The West has a long history of doing nothing, utilizing the
United Nations, and before that the League of Nations, to create the
illusion that they are doing something, when they make speeches and
pass resolutions.
Neither speeches nor resolutions are going to make any
difference to the Russians, to the Iranians or to any other belligerent
nation. We know it, they know it and the world knows it. (continue reading at Townhall.com)
Now we hear that Russia's Novolipetsk Steel is to buy John Maneely Company from Carlyle Group.
On Sept. 11, 1990, U.S. President George H. W. Bush addressed
Congress. He spoke in the wake of the end of Communism in Eastern
Europe, the weakening of the Soviet Union, and the invasion of Kuwait
by Saddam Hussein. He argued that a New World Order was emerging: “A
hundred generations have searched for this elusive path to peace, while
a thousand wars raged across the span of human endeavor, and today that
new world is struggling to be born. A world quite different from the
one we’ve known. A world where the rule of law supplants the rule of
the jungle. A world in which nations recognize the shared
responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong
respect the rights of the weak.”
After every major, systemic war, there is the hope that this will be the war
to end all wars. The idea driving it is simple. Wars are usually won by grand
coalitions. The idea is that the coalition that won the war by working together
will continue to work together to make the peace. Indeed, the idea is that the
defeated will join the coalition and work with them to ensure the peace. This
was the dream behind the Congress of Vienna, the League of Nations, the United
Nations and, after the Cold War, NATO. The idea was that there would be no major
issues that couldn’t be handled by the victors, now joined with the defeated.
That was the idea that drove George H. W. Bush as the Cold War was coming to its
end.
Those with the dream are always disappointed. The victorious coalition breaks
apart. The defeated refuse to play the role assigned to them. New powers emerge
that were not part of the coalition. Anyone may have ideals and visions. The
reality of the world order is that there are profound divergences of interest in
a world where distrust is a natural and reasonable response to reality. In the
end, ideals and visions vanish in a new round of geopolitical conflict.
The post-Cold War world, the New World Order, ended with authority on Aug. 8,
2008, when Russia
and Georgia went to war. Certainly, this war was not in itself of major
significance, and a very good case can be made that the New World
Order actually started coming apart on Sept. 11, 2001. But it was on Aug. 8
that a nation-state, Russia, attacked another nation-state, Georgia, out of fear
of the intentions of a third nation-state, the United States. This causes us to
begin thinking about the Real World Order.
The global system is suffering from two
imbalances. First, one nation-state, the United States, remains
overwhelmingly powerful, and no combination of powers are in a position to
control its behavior. We are aware of all the economic problems besetting the
United States, but the reality is that the American economy is larger than the
next three economies combined (Japan, Germany and China). The
U.S. military controls all the world’s oceans and effectively
dominates space. Because of these factors, the United States remains
politically powerful — not liked and perhaps not admired, but enormously
powerful.
The second imbalance is within the United States itself. Its ground forces
and the bulk of its logistical capability are committed to the Middle East,
particularly Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States also is threatening on
occasion to go to war with Iran, which would tie down most of its air power, and
it is facing a
destabilizing Pakistan. Therefore, there is this paradox: The United States
is so powerful that, in the long run, it has created an imbalance in the global
system. In the short run, however, it is so off balance that it has few, if any,
military resources to deal with challenges elsewhere. That means that the United
States remains the dominant power in the long run but it cannot exercise that
power in the short run. This creates a window of opportunity for other countries
to act.
The
outcome of the Iraq war can be seen emerging. The United States has
succeeded in creating the foundations for a political settlement among the main
Iraqi factions that will create a relatively stable government. In that sense,
U.S. policy has succeeded. But the problem the United States has is the length
of time it took to achieve this success. Had it occurred in 2003, the United
States would not suffer its current imbalance. But this is 2008, more than five
years after the invasion. The United States never expected a war of this
duration, nor did it plan for it. In order to fight the war, it had to inject a
major portion of its ground fighting capability into it. The length of the war
was the problem. U.S. ground forces are either in Iraq, recovering from a tour
or preparing for a deployment. What strategic reserves are available are tasked
into Afghanistan. Little is
left over.
As Iraq pulled in the bulk of available forces, the United States did not
shift its foreign policy elsewhere. For example, it remained committed to the
expansion of democracy in the former Soviet Union and the
expansion of NATO, to include Ukraine and Georgia. From the fall of the
former Soviet Union, the United States saw itself as having a dominant role in
reshaping post-Soviet social and political orders, including influencing the
emergence of democratic institutions and free markets. The United States saw
this almost in the same light as it saw the democratization of Germany and Japan
after World War II. Having defeated the Soviet Union, it now fell to the United
States to reshape the societies of the successor states.
Through the 1990s, the successor states, particularly
Russia, were inert. Undergoing painful internal upheaval — which foreigners
saw as reform but which many Russians viewed as a foreign-inspired national
catastrophe — Russia could not resist American and European involvement in
regional and internal affairs. From the American point of view, the reshaping of
the region — from the
Kosovo war to the expansion of NATO to the deployment of U.S. Air Force
bases to Central Asia — was simply a logical expansion of the collapse of the
Soviet Union. It was a benign attempt to stabilize the region, enhance its
prosperity and security and integrate it into the global system.
As Russia
regained its balance from the chaos of the 1990s, it began to see the
American and European presence in a less benign light. It was not clear to the
Russians that the United States was trying to stabilize the region. Rather, it
appeared to the Russians that the United States was trying to take advantage of
Russian weakness to impose a new politico-military reality in which Russia was
to be surrounded with nations controlled by the United States and its military
system, NATO. In spite of the promise made by Bill Clinton that NATO would not
expand into the former Soviet Union, the three Baltic states were admitted. The
promise was not addressed. NATO was expanded because it could and Russia could
do nothing about it.
