitically critical.
Both Turkey and Iran, however, are primarily important geopolitical pivots.
Finally, South Korea is a Far Eastern geopolitical pivot.
U.S. policy toward the vital geopolitical pivots of Ukraine and Azerbaijan cannot skirt that issue, and America thus faces a difficult dilemma regarding tactical balance and strategic purpose.
By exploiting religious hostility to the American way of life and taking advantage of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Islamic fundamentalism could undermine several pro-Western Middle Eastern governments and eventually jeopardize American regional interests, especially in the Persian Gulf.
Potentially, the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an "antihegemonic" coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances.
Western Europe is already a common market, but it is still far from being a single political entity.
For France, Europe is the means for regaining France's past greatness.
For Germany, redemption + security = Europe + America.
However, Germany's reunification also dramatically changed the real parameters of European politics. It was simultaneously a geopolitical defeat for Russia and for France.
Through Poland, German influence could radiate northward— into the Baltic states—and eastward—into Ukraine and Belarus.
Left to themselves, thc Europeans run the risk of becoming absorbed by their internal social concerns.
Nonetheless, after, the first three new NATO members have also joined the EU, both the EU and NATO will have to address the question of extending membership
The collapse of the Russian Empire created a power void in the very heart of Eurasia.
The appearance of an independent Ukrainian state not only challenged all Russians to rethink the nature of their own political and ethnic identity, but it represented a vital geopolitical setback for the Russian state.
Russia's loss of its dominant position on the Baltic Sea was replicated on the Black Sea not only because of Ukraine's independence but also because the newly independent Caucasian states— Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan—enhanced the opportunities for Turkey to reestablish its once-lost influence in the region.
That Ukraine will eventually somehow be-, "reintegrated" remains an article of faith among many members of the Russian political elite.
Moreover, the heavy-handed Russian treatment of the new Ukrainian state—its unwillingness to grant recognition of Ukraine's borders, its questioning of Ukraine's right to Crimea, its insistence on exclusive extraterritorial control over the port of Sevastopol—gave the aroused Ukrainian nationalism a distinctively anti-Russian edge.
Without Ukraine, as already noted, an imperial restoration based either on the CIS or on Eurasianism was not a viable option.
For America, Russia is much too weak to be a partner but still too strong to be simply its patient.
An independent Azerbaijan can serve as a corridor for Western access to the energy-rich Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia.
The key point to bear in mind is that Russia cannot be in Europe without Ukraine also being in Europe, whereas Ukraine can be in Europe without Russia being in Europe.
Today's competition within the Eurasian Balkans also directly involves three neighboring powers: Russia, Turkey, and Iran, though China may eventually become a major protagonist as well. Also Involved In Ilie competition, bul more remotely, are Ukraine, Pakistan, India, and the distant America.
For Ukraine, the central issues are the future character of the CIS and freer access to energy sources, which would lessen Ukraine's dependence on Russia.
The example set by Ukraine and Uzbekistan has had an impact even on the leaders who have been more deferential to Moscow's central concerns.
In time, economic growth in Kazakstan might help to bridge the ethnic split that makes this Central Asian "shield" so vulnerable to Russian pressure.
China's resentment of Taiwan's separate status is intensify ing as China gains in strength and as the increasingly prosperous Taiwan begins to flirt with a formally separate status as a nation-state.
Great Britain, Japan, Russia, and America—Great Britain, because of the Opium War and its
consequent shameful debasement of China;
Tensions within China could also intensify, as a result of the inevitable unevenness of highly accelerated economic growth, driven heavily by the uninhibited exploitation of marginal advantages.
Geography is also an important factor driving the Chinese interest in making an alliance with Pakistan and establishing a military presence in Burma.
Japanopho-bia has now yielded to Sinophobia.
These facile analyses obscured the degree to which Japan was, and remains, a vulnerable country. It is vulnerable to the slightest disruptions in the orderly global flow of resources and trade, not to mention global stability more generally, and it is beset by surfacing domestic weaknesses—demographic, social, and political.
Geopolitical pluralism in Eurasia as a whole will neither be attainable nor stable without a deepening strategic understanding between America and China.
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The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives. Zbigniew Brzezinski. 1997
Twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, Belarus remains politically and economically dependent on Russia. One-third of all its exports go to Russia while Belarus is almost entirely dependent on Russia for its energy needs. Moreover, a majority of Belarus’s 9.6 million people speak Russian, Belarus as a national state has been independent only since 1991, and the depth of its people’s national identity has not been tested—all of which are factors that preserve Moscow’s influence. For example, in 2009, the Russian army held major maneuvers (with Belarusian participation) in Belarus designated as Zapad (i.e., “the West ”) in which it repelled a hypothetical Western attack, culminating with a simulated Russian nuclear attack on the capital of a bordering Western (i.e., NATO) state.
Nonetheless, Belarus’s dependent relationship with Russia has not been without conflict. Belarus has not recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states (which Moscow established after its clash in 2008 with Georgia) despite open pressures by Putin. At the same time, its lack of a democratic process, as manifested in the seventeen-year-long dictatorship exercised by President Lukashenko, has stood in the way of any meaningful relations with the West. Poland, Sweden, and Lithuania have been trying to develop some civic connections between Belarus and the EU, but with very limited progress.
