The role for America
The latest republican presidential debate in the u.S. has raised some fundamental geopolitical issues, though the candidates didn’t generally recognize them as such. Senator rand Paul of Kentucky demanded to know how Senator marco rubio of Florida could “call yourself a conservative if you want to add a trillion borrowed dollars to defence spending.” rubio replied very fluently that American withdrawal in the world created vacuums that would be filled by antagonists, and spoke of terrorists executing Christians in Syria, mad clerics seeking nuclear weapons in Iran, and China trying to take over the South China Sea as if it were a Chinese lake. The argument was being conducted in sound-bites in the middle rather than starting where it belonged — a definition of the u.S. national security interest and the determination of the level of military force required to maintain and defend that interest. The issue wasn’t rubio’s conservative pedigree, but whether Paul’s fiscal conservatism would make America more vulnerable to its enemies.
There is nothing inherently wrong or dangerous in the united States being less extended militarily in the world than it has been. but rubio is correct that this withdrawal can consist of an abrupt departure where the u.S’s place is then taken by enemies. This happened when President barack Obama precipitately departed Iraq, leaving the Shiite majority under the suzerainty of Iran and the Iranians and the Islamic State contending for control of the Sunni portion of the country, causing strategic and humanitarian disasters at the same time, as was entirely predictable. The George W. bush and Obama administrations were jointly responsible for a greater geopolitical fiasco and now probably also a greater humanitarian disaster than vietnam (though American casualties were fewer in Iraq), as the vietnamese communists are comparatively civilized and not overly aggressive by the standards of militant Islam.
The conduct of the Chinese is more illustrative of the virtues of phased and co-ordinated American withdrawal. All of the neighbouring countries, vietnam, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, malaysia, and the Philippines, with steady American encouragement, are resisting the aggrandizement of China, and it is being conducted in a traditional context of overly assertive statements and occasional angry encounters between small craft in the disputed waters, but without serious exchanges of fire or dire ultimatums. The Obama administration’s hackneyed “pivot to Asia” has so far consisted in sending 50 marines to darwin, Australia and promotion of the Trans-Pacific trade pact, which excludes China, and whose immediate political future is problematical. yet successive American regimes have provided consistent diplomatic support for self-help in the region. India and Japan, in particular, are building large navies, and the democratization movement in myanmar can be seen in part as a rebuke of Chinese expansionism.
In europe, the united States has withdrawn probably 90 per cent of the military forces it had stationed in Western europe at the height of the Cold War, and the russian borders have, of course, effectively receded over 2,000 kilometres from the western tip of the former east Germany to the contested eastern border of ukraine with russia itself. No one could imagine a russian military threat to the old NATO powers in Western europe. but again, the irresolution of the American position over the former republics of the Soviet union is abetting the expansionist ambitions of revanchist russian leader vladimir Putin, who naturally, like most of his countrymen, has not philosophically accepted the dissolution of the russian overlordship of half of the former Soviet population. NATO impetuously admitted Latvia, Lithuania, and estonia to membership, meaning that an “attack upon one NATO member is an attack upon all,” although all three countries have substantial russian minorities and, like other international institutions, NATO did not provide for minority ethnic insurgent action within countries, or aggressive acts perpetrated by organizations like al-Qaida and ISIL that no state admits to sponsoring. It is unlikely that, if put to the test, Canadians and Americans will find agitation on the Latvian-russian border equivalent to a russian assault on the Canadian and Alaskan Arctic, any more than the American administration has taken that view of the russian antics in the donbas region of ukraine largely populated by ethnic russians. (Of course, ukraine is not in NATO.)
It would be unfair to lay all the responsibility for this lassitude on the united States. europe belongs to the europeans and in their troublefree moments the europeans have been very vocal about running their own affairs, from Gorbachev’s claptrap about “our common european home” (i.e. without the united States to prevent the russians from taking all of it over), to eu president Jacques Poos (of the geopolitical powerhouse Luxembourg), who greeted the beginnings of the yugoslav crisis in 1991 with “This is the hour of europe” a few months before beseeching the intervention of the united States. The whole world wants the German chancellor, Angela merkel, to act as the first responsible leader of a united Germany as a great power since bismarck (since bismarck, Germany has been either irresponsible or disunited or has not acted as a great power). In the current ukrainian problems, she hasn’t reduced her country’s natural gas imports from russia, hasn’t tightened sanctions, and refuses to do anything to help the ukrainians defend themselves.
The only restraint on Putin’s appetite in ukraine and the baltic states has been provided by Saudi Arabia’s reduction in the oil price, inducing a currency and economic crisis in russia, though the Saudis were chiefly aiming at Iranian adventurism in Syria. eventually, europe will probably be divided between russia; an amorphous zone comprising most of the former european Soviet republics; a hard currency Germanled core including the Poles, Czechs, dutch and most of the baltic countries; a less fiscally rigorous western and southern group of countries led by France, Italy, and Spain, in a continuing free trade zone with the German bloc; and the united Kingdom, enjoying free trade arrangements with the last two but navigating politically between the continental powers as has been the british vocation for 500 years. NATO will be updated some time, and ukraine’s long-term status is unclear.
In the middle east, we are completing the unwinding of colonialism. The Ottoman occupation of most of the region, followed by the Anglo-French carve-up after the First World War, followed by the fluid and generally ineffectual manipulations of the great powers, is giving way to some sort of messy and infinitely slow demarcation between Saudi Arabia as protector of the Gulf states, Iran as lord of the Shiites, and Turkey and egypt controlling most of the Sunni territory. Israel is finally being seen as a side-show by almost everyone except the diehard Palestinian Kool-Aid drinkers (including the useless idiots in the West comparing Israel to an apartheid state). In time, most of the West bank, Gaza and some territory carved out of Israel will form a Palestinian state, but only when that elusive ethnicity finally recognizes that the right of return of Palestinian refugees and their descendants is to it, not to the Jewish state.
The region’s whipping boy, the Kurds, will have to be conceded some extent of autonomy. This process of regional evolution will continue, erratically and violently, until some sort of stasis is achieved, as long as the Iranians don’t load up nuclear missiles before the next u.S. presidential inauguration. After Jan. 20, 2017, any attempt to do so will be replied to, whether by mrs. Clinton or any of the serious republicans, with the military option, which should have been used or at least believably threatened before, but which, when wielded by a determined American leader, would certainly be effective.
In Latin America, once the Cold war ended, the united States was able to relax vigilance without creating a vacuum anyone bothersome would occupy. As long as there is no threat of strategic penetration of the Americas by anti-American elements backed by a great power in another hemisphere, Washington has good-naturedly repealed the monroe doctrine barring Latin America to europeans (which was for its first 40 years mere bravura depending on the british Navy for enforcement), and has ignored leftist regimes that would formerly have provoked apoplexy in the State department and the Congress: Argentina, bolivia, ecuador, Nicaragua, venezuela. It has reopened relations with Cuba, getting nothing in return, and has watched almost bemusedly as the brazilian democratic left has cracked up the economy and political credibility of that magnificent country.
To return to the beginning, the united States must define and make clear what it regards as its security interests, and assist forces and countries it finds amenable to replace it on the ground in the regions outside the Americas. It then should assure it has the military capability to enforce those interests, and deal with whatever budgetary problems remain with a combination of entitlement reform, administrative streamlining, and increased consumption taxes. Not the world’s policeman, but what President eisenhower said in the midst of the Cold War remains true: “The cost of successful national defence is high, but the cost of failure is everything.”
The only restraint on Putin’s appetite in Ukraine and the Baltic states has been provided by Saudi Arabia’s reduction in the oil price