From the Russian point of view, the
strategic break point was Ukraine. When the Orange Revolution came to
Ukraine, the American and European impression was that this was a spontaneous
democratic rising. The Russian perception was that it was a well-financed CIA
operation to foment an anti-Russian and pro-American uprising in Ukraine.
When the United States quickly began discussing the inclusion of Ukraine in
NATO, the Russians came to the conclusion that the United States intended to
surround and crush the Russian Federation. In their view, if
NATO expanded into Ukraine, the Western military alliance would place Russia
in a strategically untenable position. Russia would be indefensible. The
American response was that it had no intention of threatening Russia. The
Russian question was returned: Then why are you trying to take control of
Ukraine? What other purpose would you have? The United States dismissed these
Russian concerns as absurd. The Russians, not regarding them as absurd at all,
began planning on the assumption of a hostile United States.
If the United States had intended to break the Russian Federation once and
for all, the time for that was in the 1990s, before Yeltsin was replaced by
Putin and before 9/11. There was, however, no clear policy on this, because the
United States felt it had all the time in the world. Superficially this was
true, but only superficially. First, the United States did not understand that
the Yeltsin years were a temporary aberration and that a new government
intending to stabilize Russia was inevitable. If not Putin,
it would have been someone else. Second, the United States did not
appreciate that it did not control the international agenda. Sept. 11, 2001,
took away American options in the former Soviet Union. No only did it need
Russian help in Afghanistan, but it was going to spend the next decade tied up
in the Middle East. The United States had lost its room for maneuver and
therefore had run out of time.
And now we come to the key point. In spite of diminishing military options
outside of the Middle East, the United States did not modify its policy in the
former Soviet Union. It continued to aggressively attempt to influence countries
in the region, and it became particularly committed to integrating Ukraine and
Georgia into NATO, in spite of the fact that both were of overwhelming strategic
interest to the Russians. Ukraine
dominated Russia’s southwestern flank, without any natural boundaries
protecting them. Georgia
was seen as a constant irritant in Chechnya as well as a barrier to Russian
interests in the Caucasus.
Moving rapidly to consolidate U.S. control over these and other countries in
the former Soviet Union made strategic sense. Russia was weak, divided and
poorly governed. It could make no response. Continuing this policy in the 2000s,
when the Russians were getting stronger, more united and better governed and
while U.S. forces were no longer available, made much less sense. The United
States continued to irritate the Russians without having, in the short run, the
forces needed to act decisively.
The American calculation was that the Russian government would not confront
American interests in the region. The
Russian calculation was that it could not wait to confront these interests
because the United States was concluding the Iraq war and would return to its
pre-eminent position in a few short years. Therefore, it made no sense for
Russia to wait and it made every sense for Russia to act as quickly as
possible.
The Russians were partly influenced in their timing by the success of the
American surge in Iraq. If the United States continued its policy and had force
to back it up, the Russians would lose their window
of opportunity. Moreover, the Russians had an additional lever for use on
the Americans: Iran.
The United States had been playing a complex game with Iran for years,
threatening to attack while trying to negotiate. The Americans needed the
Russians. Sanctions against Iran would have no meaning if the Russians did not
participate, and the United States did not want Russia selling advance air
defense systems to Iran. (Such systems, which American analysts had warned were
quite capable, were not present in Syria on Sept. 6, 2007, when the Israelis
struck a nuclear facility there.) As the United States re-evaluates the Russian
military, it does not want to be surprised by Russian technology. Therefore, the
more aggressive the United States becomes toward Russia, the greater the
difficulties it will have in Iran. This further encouraged the Russians to act
sooner rather than
later.
The Russians have now proven two things. First, contrary to the reality of
the 1990s, they can execute a competent military operation. Second, contrary to
regional perception, the
United States cannot intervene. The Russian message was directed against
Ukraine most of all, but the Baltics, Central Asia and Belarus are all
listening. The Russians will not act precipitously. They expect all of these
countries to adjust their foreign policies away from the United States and
toward Russia. They are looking to see if the lesson is absorbed. At first,
there will be mighty speeches and resistance. But the reality on the ground is
the reality on the ground.
We would expect the Russians to get traction. But if they don’t, the Russians
are aware that they are, in the long run, much weaker than the Americans, and
that they will retain their regional position of strength only while the United
States is off balance in Iraq. If the lesson isn’t absorbed, the Russians are
capable of more direct action, and they will not let this chance slip away. This
is their chance to redefine their sphere of influence. They will not get
another.
The
other country that is watching and thinking is Iran. Iran had accepted the
idea that it had lost the chance to dominate Iraq. It had also accepted the idea
that it would have to bargain away its nuclear capability or lose it. The
Iranians are now wondering if this is still true and are undoubtedly pinging the
Russians about the situation. Meanwhile, the Russians are waiting for the
Americans to calm down and get serious. If the Americans plan to take meaningful
action against them, they will respond in Iran. But the
Americans have no meaningful actions they can take; they need to get out of
Iraq and they need help against Iran. The quid pro quo here is obvious. The
United States acquiesces to Russian actions (which it can’t do anything about),
while the Russians cooperate with the Unit ed States against Iran getting
nuclear weapons (something Russia does not want to see).
One of the interesting concepts of the New World Order was that all serious
countries would want to participate in it and that the only threat would come
from rogue states and nonstate actors such as North Korea and al Qaeda. Serious
analysts argued that conflict between nation-states would not be important in
the 21st century. There will certainly be rogue states and nonstate actors, but
the 21st century will be no different than any other century. On Aug. 8, the
Russians invited us all to the Real World Order.