Consequently, a marked decline by America would give Russia a largely riskless opportunity to absorb Belarus, with at most a minimal use of force, and with little other cost beyond its reputation as a responsible regional power. Unlike the case of Georgia, Belarus would have neither Western arms nor enjoy the West’s political sympathy. The EU would be unlikely to respond in the absence of American support, and some Western European countries would likely be indifferent to the cause of Belarus. The UN, in such circumstances, would be largely passive. The Central European states, all too aware of the dangers of an emboldened Russia, might demand a common NATO response, but with America in decline it is unlikely that they could muster a collective and forceful reaction.
Russia’s absorption of Belarus, without too much cost or pain, would jeopardize the future of Ukraine as a genuinely sovereign state. Ukraine’s relationship with Russia, since gaining its independence in 1991, has been as prone to tension as its relationship with the West has been prone to indecision. Russia has repeatedly tried to coerce Ukraine into adopting policies beneficial to Russia, using energy as a political tool. In 2005, 2007, and 2009, Russia has either threatened or actually stopped oil and gas flow to Ukraine because of price issues and Ukraine’s outstanding energy debt. In the summer of 2010, Ukraine’s President Yanukovych was pressured to agree to an extension of Russia’s lease of a naval base in the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Sevastopol for another twenty-five years in exchange for a preferential pricing of Russian energy deliveries to Ukraine.
Ukraine is a significant European state of some 45 million people, with a strong industry and potentially very productive agriculture. A union with Russia would both enrich Russia and represent a giant step toward the restoration of its imperial sphere, a matter of much nostalgia to some of its leaders. Hence it is likely that the Kremlin will continue to press Ukraine to join a “common economic space” with Russia, gradually stripping Ukraine of direct control over its major industrial assets through mergers and takeovers by Russian firms. At the same time, quiet efforts will go on to infiltrate the Ukrainian security services and military command, in order to weaken Ukraine’s ability to protect, when need be, its sovereignty.
Eventually—assuming America’s decline—a passive European response to the absorption of Belarus, not to mention an earlier and successful use of force to intimidate Georgia, could entice the Russian leaders to attempt at some point a more overt reunification. But it would be a very complicated undertaking, perhaps requiring the use of some force and at least a contrived economic crisis within Ukraine to make a formal union with an economically more resilient Russia more palatable to the Ukrainians. Russia would still risk provoking a belated nationalist reaction, especially from the Ukrainian-speaking west and center of the country. With the passage of time, Ukraine as a nation-state is gaining a deeper emotional commitment from a younger generation—whether primarily Ukrainian or Russian speaking—that increasingly views Ukrainian statehood as normal and as part of its identity. Hence time may not be working in favor of a voluntary submission by Kyiv to Moscow, but impatient Russian pressures to that end as well as the West’s indifference could generate a potentially explosive situation on the very edge of the European Union.
Devastated by nine years of extraordinarily brutal warfare waged by the Soviet Union, ignored by the West for a decade after the Soviet withdrawal, mismanaged by the medieval Taliban rulers who seized power with Pakistani assistance, and exposed during the Bush presidency to seven years of halfhearted US military operations and sporadic economic assistance, Afghanistan is a country in shambles. It has little economic output outside of its illegal narcotics trade, with 40% unemployment and a global ranking of 219th in GDP per capita. Only 15–20% of Afghans have access to electricity.
The most likely results of a rapid US disengagement brought on by war fatigue or the early effects of an American decline would be internal disintegration and an external power play among nearby states for influence in Afghanistan. In the absence of an effective and stable government in Kabul, the country would be dominated by rival warlords. Both Pakistan and India would more assertively and openly compete for influence in Afghanistan—with Iran also probably involved. As the result, the possibility of at least an indirect war between India and Pakistan would increase.
Iran would likely try to exploit the Pakistani-Indian rivalry in seeking advantage for itself. Both India and Iran fear that any increase in Pakistani influence in Afghanistan would severely affect the regional balance of power, and in India’s case compound the belligerent stance of Pakistan. In addition, adjoining central Asian states—given the presence of significant Tadjik, Uzbek, Kirghiz, and Turkmen communities in Afghanistan—could become involved in the regional power play as well. And the more players involved in Afghanistan, the more likely it is that a larger regional conflict could break out.
Second, even if a solid Afghan government is in place at the time of currently planned American disengagement—with some semblance of central control—a subsequent failure to sustain US-sponsored international involvement in the region’s stability is likely to reignite the embers of ethnic and religious passions. The Taliban could reemerge as the major disruptive force in Afghanistan—with help from the Pakistani Taliban—and/or Afghanistan could descend into a state of tribal warlordism. Afghanistan then could become a still larger player in the international drug trade, and even perhaps again a haven for international terrorism.
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Strategic vision : America and the crisis of global power. Zbigniew Brzezinski. 2012
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